Chapter 22

My body thumped to the bottom, the full force of my fall cushioned by a hundred tiny crunches as my weight cracked a hundred tiny shells.

But there were still a thousand more, and they all clicked against each other as they swarmed me, millions of needle-thin legs washing over every part of my body: my legs, my torso, my arms, my neck, my hair. They dug into every crack, every fold of clothing, every space between my limbs and core.

I snapped my mouth shut mid-scream before any of them could slip down my throat. But I still had to talk to them, to order them off me, and that would require opening my mouth again. How, though?

How?

How?

How?

A gag formed in my throat, but I brought my hands up, shaking off the stray cockroaches still clinging to them, and made a cage of fingers around my mouth.

Ms. Pincette had taught us that insects understood human language equipped with the same accent they themselves presented. Grasshoppers, for instance, listened more if you chirped your vowels. Ladybugs listened if you buzzed through the first sound of each word. Centipedes listened if you rolled your ‘r's. The ants had listened to me that one time because my breath had been rough and raw, like the sound they made when they rubbed their ridges against their abdomens.

I simply had to mimic the cockroach accent of harsh, spitting sounds, then.

"Get off me," I hissed through my fingers.

The roaches didn't move. One tried to squirm into my ear, and I flailed, scrabbling at it. Another crawled over my eye, and my foot kicked out, colliding with the end of the tank and making the whole thing quake around me.

"Get off me," I tried again. "Go to the dummy. Get off me."

Nothing. No reaction, except for perhaps a swell in their own voices, a sharp, high-pitched kind of laughter. And I hated them for it, hated every tickle and prick and invasion, and I was going to scream if they didn't stop.

"Get off me!" I said again, my voice rising against my will.

The roaches simply crawled over each other in their haste to crawl over me, again and again, as if burying me alive and letting me rest under their combined weight wasn't enough. As if the burial had to constantly move and swirl and writhe.

Ms. Pincette got to her feet. She was going to mark this as a fail.

Something slipped through the cracks of my bones. Something deep and restless and aware.

It lunged, lashing out at the thousands of little invasions to my body.

The cockroaches flew off me, skidding up the sides of the glass and overflowing to the floor, where the dead ones remained and the live ones scuttled for the dummy to swarm its rubber figure.

But rather than crowd its body like they'd done to me, the thing inside me nudged them deeper and deeper, willing them out of existence, willing them to disappear completely.

I watched through the glass, horror-struck, as the cockroaches burrowed into the dummy itself and merged with its rubber surface, until all that was left was an ink-black figurine with twitching cockroach legs for hair.

Ms. Pincette's head snapped toward me.

Slowly, I rose within the tank and hoisted myself out. The silence of the room echoed like the aftermath of thunder as Ms. Pincette looked at me and I looked back at her.

I had no idea what I'd just done, but I did know that Wild Whispering abilities couldn't merge a thousand insects with a dummy. And that lunge inside me—it had felt an awful lot like my raw power had the night before Branding… only pointed and directed and honed, somehow, rather than shapeless.

Ms. Pincette, still staring at me, seemed to make up her mind.

"Leave us," she snapped at seemingly nothing but air.

The subtle, departing clicking of a dozen spiders faded from the walls.

Ms. Pincette motioned for me to come closer and waited until I was a nose-length away before seething, "What. Was. That."

"I don't know," I answered honestly—but I couldn't let her get too suspicious, so I added with a quick, careful smile, "But I did as you said, right? I got them off me and made them swarm the dummy instead. That's a pass, right?"

My voice sounded like nothing more than feeble bleating even to my own ears. I clenched my fists to keep her from seeing my shaking hands.

Ms. Pincette, however, eyed those fists, then let her gaze travel up the rest of my body, landing on my face. Her own face hardened. She gestured to the armchair.

"Sit, Ms. Drey. Sit and listen very carefully to me."

I sat. Now Ms. Pincette towered over me with a pinched expression.

"Do you know what these tests are for, Ms. Drey? The Final Tests?"

"To make sure we have control of our magic," I answered automatically, afraid to say a single wrong thing. "To make sure we are worthy of living on this island."

"And why would this be, Ms. Drey?" Ms. Pincette's fingers drummed against her own folded arms. "Why would the Good Council seek this kind of control?"

I blinked at her. Dare I say what I truly thought about the Good Council? Wasn't she part of them, in a roundabout way, by teaching at the Institute?

Deciding to play it safe, I said, "To weed out the weak."

"To weed out the strong," Ms. Pincette hissed, her tone as harsh as those roaches had been. "Do you really think they care about the people who genuinely fail these tests, Ms. Drey? The ones who can't talk to animals or summon objects or wield fire? No. They care about finding the people who can pass the test too well. Do you understand me? Because the people who pass the test too well are a threat."

I already suspected this, of course, but I still felt a sliver of surprise that Ms. Pincette would dare say it to me.

"I understand you," I told her earnestly. "I really do."

"No, you don't." My surprise only sharpened when she leaned even closer and said, "You don't understand a thing, Rayna Drey, because you'd be shitting yourself right now if you did. Now." She sat on the edge of the armchair, hovering over me. "I want you to use one hundred percent of your brain right now. Forget about what you've been told." Her jaw clenched. "Would the Good Council, seeking both the weakest and the strongest of society during these mandatory tests, truly give those strong ones to the pirates who are trying to break through our magical shield?"

I thought about it. Tried to use one hundred percent of my brain even though it was still buzzing over what had just happened.

The pirates—my mother's people—had the same raw power as me… but they didn't know how to control it, so they were seeking access to the island's bascite as a way to help themselves.

It didn't make sense, then, that the Good Council would truly exile people with that same bascite in their blood. If they did, they'd be… they'd be handing over exactly what those pirates wanted. Bascite. Controllable magic. And by extension, tools and weapons to use against the island itself. A way to break through the shield.

My heart dropped through my chest.

"What do they do with the ones who fail the test, then?"

Because I understood now. It wasn't just the bottom of the barrel that failed the test, but the top of the barrel, too. Only the ones with average, predictable magic got to stay on the island. The rest…

"There is a prison," Ms. Pincette began, her shadow shielding me from the light of the room. "A prison at the top of Bascite Mountain, where the Good Council lives. The exiled are sent there, where the weak ones are—" She winced "—recycled, and the strong ones are…" Another wince, deeper this time. "Experimented on."

My breath was a puddle in my lungs, stagnant and refusing to move.

Recycled? Meaning their blood was drained from their bodies to reuse the bascite in their system? And… experimented on? Dissected and studied and tortured?

Images floated across my vision. A cold mountaintop sparkling with smoky gray metal. A fortress filled with screaming. Dyonisia's cruel, cruel eyes. And what Quinn had told me so long ago: Mrs. Pixton is convinced her son is still on the island, locked up somewhere and waiting for her to rescue him.

Oh yes, I was certain of it now: the shield was to keep us in. To keep us from the rest of the world so that she, Dyonisia Reeve, could hoard us and abuse us.

And my magic, my blood, my other power—it was certainly something she'd want to study and tamper with and use.

"Why?" I croaked. "Why is she doing this? Who is she?"

By the flare of her pupils, I could tell Ms. Pincette knew exactly who I meant. But she only pursed her lips, straightened her posture, and patted at her blouse.

"I am giving you a fail, Ms. Drey, for being… unable to get the cockroaches to move. I expect you to study and sharpen your communication skills for next time."

In the silence that followed, the black-as-ink, still-twitching dummy seemed to stare me down, but a small part of my panic loosened.

Ms. Pincette was not going to record what had actually happened. As long as all those spiders who had been eavesdropping during the test were truly under her direction… I was safe.

For now.

"You may go, Rayna," Ms. Pincette said quietly. "Better luck next time."

I got up on shaky legs. Just as I was reaching the back staircase, which looked like it would spit me out to the rocky edge of the cliff behind the Testing Center, I looked back at her.

"Do you happen to have a map of the world, Ms. Pincette?" I swallowed the heat and grittiness of my bile. "I thought it would help me with my studying."

I need to know where my mother's people came from. Where I came from. And maybe… maybe where Dyonisia Reeve came from, too.

Ms. Pincette, however, just raised her chin. "Better luck next time, Ms. Drey. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go find more cockroaches for my next test."