Chapter 3
Three
Kyrith
It's been five hundred years since I felt the glide of sheets across my body, and I doubt they were ever this soft. The only reason I recognise them at all is because someone tucks them under my arm as I start to come back around.
I flinch, and my companion freezes.
“Kyrith? You awake this time? Or are you gonna ghost out on me again?”
Eddy’s tone is soft with caution as I battle the clinging vestiges of sleep.
If I didn’t die, then I refuse to be idle.
“Why is everything so difficult?” I ask, grunting as I give up the fight against my eyelids. “How do you do this?”
Even talking feels like a huge effort.
“It might have something to do with not eating for a long time,” she suggests, wryly. “Give me a second.”
Her weight leaves the mattress, and I feel her footsteps skip across the floor, heading for the stairs.
“Oi!” she hollers, weight hitting the rail as she leans over to project her voice down the stairwell. “She’s awake. Someone check if the doors are working now, and grab us some food.”
“Pizza,” I say. “Pizza and sex and travel.”
Except, I’m not certain I’m in any condition to experience any of those things. The mind is willing, the body… Ugh, not so much.
Magic, I might be delirious.
“Let’s just start with something light and easy to digest,” Eddy corrects. “And work out whether birth control works on ghosts before you start putting your vagina through her paces.”
Multiple chairs scrape across the floor downstairs, making the wood protest. At the same time my eyes scrunch up in tiredness. Somehow the two sensations both end up battling for dominance, clashing until I can’t distinguish one from the other.
“Doors work!” North yells back, and I hear his voice echoing up the stairwell and simultaneously as if I were in the room below with them.
Too much. Overwhelm threatens again. This time, the Arcanaeum sends a wave of apology at me before it does something, then the awareness of the building fades. It’s still there, but muted, giving me the space to process the dryness of my mouth and the relief that comes with my yawn.
I can touch things. I tangle my hands in the covers just to prove it’s possible and then hiss as I accidentally draw the quilt away from my feet, exposing them to cold air.
“I haven’t missed that,” I grumble, shivering as I retreat back into the warm haven of my blankets.
That’s a lie, but it feels good to grouch about something as benign as chilly toes.
My eyes finally flicker open as Eddy reclaims her spot on my bed.
I wasn’t imagining it earlier; she is brighter than before.
It’s like I’ve been looking at her through dirty glass, and now someone has cleaned up the image, throwing the golden brown of her eyes and the dark brunette of her short hair into sharp relief.
Even the room is more vivid than I remember.
I had no idea being dead affected my eyesight so badly.
Above us, the mechanism of the clock tower ticks merrily away, and the Library itself seems supremely…smug. Footsteps charge up the stairs, the beams vibrating under the weight of a crowd.
I raise my hands into my field of view, expecting them to be blue and riddled with black cracks. Calloused pink palms tremble before me. The only blue in sight is the delicate tracery of my veins and the cerulean sleeves of my decidedly modern flannel pyjamas.
“I washed and dressed you when we got you out of the vault,” Eddy explains, propping me up with multiple cushions—more of which the Arcanaeum supplies without prompting. “Your clothes were… Well…everything was covered in blood.”
“That doesn’t explain why my top says ‘World’s grumpiest librarian,’” I remark dryly, rolling my neck.
Maybe teaching her to conjure garments was a mistake.
Eddy shoots me an unrepentant grin as the thunder of footsteps on the rickety stairs reaches a crescendo, and a tangle of men bursts into my private sanctuary. Dakari first, followed by North and Leo, and finally Jasper lingering at the back.
No Lambert.
My heart did not just fall a little.
Four pairs of eyes search me out, then pin me in place.
Magic. I’ve never truly felt the impact of those stares before now.
The way they drill into me sends a subtle little thrill down my spine.
Addictive. Intimate. The weight makes dusty, forgotten parts of me perk up.
I’m decent, but without my stays and kirtle, I feel practically naked, and I drag the covers a little higher to compensate.
My nipples are practically poking holes through the flannel, and while I could argue that it’s due to the temperature, I’m not sure they’ll believe that any more than I do. Especially since it suddenly seems a lot warmer than it was a moment ago.
“Out!” Eddy snaps, before her twin can take another step into the room. “I told you to bring food, and you promised not to rush her, remember?”
Her voice is deafening. I wince, then grimace as the action sets off another round of sensory overload.
“I’m not rushing her,” Jasper promises, weaving his way to the front of the group of men. “But someone needs to check on her.”
“You already did that, and then you made Leo double check,” Eddy protests, but her sigh says she’s given up fighting him, at least. “Why are the others here?”
“I’m not going anywhere until Kyrith tells me to,” Leo says, folding his arms. “It’s been days.”
Days? Surely not?
Dakari mirrors Leo’s defensive posture. “I’m not leaving him alone with her.”
Oh, stars give me strength.
“And I’m fed up of sitting down there with Lambert.” North rolls his eyes. “He’s acting like someone shot his puppy.”
“Tough shit.” Eddy stands firm, despite their intimidation tactics. “If the doors are working, go get the food I asked for and support your best friend.”
North groans, offers me a chin dip, and disappears downstairs. As soon as he’s gone, Dakari leans against the rail, making the wood creak.
“Lambert,” I mumble.
Stars, what must he be thinking? What must he be feeling? It was selfish of me to use him like I did.
Guilt swamps me, and for the first time in forever, I feel it sinking low in my stomach, and burning in my throat. The emotional deluge is a suffocating, confusing rush that consumes my senses.
Why did I bemoan being a ghost again? I hate feeling like this.
Just as quickly as the thought pops into my head…it all stops.
Sensation. The feelings choking me. Everything disappears.
The blankets fall to the bed with a muffled thump, and my hands, which I had resumed examining under the force of the others’ stares, turn transparent and blue. My pyjamas have turned ghostly alongside the rest of me, and I look up in a panic, meeting Eddy’s unsurprised gaze.
“Yeah. You do that now, apparently. You kept floating out of the blankets in your sleep. See if you can turn it off.”
Turn it off? I’m either dead, or I’m not.
That doesn’t make sense.
Only…
Eddy’s earnestly waiting, like she genuinely believes I can. She’s got nothing to gain by lying, and my pyjamas prove I wasn’t dreaming when I woke up.
It can’t hurt to try.
Most magic, at its most basic level, works through intent and visualisation, so I start there. Choosing the very recent memory of myself warm and cosy amongst the blankets, I focus on the sensation of soft fabric and the chill-kissed air on my toes.
My butt hits the mattress, all of the weightiness returning in a rush. My eyes slide closed as I’m forced to process it all over again.
What in magic’s name happened to me? Can I switch at will?
It’s not hard to test the theory. Becoming a ghost is easier, like stepping back into a familiar pair of worn shoes, but being solid…
I never realised just how huge the difference was. My memories must’ve faded, because having a body is so much more profound than I recall. Even the tiny chest-pang that follows that thought is enormous.
“I’m not supposed to be alive.” I rub one hand with the other, trying to come to terms with the alien sensation of warm skin covering muscle, tendon, and bone.
Not that I’m complaining. I longed for this. I just never thought it would be so…intense. I have so many questions, chief amongst them: “If I’m not a ghost, what am I?”
Leo pushes forward, coming to stand at the foot of my bed as he rakes his gaze over me again. “I don’t think you were ever dead.”
“They stabbed me through the heart.” I return his serious stare with a defiant one of my own. “I bled out on that altar.”
I remember it vividly. I relive it every single night. My hands flutter up to my sternum, and I flicker to my ghostly self a second time. That’s when I realise my cracks are gone in this form too; as if they were never there in the first place.
“If you were dead, we’d have needed powerful necromancy to bring you back,” Leo argues, as I drag myself back to solid form again. “Accidentally touching you wouldn’t suffice. Reanimation—the kind I’ve read about, anyway—doesn’t look like this.”
“There has never been a case like mine for you to make that assumption,” I say, though his points are valid.
“None of the forbidden books I’ve read mention a ghost cracking.” He pauses, hawkish eyes drilling into mine. “What exactly happened when you were sacrificed?”
His tone holds a streak of distrust a mile wide, but he’s forced to step aside when Jasper takes advantage of my long silence and perches on the bed beside me, opening his grimoire. A few words into his murmured incantation, I relax. He’s only using a divination spell to check on my healing.
“I already told you. They stabbed me. I bled to death. You saw and heard the rest, and I’ve spent thousands of nights reliving it. I don’t understand why their spell went wrong.”
Leo rakes his fingers through his curls. “But for what purpose? What was the ritual supposed to accomplish? If they wanted your magic to protect the building, and they’d done it before, what was so different about you?”