At lunch, I sat with Jasinda in the courtyard closest to our house. There were six of them in total, and each one catered to a specific year. Pretty sure this one was the sixth year courtyard, but I didn’t particularly care about that because every time I checked my schedule, I heard Talon’s voice reading it aloud.
“Lunch Hour—very descriptive—is followed by Hour Five: Spirits and Shadows. Seems redundant, but okay.”
My head was resting on my forearm, but I paused to lift it up and look across the table at Jasinda. She was picking cherry tomatoes off the top of a purple salad—made with only purple leafy greens from the Royal College greenhouse. The food here, it really was top notch.
“I can’t stop thinking about Talon,” I said, sending out little magic feelers for the other spirits attached to me. Elijah, Airmienan and now Professor Cross and Dyre. They were all keeping themselves hidden except for Mr. Cross. No, he was making small-talk with other staff members and making me ridiculously uncomfortable with the idea of having a gods-damned (bye, bye feather!) teacher attached to me for the rest of the year. I hadn’t had a chance to give it much thought yet, but holy Haversey’s boobs! How was I supposed to do anything fun with a freaking staff member latched to my soul?
Come to think of it, he deserved a good tongue-lashing. He’d bound himself to me without asking, without any consideration as to how it’d make me feel. Just because he was a teacher, and just because we’d gone through shit on the orientation day assignment didn’t mean he was off the hook.
“Talon,” Jasinda said, giving up on trying to stab the last cherry tomato with her fork and popping the shiny red veggie into her mouth with her fingers. “I’m sorry about what happened to him, Brynn, but he’s gone.”
“He’s not gone,” I growled, causing Jas to raise her eyebrows at me. “He’s inside the belly of a razor wolf.”
“Yeah, and far beyond our reach,” my handler continued, reaching out and pushing my own salad a little closer. I hadn’t touched it and I was starving. But I was also too overwhelmed to eat.
“He’s not beyond our reach,” I continued, sitting up straight and glancing in the direction of the snow capped mountain where we’d lost him. I didn’t see any soldiers or whisperers up there now, but it made me wonder. What the flub was the bleeding queen doing up there in the first place? I’d seen her just before that sleep whisperer knocked me out. “He’s right out there, just a sword slice away from being rescued.”
“You can’t be serious,” Dyre said suddenly, reappearing on my right side. Jasinda jumped and fingered the spirit charm around her neck, but I just glanced over at his scowling face and tried to remind myself that no matter how abrasive he was, that he’d saved my life. Just like Talon, he’d sacrificed himself for me. “Did you see how much trouble we were in up there? I died, Brynn of Haversey. I am dead and I have a fucking brother and a dying kingdom that need me.”
“Then why’d you do it?” I asked him, watching him tap his katana on the surface of the table. It went through it several times before he finally got it together enough to make it bounce off like it was real. “I saw you look at me just before. You had a choice and you picked me.”
“What kind of prince would I be if I put myself first?” Dyre scowled, turning away from me and leaning his, admittedly, really nice butt against the edge of the wooden picnic table. He went through it though and fell half inside the white stone that lined the streets of the faculty and sixth year apartments. Up through fifth year, all students shared a room with at least one roommate and stayed in the dorms. But during sixth year, they got to move into posh digs on the same street as the staff.
I stifled a small smile and pretended that Dyre's smooth move hadn't totally flopped.
“A living prince?” I hazarded as he stood up back up and cursed in Vaennish under his breath. “Your life has gotta be more important than mine …”
“That's stupid,” Dyre growled, giving me a look through narrowed eyes. I could almost imagine the copper color shining through as he stared at me. “You have a resurrection spell to perform. If you do this successfully, you become the most important person in Europia. Maybe the whole world.”
A slight flush colored my cheeks as I glanced around and wondered how many spirit whisperers were watching us. Yes, we were in the shade of a large oak tree, but Dyre really should've been acting as careful as Air. The queen hadn't said anything about his death to me yet, but I'd imagine she wouldn't want the world knowing the last living royal from Vaenn had died during an Amerin college assignment?
“You should hide yourself,” I muttered, just as I spotted Felixa flouncing into the courtyard. She sat at a table bathed in bright sunshine and locked her eyes on mine. I had no idea how she could see me through the shadows and yet, somehow she did. When I flicked my eyes over to where Dyre had been standing, he was gone. “I'm not giving up on Talon,” I muttered, and I swear, I heard Air curse somewhere in the direction of the pond on the other side of the willow tree. “He gave his soul up to save my life.”
“Yes,” Jasinda said as I dragged my eyes away from Felixa's and refocused them on my handler. “He saved you because you have a higher purpose. Don't throw both his and Dyre's sacrifices aside.”
“You want me to leave Talon out there, knowing his fate?” I asked, feeling this hot, angry little spark flare to life inside of me. I pushed my salad away and raked the fingers of both hands through my white hair. “You want me to leave the guy I had my first kiss with to spend two hundred or more years trapped in some carnivore's belly?”
“You're awfully stuck on that first kiss thing,” Elijah said, appearing by my side and sitting down. He was the only one besides the professor who could freely show himself. Everyone knew he was dead anyway. I wondered how that would work then, if I were to resurrect him. Everyone would know. And once they did, word would spread far and wide.
Remember that Double Blessed whisperer who was promptly killed when word got out?
I would be promptly killed three times as fast. Five times. Ten.
Now that I really thought about it, other countries would go to war over something like this.
That's when I started to feel really fucking sick inside.
A black feather drifted down to land on my salad as I stared blankly ahead, a sudden surge of fear and panic spreading through me. The queen wanted Air's death kept secret for a reason—and not just because he was the last living heir.
Because she didn't want anyone to know what I could do.
She wasn't going to let Elijah or Talon or anyone else that was supposed to be dead come back to life, was she? My heart started to pound inside my chest and I felt suddenly dizzy. If I did this, if I actually completed this spell, my life … wouldn't ever be my own again, now would it?
“I need to go home for a minute,” I said, shoving myself up from the table and heading directly for the front door of our house. I fumbled the key out of my pocket and unlocked it, shoving my way in and slamming it behind me. It was close enough to the courtyard that my spirits didn't have to follow me.
But Air did anyway.
“Are you alright?” he asked as I ran for the staircase and darted up it, slamming into Vexer's hard, warm chest and coming to a sudden stop with his hands on my shoulders.
“Everything okay?” he asked as Air came up the steps behind me and paused on the landing. I glanced back at him and then over at Vex's gray eyes … and Trubble's bronze ones. They were impossible to ignore, curled up as he was around the big man's shoulders.