Chapter 24

The waterfall stole all my focus, along with my breath.

Its sparkling, feral shower warped my view of the green-black spread of ocean beyond it, but the water somehow caught shards of starlight and sent them cascading back into the cave, reflecting off the gemstones imbedded in the ceiling and walls and filling this entire space with throbbing, multi-colored light.

The estuary. We were directly beneath a part of the estuary, right where it spilled itself off the cliff and into the sea.

I was gaping all around me when I realized Coen had unslung his backpack, pulled out a blanket, and spread that blanket over the polished black floor of the cave.

"What are you doing?"

He didn't answer until he'd rummaged through the backpack some more and brought out a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. When he'd unpacked it and placed it neatly on the blanket, he nodded down at it and said, "Eat."

"What?"

Coen, as I might have expected, crossed his arms.

"Your hair looks like a bird's nest, I just saw a recent memory of you bathing in cockroaches, and your mind seems to be stuck on the concept of torture. The least you could do for yourself right now is eat this damn sandwich I made for you."

A bird's nest? I touched my hair, pushed out my best grunt, and stomped over to the blanket, where I sat cross-legged on the floor of the cave and began tearing into the sandwich. Don't moan, I begged myself when my stomach snarled at the sudden taste of food—seed-filled bread, spiced avocado, and dripping tomato slices. It had to be, what, nearing one in the morning now? And I hadn't eaten since before stepping foot in the Testing Center.

Apparently satisfied that I was getting something down, Coen untangled his arms and began to pace around me.

"Okay, go over it again," he ordered. "Everything that instructor of yours told you after the cockroaches."

Right. Coen had never had Ms. Pincette as a teacher, since he was in a different sector. I spilled out every detail of her warnings through mouthfuls of sandwich, trying to convey the sharpness of her character, how she wasn't one to exaggerate.

"And then she said the people who fail the test aren't actually exiled but taken to the top of Bascite Mountain." I paused as Coen's eyes remained focused on his own feet while he paced. Shouldn't he be grimacing or cringing or making some kind of unpleasant facial expression at the idea of such a thing voiced out loud?

I stood up suddenly, marching toward him and poking a finger to his chest.

"You knew, didn't you?"

He stopped in his tracks, blinking down at my finger.

"I… suspected. Not that the exiled go to Bascite Mountain," he added quickly as my eyes flared. "I could've never guessed that… but I wasn't convinced they actually get thrown out to sea with the pirates. You have to remember—" Even though there was no way a single spider could hear us over the crashing of the waterfall, Coen's eyes still darted left and right before continuing "—I was nine years old when my captain sent me and the others through the shield, not a baby. I remember living on the ships, and we never once nabbed any exiles drifting on rowboats or swimming helplessly in the ocean, or whatever else you might imagine."

Something about that gave me pause. Made me lower my finger from his chest and press it against my own chin.

"You were nine?" I repeated. "Nine years old?"

Even if I wasn't a natural at arithmetics, I could do simple addition. When we were children, some… others and I were dropped onto one of the coastal villages—Hallow's Perch—about twelve years ago, Coen had told me the first time I'd visited his bedroom. And if he had been a nine-year-old twelve years ago…

"You're not twenty-three," I said flatly, even though that statement sounded ludicrous. Every fifth-year was twenty-three going on twenty-four. Every fifth-year besides Coen, apparently.

His eyes flashed, then blinked in surprise. The next second, a grin had cracked his face.

"God, you're smart. I've got to remember to be careful about what I say around you. But you're right, I'm twenty-one. The twins are twenty-two. Garvis is—oh, let's see—twenty-four now." When my eyebrows flew into my hairline, he added, "we weren't all born in the exact same year, Rayna. But when we got dumped on this island, we knew we'd have to stick together. Go to the Institute together and take our Final Tests together. So we lied about our ages from the very beginning."

It made sense, but… I loosed a pent-up breath. Twenty-one. Coen was twenty-one, only three years older than me. A mix of shock and… and embarrassment flared through my chest, though I didn't know why, so I latched onto another question.

"And Terrin? How old is he?"

Coen grabbed a fistful of his own hair and laughed as nervously as I felt.

"He will murder me if he knew I was telling you this, but Terrin's only nineteen. Yes, even with all his facial hair. He was the youngest of us to be used as bait." Coen didn't even cringe from that statement, although I did. "He was seven when we left the ships for the last time."

My breath hitched. A pirate. Coen wasn't just a pirate's son, but an actual pirate who had lived on one of those ships dotting the horizon for nine whole years.

Coen bent to snatch up the last bite of sandwich I'd discarded, and lifted it to my lips.

"Finish it. Your hands are still shaking."

I took it into my mouth, my lips brushing the edges of his fingers.

He made sure I swallowed before he said, "Garvis and I have tried to follow the exiles every year. After they fail their tests, they're escorted by Good Council security to a group of iron wagons behind the Testing Center waiting to take them away. Garvis and I don't dare follow close enough for anyone to actually see us, or I'm sure Dyonisia Reeve would have our heads on two identical pikes. But we follow the screams of their minds from a distance away."

"And?" I asked breathlessly.

"And the sound of the exiles cuts out after a few miles. Every year."

"Like they're dead?" I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. "Do you think the Good Council just kills them and takes their bodies up to Bascite Mountain?"

The weak ones are recycled, Ms. Pincette had said. Were their literal corpses recycled, then? The bascite in my system—had it come from the blood of a murdered Esholian who'd failed the test before me?

But Coen brushed his hands against my arms, and I felt a flutter of shock at the rough texture. What did the Mind Manipulators do in their classrooms to warrant such callouses? Or would his skin simply never shed the roughness of his childhood on a ship?

"No, Rayna, it's not like a dead kind of silence. More like the exiled become muted. Shielded." At my questioning gaze, he amended with, "Mind Manipulators can cast their own mental shields against fellow Mind Manipulators. That's why Garvis and I are the only ones who try to follow, because we know that if we're interrogated, we can block out the truth and feed out lies. I'd never ask Terrin or the twins to put themselves at risk by trying to investigate anything."

Because if they were interrogated and found out, he didn't need to say, they'd find out where the exiled went, alright. By joining them.

"So," I said, trying not to let the halo of sparkles around Coen's head—cast by the gemstones behind him—distract me. "You think a Manipulator on the Good Council is casting a shield around the exiled… to prevent anyone from following like you and Garvis try to do?"

"I think that's exactly what's happening."

Coen's hands had come to rest near my elbows, anchoring me into place. I tried to tell myself our closeness had everything to do with the secrets spilling from our lips and nothing to do with… anything else. Tried and failed.

"Garvis and I have always suspected the Good Council changes course as soon as they mute those kidnapped minds," Coen continued in a harsh whisper. "We've always scoured the shores afterward, but… there's never any sign of them. And…" He paused, as if weighing whether or not he wanted to tell me. Something seemed to fall into place in his eyes. "And I don't think the dome around Eshol would let anybody leave, anyway. Even the exiled ones."

For a moment, only the crash of the waterfall blared around us.

"How did you and the others get through it all those years ago?" I whispered. "What is the dome, anyway?"

I'd always imagined it was a staticky material made of different types of magic. Perhaps a solid wall of air woven with a Mind Manipulating charm to stay away, or a vault of iron that the Shape Shifters made appear invisible.

Coen seemed to shiver. He stepped away from me, dragging his fingers through his hair and looking toward the waterfall instead—or perhaps he was looking past the waterfall, toward the place where his old home bobbed on the sea.

"Think of it like a sort of… disease. Or a poison made solid." He still didn't look at me, as if he were ashamed, when he said, "And Terrin, Garvis, the twins, and I—we're all immune to it. That's how we got through."

I tried not to gape. Tried to process the information without letting it show on my face.

"So in theory," I said, stepping closer to him again, "you five could go in and out as you please? The shield isn't actually keeping you in?" You could return to your family whenever you wished, if they still remembered you. If they'd still take you back.

The thought made me wonder if my own mother was immune as well, if that's how she'd stepped foot on the island and met Fabian and left again just as easily after I was born. If she'd left at all. I wouldn't know unless Fabian ever returned my message.

"In theory," Coen agreed, his eyes flitting back to mine.

I felt a tickle in my mind, a gentle probing. Shadows seemed to cross his face.

"Do you know why your power slipped through the suppressant?" he asked.

"No." I started, surprised that he was even asking me. "I'd assumed it was just something that happened from time to time." The silence between us swelled with crashing water. "That's… that's never happened to you?"

Coen shook his head slowly. "The pill has never failed any of us before. I can't remember the last time I actually felt my own power, having taken a suppressant every week for… what is it? Seven years now?" Another tickle in my mind. "Can you explain to me what it felt like, to lose a bit of it?"

I knew he could access my memories, that he could see for himself—had already seen for himself. What he wanted now was my own verbalized perception.

"It felt like…" I looked around as if I might be able to find the right words sparkling on the tips of each gemstone. "It felt like a slice of it slipped through the bars of a jail cell or something." I couldn't help but imagine the spindly pieces of cheese that curled at the end of a cheese grater. The slice of power had been just as thin, just as malleable, just as localized.

Coen's lips twitched as he saw that image in my mind, too. But the smile never fully took form, because the next second he tipped back his head and sighed.

"I wonder if we should increase your dose."

"Absolutely not," I started. "Not when I don't even know where you get them or how you make them."

A pained expression. I almost wanted to smooth out the sudden lines in his forehead with my fingers. To force his worry to soften.

"I have to pay for them, you know," he said quietly, "and part of that payment involves my… confidentiality. They don't want the Good Council to know what they're providing me with."

I considered this. Imagined a pharmacist or herbalist in Coen's adopted village, mixing special powders of who-knew-what and filling those pearl-shaped capsules with the mixture. The more I thought about it, the more I couldn't blame the herbalist—or whoever they were—for making Coen swear his secrecy. If the Good Council found out…

"Fine." I unleashed a breath. "I can respect that." I let myself get lost in the cascading glitters, the warped, pulsing starlight around us… if only to give my brain a break from thinking so hard. "This place is beautiful, you know."

"It is, isn't it?" But Coen hadn't followed my gaze. His stayed on my face.

I returned my focus to him.

"What is it?" I could tell something was bothering him about my own expression. "Do I have tomato juice on my face, or something?"

Unfortunately, no, or I'd lick it off for you.

His voice was merely a wisp in my mind, as if he'd let that thought pass through his defenses. I supposed if he was already loitering in my head, it would be hard to contain his own thoughts from me. I didn't know whether to nudge him playfully or protest or wipe my mouth, as if I could feel where he'd lick me—but before I could decide, Coen rushed on.

"I just don't want you to worry about us—me and Garvis, or the twins and Terrin. I can feel the… the weight of your fear for us, but we're going to pass the Final Test. All five of us." His eyes blazed with those flecks of quartz, and I suddenly found him more mesmerizing than the waterfall or gemstones. "And when your time comes, Rayna, you're going to pass it, too. You have years to practice your control, so in the meantime, that's exactly what I want you to do, okay? Practice, and enjoy your friends, and—"

I tore myself away from him suddenly.

"So we're just supposed to ignore this possibility of a torture chamber overlooking our entire island?"

"Oh, no." Coen bared his teeth in a grin, as if challenging me. "I'm not going to ignore it. And neither is Garvis. Him and I are going to investigate the hell out of this, but you, Terrin, Sasha, and Sylvie are going to stay as far away from it as you can get. Garvis and I can protect ourselves, but if any of you get caught snooping around, the Good Council will tear your minds to shreds, so I don't even want to hear it. Understood?"

I pretended to really contemplate it, even though a weak, miserable part of me was so, so relieved to hear it. That I could keep pretending everything was fine.

"Will you at least tell me what you find?" I asked finally. "Because you say I have years to practice, but…" And the truth seemed to touch down on my skin, sending ripples of goosebumps over the barest parts of my body. "But in half a year, you'll be gone, which means no more pills for me. No more suppressing this." I rubbed my chest. "Which means I might be heading to that mountaintop sooner than—"

"Don't." His tone came out as a low snarl. "Don't you dare think that I'll leave you defenseless. I will find a way to get the pills to you every week for as long as you need them."

We were close again, my breasts nearly brushing the underside of his own chest muscles. I could smell the rich, mellow scent of black bamboo that always seemed to linger on his skin, in his hair, and it made me think of our faux make-out session. The feel of his weight on top of me and the taste of his tongue in my mouth.

I snapped my mouth shut, mortified—because I could feel him in my mind, and by the way his mouth pulled into his biggest smirk yet, I could tell he was reliving each of those moments as well. But through my experience, not through his.

"Interesting," he drawled, as if bored. "I thought you were over it."

"How could I be over it?" I snapped. "How can I even look at any other guy on campus when you're always on my mind? Literally."

Coen's smirk sagged a tad. "I didn't realize I was holding you back. I'm sorry if I'm overstepping… or keeping you from experimenting with—"

"Oh, I don't want to experiment with anyone else but you." My frustration flowed over, heating my mouth. "But you're going to leave in a few months, so what's the point, and Kimber already hates me, and Jenia thinks I'm sleeping my way to the top, and—"

"Get down," Coen said suddenly, with such savage intensity that I thought someone from one of the pirate ships must have spotted us from the sea. I obeyed instantly, hurtling onto the blanket at our feet. "On your back," he added.

Now my heartrate spiked for a completely different reason.

I laid down slowly. Coen sank to his knees and bowed over me.

"You really want to experiment with me?" His breath was sweet, rich, hot.

I could only manage a nod, my heart fluttering in my mouth.

Coen's answering grin met my lips.