I stared back at her for so long that she finally pulled away, moving from person to person in the small clearing and asking when they’d last seen Vexer of Reisender.
“Is he really dead?” Airmienan asked, his face pale. Everyone here was jealous of the man, that much was obvious, but I was also fairly certain that they didn’t want him to die. Because if he died, Brynn might shatter. I stood there for a long moment before answering, watching as Brynn’s handler chased her around the clearing, grabbing onto her arm and trying to get her to calm down for a moment.
“He’s dead,” I replied, even though I didn’t want to say it. The vision I’d received had been vague, more pain and hurt and guilt, longing and frustration and fear, than actual images or sounds. But I didn’t need to see Vexer’s body to know he was gone, and neither did Brynn.
Tears streaming down her face, she stormed back over to us and swallowed hard.
“I’ve hired three mounts,” she ground out, “one for Trubble and Dyre, one for me and Spicer, and one for Jas, Eli, and Air. Try not to startle the griffins; they don’t like ghosts on their backs.” Brynn whipped back around, her hair and feathers flying right through me, but smacking Trubble in the side.
This isn’t going to be good, Spicer, I told myself as I moved forward and climbed up behind Brynn. I felt awful about it, but it felt nice to put my arms around her scoot close. She’s a student, you insensitive scobberlotcher, I told myself, and she’s hardly in any mood to entertain the amorous advances of a dead professor for fuck’s sake.
We were barely seated before Brynn was requesting takeoff, the large beast bunching its muscles beneath us and flapping its massive wings.
Silence reigned between us as we went up, up, up, soaring above the massive circular walls of New Akyumen, the castle sitting atop it all like a cherry on a sundae, and the Royal College jutting out off the right side like the handle of a spoon. It was all quite scrumptious from up here, but down there, something awful was brewing.
“Tell me about the vision,” Brynn said as the griffin flapped its massive wings and I solidified my body enough to feel the wind of my face. There were so many parts of me that enjoyed the hot warmth of another human—even a half-human—pressed up tight against me, but I did my best to ignore all of that. Even if Brynn wasn’t in crisis, a relationship between the dead and the living was scandalous enough … add in the student/teacher aspect and it was entirely unfeasible.
And even all of that was premature assumption on my part as Brynn had never given me a single indication that she was interested in me in the first place.
Taking the glasses off my face, I put them back in my pocket and rubbed my hand down my face. This is the freedom you wanted, my mind whispered as I opened my eyes back up and looked down at the scenery unfolding beneath us. Our country was beautiful, more so to me than any other I’d ever visited, and seeing it from up here after years of being trapped … It did something to me inside that I just didn’t know what to do with.
Still, with Brynn crying in front of me, tiny drops of tears catching on the wind and blocking back toward me like shimmering blue jewels, it all felt tainted.
“We’re going to Markt, I assume?” I asked, trying to keep a respectful distance between our bodies.
“Tell me about the vision,” she repeated, and this time, I knew I had to tell the truth, a truth that she was already realizing. Not only had she lost our prince, she’d seen another give his life for her, watched the thief boy give up his spirit to protect her … and now this.
I wondered how much more this woman could take before she broke completely.
“I say vision because it’s the easiest term to understand, but what I should say is impression. Sometimes, I feel things that’ve already happened or are currently happening. There’s a surge of emotion that isn’t mine, a quick flash of a place I’ve never been, and then it’s all over.”
A heavy silence sits between us, and I hate what I’m about to do. I’m about to crush this woman’s soul to dust, aren’t I? I debate lying to her. Once we get to Markt, finding any information about Vexer or the whereabouts of his body are going to be slim to none.
I could lie to this girl and she would never really know.
But I already betrayed her trust once, and I can’t do it again.
“Vexer is dead,” I told her, those ebon dark wings of hers trailing out behind us, one on either side of me. They slumped as soon as I said that, dropping low and hanging like wilted petals. There was a tenseness in her shoulders that made my own hurt just looking at them. “I can’t tell you exactly how or where—” I started, but I didn’t get the chance to finish.
Brynn spread her wings wide, beat down with them once, and then lifted up off the back of the griffin in a sudden surge. Ghosts could theoretically fly, but it was extremely difficult for unpracticed ones like Air or Dyre. If Brynn got too far from us, we’d all start to feel the pull and find ourselves literally dragged from the back of our mounts.
The other boys might fall, and then the force of the magic stretching between us could end up dragging us all to the ground … Closing my eyes, I exhaled a sharp breath and touched on the madness and magic inside of me, encouraging our mounts to follow along behind Brynn.
It took every ounce of my power to do a compulsion like that, leaving me faded at the edges and straddling the Otherside. But I did it. I did and then I slumped forward, my tattoos shifting restlessly, my heart—even as dead as it was—thundering with rapid, frantic beats. In the back of my mind, I could hear my god whispering his mad thoughts, telling me things I didn’t want or need to know.
Sit up, Spicer, and get over it, I told myself as the three irezumi bound into my skin snarled and clawed at the surface, desperate for release. I pushed them back, clamped down on their urges … until I saw where Brynn was going.
In the snow, near the edge of a mountain peak was a pack of razor wolves.
“Brynn!” Elijah shouted, taking off after her with massive beats of his own wings. She was already diving, heading straight down toward the pack as they rested in small round forms in a patch of bright sunshine.
Last time we’d fought them, the blade whisperer had been alive.
This time, he was going to have to use Brynn’s body to fight for us.
There was not a lot of thought going through my mind when I descended from the sky like a Valkyrie and plunged the blades of both knives—Haversey and Hellim—into the head of one of the sleeping wolves. And I didn’t feel bad about any of it either because I was just numb inside. Numb and broken.
This moment … it was like I was experiencing both Air’s and Dyre’s deaths all over again. I wasn’t even present in my body when I started attacking the wolves, waking them slowly from a death sleep to the smell of blood and wild howls of pain.
That’s probably why I was so open to Dyre when he possessed me again, for the second time that day, and took control of my weapons. Even though I knew that I had to fight, that I needed to live in order to keep these men bound to me, I just gave up. If Dyre hadn’t taken over, I’d have probably died right there in a circle of razor wolves, my soul consumed and gobbled up to sleep alongside Talon’s.
Instead, without having anyone else to look after, Dyre was a beast. He tore through the wolves like they were made of paper, shredding them with my knives while the griffins—and their precious cargo—stayed nearly eighty feet back from the carnage.