Chapter 10

The next morning at dawn, Emelle and I wandered to the dining hall together.

We'd claimed the same bunk, her on bottom and me on top, and after we'd located our luggage in a pile of other bags in the corner of the bunkroom, we'd ventured to the bathing chamber together with fresh nightgowns from home.

The bath had been bliss, even though it had felt… less private than my tub back home, that was for sure. A dozen clawed bathtubs lined the wall of the chamber, each with a half-moon rack and skimpy curtains half-heartedly shrouding each space. Emelle and I had bathed side by side, talking through our curtains, then retired to bed earlier than anyone else.

I couldn't even remember the others coming to bed, I'd slept so deeply.

Now, the birds out our bunkroom windows were chirping at everyone to wake up. It was strange, to hear those chirps but also hear the translation in my head: "Wake up, the sun's out, wake up!" I spared them a last glance as Emelle and I trailed downstairs after the others, both of us already dressed in new outfits for our first day of classes.

"I overheard someone saying our downstairs connects with the guys' downstairs," Emelle said as we reached the bottom of the steps and faced a rounded corridor with three separate doors.

The women in front of us pushed open the middle one, and we followed them, coming out into a massive hall filled with circular tables.

Emelle was right. Both boys and girls of the Whisperer sector mingled, which meant… I glanced up at the ceiling. Boulevard Bascite must be right above our heads.

We made our way to the queue trailing from an open, widespread kitchen window, where a kindly-looking cook was handing out platters of mouth-watering breakfast. Steaming eggs, golden toast, and a medley of berries, from the looks of it.

"I'm starving," I moaned. When Emelle gave me a cockeyed look, I added, "I've been pretty nervous up until this point, so I haven't eaten much for the past few days."

True, of course. But Emelle couldn't know that my nerves had skyrocketed beyond the normal scope of inductee butterflies. She couldn't know, either, that I'd fallen asleep with my mind churning with images of Coen and Jagaros.

The Mind Manipulator and the tiger.

Both of whom had saved me in different ways.

After we'd finally accepted our platters of breakfast from the house cook, we were just scanning the room for an empty table when a familiar voice yelled out, "Hey! It's the girl who thinks I'm a teacher!"

I jumped, almost dumping my food, and found Rodhi grinning at me at a nearby table, surrounded by a group of friends.

"What are you doing just standing there? Get your ass over here, darling!"

Right. He had no idea who I was beyond our initial meeting in the courtyard, since Coen had erased his most recent memory of me.

Leading Emelle over to him, I said, "I don't think you're a teacher now. I just didn't get a good look at your lack of facial hair before."

Rodhi laughed like before, stroking his smooth chin. "My old man didn't grow a beard until he was thirty-five, so I'm waiting for—"

"—your stud to kick in?" Stupid, I chided myself when his face fell a bit. Why did I have to go and ruin his joke just because I knew what he was going to say?

But then Rodhi's boyish face split into his widest grin yet.

"Oh, I'm going to like you, I think. What's your name, by the way? And yours?" he asked Emelle.

Once we'd introduced ourselves—again—Rodhi burst into the story of his own Branding, how he'd been the very last one to be called up (which explained why I didn't remember him during the ceremony), and how a flock of toucans had bombarded him with bugs and slugs as a welcome gift.

"Fascinating," Emelle whispered after he'd jumped up to go hail another group of his friends strolling into the dining hall. "I've never seen someone so… lively."

I opened my mouth to respond when a sultry voice pierced the din of the hall.

"I'm just so glad we were granted the same magic, sis." It was Jenia, once again with the bronze-skinned beauty named Dazmine. But this time, both of them were talking to the princess of our house, that sharp-chinned brunette with the parakeet on her shoulder. I could have sworn they had strayed near our table on purpose. And…

Sis. I tried not to let my head swing back and forth between Jenia and the house princess. They didn't look alike upon first glance, but when both pairs of gray-slitted eyes glanced my way, I caught the resemblance in their expressions.

Sisters. Great.

Jenia's older sister shrugged. "The Whisperer magic must really like our blood."

Emelle and I stayed silent, pretending to be unengaged, until the trio moved away toward the kitchen window to grab their own breakfasts.

One of the young women at the table with us spoke up. "Don't worry about Princess Kimber. She's way more interested in the mirror than the orchid and the owl."

"But she's a class royal," I said around a mouthful of scrambled egg. "Wasn't she picked based on… I don't know… expertise or something? Passion?"

"You would think, but Kimber's more like the royal of bitches, if anything."

Emelle and I clapped our hands to our mouths, but the others at the table were engaged in their own conversations, so no one besides us had heard. Still…

The young woman, a second-year named Wren, if I remembered correctly, had a black bob, strikingly slanted eyebrows, a ring glittering on one side of her nose… and exactly the kind of expression that made oh-so high and mighty people hesitate.

Before we could respond, she pushed back her plate and hoisted herself up.

"C'mon. I'll take you guys to your first class so you're not late. First-years always get History first thing on Mondays. I like to think of it as a special kind of torture, considering how drab Mr. Fenway is."

Emelle and I exchanged bemused glances. Our sector's class schedule had been posted in the foyer the night before, so we already knew that our first class was A History of the Esholian Biome in Classroom 3A, but this was the first we were hearing about the instructor. And it would be hard to find the right building without a guide.

"We'd really like that," I told her.

Wren pressed her lips together to smother a smile.

Five minutes later, Emelle and I were following her back through the dining hall, up the stairs, and out onto Bascite Boulevard, illuminated in pools of gold from the sunrise and streaming with students walking toward campus.

As we joined the flow, birds chirped at us from overhead.

"New friends, new friends, hi, new friends!"

"Hello," I said.

"Hi, there!" Emelle called upward, positively beaming.

"Pesky buggers," Wren said, though not without a hint of affection.

The monkeys, too, were waiting for us on campus, squatting on rooftops and lounging in the tree I'd slept in the night before Branding. I recognized the ones who'd braided my hair—something about the specific spots of fur on their tails—and waved.

This time, when they chippered back at me, I heard, "Glad to see you're looking freshened up. We were beginning to think you had some troll blood in you."

They shrieked with laughter, clutching each other in the tree, and I scowled. That was my joke, although… at least they'd actually found it funny.

"What was that about?" Wren asked, cocking an eyebrow as we passed.

I didn't want to explain my past sleeping arrangements, so I shrugged. "Just some silly monkeys, I suppose. Is this it, then?"

She'd stopped us right in front of a crumbling stone facility with a slanted roof, where a few steps led down to a door situated halfway underground.

"This is it," Wren sighed. "Good old Mr. Fenway likes his must and mold, that's for sure. Good luck, you two."

"Thank you," I said. I wouldn't have wanted to be late on our first day.

Beside me, Emelle nodded earnestly, and Wren raised two fingers in farewell.

Mr. Fenway did indeed seem to like must and mold.

He wasn't just an old man, but an old man with bags under his eyes and a hunch to his back, plus a severely receding hairline. When the rest of the class had finally trickled in and filled the fifty or so seats in the classroom, he coughed.

"Hello, children. I…" He coughed again, then thumped his chest. "I am pleased to see so many of you join the sector of Wild Whisperers."

"Children," Jenia scoffed to her friend—Dazmine—from two rows back. "Well, to a man on his deathbed, I guess we are."

Mr. Fenway didn't appear to hear, or maybe he just chose not to acknowledge her. He twined his hands together behind his back and began a monotone ramble that I was sure he'd repeated dozens and dozens of times before now.

"One thousand years ago, faeries ruled this island, their powers tending to the land in every way. Conjuring rain to water the vegetation, encouraging trees to reach their fullest height…" A cough "…and helping balance out the delicate nature between life and death among the Esholian animals."

Like the persistent whine of insects, Jenia was whispering to Dazmine over Mr. Fenway's speech, no doubt ridiculing him or the idea of faeries. One seat ahead of her, a guy I'd never noticed before was lounging back in his chair, chuckling at her every insult and mockery.

I didn't like the looks of him: greasy hair that curled near the nape of his neck, hooded eyes, a too-casual swagger about him—nothing like Coen's playful smirk or Rodhi's inherent confidence. This was just pure contempt for everyone else around him, besides perhaps Jenia herself.

"Then," Mr. Fenway continued, raising his wispy voice slightly to drown out Jenia's whispers, "the faeries began to die out."

A young man with a broad build in the very front row gasped softly.

"Why?" he asked, his tone low—and perhaps a bit slow.

"What is your name, boy?" Mr. Fenway asked, squinting at him.

"Gileon, sir." The young man drew out every syllable, and the greasy-haired boy huffed out a scoff of amusement, which made Jenia grin.

"Well, Gileon," Mr. Fenway began, "faeries lived for eons, but it was difficult for them to reproduce, and soon, their offspring became more and more rare. So they died out about five hundred years ago, the last of them laying themselves to rest at the top of what is now known as Bascite Mountain."

He nodded somberly as Gileon gasped again.

"Yes, yes, yes, it was very sad—so say the birds who pass their stories down from generation to generation. And even sadder…" Another cough "…was that the island, without its protectors, began to die, too."

On the opposite end of the classroom, Rodhi was clinging on to every word, his knee jittering as if the lack of talking was literally going to kill him. But it made me respect him all the more, that while Jenia whispered and tittered, he kept quiet.

"Plants shriveled up," Mr. Fenway persisted over the drone of her lowered voice, "predators overhunted and starved themselves out. The birds, I have heard, quit singing. Yet before the island could collapse completely, not long after the last of the faeries died, she came. The head and founder of our Good Council. Dyonisia Reeve, whom you all saw witness your Branding last night."

Ice-blue eyes, star-bright skin, razor-sharp bangs and flowing black hair. I couldn't shake the image of her out of my mind as Mr. Fenway went on.

"Dyonisia sailed in from the outside world and beheld the decay of the island all around her. She is the one who discovered bascite at the top of the mountain. For, you see, every other part of the last faeries had disintegrated like everything else … except for the magic metal in their blood. That metal, bascite, remained."

Magic metal in their blood? I'd always known that bascite came from the ancient faeries, somehow, but I'd never known it came from their blood. How many faeries, exactly, had to have died to leave heaps and heaps of their remains atop Bascite Mountain—enough for generations of inductees, year after year? Enough for people to steal and dissolve into ale?

Mr. Fenway broke into a coughing fit, then wiped his mouth. "Excuse me. As I was saying, Dyonisia formed this remaining metal into brands, that when stamped on a human's skin, as you know, joins our own blood and grants us vague remnants of the faeries' old powers. Once Dyonisia garnered enough branded people to revive the island, humans wishing to escape the terrors of the outside world sailed in in droves, repopulating what had once almost died. And now we, thanks to Dyonisia's discovery and invention, care for the plants and animals of our dear home as the faeries once did."

The classroom burst into murmurs at that. Across the room, Rodhi couldn't contain himself any longer and cried, "Bascite came from blood? Wicked!"

But I stayed silent. I couldn't get those ice-blue eyes out of my head.

Dyonisia Reeve. The founder and head of the Good Council. At least I now had a name to put to that cruel, beautiful face. And another thing:

If the last faeries had died about five hundred years ago and Dyonisia had discovered the island not long after, then…

Through Shape Shifting, I was sure, regenerating her organs and bones and skin time and time again, the leader of our island had to be hundreds of years old.

A crone in a young woman's body, indeed.