I huddled over, clutching my arms over my churning guts. I was crumpling, falling apart, dust.
Then Fox stumbled through the darkness in the wall, and I caught him in my arms. He was breathing, warm, alive. The sweetness of his scent was everything.
Dust coated his curls, dirt smeared his cheeks, and purple shadows smudged under his eyes. He was exhausted and pale. I shuddered to imagine how hard this last day had been for him.
Yet right now with the way that Fox’s arms curled around my shoulders and his cheek rested against mine, all that mattered was that I'd saved him like I hadn't been able to protect Robin.
I could never forgive myself for Robin’s death; I understood that now. Reaching for redemption as the Princes did, was a false hope.
But I could make different choices, and it started with Fox.
My magic burst out of me in an explosion of intense joy. It grew in brambles out of the floor and walls around Fox and me, protecting us in a glowing womb from the rest of the academy. I ignored Damelza's hollers, and instead, wrapped my arms even tighter around Fox. He raised tired eyes to mine, but I shivered at the strength of his love.
I kissed him, licking across his dry lips, and the breath rushed from my mouth into his. The way that his tongue pushed desperately deeper, before curling around mine was like it belonged there and always had.
It was...life.
I grasped Fox’s hair, twisting my hand in his curls. Then I drew back, panting. We rested our foreheads together.
Alive, alive, alive.
A laugh bubbled up, and I couldn't hold it back. Fox pressed kisses against my smiling lips, before slipping his palm to the hollow of my back, as if I was just as much a miracle as he was.
"I breathed for you," I murmured.
"Well, it worked." Fox's gaze was fragile, and his voice raspy, but then he smirked. "Pfft, I told you that I could hold my breath for a—"
"Really," I nipped his lower lip on each word, "really, long time."
"Don't hog the mage," Echo called from the other side of our magical briar.
"We won't peck his balls," Flair promised. "We know that you need his fuckable behind whole, boss."
"Tell him that we're glad he's not dead," Echo added. "We'd have missed his curly hair. It shines like moonlight."
When I spluttered with laughter, Fox raised his eyebrow at me. Had Lysander and him been taking lessons together?
"My familiars wish to tell you that they're glad you didn't smother to death in the walls because your hair glimmers like moonlight."
Fox bit his lip hard to hide his grin. "Wow, they're warming up to me. But then, who wouldn't wax lyrical about a mage like me? After all, I did win the Shiniest Hair Awards Five Years running and have the ribbons to prove it. I had several offers to pursue a career as a hair model, but that's a crazy lifestyle, and I didn't want it to turn my head."
Ah, my adorable pathological liar. How I missed you.
Then the tips of Fox's ears reddened, before he offered, "It's hard to explain...okay, the truth is that I don't want to explain yet but...I've sort of discovered a whole new perspective on this ghost business. I understand being shut away, invisible, and ignored, but I'm free from the attic now. Your familiars aren't free. How about we let them into our love nest?"
I stared at him in surprise, and Echo cawed hopefully
"Well, fuck me," Flair gasped.
No one had never loved me enough to also see my familiars. Admittedly, they were kinky, loud, and possessive, but they were also smart, loyal, and mine. Now Fox wished to include them.
I hadn't believed that I could love Fox anymore, but yet, I could.
My magic dissolved, and for a moment, I thought that I'd made a terrible mistake.
Were my crows too possessive to love Fox back?
Flair and Echo barreled into Fox's lap. Crack my broomstick, they were going straight for his privates...
I was quite...extremely...fond of those balls. I had plans for them later.
I shot out my magic in a protective shower of sparks.
Yet instead of pecking, my familiars cuddled Fox, as if they were on my knee, nuzzling in their own version of crow kisses. After a moment, Flair appeared to realize what he was doing. Embarrassed, he turned his beak up like he was only using Fox as a pillow.
My magic fizzled out, and I leaned forward; Fox and my breaths' mingled.
"I love you," I murmured against Fox’s lips, "for your kindness and your courage. And I believe, that you've just earned the eternal love of my familiars. Be grateful, since they're now on your lap and they have an awful tendency to peck."
Fox stiffened and gave a nervous laugh. "I have an Anti-Peck Certificate. It indemnifies me against all crow attacks. I'm bullet proof."
"I'll show our foxy bullet proof..." Flair dived for Fox's prick like it was a worm, but I snatched Flair by the wing, holding him back.
Then I noticed that Fox was hugging something to his chest by one arm. He hadn't been carrying anything when he'd been shut in the walls. I froze. Through the haze of safe, safe, safe, I recognized the book, which wasn't safe.
It shouldn't even have been in the walls.
How was Fox holding it?
How, how, how?
Now it was me who couldn't breathe.
Fox gently held out Robin's Your Heart's Desire Book to me.
Robin had gifted the book to me in Hecate's glade on the night that he'd died because of our first kiss. It was no more than sheets, which had been ripped out of other books because orphan mages weren't allowed to possess anything. But Robin had risked creating it for me, intending to give it to me at the Enchanted Ball. Such gifts were for those who you planned to court and marry.
Instead, I'd been bound to a fae prince, Titus, who’d been a stranger to me. Robin had still gifted me the book, as well as his first kiss, while knowing that I was to marry another.
It was to be our only moment as lovers together.
It'd been the best kiss of my life.
And it'd killed Robin.
I pressed the back of my palm against my mouth to hold in the sobs.
Fox clasped my other hand, entwining our fingers, before he brushed them over the soft red feathers on the front of the book: the ones that Robin had plucked from his own coat. Robin's bittersweet birdsong magically sang out.
Despite myself, I laughed, as my crows joined in with their own tone-deaf songs. Then I was shocked to silence as the aroma of sweet wild blackberries gusted across my cheeks.
It was too much...
Don't take me back there...to the woods with my best friend and first lover...searching out berries and feeding them to each other, as the juices stained our chins. To the life, joy, and every snatched moment of forbidden freedom. To the sensation of Robin's strong finger tracing my cheek, his emerald eyes, and how he'd awakened me.
Cold prickled against my neck like kisses, and I shivered. My eyes widened.
"What in the witching heavens have you done?" I demanded.
Fox edged backward; he looked half proud and half worried that he was about to be cursed with a Nipple Pinching Hex. "Yeah, about that. I might have freed another ghost. It's my new habit. But it's not a bad one because this one loves you. I can feel it in my bones, blood, and heart. He crushes on you like Tinker Bell does on Peter Pan. Oh, and he's a mage. So, mage solidarity and that."