I nodded.
My throat was suddenly too tight to speak. Magenta had loved this man.
I smoothed my hand over the silk like a blessing. It was the least that I could do for a fellow mage. Yet who’d built a shrine that was versatile enough to double as a tomb if there’d never been another mage in this castle? It must’ve been constructed by magic. Yet who’d cared enough to respect the mage’s body in this way, rather than let it turn to dust on the freezing floor?
Whoever had done it must’ve loved them.
When my fingers brushed a book, which was balanced on the silk, I gasped. Magic prickled across my skin, jumping from the cover. I ran my fingers reverentially down the spine.
“By my feathers, don’t touch. I understand why you have the urge to test your wings, when they were clipped for so long, but resist it. There are worse ways to die than quietly walled up alive, like screaming in agony.” Ezekiel clutched my shoulders. “First, Bacchus doesn’t teach you about spells and then, she doesn’t warn you about the risk of cursed objects.”
“Pan would never curse one of his shimages, right Great Pan?” I eyed the shrine hopefully.
Would it be desecration to remove items from a grave? I vaguely remembered the Egyptian gods cursing grave robbers.
I shrugged. I wasn’t a robber, I was just a curious pussy.
Wait, didn’t curiosity kill the cat?
Too late.
I snatched the book, holding it close enough to see through the gloom that it appeared to consist of sheets ripped from other books. The front was decorated with fluffy red feathers.
Robins again.
Why were my hands shaking?
“Don’t…” Ezekiel urged, but it was distant like everything had fallen away but the book, me, and the itching urge to open it.
The fingers cramped, as I attempted to resist. Then the image of a glade in summer, which was speared with sunlight as butterflies flitted between violets and lilies of the valley, slammed through my mind. Instantly, I craved like my body was aflame.
I threw open the book, and a gust of wind that was scented with sweet wild blackberries blasted out. I fell backward, shocked at the chill, which ghosted down my spine.
Invisible fingers traced my cheek in tender gratitude.
I swallowed, freezing.
I was being watched. On my prickles, I was being observed.
It was the same as when I’d stepped into the academy’s courtyard bailey, and Magenta had first kissed me with cold lips that’d warmed with life, even across the veil of death.
What were the chances that this spook only wanted to make out with me?
Perhaps, Ezekiel was right about a quiet death being better than whoever I’d unleashed.
After all, now we were walled up alive with a ghost.
Chapter Seven
MAGENTA
I took a deep breath.
I'd promised to breathe for Fox, yet every precious lungful could be one less for Fox in the darkness within the walls of the castle. One less gasp or moment of life.
One less chance to return to me.
I loved Fox with a desperation that ached through my bones and whispered through my Soul.
I needed him.
Yet I'd promised Byron to treat mages as equals and that also meant trusting him. Why couldn't I simply wrap him in the softest candyfloss of my magic and save him from all hurt forever?
What was wrong with such protective love?
After watching barbarity towards the Rebels and their deaths as both a child and for over a hundred years trapped in Hecate's Tree, I had a right for a little anxiety.
I braced myself on the open windowsill of the stone gallery outside Damelza's study. After Fox had been walled up alive (witching heavens, that hurt even to think), my lovers and I had been locked up in the West Wing. Sleipnir had paced furiously from one side of the bedroom to the other, while Bask had curled up underneath the sheets with Nile, until I hadn’t even been able to see the top of his silky head. I alone could break the room's wards, however, to materialize outside the study.
Already, the Membership’s spell was weakening.
But not quickly enough.
Fox believed that he could hang onto life, until we won the Dragon Polo Tournament and weakened the wards enough to free him. As Flair, my crow familiar would say, bollocks with a helping of fuck that.
Watching the gallery wall seal behind Fox was the hardest thing that I've ever endured. It'd been worse than seeing it the first time with Robin, and that’d shattered me into the wickedest witch, who’d cursed an entire academy. Because watching it a second time and knowing how the loss had torn me apart the first time (was still tearing me apart), was the cruelest torture.
I couldn't wait until I’d broken the spell. I wouldn't risk Fox's life or Ezekiel's.
My mother, Henrietta, had insisted that it was impossible to let out a mage, once they'd been put into the walls. But what if that'd been a lie?
Sweet Hecate, don't steal both shimages from me.
My eyes widened, and I swayed. My magic sparkled in a magenta mist around me; it prickled me in distress.
Surely all this couldn't be happening because of something as simple as rivalry? Had I lost my lovers out of a feud like the one that the academy attempted to create between the Princes and Immortals? Did Hecate hate Pan, who blessed the shimages, with such ferocity that she'd murder them to punish Pan?
And I'd been the foolish witch who'd prayed to Hecate to free me from marriage, in order that I could love a shimage. I'd even kissed Robin in her sacred glade beneath her yew tree. Then it'd been Fox's blood that'd resurrected me because shimages were the sacrifice.
Had shimages always been the traditional sacrifice for witches and their god?
A sudden hoarse cawing broke out. Then in a flurry of feathers my two crow familiars, Flair and Echo, landed in the open window. I thrilled that I wasn't alone, sitting down on the sill, before I fell on my face.
I was graceful like that.
My familiars hopped onto my lap.
Flair tipped his head, inspecting me with his sharp gaze. "You look like you've seen a ghost and not our fuckable arses."
Echo rubbed his pink head against me with deep yearning, until I stroked his feathers. He pulsed with my magic, which calmed mine. He let out a series of satisfied, rumbling clicks.
"We missed you," Echo said, quietly. "I was frightened that you wouldn’t come back from the mission. Then you did come back, and the academy’s magic kept us away. But you never tried to find us."
My chest tightened, and I cuddled Echo closer. "I'm sorry."
Flair snapped his bill with an irritated clack. "I don't care a witch’s fuck for sorry. If you're out here, rather than riding your Rebels, then it finally happened. You turned into a zombie, didn't you? I knew that there was no such thing as a Ghost Witch. You're not craving crows’ brains?"
I sighed. "I'm craving spanking a crow."
Flair snorted. "A kinky zombie then."
Echo peered at me, wrapping his wings around me. "Did you forget us like everybody else?"