He smelled alive.
I wanted nothing more in that moment than to throw my arms around him and hug him close. Instead, I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to get oriented as best I could.
“What happened?” I asked, my voice husky and rough. I had to swallow several times to clear it. “The last thing I remember is …” Dyre rose up from the floor, katana in hand, his eyes shimmery and see-through, like any new spirit. And he was here, in my room, which meant … I’d bound yet another ghost to me?! What was wrong with me?
“We were put under by the Royal Sleep Whisperer,” Jasinda said softly, reaching out and putting her hand on my bare ankle. I was dressed in one of my silk nightgowns, a solid black one this time, and somebody had scrubbed all the blood off of my skin. From what I could remember, there was a lot of it. A lot of blood … and a lot of spirits. Fuck. A feather popped off as I rubbed my hands down my face, but I didn’t care. Now that I was thinking about all those flubbing spirits pouring out of the wolves and into me, I wanted to throw up. Curling my wings around my body, I checked for missing feathers and sure enough, there were a few bald patches here and there. Fortunately, they were mostly invisible unless you knew specifically to look at them, but it was just more proof that what I thought had happened, really had.
Spirits poured into me, blood oozed down my face, my feathers sloughed off in clumps.
What in Hellim’s hell had happened to me?
“Who woke you up?” I asked before I noticed Jasinda’s eyes flicking over to Matz. Her blush turned copperberry red before she turned her wide eyes to me.
“The person who’s sleeping, they don’t have to … Well, only the person doing the waking has to feel love. I—” Jasinda rambled on for a moment and then took a deep breath, putting her fingers over her eyes for a split-second before dropping them into her lap. “Matz woke me up, and I am forever grateful. Now, we’re sort of on a time schedule here. Need I remind everyone in this room that the queen had us knocked out and locked up here?”
“Locked up?” I asked, rubbing at my forehead and wondering how the flub I could I be so damn tired when I’d been in a magically induced sleep for … “How long was I out anyway?”
“Two days, thereabouts,” Air said, moving over to sit beside me. I reached out for him, but he was nervous and scared, and he hadn’t had my spirit to ‘warm’ him, so when I made contact with his arm, he was ice-cold. Still, I pulled him to me and laid my head on his shoulder as I stared at Vexer and Elijah. Dyre and Professor Cross stood behind them, watching me. I still had yet to process the fact that the professor had used me to escape his point of binding. As of right now, however, I had plenty of other ship to worry about, much more pressing ship.
“Why would your mother put Jasinda and me out like that?” I asked, just as the sound of the front door opening echoed through the house. Elijah didn’t hesitate before dropping through the ceiling … and popping right back up. He might’ve been a ghost, but his face was clearly ashen.
“It’s the Royal Spirit Whisperer and her handler,” he hissed as Vexer rose to his feet and I followed along behind him, dragging Air with me.
“In the wardrobe,” I whispered as I tried to move and stumbled. My legs were shaky and I felt completely disoriented. Those spirits had done their best to drive themselves into me. I felt them pummeling my metaphysical shields, looking for an opening. I hadn’t been able to tell if they were trying to possess me, if they wanted me to exorcism them, or if they were attempting to bind themselves to me the way the professor had done. It’d been too overwhelming to even guess. And even having slept the past two days away, I was exhausted.
“The wardrobe?” Dyre asked with a scowl. “That’s original.”
“She’s a spirit whisper for flub’s sake,” I snapped back at him as Air and Elijah helped me to stay standing. “She won’t be looking for a griffin in the closet.”
Fortunately, Vexer didn’t wait around for us to argue, squeezing his large body into the wardrobe and yanking the doors closed behind him.
“Whatever,” the Vaennish prince growled, running his fingers through his blue-white hair. I felt awful fighting with him, even in something so small as this. He’d died for me. And we’d both known it was coming; he’d locked eyes with me just before his guts spilled into the snow. “Trubble will keep him hidden.”
Ah.
Trubble.
The shadow.
The unbound shadow.
Yet another problem that’d need to be dealt with later. Right now … the door was opening and Ame of Haversey and her handler were stepping into my room. To say they looked shocked as ship to see me awake was an understatement. Pretty sure I almost gave Ame a heart attack.
“Your majesty,” she greeted, looking first to Airmienan before she bothered turning her attention to me. “Brynn of Haversey, I’m surprised to see you awake. I’m here by order of the queen, to check and see if the flesh whisperers have healed your injuries to a sufficient level that you could be woken up. But I see that’s already been done?”
There was so clearly a question mark clinging to the end of that sentence that I glanced over to Jasinda for help … and saw Matz standing by her side. So cute, right? He liked her enough that his kiss had the power to break a spell. We’d have to have a girls’ night soon, so I could finally get to the bottom of this thing between her and the scribe, see if she liked him back.
“Matz kissed us both and broke the spell,” I blurted quickly, carefully extracting my arms from both Elijah and Air. I teetered a little, but managed to stay standing, watching as Ame and her handler—totally could not remember the woman’s name—scanned the other ghosts in the room.
“You’re certainly lucky to have someone who cares so much about you,” she said, giving the scribe a long, lingering look. The blush on both mine and Jasinda’s faces probably helped seal the deal for that lie. I was embarrassed as hell, and a little shocked that Vexer liked me that much. Oh, Vexer. Biting my lip, I raised my brows at Ame and waited to see what she’d do now.
Clearly, Everess had something up her sleeve, something that Air would eventually figure out. It was hard to hide much of anything from a ghost. But whatever it was, she must’ve figured it’d work out in the end. It wasn’t like Airmienan had a lot of choices, considering he was dead and all.
“There were supposed to be several guards inside with you, but I’m not seeing any of them.” Ame exhaled and put her hands on her hips. She was dressed in voluminous purple, red and white silk robes, a symbol of her station. Pretty sure she was about a hundred times more powerful than I’d ever be, my strange double blessing aside.
“I just woke up,” I choked out, wishing I’d had even a few minutes to adjust before having to deal with all of this crap. A feather popped off and drifted to the floor near my feet, causing Ame to raise a brow as she folded her white wings behind her.
“I possessed them and walked them outside. We deserve more privacy than that, don’t you think?” Air said with a lift of his chin. Ame’s ice-blue eyes flicked from him to Elijah. Clearly, she knew it would take a much more skilled spirit than Air to possess a human without leaving any memory of the occasion. Then again, dead or not, Air was still the crown prince, so she kept her mouth shut. “Inform my mother that Brynn is awake and let her know that I’d like to speak with her right away.”