3. The Great Feast
THREE
the great feast
He’s tense when I follow him back to the dorm. The other man from earlier is gone, and the silence eats away at me with each heavy sigh he shoves from his lungs. He laces up a pair of worn black leather boots with too much strength, jerking the thin laces so tightly, it looks like he’s practicing strangling someone rather than tying innocent little bunny ears on each of his feet. His pants are tucked into the tops of the boots now, and that small detail changes him from a good little academy boy into a hardened militia appearance that I don’t particularly like, if we’re being honest.
When he finishes the simple task, his hands lift abruptly and shove forcefully through his thick hair with far too much aggression.
“Do you hate yourself?” I ask suddenly, the words tumbling out as I study this man in an unabashed way that feels far too intimate.
It’s so strange to pick him apart so freely. His every move is strung tight with violence like it wants to rip through him from the inside out. A suit jacket lies crumpled and discarded on his bed, and the moment his fingers fumble with the top button of his dress shirt, I turn away and face the brick wall.
“Could you give a girl a little warning next time?” I throw over my shoulder as I pretend to be completely fascinated with the divots of the grout in front of me.
I hear the shirt hit the floor, and it’s weird, I know. Completely unprofessional of an undead woman like me. But I’m not a professional. I’m a ghost.
It’s like they say, you know, no one knows how much time we have left on this Earth. We can’t waste once-in-an-afterlife-time opportunities. What if I finally really die and never get to see all the beauty the human form has to offer? It’d be a great tragedy, surely.
Okay, I’m a damn undead creep. May the fates smite me if they so choose. But until then . . .
Like a ballerina, I twirl on the toes of my boots and face him. At first, I can’t look him in the eye, but then I find I don’t particularly care about his pretty eyes anymore.
Because Arcane Deces is hiding the body of a dark god beneath this academy’s hideously pretentious uniform. They should be ashamed of themselves for even suggesting he wear it now that I know what’s tucked away underneath in such a gloriously hard package.
I clear my throat and try to look away, but the veering lines of his lean hips only demand my attention even more. There are black lines like runes that run up his abdomen. They’re like a map that’s drawn across his golden flesh, racing up his pecs and then disappearing abruptly against harsh blackout sleeves of ink. The blackness seems to highlight the corded muscle of his arms, casting shadows across his veins all the way down to his wrists.
I can’t look away. It’s like I can’t stop it. Like I’m drawn to him. What if ghosts don’t have a choice in who they haunt? What if no matter how hard I try, I’m connected with this strange and terrible man?
Without warning, I take two daring steps closer, and I can faintly see the rune lines continue beneath the heavy black ink he’s covering them with. It’s like they’re carved beneath his flesh, veiled beneath the ink, dying to break free.
I lift my fingers, and I can’t help but trace a dark line that curves along his strong shoulder and hides beneath the solid ink of his arm. My touch is feather-light, but he stops in his tracks, holding the clean white T-shirt between us. It’s like peering through a portal with nothing at all separating me from him, and yet, he feels worlds away. Those violent eyes meet mine with a spark of silver encompassing them as I whisper.
“What are you hiding?”
“What do you want?” he asks at the same time, our voices dancing together but never breaking through the mysterious barrier that separates him from me.
I, regretfully, think I might be obsessed with him.
“I think I need someone to guide me,” I say instead. “I need to find out who I was before and why I’m still here now.” The confession stuns me because I hadn’t really thought about it at all. Everything is happening all around me, and I’m just struggling along trying to keep up.
I’m not even living, and life seems completely exhausting.
The palest eyes search mine. He’s so close, I can feel the warmth of his body trying to invade mine, demanding me closer. The heat seeps through the numbness faintly, taunting me with all the things I can’t quite feel. It’s intoxicating. I want that. I want to be alive with life. With a daring step, my chest brushes his. With another small step, his heartbeat becomes mine. The thump of it fills my body with a pulse that I can feel within the deepest parts of me.
Thump.
Thump.
My breath cuts away on a jagged gasp as the pulsing intensifies within us. I can’t help but want to step right into his warmth, let him carry me away within him, and never let me leave.
“I can’t help you, if that’s what you want.” He pulls the shirt down over his chest as he shoves through my body and washes away the intimacy that almost tangled around the two of us. I close my eyes as buzzing energy swarms through me. I have to swallow hard to force my stomach to calm.
Can ghosts vomit?
God, I hope I never find out.
When my lashes slowly lift, he’s already striding out of the room and completely forgetting his new best friend.
“Hey!” I race after him. The door closes with a rush of wind, but I’m really getting the hang of this spirit business.
I run through the barrier without even flinching, and I’m jogging at his side in no time. A smirk tilts the corner of my lip when my silent steps sync with his heavy footfalls.
From the corner of my eye, I see him narrow his gaze and glance suspiciously my way.
“Scared you almost lost me, huh?” I ask with a big smile.
I hear him stifle a groan, but his rage-filled strides never slow. Wherever we’re going, we’re late, apparently. I’m more than a little curious about where we’re headed because something happened here. I think I died in this academy. And Arcane is the lucky man who gets to help me figure out how it all went down.
“We’re like a team, you and me,” I whisper to my friend. “An inseparable duo. A—”
My words die on my lips as dark onyx scales clatter across his arms, eating away at the flesh one by one before overtaking his features and shifting them into a monstrous man. Dark demonic wings burst from his back, tearing away at the shirt he just put on. They span wide and strong, twisting the shape of his body with every passing second. The muscle of his arms and chest is a rough reptilian texture that veers down in black-and-silver hues to what I can only describe as a nightmarish creature cock that will forever be burned into my regretful memories for the rest of my undead days.
Our friendship just got a whole lot weirder.
I’m still processing it all, stunned in place as his body morphs smaller and smaller, and my mouth can’t get any wider as I watch the man form into a tiny winged lizard of some kind.
An uncontainable scream rips from my throat when his quick little feet rush through my shoe like little centipede pitter-patters crawling through my very being.
He scurries up the wall, beneath the black edge of a portrait, and then . . .
He’s gone.
The dark brick and thick shadows are all that’s left. With wide eyes, I search the hall, but not a single soul is seen. Not a sound is made.
It’s just me now. Alone. I don’t know why that echoing thought settles uncomfortably within me, sliding through my presence until it hits hard in the pit of my empty stomach.
I swallow slowly and turn around on unsure steps. Nightfall darkens the drafty corridor with windows arching up into a romantic peak at the end, framing me in my own little picture of isolation. Stars twinkle outside in an endlessly consuming sky of blackness. The inky waves of the ocean drift on for miles and miles into the obscure horizon.
I hadn’t realized how codependent I’ve become on the man I only just met this morning until this very moment.
I take several steps back the way I came, but they become smaller and smaller as I realize I can’t even tell which dorm room is his now. The glossy doors are identical. Roman numerals are etched into the brick at the center just above the doors, but I don’t know . . . I can’t tell which is which.
Why am I here? I don’t have a life of my own to guide me through these halls. Maybe I don’t belong here at all.
Pain twists my stomach for the very first time, and it almost crumbles me to my knees to feel the foreign sensation of . . . sadness? Is that what this is? Something in my chest where my heart should be pulls, and I know it’s not true. I’m here for a reason. Something happened to me here, in this castle of a school, and I have to find out what it was, or I’ll be stuck wandering these halls for the rest of my endless life!
Faint cheers break through the suffocating silence, and I spin on my heels as they grow louder. My breath catches, sucking away the terrible emotions before they drown me. Without hesitation, I’m running after the echoing sound of celebration. I turn sharply and pause, listening intensely to the call of their laughter and raucousness before racing after it. I step through a wall, and it only intensifies the voices.
THE GREAT DINING HALL is carved into the large center stone above a set of enormous doors up ahead. In a rush, I step through the carved double doors. It’s like I can feel every grain of wood passing through my being. It slips through me like sand in an hourglass, and then I’m absorbing the sound of applause and whistles.
Hundreds of people are seated at long tables. The cheering continues on all around me. Laughter and clapping and life fill this space, and a blooming need to never be alone again pulses through my chest with a pain that has me blinking back the sensation of tears in my eyes.
Emotions: turns out, I’m not a fan. Zero out of five stars. Would not recommend.
The room spans on forever. The walls here are more like charred stone. Tables form lines from the back all the way out to an open, jagged cliff hundreds of feet up ahead. It’s a narrow space like a runway. It perfectly fits the hundreds of students seated all around me. The stars twinkle above the dining hall, shining down on what I can only assume must be the entire student body and faculty as well. Shoulders bump one another, and whispers with sly smiles are shared. The room holds a special warmth that has nothing to do with the weather. The cool night air isn’t cold against my skin, but I yearn for the feel of it. I know it’s there even if my senses no longer taste the magic of nature anymore. I close my eyes and take a steadying breath as cups clank together and food is passed from hand to hand.
It feels like . . . Yule.
I open my eyes to that strange realization. How the hell do I know what Yule feels like?
The idea of religion and beliefs and family and love slam into me one after the other, but none of it feels like mine. None of it is familiar.
That annoying tinge of sadness tries to creep back in, but I tamp it down. I don’t need that nasty sensation attacking me again.
To my right, at the closest table to the doors, a certain shifting asshole sits with a big smile stretching across his perfect teeth before he shoves an unreasonable amount of bread across his lips in one big chunk. He wears his boots and pants tucked in at the ankles still. A white shirt is fitted across the broad span of his shoulders, and that monster cock he terrorized me with is nothing more than a— very —vivid nightmare now.
How did he change back as if nothing happened? What happened to his torn clothes? Did I imagine it all?
I walk through the bench he’s sitting on and lower myself down to the empty spot next to him. My glare never leaves his obnoxiously handsome face. And his hand never stops shoving food into the bottomless hole he calls a mouth.
“God, chew your food, or you’ll choke . . .” My lips curl back slightly. “ I hope .”
His smile falters. His hand lowers. It’s then that I know he knows .
He looks right at me with the deadliest of stares.
I wink and give a little wave with my free hand before booping him on his nose and letting the chilling feel of my presence sink right into him.
“Miss me?” I ask with more snark than I feel.
His head drops between his shoulders like my very existence is painful to him.
Good.
I hope it is.
“If you ditch me again, I’m going to the school library. I’ll find the P section, and I’m going to look up possession , and I promise you won’t like where that takes our relationship, my pretty little beast boy.”
“That’s not even remotely how a library works, my pretty little haunting.”
Everything in me stops when he says those mocking words so flippantly. It was a snide remark to him; a brutal life-shattering moment for me. My hand pauses between us, and I just stare at the hauntingly beautiful man. Even as he peers up at me from beneath thick dark lashes. Something glints like twisted silver in his blue eyes. I was right: The prettiest creatures are the cruelest.
“You can hear me,” I murmur. “You can see me!”
His attention shifts over me, taking me in like he’s ready to give me the time of day now, and my rage only grows with each passing second! He knew! The whole time, he could see me, and he intentionally ignored me! Why?
He knew I needed him! He’s literally my everything right now, and I’m a simple annoyance to him!
I’m just about to unload every one of my seething thoughts onto him when his teeth sink into his lower lip before he turns away and gives his full attention to the man standing at the end of the rows of tables, just near the cliff’s mouth.
Unearthly starlight shines down on the man like a god standing among us. The walls of the room are a mass of jagged charred rocks that become more and more slender before breaking off into a void of night.
“Good evening, Protectors!” calls the headmaster. Shining, silver hair blows wildly around his temples, and his smile turns wicked as a quiet spreads across his audience. “I hope our Protectors are enjoying this evening’s feast before next week’s trials officially begin!”
A roar of applause rises up before dwindling back down. All eyes worship the headmaster, including the dirtbag dragon shifter next to me.
The headmaster continues, droning on about contestants and games and nonsense that I can’t even begin to think about right now. Something about dragons needing protection, and my mind immediately falls back to the current dragon in front of me who’s about to need some serious protection as well.
I lean forward, dark hair filtering into my face before my lips brush his ear. I whisper intensely, “I’m going to haunt the hell out of you.”
He shivers from the skim of my body invading his or possibly from my warning or maybe both.
His head tilts subtly to the side, and he passes me a lazy glare that I know is meant to be intimidating. The hard set of his jaw, the icy pierce of his stare, it all is a big, red warning bell . . . a bell that I’m already stripping down naked beneath the full moon and dancing to like it’s my favorite song.
Don’t poke the psychotic bear, my thoughts warn. Poke it? I’m going to tackle it to the floor if he keeps looking at me like I’m the one who should be ashamed right now!
“Classes will resume Monday with the first trial for our Protectors beginning the following Friday!” the headmaster says, and Arcane just claps and claps like a good little star student.
He’s such a kiss ass.
“It’s going to be me and you for the rest of eternity,” I threaten on another whisper. “I’m going to be in the background of your life every step of the way. In your classes. On your first date. When you lose your virgi—
“You’re a few years late. That loss happened a long time ago, Haunting,” he murmurs over his shoulder. My lips part to ask him if he has her address so I can send the poor girl flowers, but he turns and slides right through my entire being like I’m nothing more than a bad stench in his way.
He stands abruptly, and I can’t tell what’s happening, but everyone else is also shuffling, no one daring to make an official move as this alpha-hole prowls through the crowd. His strides are confident, and he absorbs the attention of everyone around him like the Earth sucking up the energy of the sun with every meager little move it makes. That’s what he is: an obnoxious, overbearing energy suck.
“Arcane Deces, ladies and gentleman.” The headmaster introduces my nemesis like he’s a guest of great honor. “Arcane has been assigned as this year’s captain of the Death Riders! He has shown unprecedented shifting abilities since the age of five!” Whispers and murmurs circle the tables, and I hear that age repeated over and over again, but I don’t know why.
I sit frozen in my seat. Arcane stands at the headmaster’s side. Pale, cruel eyes lock onto me, and I flip him the bird just to give the type of raw, unfiltered encouragement that only I can give him.
He smirks.
I roll my eyes.
The girl in front of me on the bench giggles, and I realize she thinks he’s looking at her. Silver-and-black wings rip from Arcane’s back, shredding his shirt once again and revealing hard abs, dark runes, and another sinfully arrogant smile.
My hands lift in a waterfall motion from my mouth to the floor as I pretend to puke my undead guts out over and over again.
He smirks harder, and I hate that I just noticed he has dimples.
Dammit!
It’s like fate knew Arcane Deces was gifted the personality of moldy white bread and wanted to make up for it with an offensively attractive body.
Fate: she’s a cruel bitch like that.
This time, the giggles and whispers become uncontainable from not only the woman closest to me, but dozens of men and women all around the room. I can’t believe how easily he wins them over.
Poor souls. Can’t see the red flags hiding behind all that wingspan, I suppose.
“Arcane, please lead us on our first flight tonight as the future Protectors of tomorrow!” The headmaster steps aside, and it’s like watching everyone move in slow motion.
Arcane runs. His feet move quickly, but my attention drags him down. I catch every little detail. There’s a delicate lift of his big wings and the shift of dark scales across bronze shoulders. Horns like white bone arch up from his skull, and then . . .
He leaps.
The cliff's edge swallows him whole, and I don’t know when I stood up, but I’m suddenly running. And so are the others. Everyone races forward all at once, and I get lost in the sea of bodies pushing into me and through me and around me. Clothing rips, wings spread, roars overtake the night, and I’m suddenly standing still among the chaos of it all.
It’s then that a beautiful black dragon reaches up toward the moon. His wings carry him higher, highlighting his shining scales in the starlight of the night sky. A passing thought of angels flashes through my mind, but it’s quick and fleeting as a monstrous roar pierces like a knife through the serenity.
Slitted silver eyes look down on me. A few others have stopped shifting, looking up at the omen above.
“Death dragon,” a girl whispers at my side before a man lowers down, and she holds his shoulders while still looking up in awe. The guy’s smile lingers as his skin rips away with shining scales, and then a beast of a man is hauling her toward the headmaster. My lips part as he nears the cliff with the slender girl in tow. Dark green wings tear from his shoulder blades. He walks right over the edge without hesitation.
Her scream calls out to me. It sounds far-off and faded among the clatter of scales and excited hollers of dozens of other dragons doing the same thing. For a moment, a jolt of fear strikes through me for the unnamed girl.
Before she, too, rises back up from the shadows. She sits atop the creature with ease and excitement. The deadly dragon whisks her way into the night like a misunderstood fairytale. Long dark hair blows in the breeze, and that scream that was lost on her lips is now a carrying laughter.
I’m still in a daze of unanswered questions when I realize only two people stand at the cliff’s edge overlooking the endless ocean with me.
The boy from the dorm room and the headmaster. The two of them stand side by side, watching the flank of dragons fly off into the night sky. The two men are opposing figures. The boy, young and vibrating with rage, while the man is old and careless with confidence.
“You’ll fly someday, Aelix. Control your temper, and you’ll be ready for the trials in no time.”
“I’ll die in those trials,” Aelix whispers.
“Possibly,” the headmaster says. “Your brother wouldn’t dare let death get him, and I believe you and your brother are more similar than you admit.”
Aelix’s fingers curl in, and I can feel his energy seeping into me, and it’s . . . dark .
“You grounded me. While others are training and shifting for the first time and preparing for the most dangerous days of their lives, you fucking grounded me!” The scar that crosses his left eye twists his features into something dark.
I step forward at the same time the headmaster does, but the older man is quicker, his words tumbling out with an anger I hadn’t yet seen cross his face before.
“That is enoug—”
Then the two of them are ripped away from me in the matter of seconds. Hands grip hold of me. It startles me hard because I actually feel them. I feel skin meeting mine, warm and rough. As strong hands wrap around my upper arms. I don’t know why, but I lean forward into the feel of his viciousness for more of that sensation.
With my lashes still fluttering closed, he shoves me back with unfiltered force. Wind roars around us, twirling my hair and shirt. The Great Hall tears away as a blackness seeps in through the cavernous room. Strange shadows swallow us up. A barricade of some kind presses to my back, but we thrust through it beneath the weight of his force. My eyes flash to his for the first time, and I realize how familiar those violent blue eyes are as they glare down on me.
Arcane’s palm meets my chest, and he pushes me away from him, despite how hard I was leaning in like his body was the only safety I’ve ever known. I feel whole beneath his touch, like my limbs have more weight to them than they did before. Outrage blooms through me. The first person to ever touch me in who knows how long, and he shoves me away! Why is he such a barbaric beast?
“Who the fuck are you?” Arcane growls out.
Anger scrapes his tone, but his gaze softens, peering down my frame slowly. He’s taking me in, making note of my features with so much calculating attention, and I suddenly wonder if he could fully see me before now.
Was I an apparition? A beam of light? A dark shadow looming across his existence?
The mystical space around us is flat darkness. Not a single thing can be seen in the desolate surroundings. The academy doesn’t seem to even exist here and I shift on my feet at the idea of not knowing where I am. Again.
“How are you here?” I ask instead, crossing my arms over my chest hard to stop myself from doing something stupid like shoving my face against his warm body and purring like a desperate cat.
Who knew not having skin-to-skin contact with another living being in all my afterlife would have such a weird effect on me?
He shakes his head, his windblown locks shifting across his temple like ink running across a page.
“I’m asking the questions here. Who are you, and what do you want with me?”
“How do you keep getting clothes on though? One minute you’re naked, one minute you’re a dragon, now you’re . . . here —” I wave in the general direction of the flat, empty blackness. “Where are we, by the way?
“For ten seconds today, could you take a breath and just shut the f—”
“Stop being an asshole! You’re the only goddamn person who knows I exist! Can you show some compassion?”
“Compassion?” He storms hard across the strange black room and comes inches from my face as he screams, “You’re a ghost! You’re dead! Move along into your little afterlife misery and leave me to mine!” Wild eyes look down on me as two little words repeat over and over in the back of my mind.
You’re dead! You’re dead! You’re dead!
His breath fans my cheek, and I hate how much feeling he’s giving me all at once after not feeling hardly anything all day. It’s melting into my chest and stomach and heart. All at once, I can’t take it anymore! Rancid emotions tangle up my stomach and . . .
Oh no!
“Are you crying right now?” he asks with disgust lacing his words.
“What? No!” I turn away on the heels of my shoes and immediately stumble, my legs feeling too heavy and too awkward to carry me now that I’m a semi physical being.
I nearly fall, but I casually walk away from him on a slightly jarring step.
Instead of meeting his watchful eyes, I study the nothingness around us and swipe away the dampness from my cheeks. I hear him there lingering and waiting for me to get my shit together, but it’s hard to even swallow all the thick emotion that’s threatening to tear me down right in front of him.
“This is the in-between,” he says.
I glance at him out of the corner of my eye.
“This is where you go before you pass on. This is where you belong.”
Something kicks through my chest, and I can’t find a steady breath of air as I think about what he’s telling me.
“I’m about to die?” I ask on a voice that sounds far too small to be my own.
I don’t know why I can deal with the idea of being a ghost but not actually dying. Being a ghost seems eternal while dying, that sounds rather final.
“No.” He presses his palm roughly over his face like he can’t believe he has to deal with my undead ass right now. “You’re already dead. And instead of coming into the in-between, you’ve been hovering on the edge. Annoying the living. Like myself.”
My attention narrows on his explanation, and his lips quirk at the corners just faintly.
I hate him. But I think he’s right. Which only makes me hate him more.
“How do you know all that?” I ask.
“Let’s just say I’m super fucking gifted.” He lifts his hands from his sides like he’s offering up his perfect body instead of an explanation. A total consolation prize.
I roll my eyes at him once again.
It’s so easy to judge and advise when it isn’t your life, isn’t it, dragon boy?
“Okay. Well, I’m here. I’m in the in-between now. Thanks for your help.”
“My pleasure,” he says with a wicked fuck-you smile.
“Can’t say the same,” I tell him with a nod, and his smirk only widens.
He claps his hands together like he’s ready to be done with me and my afterlife crisis and all this vapid nothingness that we’re standing in.
Then he turns and walks away.
His footfalls are a sad sound that becomes more and more faint. It only emphasizes his departure and my sudden aloneness. I stare at the silhouette as he becomes a smaller and smaller figure within the bleeding shadows.
I find myself straining for the sound of his steps. Going as far as to even close my eyes and focus on nothing else. I swallow hard, trying to accept my fate. I guess I knew I was dying all along. It’s just something that I strangely can’t come to terms with. Fortunately, I don’t have the option to do so even if I wanted to. I feel myself becoming less fleshy and more incorporeal again. The fear in my stomach dissipates. Emotions become more faded and worn.
I can physically feel myself slowly becoming less and less here in existence.
I can’t help but wonder with a bit of sadness left floating within me . . . what will happen next?
My lashes lift, and the light is soft and gentle like candlelight. It isn’t bright and imposing like I thought it would be when I died. Oddly, I feel at ease. Maybe this is what peace feels like. Will someone come to lead me on from here? I blink a few times, and my sight adjusts ever so slowly, trying to absorb the serenity of this moment. The darkness isn’t as dense as it once was. It’s calm and soft like midnight. Heavenly stars shine down on me.
Then familiar pale blue eyes meet mine.
Silver rings his pupil just as his jaw clenches together. His lips purse hard like he’s biting back too many words. The strange in-between room of blackness is gone. The heaviness of my limbs is gone, replaced with that weightlessness I was so used to. My pale transparent fingers lift before my eyes, confirming what I already knew deep down. The two of us stand at the cliff’s edge once more, but the headmaster and boy are long gone, leaving me alone with him once more. Without warning, he sends out his annoyance through a growling tone that echoes around the rocky room over and over again:
“Mother fuc—”