Chapter 14

A woman opened the door partway, breathless and stumbling.

"Sector?" she asked with a hiccup, only half her face visible through the crack.

"Whisperer," I said.

"Okay." She slammed the door shut.

"Um," Emelle said, but the next second, we heard the clicking of many locks and the door swung open wide. The woman gestured, and we stepped inside.

It was like stepping into a sky of throbbing stars.

Lights blared and whirled from every corner of the foyer, which was cramped with glittering, sweaty bodies that swayed to the pulse of music. A few people even grinded against each other, and more than a handful of couples were draped over each other on pristine white couches that bordered the room.

"Rayna! Melle!"

Rodhi appeared through the throng, spreading his arms wide. He slung one around each of our shoulders and kissed us both on the foreheads.

"So glad you were able to make it this time!" From the waft of his breath, I could tell he was already drunk. "Come here, I want to show you something."

Grabbing our hands, he tugged us through clumps of bodies, to a counter near a twin staircase in the back, where an upperclassman was pouring drinks into dozens of tiny glass vessels. Rodhi grabbed two and pressed one into each of our hands.

I winced, trying not to let the memories freeze me up. Never, ever again would I drink this stuff. "I'm not a huge fan of bascale, Rodhi."

But Rodhi laughed. "It's not bascale. Why would you need that stuff when you already have powers? No, this is just pure, uncontaminated ale, my darling."

He was gone again before I could reply, charging at a Mind Manipulator in our year. Emelle giggled, brought her drink to her lips, and swallowed it in two chugs.

I shrugged and was about to taste mine when it was plucked out of my hand.

"Rule number one," drawled a soft, dangerous voice that made the back of my neck prickle, "don't drink random shit at a party when you don't know what might trigger your condition."

Emelle mouthed, "What?" but I shook my head as I turned—and yanked my gaze up to find smoky quartz eyes already rested casually on my face. As if the party bored him, and the flush I could feel climbing up my cheekbones was the only thing interesting enough to look at.

"There are people around," I said in as normal of a voice as I could muster. I wasn't too worried about Emelle—although I'd done my best to keep my secret from even her—but someone else might have heard.

"So?" Coen Steeler passed my vessel of ale off to the nearest random person, who took it without asking a single question. "I'm talking about your liver disease." The crook of his damned mouth kicked up. "Obviously."

"Right." I nodded and glanced at Emelle, who'd never looked more confused.

A moment later, she shook her head as if to clear it and slapped a hand on my arm, her eyes already glazing over. "I'm going to go find Rodhi, okay?"

"Okay."

I watched her wander off and felt a sliver of proud satisfaction at all the heads already turning in her direction, following the sway of her hips.

When she was gone, though, and no one could hear us, I rounded on Coen.

"Liver disease? Really?"

He shrugged, his lips crooking. "You told me to stay out of your head, so I've had to get creative when it comes to getting secret messages across to you."

"Privacy," I bit out. "I'd like some privacy with you. Right now."

I was tired of asking the orchids questions that they refused to answer clearly.

Coen didn't even try to hide his smirk. "At least let me take you on a date first." When I hardened my glare up at him, he sighed. "Okay. Come on. But if anyone asks what I'm doing bringing a first-year into my personal room, I will have to say some vulgar things about you that you might not like to hear."

His scrutiny zeroed in on my dress, raking the downward path of the black pearls, as if taking note of exactly what he would say.

I tried to twist my face into a smirk that matched his own. "I can handle that."

Besides, I already had plenty of vulgar things to say about him, starting with his broad shoulders and muscled chest. I just wasn't going to say that out loud.

"Very well."

He put one of those hands, gentle yet sturdy, on the small of my back now, guiding me downstairs and through one of the doors opposite the Mind Manipulator dining hall. A few people glanced our way, curiosity raising their eyebrows, but no one stopped to talk to us or ask what we were doing.

That, even though their assumptions were wrong, seemed obvious.

When Coen closed his bedroom door behind us, the thumping music faded.

"Where does that music even come from, anyway?" I asked, trying not to stare too obviously at the details of his room: a king-sized bed layered with dozens of fluffy, white pillows, a vast marble dresser in one corner, and an open archway to a private bathroom in the other—all lit by a single flaming lantern hanging from a hook on the ceiling. The glow of it made the room shimmer with shadows.

Coen folded his arms. His signature stance, it seemed.

"You burst with unexplained power, take a pill from a stranger, join the Wild Whisperers by attracting a magnificent white tiger to your side, get shoved against a wall by the greasiest bully I've ever seen in my life, and demand privacy with a dangerous Mind Manipulator all in your first week at the Institute, and that's the first thing you ask? Where the music is coming from?"

I stared at him, waiting—though a small part of me whimpered at what he'd just said: dangerous Mind Manipulator. He didn't seem dangerous to me, but then again, I'd just watched him torture Fergus on dry land without lifting a finger.

"The music," Coen said when it became clear I wouldn't retract my question, "is part of a very complex Manipulating charm placed around this house. Anyone who comes near here—near the foyer upstairs, to be exact—will hear it. But it is not real. It's all part of the imagination of the caster, who makes you think it's real."

"You said you'd stay out of my head!"

"I'm not in your head. My buddy Garvis is. He's the one who cast the charm." Coen stepped toward me, and when I stumbled back, my ass hit the edge of his bed. "Next question. I know you have plenty. I can see them all brewing in your eyes."

I refused to shudder at the thought that he was deciphering—correctly, too—the moods of my eyes.

"Do you have the same power?" I asked, deciding to skip the topic of the pills for now. "Do you have to suppress it, too?"

Coen bowed his head.

Now I did shudder. For an entirely different reason.

"Are you and I the only ones?"

Coen grimaced. "No. But if you think I'm going to give you names and jeopardize anyone else's safety, you can—"

"I don't need names," I said quickly. "That's not what this is about. I'm just trying to figure out… how this happened. Where it came from."

"So am I," Coen said. When my eyes flared, he added, "I know where my power came from, as well as the others'. I don't know where yours came from, though. Which is exactly why I have a couple questions to ask you now, little hurricane."

The way he said that nickname, soft but with the edge of that growl I'd heard the night before Branding, made my knees hollow. I sat deeper into the edge of his bed to steady myself.

"I'm not a hurricane."

"Oh, but you would be, without the pills."

I only pursed my lips at him. "What do you need to know about me?"

"Well, you said you're from a village named Alderwick, right? The one kind of near the Uninhabitable Zone? I looked into it, and it seems Alderwick's about as far as you can get from the coast, save for Belliview and Bascite Mountain itself. So—who the hell are your parents?"

I blinked at him. I looked into it… as if he'd been researching me.

"Rayna?" Coen prodded.

"Fabian and Don," I got out. "My parents are Fabian and Don."

He sat down next to me, the bed sagging under our combined weight. I stiffened at the warmth of his body, afraid that if I let myself relax, I'd melt into him.

"Both men, then?" he asked.

"Yes." I raised my chin, unable to keep out a note of defiance.

"And your mother? You don't know anything about her? Who she is?"

The answer was no, but I hesitated. Images of that tarnished knife flipped through my mind. But beyond that singular weapon, which I still didn't know anything about, Fabian hadn't given any real details about my mother beyond the barest basics. I'd asked him plenty of times, and he'd always provided the same clipped response.

I fell in love with a visitor from a coastal village, she fell pregnant, she stayed long enough to give me you, and then she left.

I'd never questioned that Fabian was my biological father, what with all our shared features, but…

"Are you saying you think my mother was a—?"

I couldn't even say the word out loud. Couldn't even stomach it.

Coen dipped his head.

"Are you a…?"

Pirate's son, I couldn't say… and then all the implications of it rushed out at once.

"But how'd they get through the shield? And I thought they're after our magic, to sell it or use it for themselves? That's why they're always circling the island, right? Why would they even need bascite if they already have this… this…" I looked down at my chest, as if I could see the raw power slumbering there. "This thing?"

"Well," Coen began slowly, his eyes flicking up to the ceiling as something thumped above us, "first thing's first, that thing in both of us can kill if not contained properly, as evidenced by your first experience with it last week. And a weapon is only as good as the wielder, so if you can't even wield it… it would make sense if the pirates are searching for a way to shape their power. To harness it."

"With bascite?"

It didn't make sense. The pill was the thing that contained my raw power, not the bascite. The bascite itself had simply given me magic that was already shaped, already harnessed. Right?

Once again, Coen seemed to trace the shifting mood in my eyes, but this time he didn't offer me any answers. He simply turned his gaze to the lines of his hands.

"When we were children, some… others and I were dropped onto one of the coastal villages—Hallow's Perch—about twelve years ago. I don't know how the pirates got us through the shield, but it was supposed to serve as a sort of… distraction. While the other villagers were gawking at us, the pirates tried to cleave through the shield themselves."

"And?" I asked when he fell silent for a moment.

"And their attempt failed." Coen shrugged. "The villagers took pity on us, though. Knowing the Good Council would execute us if they knew where we'd come from, they adopted all of us. Different families, of course, but we continued to grow up together, and it was only when we tried some bascale when we were teenagers that we all just… exploded with that power. And realized our mistake in thinking we'd never be found out when one of us…" His throat bobbed. "I considered him a brother, and he died from it. And I knew I had to find a way to save the rest of us."

"Hence the pills," I said, sensing, somehow, that he didn't want me to acknowledge the brother thing now or anytime soon

"Hence the pills," Coen repeated, relief softening his jaw.

Silence for a beat. In the quiet, the many footsteps thumping overhead seemed to bloom louder. I went rigid, realizing that I'd been angling toward him.

"How often do we have to take the pills?" I asked after a moment.

"Once a week. After a week, if you don't take another one, you'll feel it stir."

As I expected.

"And you… have enough for me? To take every week?"

For some reason, the question cracked something open inside me, leaving a vulnerable, fragile hole. If he didn't have enough, there was no way he'd choose me over his lifelong friends.

But Coen said, "Of course I do, Rayna. In fact…" He got up from the bed long enough to rummage through the top drawer of his dresser, then returned with another one. "Just in case I don't see you before Sunday. Take it then."

I accepted the pill from him, daring to turn, to face him fully. So many questions tipped the edge of my tongue. How did the children of pirates break through the shield when the pirates themselves couldn't? Was Coen content to never talk to his parents again, never know what had happened to them? And another thing—I knew I had to find a way to save the rest of us… that implied he himself had made the pills, somehow, right?

But maybe I could read his moods, too, because I knew from the way his speckled brown eyes had hardened, like molten quartz solidifying, that he didn't trust me enough to tell me those things. Yet.

So I just said, "I give you permission from now on." When he arched a brow, I amended, "Only to talk to me mind-to-mind. Not to change my perception or erase my memories or… whatever you did to Fergus the other day."

And that quickly, his eyes became molten again, churning with liquid rage.

"I would never do that to you. Never—"

The door burst open, and suddenly Coen was on top of me.

Kissing me.

His mouth fused with mine. His tongue swept away every retort on my lips, the taste of him filling me with something exotic and dark—like the space between stars.

"Oh. Am I interrupting?"

Coen rolled off me lazily and sat up, swiping a few fingers through his mussed-up hair. I sat up, too, panting, dizzy, confused, and… perked. Wanting.

But there, in Coen's doorway, stood Kimber with that parakeet on her shoulder. The princess of my house, and Jenia's older sister.

Her eyes narrowed on me before rounding on Coen.

"I didn't realize you'd… expanded your tastes."

Ugly. Vile. That's what I was under Kimber's gaze. Nothing but a slug we'd study in Ms. Pincette's class. I crossed my arms over my chest, near tears.

"Did you barge in here to criticize my choice in women, Kimber, or is there something else you need to tell me? Because I'd really like to get back to—"

"There's a fight upstairs," Kimber said through gritted teeth. "You're needed."

Indeed, a series of smashing and banging echoed over our heads, rattling the lantern on its hook and flinging that flickering light in every direction.

Coen sighed at the ceiling. "I see. Fine." Turning toward me, he placed a finger under my chin, lifted it, and drawled, "Until next time, little hurricane."

Then he strolled after Kimber, who threw me a look of deepest disgust over her shoulder just as her parakeet squawked a single word at me. "Slut!"

Leaving me sitting on his bed, the pill still in my hand and my breath a tousled mess in my lungs.