Chapter 16

"Quinn?"

I stepped toward her, wiping a string of wet hair from my face.

Something was off about her appearance. She still wore party clothes, and though her ruby-red hair was slightly more ruffled than usual, it was… dry, I realized. Quinn was dry.

She let me approach and, when I'd stopped before her, said, "Rayna. How nice to see you." The words didn't match her tone, though, as if a wary mask shielded her true feelings. "I was going back to my house when I saw you…?"

The silence stretched, and I realized she was asking for an explanation.

"A crow," I said rather lamely. "I was talking to a crow."

"Oh. Right. Wild Whisperer now, and all that."

"Yes."

This was not at all how I'd imagined our reunion would go. Even after what had happened with Lander, I hadn't expected her to go from obliviously carefree with me the night before Branding to… whatever this was.

I gestured at her dry hair, desperate to return a sense of normalcy to our conversation.

"It looks like you've got good control of the rain already. That's so cool!"

"What?" Quinn looked down at herself. "Oh, yeah. I can make the water sort of… skirt around me, leave me alone. I'm not advanced enough to make an umbrella for you, too, though, I'm afraid."

"It's okay." I waved a hand. Breathed.

She said, "Well, I'd better—"

"Will you go hunt a crab with me?" I cut in.

Quinn's mask didn't reveal a flicker of surprise, but she said, "What?"

Briefly, I explained the deal I'd made with the crocodile.

To my relief—and terror, as if part of me had been hoping she'd say no—Quinn shrugged. "Sure, I guess. I've been meaning to visit the beach anyway."

Silently, we began walking side by side toward the Testing Center. Behind it, I'd heard, there would be a stone staircase leading down to the shore. Although we weren't allowed to mess with the shield, we were allowed to dip our toes in the sea.

I spent the entire ten-minute walk there trying to come up with a way to broach the subject of Lander, constantly wiping the rain from my eyes. But even that subject dropped from my mind when we finally rounded the enormous Testing Center and came to the top of that staircase sandwiched between wrought-iron lampposts.

"Wow," was all I could say.

I'd known there was a drop down to the ocean, but I must not have gotten a good enough look from that carriage in the sky. I saw it now, though. Stared down at it and felt a swoop of dizzying fear. Because the Esholian Institute campus was truly perched on the edge of a cliff that went down and down and down.

Even the staircase had to zigzag as it descended, hugging the cliff's edge with little more than a flimsy wooden handrail. And down below… Quinn and I had always mused about the white, sandy beaches we'd get to lounge on at the Institute, but down below was the furthest thing from white and sandy you could get.

Rocks, sharp and spiky, cluttered the ground. Only a narrow strip of gritty sand, dark gray in the rain, separated those rocks from the clash of the sea.

Beyond it, of course, the air shimmered with the domed shield, and even from here I could see the pirate ships dotting the waves past it. Was my mother out there with them, wondering what had ever happened to her lover and daughter? Or was she still somewhere on Eshol, avoiding me on purpose, keeping her identity hidden?

A streak of lightning in the distance made me blink. Made me remember myself and who I was with and what I had to do.

"Element Wielders first?" I said, in an attempt to get Quinn to smile.

She didn't. She just began the march downward, and I followed.

When we were near enough to the bottom that I could breathe again, I finally said, "So who'd you spend the night with?"

Not that it was my business, but… we had once told each other everything. And maybe it would be a good way to segway to Lander.

Quinn shrugged.

"Some Object Summoner, I think. I woke up in the Summoner house, at least." She stepped down from the last ledge of the staircase and nodded out at the shimmering dome. "Someone from my house tried to mess with it last night. The shield. He shot a spear of ice at it to see what it would do. It only rippled for a moment, but the princess of my house electrocuted him twelve times as punishment. In front of everyone."

"Oh. Wow. That's horrible." I stepped down after her, wondering why she'd told me that, of all things. We began picking our way through the rocks, toward the ebbing tide. Down here, a thick mist clung to even Quinn's clothes, and the rain came down harder than ever.

"Why…" I cleared away the accusation in my voice. "Why didn't you at least break up with Lander before moving on?"

Without looking at me, Quinn said, "I couldn't find him. The three of us stepped out of that carriage and got separated immediately, remember?"

Now the accusation crept back up my throat, because what kind of an excuse was that?

"You didn't even try," I said quietly.

She stopped. Turned to me. A single bead of rain broke through her own personal shield and rolled down her forehead.

"Don't you dare," she said, "try to tell me what I did or didn't do, Rayna. Just because you couldn't fathom making a single new friend didn't mean I was going to whine and whimper until I'd found you two."

Heat rushed up my chest at that. From the corner of my eye, I saw yellowish-brown crabs lifting their tiny shelled heads from the sand to observe us and talk to each other in quick, clicking whispers.

"Look!"

"A faerie?"

"No. One of those invasive humans from the school."

Ignoring them, I shook my head at Quinn.

"What happened to you?"

She tipped her head back in a laugh.

"You wouldn't understand, Rayna. You've always been content to stay small."

Even the crabs hushed.

"Excuse me?" I breathed.

Quinn wrinkled her nose. "I said what I said. You never wanted to come here to the Institute. You always planned to return to Alderwick and live the rest of your life alongside your fathers. You never wanted any friends beyond me and Lander. But I did." Something foreign lit in her eyes. "I wanted out. I wanted more."

I shut down the heat, the mortification, the anger. Let the pounding of the rain wash warm fury over me instead

"I didn't realize we were using human beings as stepping stones to make ourselves feel bigger, Quinn. Loving my fathers, wanting to stay friends with you and Lander… those things don't mean I'm small. It just means my love for you all is big." I paused to collect my breath. "Humans aren't just objects to discard when you grow bored of them."

A dry laugh. "They are if they hold you back."

In the distance, another bolt of lightning cracked through the clouds, and Quinn pressed on before I could respond.

"You knew, Rayna. You knew how my mom treated me. You knew the hell I went through with her back at home. Having her constantly in my mind, controlling everything I did… it erased my sense of self, and you knew that. Yet you know where I saw you heading to last night when I came to see you?"

I didn't say anything, but understanding flashed through me.

"The Mind Manipulator house," Quinn said grimly. "A Mind Manipulator abused your best friend for years, but you're choosing to fraternize with them now."

"Quinn—"

"I also," she persisted, "heard what you did to Jenia and the others. Were you jealous of my friendship with her? Is that why you made the ants attack?"

"I didn't." I shook my head to clear it. "I did, but they were harassing a—"

"Oh, spare me your self-righteous bullshit, Rayna. You. Hurt. Them. And there is no excuse for hurting people."

Faster than my heart could even stop, Quinn struck out with her hand.

I flinched, but the fire that erupted from her palm sped toward one of those crabs instead.

The rest of the creatures burrowed back into the sand, but that single unlucky one… it lay blackened and motionless among the rocks now.

"There you go," Quinn said. "A crab for your crocodile. Glad I could help." She turned back toward the zigzagging stone staircase. "See you around, Rayna."

I watched her go, thoroughly drenched now, only relaxing my shoulders once she'd disappeared over the cliff's edge high above me.

Then I sat on a rock by the dead crab and watched the waves crash onto the gritty land before me and the lightning splinter through the clouds. I gazed at the pirate ships where my mother might or might not be staring back in my direction.

It was only when the other crabs rose again, this time to observe the scorched one of their kind at my feet, that I cried.

And cried.

And cried.