“Shut up, Eli,” I said, cheeks red as I moved over to Air and took his arm in mine. “I want to be more honest with you,” I told him, even as I felt some guilt anyway, damn it.
“I think we could both be more honest with each other,” he told me, but I didn’t have time to guess what, exactly, that meant before the bells were clanging and we were heading to the far side of campus for the next class.
I’d always prefer a premonition or a prophecy over a vision.
A vision was done, over, something that’d happened that could not be undone. It was even more frustrating when I didn’t understand it. All I knew was that someone, somewhere was bleeding, dying, suffering—and that’d received that vision by touching Brynn of Haversey.
“You’re truly a nightmare of a god,” I cursed as I clutched my hand around the metal eye hanging from my neck. Verstand ignored me; he was far too mad to take out any revenge on unworthy followers. His blessings were intentional or direct, more like the scattered nonsense of a shattered mind, bits of that glass leaking down from the sky to paint unwanted pictures in my own mind.
I kept myself apart from the others: why on earth would those students want me tagging along with them? It was good to be free of my point of binding, but the loneliness I thought would dissipate sooner rather than later … has amplified tenfold.
I was surrounded by people, but not a part of them. I was bound to Brynn, but not in her confidence. As I followed her through the streets of the Royal College and toward Professor Tiukka’s office, I wondered if I made the wrong decision. At least when I was trapped in that building, I knew I was missing out on life. I just didn’t know the exact events and interactions that I was missing out on.
Laughter, hugs, kisses, sex.
All of that.
Slicking my fingers through my hair, I sighed and did my best to maintain a safe distance back from the others, far enough away that I wasn’t intruding but close enough to prevent that awful lurching feeling when the connection got taut.
“You don’t have to sit back here like an outcast,” Prince Airmienan said, falling into line beside me. Knowing the only heir to our kingdom was dead was not a promising thought. And demigods were not known for being particularly fertile, so the chances of the queen having another child were quite slim.
My irezumi, my living ink, shifted on my skin, uncomfortable with the direction of my thoughts. Well should they be, too, because something eerie was happening in Amerin. I couldn’t quite place my finger on it—and my patron god had been unnervingly quiet about it—but I could feel it. Restoring both of these dead princes to power was tantamount. And, if given a lucky second chance at life, I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist traveling to Vaenn to see for myself what destruction the shadows had wrought.
An entire kingdom falling silent … was not a good omen for anyone.
“Brynn doesn’t like me, does she?” I asked, wondering if I should’ve told her the truth about my death. Maybe that could’ve restored some small chance of building trust with her, after I so thoroughly shattered my chances before.
“I don’t know what Brynn does or doesn’t like anymore,” he snapped, and then cringed slightly as I raised a dark brow at him. Speaking to royalty had never fazed me, but as I walked alongside the prince with his bright blonde hair and sea green eyes, those slighted pointed huldra teeth, I could feel the magnetism of his blood, that natural magic calling out to me, even in death.
“You were going to make her your queen?” I asked, because even if I tried to stay out of everything, I was still human; I eavesdropped. The vision from earlier, the one of pain and death and blood flickered through my head again and I stopped suddenly, putting a hand out to steady myself on the pink wall of some student housing. I’d been dead long enough that I knew how to do that, act like I was still alive enough to interact with the world.
Brynn stopped walking suddenly, and I saw it, this chill skitter down her spine.
She turned and looked over her shoulder at me, those beautiful gold eyes meeting mine with a shock of sudden fear. Before I even had the chance to recover, she was turning around and running in the opposite direction, her handler calling out from behind her.
The shadow boy—Trubble—jogged along behind her, and the rest of us were forced to follow. Of course, being a spirit made it easy to keep up. We could run, if we really wanted, but we could also fly, skim the ground and maintain speeds no person could ever keep up with.
Brynn didn’t wait to explain anything, just kept running, out the gates and down the winding road toward the Eaters’ district. She was panting and covered in sweat by the time she got there, her white hair sticking to her forehead. For a moment, she paused and looked around the busy square, scanning for someone.
That’s when it hit me.
Vexer, the griffin Master of the Travelers’ Guild.
She was supposed to meet him tonight for dinner—after her meeting with Professor Tiukka, which we were now going to miss. But as soon as I realized what we were doing here, I knew.
He’s dead, I thought as I stood there and watched her search through the crowd, spotting the sign of a nearby restaurant and pushing her way in through the doors. I followed along behind her, the crowd so dense that people were passing through my body as I moved. The vision, it has to be about him. Who else?
“Vex!” she called out, cupping her hands around her mouth and shouting before she paused to survey the crowd. A man stood up from a nearby table, sporting the same gray eyes and brown wings as Vexer or Reisender. Only … it was most definitely not Vexer. A sibling, perhaps? I pulled my glasses from my pocket and slipped them on my nose, looking for magical signatures. Even though I was deceased, a figment of my former self, and the glasses weren’t real, they still functioned as if they were.
The man’s aura was similar to Vex’s, a violet haze with big white spots in it, like he’d been relaxed but wasn’t anymore.
“Vexer isn’t here,” he said, brow crinkling slightly. “I haven’t seen him in a while. What’s wrong? I got back into town earlier than I thought, and this is his usual spot for a Saturday night.”
Brynn backed away slowly, her eyes wide and her pulse thundering. She looked up at me again, and I knew she’d want to know why I’d stumbled at the precise moment she’d felt a cold chill.
An emissary of death had paid a visit to us both.
I left through the front wall—no point in going through the door—and starting off down the road toward the city gates. That’s where she’d want to go next, to confirm if anyone had seen Vex land, on his way back from taking a client to Markt, a particularly ancient and horribly uncreative name for a market town just south of here.
“You felt something,” she said, grabbing me by the sleeve. I let her hold onto my arm, not just because she was hurting, but also because I was selfish and I wanted to touch someone. Anyone. I just wanted to be looked at like I still mattered, and in this moment, I did. “What is it? Where is he?”
Already, tears were streaming down her cheeks.
Brynn of Haversey was powerful, and she was smart, and griffins didn’t just mate for life based on some moral principle. They could only gift their fertility to one person through a bond of natural magic. Usually, it happened without the people involved even realizing it. That’d happened with Brynn and Vexer, I was sure of it.
She’d know if he were dead.
She’d know.
“I had a vision,” I said carefully, pausing as we left the city and entered the clearing where all the griffin mounts were hired. It was an official Travelers’ Guild sponsored location. If Vexer had come back, he would’ve checked in here.
“More blood and ice?” Dyre growled out from my other side. Brynn flicked her eyes briefly to him and then back to me.
Waiting.
She was waiting for an answer.