Chapter 23

Coen. Coen, I need to talk to you right now. Coen, can you hear me?

The moment my feet hit the ground outside and the back door of the Testing Center swung shut behind me, I threw those thoughts into the muggy night air.

I must have been in the Testing Center for hours. Stars blared between clouds overhead, warm and winking. A few people milled about beside those two lampposts sandwiching the staircase that led down to the shore, but I didn't stop—around the Testing Center, across the courtyard, down Bascite Boulevard… I shouted his name in my head as I ran, wishing, for once, that his voice was already inside my mind.

But nothing filled the space between my ears besides the pounding of my own blood. Where was he? I knew it wasn't fair of me to expect him to know that I was done with the test, but my terror couldn't seem to rationalize anything. He was in danger, too, he and Garvis, Terrin and the twins—they would all be dragged to the top of that mountain and tortured if they revealed their true powers during their upcoming Final Tests.

The pirates were laughable compared to that.

Without pausing for breath, I sprinted over the bridge and down the street to my house, where I plunged through the opening doors just as a group of fellow Wild Whisperers walked out.

"Are you okay, Rayna?" one of them asked.

I threw back a quick, "Yeah, thanks!" and headed straight downstairs to the dining hall.

Here, a bunch of people in my class were eating a late-night snack to replace the dinner we'd missed. I didn't see Emelle, Rodhi, Gileon, or Wren, but I paused long enough to listen in on another group of friends, including Mitzi Hodges and Norman Pollard.

"I think I failed the History portion."

"I know I failed Predators Prey. When I let out that fuzzy caterpillar, the owl just stared at me."

"The only test I passed was Ms. Wildenberg's," Norman said, "but I think it's because the old bat was falling asleep and just too embarrassed to ask me to repeat my answers."

"Better than what happened to Bekka Nickleson," Mitzi said. "Did you hear about her? She failed all of them and tried to run away back to her village. The prince of the Shifters caught her." She lowered her voice. "Apparently, he shifted her kneecaps into stone so she couldn't run anymore."

"But it doesn't matter if you fail one or fail them all, right?" someone else asked. "In the end, if you can't pass every portion, you're pirate food."

From the fragile, frightened tone of their voices, I knew they were all imagining themselves thrown out to sea, unaware of that mountaintop prison and the worse horrors that would await them there.

Horrors that sounded a lot like slice you open and pillage the magic from your blood.

Once, that hallucination Coen had bestowed upon all the first-years seemed like the worst thing that could happen. Now, I had a very vivid imagining of Dyonisia Reeve doing even worse—with all the tools Fabian and Don usually used in their little blacksmith shop in Alderwick. Sledgehammers and pliers. Nails and chisels. A forge.

Shivering, I crept to the ice box behind the kitchen doors, nabbed a chunk of paper-wrapped cheese, and hurried back up to the study room. There, I whispered Willa's name into the stale, motionless darkness.

Her squeak of a voice answered me within seconds.

"I was beginning to worry that you'd forgotten today." She scrambled onto a nearby desk. "How did your test—"

"Willa." I unwrapped the cheese and placed it in front of her tiny paws. "Do you know of a place where I could talk to someone in private? Without the risk of any spiders overhearing?" I willed my heart to slow, to align with my breathing, to take hold of the fact that I wasn't in any imminent danger. Not yet.

Willa cocked her head at me and sniffled.

"The eight-legged beasts don't like water very much. Especially flowing water. Maybe near the estuary?"

"Perfect. Would you be able to pass a message to your family in the Mind Manipulator house?" I'd learned by now that all the mice shared their own kind of social community within the walls of each structure on Bascite Boulevard, often visiting each other and hosting little crumb parties. "Tell Coen Steeler to meet me on the bridge in five minutes. Can you pass that message along?"

"Sure, but…" Willa scurried around the hunk of cheese, ignoring it completely. "What's wrong, Rayna? You look ill. Have you eaten anything tonight?"

"No, but I'm not hungry. I just have to speak with Coen."

Preferably face to face. Because what I'd just learned… I felt like my scrambled mind would never be able to convey it all properly. I needed to voice it all aloud.

Willa gave me a beady-eyed look, her whiskers twitching, then scampered away.

Coen, I tried one more time. Coen, can you hear me?

Maybe it made me a coward to try to reach him this way, via minds and mice instead of just knocking on his front door and asking whoever opened it if I could come inside to see him.

But I heard Jenia's voice in my head: Why're you holed up in his room every weekend, then, if not to sleep your way to the top? andI couldn't stand the thought of all those smirks that would follow me to his private bedroom, or the gossip that would meander its way back to Jenia and Kimber.

Before I could overthink my decision, I hurried back to the foyer and out the door, starting toward the bridge with my head bowed against a sudden sprinkle of rain.

The gurgle of the estuary rose around me as I leaned against the metal guardrails, waiting for him. And as the minutes leaked by, my worry grew.

Where was he? Surely, it had already been five minutes, right? Of course, he might have been sleeping, or talking to someone, or playing a card game, or performing prince duties, or… or… or… the possibilities swirled in my head, nibbling at every corner of my mind like swarming insects—

"Rayna? What's going on?"

I whipped toward the sound of his voice and almost lunged forward to embrace him out of pure relief, but stopped myself. We'd never hugged, and he might find such a thing awkward or unwelcome, so I twisted my hands together instead.

"What's the point of being a Wild Whisperer?"

That wasn't what I'd intended to say, but it tumbled out anyway, my tongue completely out of my control.

"If I was a Mind Manipulator, I could have just read Mr. Conine's mind to see if he knew what the owl wanted to eat instead of playing stupid word games. I could have read Mrs. Wildenberg's mind to find out if the hibiscus were saying yes or not. I could have forced the cockroaches to leave me alone instead of begging them to get off me."

Coen had frozen, watching me as if I were an injured bird.

"What happened to you?" he asked, each word clipped and restrained.

I pressed my hands to my face. "I just… I needed to tell you about my test, and I needed to do it where there's no chance of us being overheard, so I asked Willa, and—" My eyes had traveled to his hands clasping a pair of straps around his shoulders "—is that a backpack?"

Coen's eyes narrowed in the rain-flecked starlight. "Yes," he said, as if I were being the suspicious one. "Willa told me you hadn't eaten so I thought I'd pack you some food."

He ate up the distance between us in a single stride and lifted a hand from one of his straps, hovering it near my temple as if to brush away my hair.

"May I?"

"Are you asking if you can read my mind right now?" I asked, incredulous. "Because you do that all the time, you know, and I've already given you permission."

"Well, I can hear the thoughts you're currently thinking whether I'm in your mind or not—they're sort of screaming right now. But to access your emotions and memories and deeper thoughts when you're obviously in so much distress… I'd like your permission again. It might hurt a little," he added, "letting someone in your mind while it's vulnerable and wild. It can be uncomfortable."

I only arched my neck toward him. "Go ahead. But I don't think I can form coherent thoughts, so I need to talk it out with you afterward."

Coen's fingers brushed my temple, grazing down my cheek. His eyes glazed over for a moment, then widened, then narrowed, then widened again, and soon he'd cupped both hands around either side of my face, holding me upright. A faint headache pulsed near the back of my head, but it didn't hurt much beyond that.

When he was finished sifting through my recent memories, he released me, and the absence of his touch left aching coldness trailing down both sides of my face. Not that he'd even needed to touch me to read my memories. He could have done that from across campus.

"I'll kill him," he breathed, his hands—now wrapped into fists—shaking.

"What? Coen, what are you talking about?" I took his fists and held them steady. "Didn't you just hear what Ms. Pincette told me?"

Coen blinked, as if refocusing, but gnawed on his lower lip.

"That Fergus kid. I told him not to touch you again."

That's what he was going to focus on after witnessing my entire testing experience? The mold had sucked, sure, but the idea of a prison full of tortured Esholians seemed like a more pressing matter to me. And the fact that such torture would come straight from the leaders who'd sworn to protect us rather than faceless enemies on the horizon… it made the whole fungus incident wane in comparison.

"Fergus didn't touch me, Coen. He abided by your rules and didn't lay a physical finger on me, so please don't punish him any further. He'll only figure out a way to retaliate against me again if you do. And besides," I said, adding in a miserable attempt at a laugh, "you're not allowed to kill anyone, remember? That was a rule you announced to everyone when we first arrived."

Coen stretched out his fingers, flexing them. He gave a curt nod, then flicked a glance at a pack of Element Wielders stumbling toward the bridge, their arms around each other. Celebrating the end of the first quarterly test, I was sure.

"I think," Coen said, "we're going to need more privacy. Are you up for a little midnight hike?"

It wasn't a little hike.

By the time Coen stopped us a mile uphill, along the winding path of the estuary that flowed in the opposite direction, my throat ached with the force of my panting. Nocturnal animals peeked at us through the trees here, and I could hear their curious whispers as Coen began running his hands along the ground.

"It's some of those weird human creatures from the school."

"Do you think they can understand us?"

"Don't say anything insulting in case they can."

"Why is the male one digging through the ground? Do humans burrow, Papa?"

"No, son, but sometimes they go rabid, like this one here."

"Um, Coen," I interrupted, and all those voices blinked into silence, "why are you digging?"

He grunted as he remained stooped. "I'm trying to find the—ahh, here. My friends and I haven't used this in ages, but Terrin discovered it when he was doing one of his weird earth exercises. He said the ground felt hollow in a certain place, so we all investigated and found…" Another grunt. "This."

There was a rusty squeak as Coen lifted what looked like a hatch buried deep among the ferns. I stared at it, unsure I was seeing right, but Coen planted his hands on his hips and grinned at me.

"Welcome to what Terrin calls the Throat. Here, I'll help you down."

I didn't move.

"Help me down? Into a hole in the ground called the Throat?"

"Yeah. I promise the end will be worth it." Coen held out his hand.

"Is the end called the Stomach, by chance?" I grumbled, but stepped forward, twining my fingers around his. The warmth of his skin tingled my wrist, and before he could flit through my mind to detect that, I slid down.

It wasn't a long drop. I landed with barely more than a thud and squinted into the darkness, shuffling sideways so Coen had space to land beside me. When he did, I could barely make out the silhouette of his face or the gleam of his eyes in the dark.

"I think I liked the bridge better," I whispered.

He chuckled, though I could have sworn there was a tense edge to that sound. "Just keep ahold of me and keep moving forward. The walk down will be a lot easier than the walk uphill was. Trust me." He closed the trapdoor above our heads, encasing us in the deepest, richest black I'd ever faced.

We began to push through the tunnel, my right hand clinging to the bulge of Coen's bicep. I was vaguely disappointed I couldn't enjoy it more, this closeness and the feel of his muscles beneath my fingers—not when the Throat seemed to close in on us from every direction, its darkness swallowing us whole.

"Who made this?" I breathed out.

"Terrin thinks it was another Element Wielder from a long time ago."

"Why?"

I felt the movement of Coen's shrug. "Could have been for sewage or transport or mining. Or maybe they just decided to create it on a whim. There are more than a few strange dents in Eshol due to magical experimentation."

At that word, experimentation, I shivered—but kept quiet. If there were spiders hulking in the crevices of the Testing Center walls, there were sure as hell spiders in this tunnel with us… although I couldn't hear any of their clicking or whispering. Still, though, better to play it safe, to wait until we'd reached Coen's secret place.

Whatever that was.

Hardly ten minutes later, I found out.

Coen had been right. The walk downhill was much faster than the walk up, because I could already see light blooming ahead, a block of grayish, shimmering sky. Or… was it the sky? It was moving so viciously, so chaotically, that I rubbed my eyes.

Something was hissing ahead, but not in a language I could understand. It was a sort of endless drone, yet full of nuance, like millions of voices bubbling together.

"Coen, what is this?"

"A place where no one will ever find us," he said, and the tunnel opened up into the wide-cut mouth of a cave, where gemstones shined in glittering waves all around.

And the spraying, hissing wall of a waterfall dumped into the ocean before us.