Chapter 1

The clock on my nightstand had ticked close to midnight when I finally abandoned my sheets and hefted open my rickety window pane.

There weren't many times I'd snuck out—especially on nights where I damn well knew I needed as much sleep as I could get—but these rarities always involved my best friend, Quinn. Whenever she left a little painted rock on my windowsill, it meant meet me at the HouseASAP.

The green-painted stone that squatted outside my window now had appeared there nearly an hour ago, but Fabian's and Don's creaking footsteps outside my door had only just faded into their own room.

My fathers wouldn't punish me for sneaking out, not like Quinn's strict, Mind Manipulating mother would. But I still had no desire to watch their faces sink into disappointment if they caught me dropping into our flower garden the night before my world changed forever.

Like I was doing now.

Lifting myself from my crouch, I brushed soil from my bare knees and eased my window shut behind me before creeping through the begonias and onto the street gilded with flakes of moonlight.

My nightgown swished around my legs as I hurried down the street, but it wasn't the only sound. Frogs yelped to each other beneath waterlogged storefront porches. Bats swooped and clicked. A constant torrent of crickets reverberated off the canopies rising on either side of Alderwick's line of houses, and distant thunder nearly always moaned from some corner of the island.

No lights were on, though, and I was confident nobody would see me as I stuck to the shadows, taking a sharp corner right after I passed the town square to sneak behind the apothecary and to a certain tree a few steps into the jungle.

I could smell Quinn's smoke before I could even make out her silhouette, and I grinned despite myself as I climbed the rungs we'd nailed into the trunk when we were ten. The House, as we called it, was nothing more than some floorboards and a twining bamboo wall cradled within our favorite tree, and there were always a few too many scarabs scuttling along the bark. But we were still fond of the hideout even after all these years.

"What, no Lander?" I asked, plopping down beside her and curling my arms around my knees.

Besides Quinn and me, Lander Spade was the only other eighteen-year-old in the village of Alderwick. The three of us had been fast friends since the day we could play pentaball in the streets, but Quinn and Lander had been… well, sucking each other's faces off, to put it bluntly, for the last two years.

Quinn angled her face toward me, her curtain of ruby-red hair parting around her faint smile. As always when she snuck out, one of her mother's hand-rolled cigarettes (stolen, of course) dangled between her fingers, and she exhaled smoke in a perfect oval. She'd asked me if I'd wanted to try enough times for her to know I'd pass, so she didn't hold the cigarette out to me as she said, "Nah. He's sleeping like a big, dumb baby anyway. I knew you'd be the only one still awake."

She'd gotten that right, at least. Tomorrow morning, a stranger would whisk us away to an institute that hulked by the edge of the sea, where every eighteen-year-old on the island would be gathered like a herd of sheep for the Branding. The Good Council would grant each of us one of the five sanctioned magics, and then we'd have five years of training to master our gift. To hone it. To prove our worth as citizens of the island of Eshol.

Only those who could pass a benchmark got to come home. The rest…

Quinn cut me off from those forbidden thoughts with a smirk as she said, "Did you say goodbye to Wilder?"

Wilder was my not-so-official kind-of crush who happened to be a year younger than us, and therefore wouldn't be coming to the Institute until next year. Wilder and I had never let ourselves get serious, knowing that our age would inevitably break us apart come my Branding time. But we'd shared a kiss. Or five.

"If a quick fondle in his uncle's barn can count as a goodbye," I murmured, swiping at a flying insect near my face to hide the blush climbing up my neck.

"Rayna Drey, you naughty thing!"

Quinn smacked my arm, but when she took another drag from her mother's cigarette, I could see the expression on her face tighten amid the smoke, and I knew she was about to divulge the real reason she'd summoned me to our little treehouse for the last time.

"I heard my mom talking while she was making me do her puppet work."

Right. Mrs. Balkersaff used her Mind Manipulating gift both as a counselor for troubled villagers and as a way to make her children behave. It was always an uncomfortable visit at their house when Quinn was finishing up chores with a washed-out expression, her mother having cleaved through her mind to will her into doing them.

"Just because Mom forces me to quit talking doesn't mean I can't hear," Quinn said now, rolling her eyes. "And God of the Cosmos, did I hear today, Ray. You know Mrs. Pixton, the one always burning pies at the bakery?"

I nodded. In Alderwick, even if everyone didn't exactly know each other, we knew of each other. I could picture Mrs. Pixton's skinny legs and stout upper body, and I knew exactly why she'd be in the company of the village counselor.

"Her son didn't pass his test, did he?"

The Final Test at the end of those five years of training. The pass or fail that would dictate our futures.

"He was exiled," I went on when Quinn didn't answer right away.

Because that's what happened to those who didn't pass—to those who couldn't demonstrate enough control of their gifted magic. Banishment. And considering the fact that bloodthirsty pirates circled our island's domed shield of protection like vultures, waiting for each year's offering of outcasts…

Well, I'd heard enough whispers about what those pirates did to the outcasts to know I didn't want to join them.

Quinn blew out another cloud of smoke. "Actually, Mrs. Pixton is convinced her son is still on the island, locked up somewhere and waiting for her to rescue him. She's in denial that he was exiled and wants to confront the Good Council about it."

"Wait, what?"

Thunder splintered the air, closer than before. I felt the vibrations of it on my very tongue, and a monkey overhead shrieked in answer.

"Well, you know how those Final Tests go…" Quinn started.

Yes, I did, but only because of Quinn's snooping. Fabian and Don didn't talk about the Final Test or anything related to the Esholian Institute, because the Good Council had forbidden anyone from doing so. To avoid giving certain inductees the advantage of foresight, apparently. But when had Quinn Balkersaff ever let something like a silly little rule stop her from doing what she wanted?

"The Good Council will put everyone in a life-threatening situation," she continued, "and the ones who can save themselves quickly and efficiently with their given magic get to stay on the island. With Mrs. Pixton's son, apparently, they locked him in a trunk and threw him to the bottom of a lake." I tried not to cringe at the casual way she'd said that. "Reports say he was exiled after failing to save himself within a certain time frame, but Mrs. Pixton… she was insisting he's still locked in that trunk, using his powers to keep from drowning but never able to break free." Quinn's eyes cut to mine. "She became so escalated that my mom had to sedate her."

I frowned, chewing over those words.

"Do you think she's right?" I didn't know why I was asking such a thing; the Good Council wouldn't just abandon someone at the bottom of a lake—the whole reason they exiled those who failed their tests was to… well, cleanse Eshol of inferior magic. Mrs. Pixton had probably just gone crazy with the grief that she'd never see her child again and was inventing reasons her son might still be on the island. To maintain hope.

Quinn held out her cigarette like she was examining her fingernails. "I think the Good Council should pull those little sticks out of their assholes and stop tossing away their unwanted citizens like pieces of literal garbage. But that's just me."

Of course Quinn would think the one thing that would get her into the most trouble if anyone else heard. She'd always been a furious blaze of a person, and I couldn't help but think that she'd do well with the ability to control fire itself.

But the Branding activation was completely random, with each inductee having an equal chance of acquiring any of the five magics once the Good Council pressed that faerie metal to our skin. I listed them silently in my head. Mind Manipulating. Element Wielding. Shape Shifting. Wild Whispering. And Object Summoning, the gift both my fathers carried and used in their little blacksmith shop across the street from the church.

"I've got to go," I whispered, mostly because the thought of the Branding made the nerves in my stomach rise up to my throat, but also because… sleep. We both needed sleep. Tomorrow morning, we'd leave Alderwick for five years—and maybe for the rest of our lives if we didn't keep our wits about us. I'd known this was coming my whole life, and this… this thing Quinn had told me about Mrs. Pixton's paranoia wasn't going to do anything to help me pass my own Final Test in five years.

"See you bright and early, Ray." Quinn waved her cigarette dismissively.

I waved back before shimmying down the ladder and hurrying my way back home. A light drizzle tapped uneven beats onto my head, and I folded my arms tighter across my chest. Not because I was cold, though. The mugginess of the air was making it hard to breathe, or maybe that was fear itself, clogging up my windpipe as if that would somehow save my life in the face of danger.

Bed, I told myself. Just get back to bed, and then mull over what Quinn said.

But when I made it to my house with its thatched roof and line of mud-caked boots by the front door, I saw the jittery light of a candle through the window.

A candle that had definitely not been lit when I'd snuck out.

Shit. So much for avoiding my fathers' disappointed faces.

Sighing, I sidled inside—through the front door they'd unlocked for me. There was no use trying to sneak back through my window when they had obviously already checked my room and witnessed my empty bed.

"Where did you go?" Fabian asked quietly from his favorite armchair once I'd clicked the door shut behind me, cutting off the constant growl of nighttime.

"The House. With Quinn."

There was no use lying to him, either. We'd always been close, so close I'd been calling him by his first name since I could talk—definitely not something Quinn or Lander Spade could relate to. Unlike their parents, Fabian had never so much as glared at me for too long, evident even now. Even with his slender legs crossed and delicate arms folded in the shuddering candlelight, his features were already softening like warm butter.

Beside him, Don, who had stomped into our lives when I was three and become every bit a father to me as Fabian, was doing slightly better at pretending to be mad: he'd pushed out a more exasperated, beady stare framed by his ruddy face.

Before either of them could say anything, I blurted, "What if I don't want a magic?" Because without the Branding, without a power, I wouldn't have to take the Final Test and risk exile in the first place. "What if I just refuse to go tomorrow?"

I knew even as I said it, though, that I didn't have a choice. Everyone on the island of Eshol was branded whether they liked it or not.

"You know what they say." Fabian laced his fingers together. "The magic woven into Eshol is the only thing that keeps us safe from the monsters beyond our shield. We must each bear a thread of that magic to keep our fortifications tight."

He didn't have to add the last part of the pledge we'd all learned in the village schools: when a thread snaps, when a person can't bear their magic, they jeopardize the safety of everyone else on the island.

I just couldn't see how Mrs. Pixton's son would have been that big of a liability.

"I'm flattered you want to stay with us, kid," Don said, his forehead scrunches easing, "but I know I'm getting grumpier and uglier by the year. There's no reason a bright soul like you should stay with two crotchety old men like us when your whole potential waits for you at that institute. Right, Fabian?"

Fabian didn't answer. His jade-green eyes were tracking my face, and when Don nudged him with his shoe, he sucked a whistle of air through his nose.

"I should have given this to you a long time ago, Rayna."

Without lifting a finger, without blinking or so much as glancing in the hallway's direction, Fabian used his Summoning magic. I could feel it in the slight stirring of the air, in the way the dust motes picked up around us, in the way my skin prickled.

A faint rattling sound later and something came swooping toward us from the hallway closet, flying past all the shelves with their cinnamon and clove candles to land neatly in Fabian's outstretched hands.

He lifted it up and offered it to me.

A knife that rested in his palms like a metal corpse.