Chapter 19

The day before the test, I was straining to hear Mrs. Wildenberg in the arboretum when I caught a pair of fierce yellow eyes glowering down at me in the umbrella tree spread above us.

Startled, I looked to my right. Emelle was meditating. To my left, Rodhi was dozing. Gileon was listening way too intently to Mrs. Wildenberg, his eyes round and his fingers digging into the ground, for me to want to disturb him.

I blinked at the eyes. Ever so slowly, they blinked back.

And a striped white tail twitched through the leaves.

Jagaros.

I eased myself to a stand, careful not to rustle the ferns behind me. Nobody glanced my way, not even Jenia, who was whispering, as always, to Dazmine and Fergus.

"To further clarify," Mrs. Wildenberg was saying, her eyes closed, "a faster tempo usually means a positive reaction, so if you're going to ask a question…"

I snuck through the jumble of vines and trees and ferns, away from her warbling lesson, before she could finish that sentence.

Jagaros was already sitting on his haunches in a clearing surrounded by irises.

"Rayna Drey. You look just as anxious as the last time I saw you."

I moved forward to run a hand through his fur, and he closed his eyes, sighing.

"The anxiety faded for a bit," I explained, "but it's back now that the first test is tomorrow."

"Ahh, the test." Jagaros leaned into my touch. "But not the real one, right?"

"No," I sighed. "The real one's in five years. But this one will be a good indicator of how I'm doing so far, so I really don't want to mess it up."

Jagaros flopped down, crossing his giant paws. I sat down next to him to continue my strokes, this time along the rippling ridge of his spine.

I opened my mouth to ask him where he'd been, but he interrupted with, "Tell me of your training."

Training. The word alone sounded laughably absurd in reference to my sector. Just in the last few days, I'd glimpsed Element Wielders learning how to throw fireballs combat-style and Shape Shifters hurtling themselves into one another in different animalistic forms, yet here we were among the flowers. Meditating.

I pushed down my snort. Recollected my thoughts.

"Well, I know the basic preferences of every animal within a ten-mile radius of the Institute, so I know how to get on their good sides. I've befriended some monkeys, a crocodile, a mouse, a handful of capybaras, and maybe-sort-of a tapir who literally quakes in his hooves when I so much as say hello. But I can't talk to insects or plants very well."

Indeed, the only time I'd gotten either one to do as I asked was that one time with the fire ants and when I'd had the grass trip up Terrin during pentaball.

The orchids and the other flowers still wouldn't answer my questions about my power. Or Coen's, Garvis's, Terrin's, or the twins' power. I'd asked about all of us. To no avail.

"I see," Jagaros said over the buildup of his deep, rumbling purr. "Perhaps," he added as if he'd read my mind, "you should ask them different questions."

I gnawed on my lips and sucked in a quick breath through my nose.

"A crow told me you were king of Eshol, but he wouldn't elaborate." I purposely didn't mention the letter that particular crow had taken off with; Fabian still hadn't written back, or maybe he was unable to. "And my friend Willa—"

"Willa?"

"The mouse," I said. "And my friend, like I said, so don't you dare even fantasize about eating her."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Jagaros said, licking his maw.

"I'd hope not, because she's the sweetest, most loyal little thing you'll ever meet. Not that I want you to meet her," I added, and he huffed. "But anyway, she refuses to talk about you. Just scurries off whenever I mention your name."

Jagaros said nothing.

"And," I pressed, "Mr. Conine said there's no known monarchy among the animals of Eshol, no hierarchy that would suggest such a thing as kings or queens."

Still, Jagaros said nothing, but his purring hesitated.

"So I guess I'm asking you what the hell that crow was talking about?" I couldn't help the questioning tone that crept into my voice. "Sorry, is it rude to ask a tiger about his royalty status?"

"Yes," Jagaros answered. "Yes, it is, but I will oblige because I happen to like you more than most humans." He flicked his tail once. "I am a king, yes, but of a long-forgotten past, when faeries still ruled this island. Most of the animals have forgotten, but the birds have an annoying propensity to pass stories down from generation to generation."

I paused with my fingers woven deep in his fur.

"The faeries ruled a thousand years ago, though."

Jagaros dipped his head.

"You're a thousand years old? What are you?" Definitely not a typical tiger, with that lifespan. My next whisper cracked through me. "Are you a faerie?"

Jagaros lifted his head to face me, so close that I could smell his breath—a waft of sky and earth and blood. "Not anymore."

A bite of fear bolted through me, but then Jagaros had closed his eyes again and settled his massive head in my lap. I resumed my pets, my heart scampering.

"Why you?" I was still whispering. "Why did you answer my Branding instead of—well, any other animal?" Not that I could call him an animal anymore, but still.

Jagaros took some time to answer… so long, in fact, that I could hear Mrs. Wildenberg releasing our class through the thickness of the foliage. I'd have to go soon, before Emelle or the others realized I was missing and started to worry.

"They were afraid," he said finally. "Afraid of that deeper power they sensed imprisoned within you, scrabbling for a way out. But I was not, and so I came to you. I am still not, and so I will come to you again and again, no matter how much your power shifts and grows and tries to break free." He opened a single eye to peer up at me. "Your power does not scare me, Rayna Drey."

I swallowed the swell of tears in my throat.

"It scares me, Jagaros. I don't understand it. I don't know where my mother and the other pirates got it from. Surely, they had to have sailed in from somewhere—another island, maybe, or another continent. Surely, they didn't just drop from the sky? If I could just learn more about them, maybe I could understand myself and where that part of my ancestry came from."

None of the schools back in Alderwick had ever taught us much about the world beyond Eshol except that it was full of monsters, and Mr. Fenway, too, kept his history lessons contained within the island.

A small, skeptical part of me had begun to wonder if that domed shield existed to keep us in just as much as it existed to keep those monsters out.

Jagaros arched his back in a sudden, lazy stretch.

"I think," he said, "your best bet would be to start with a map."

The next day, all of us first-years lined up outside the Testing Center, waiting for the last of the second-years to finish trickling from the building so we could go in.

After hours and hours of waiting, my toes were curling in my shoes at the anticipation, until Coen's voice flitted in my head.

I can feel your stress from the other side of campus, little hurricane.

I know you breezed through your test this morning, I thought back, but that doesn't give you the right to judge others for some nice, proper nerves.

He chuckled darkly. You just don't want me to leave next year.

I'd been trying not to think of it actually, but—

"Is he in your head again?" Emelle asked.

"Unfortunately," I said, hoping he'd hear.

He did, sent me an image of his middle finger, and slipped from my mind.

Rodhi sighed, bouncing on his tiptoes to see over the jumbled mass of first-years between us and the front swivel doors of the Testing Center.

"If you two would just get a room already and spare us this grotesque amount of flirting, I think I'd get my appetite back sometime within the next month."

"Oh, please." Emelle ripped her wandering eyes from the crowd around us—to find Lander, a sly part of me suspected—and rounded her attention on Rodhi instead. "As if you don't flirt with every human being with boobs. And sometimes ones without boobs, too."

Rodhi flexed his knuckles. "I've got to practice for Ms. Pincette. By the time I make a move on her, I'll be so good at it that she'll be physically incapable of resisting me."

Gileon, who'd been watching the Testing Center without tracking our conversation in the slightest, suddenly said, "Hey, Wren, over here! Right here!"

I couldn't see over all the heads like Gileon could, but sure enough, Wren had barged through all the bodies and found us moments later. Her usually black clothes were dusted with lively yellow pollen, and some kind of mucus coated her hair in a slippery sheen.

"How did it go?" I dared ask.

"I passed, but barely." She raked off a handful of mucus from her hair and lobbed it to the cobblestone. "It was Ms. Pincette's test that did me in. That was probably worse than the fourth quarterly test last year, where I had to sit in a private testing room with Mr. Fenway and pretend I didn't smell his digestive issues."

"You got stung?"

Gileon nodded slowly at one of her arms mottled with burns. Out of all of us, Wren was definitely his favorite, what with her dedication to teaching him new combat techniques every night—to ensure he never got picked on again, she'd told me in private.

"Oh, it's nothing I can't handle, I guess. Got into a bit of an argument with a bee, that's all. Political differences," she added at Emelle's arched eyebrow.

"What? No fair!" Rodhi exclaimed. "I want to have a nice little debate with a bee! Do you or do you not believe that honeycombs should be taxable? Oh, look! I think we're going in."

Indeed, everyone around us shifted on their feet, and the next second, the crowd was shuffling toward the doors.

"Good luck," Wren muttered to all of us.

By the battered expression on her face, it looked like I might need it.