Chapter 26

The weeks following that first test were… brutal.

Not because the instructors themselves ramped up their lessons, but because our entire class found an aggressive new desire to outperform everyone else. Nobody fell asleep in History or The Language of Plants anymore. Nobody held back in Predators Prey or Spiders, Worms Insects. Even Jenia quit cutting through the teachers' voices with her whispers, her attention directed at each lecture with the sharpness of cold-cut steel.

A majority of the class, it seemed, had failed at least one portion of the test. And from the rumors see-sawing between the girls' and boys' houses, it sounded like only about two-thirds of us would improve enough to pass the test in five years, if we were anything like all the Wild Whispering classes before us.

Which made it a relief, one day in late fall, when Terrin caught up to me and Emelle as we were walking back to the house and invited us to his Element Wielder snow formal—an annual event placed strategically the weekend before the second test.

"To get everyone's mind off their own nerves," Terrin explained, just as we all three came to the bridge arching over the estuary.

I couldn't walk over that bridge without remembering the tunnel winding along somewhere beneath it, and what had happened between Coen and me at the end of that tunnel. Of course, it had happened a few more times throughout these last few weeks, but always in Coen's room, never in that cave gilded with gemstones. And we'd never gone all the way.

Still, though, I blushed as our footsteps clinked over the metal archway.

Terrin shook back his shaggy head of hair and surveyed me. "You alright, Drey? Your cheeks look a little flushed. Is it something I said?"

I knew better than to fall for his oh-so-concerned expression. Coen himself had told me that out of all his childhood friends, he and Terrin were the most alike, so I caught the smug little glint in his eyes and the way his mouth had quirked.

"Oh, no, I'm actually cold, Terrin. Aren't you?" A lie. Even in the wet season, the only part of the island that actually got cold was the top of Bascite Mountain or the places Element Wielders made cold.

Terrin gave a savage grin. He was a pirate, too, I reminded myself. Had been at least. I'd grown up hearing stories of pirates with fangs who dug into the exiled offerings each year and drained them until they were nothing but empty sacks of skin, yet here one was, grinning at me as he snapped his fingers.

Instantly, the water beneath us jumped and plopped with boils as big as my head. Steam billowed upward, swaddling us in its scorching mist. Emelle shrieked.

"Is that better?" Terrin asked casually.

"Show off," I muttered. I wouldn't be able to do anything more than maybe convince a fish to jump on him… but it would have to be a particularly stupid fish.

"See you ladies at the dance," was Terrin's only reply.

Apparently, Emelle and I weren't particularly special when it came to the snow formal. Since every Element Wielder was allowed to invite as many people as they wanted, the invitations spread like wildfire, until it seemed that the entire Institute was going.

"I just don't understand what we're supposed to wear," Emelle said that night in the bathing chambers while we were getting ready for bed.

Wren, beside us, stopped brushing her teeth long enough to mumble through her foaming toothpaste, "seem sir from card eeh ah."

Emelle stopped with a comb halfway to her hair. "What?"

Wren spit into the washing bin and tried again.

"Seamster from Cardina. The closest village on the other side of that ridge behind campus. He comes every wet season to sell us new clothes—along with some other villagers with all their goodies. You know, since our stuff is bound to break or rip over the years we're here, President Gleekle lets them come to campus once a year to basically screw us over with their inflated prices." She resumed brushing her teeth. "But it would be the best time to get a new dress for the formal, I'd imagine."

Her tone was careful… and rather stiff.

"Didn't you go to the formal last year?" I asked, watching her in the mirror.

Wren scoffed. "No. Not that I was invited, anyway, but it sounds horrible."

Coen, I thought into the void, right then and there.

To my surprise, he answered a heartbeat later. Yes?

Can you have Terrin invite Wren to the formal? I didn't let a single part of my expression twitch on my face, lest Wren sense some scheming going on.

Like, romantically? Coen asked. You want me to play matchmaker?

No, no, no. I mean—just make sure they can come. Rodhi and Gileon, too.

Coen snickered. Rodhi's already got about twenty-five different invitations, but I'll make sure Terrin gets ahold of Wren and Gileon in time.

Thank you.

Any other demands at this late hour? he asked. Or can I finally go to sleep?

Hey, you're the one in my head. You didn't have to answer.

A pause. I vaguely heard Emelle telling Wren she thought she'd look beautiful in cobalt or scarlet. Then Coen admitted, I didn't mean to be in your head.

What?

I was dozing off. My mind must have drifted to you.

I didn't know how to respond to that. Through all his coy words and teasing smiles, things like this would slip through every once in a while—and make me wonder why I hadn't given myself fully to him yet. It was just that… Jenia's words would slither into my ears every time I thought I was close: Why're you holed up in his room every weekend, then, if not to sleep your way to the top? It would make me pull back, panting and scrambling up with some kind of excuse to hurry away. I knew that I shouldn't let someone else's disdain affect me so much, and if everyone already thought I was sleeping with him, what was the point of not?

But something… something superstitious lurked in me, begging me to be careful. Begging me to wait, to see if this thing between us was all just a joke or a trick.

It's not, came Coen's sleepy reply in my head, but I respect your caution.

Goodnight, you, I said quickly, before he could hear any other mortifying, perpetually spiraling thoughts.

Sweetest dreams, my little hurricane.

And his mind dropped from mine like a feather floating to the ground.

On the day the Cardina peddlers came to campus, everyone broke their serious streak in Mr. Conine's class to chat loudly about what they wanted to buy while we played with sloths—or, at least, while we tried to play with sloths.

Most of the creatures were simply clinging to us, content to listen to our conversation with wide, glassy eyes. Mr. Conine himself was busy leaning back in his chair at the head of the classroom, surveying us lazily as if he hadn't a care in the world.

"I'm going to buy something for Ms. Pincette," Rodhi declared, patting his sloth on its sloped head. "I just don't know what yet. What do you women even like?" he asked Emelle and me, as if he'd only just noticed us.

"Rodhi, I've told you a million times," I sighed. "Forget Ms. Pincette."

Rodhi sighed back at me, as if I were the unreasonable one here. "I found out she's twenty-eight, so only a decade older than us. A ten-year age gap is nothing, darling."

"I think I'd like flowers," Emelle said dreamily beside us, stroking her sloth's moss-glazed back. "Preferably the kind that don't sing opera."

"I'm going to get Wren a needle," Gileon said, smiling down at his own sloth that had crawled up to his neck.

I blinked at him. "Just… just a needle? What about thread?"

Not that I could imagine Wren sewing, but…

Gileon scratched his head. "She only ever talks about needles. And sticking them in people's ice. She's never mentioned thread."

One of the sloths let out a low, slow chuckle.

Eyes. Whenever anyone annoyed her, Wren always said that she'd like to stick a needle in their eyes.

Rodhi, Emelle, and I spent the rest of class biting our lips.

Finally, Mr. Conine announced the end of class, we carried our sloths back to their favorite trees, and everyone began surging toward the courtyard.

We heard it before we had even rounded the last corner: the shouting and haggling, the jingling of coins and jewelry. I wasn't expecting it, though, when we finally stopped at the edge of the cobblestone and found hundreds of tents and carts bulging from the courtyard, all packed together so tightly, I couldn't even fathom pushing my way through the mess. It was even more hectic than that first day of our arrival, with hardly enough space to walk between each row of carts. The monkeys only stirred up the chaos, lunging forward from the sidelines to steal bits of merchandise and shrieking with laughter when the vendors shooed them away.

Rodhi rubbed his hands together, a competitive glint to his eyes.

"Wish me luck. I'm going in."

And he barged into the fray.

I glanced at Emelle and Gileon. "Let's just wander along the outer edge first?"

There'd be no point in trying to find Coen in this mess. He'd reach out to me once his last class of the day had ended, I knew.

Gileon squinted ahead. "I think I see a wagon with sewing supplies, actually. It's by the fountain. I'm going to go there first if that's okay with you, Rayna."

Oh, right. Gileon, despite his sweet demeanor, did tower over everyone else and would be able to see over the sea of all those bobbing heads.

"Sure." I waved a hand. "See you later, Gil."

When it was just Emelle and me, we began meandering along the outskirts, smiling politely at most vendors who tried to hail us down, but stopping to inspect the merchandise of an old woman who was selling chocolate truffles. Before leaving the house for Mr. Fenway's class this morning, I'd filled my pockets with those untouched copper coins I'd brought from home, and now I felt them clink together at the top of my thighs as I brought one out to pay for two truffles, one for Emelle and one for me.

Once upon a time, I used to watch Fabian and Don use their Summoning magic to grind up roasted cocoa beans. The smell reminded me of Alderwick, of home, and I chewed on my truffle slowly to savor it as Emelle and I moved on. I suddenly ached for my fathers so much that I barely even registered when one of the vendors called my name.

"Rayna. Are you Rayna Drey?"

I whipped around, toward a striped green tent where a man with sagging, yellow-tinted cheeks was peering at me beadily, a cigarette clamped between two meaty fingers. Racks of wool blankets hung all around him, swaying in a thick breeze, and the man beckoned with his free hand.

I took a few steps toward him uncertainly, Emelle on my heels.

"Yes?" I swallowed my chocolate.

Perhaps he was a Manipulator, and this was a tactic to sell more blankets: invade passersby's minds, pick out their names, and call out to them as if he knew them personally. I stopped a few paces short of his tent, just out of reach.

"I've got something for ya," the man growled.

He turned to rummage through the blankets behind him one-handedly, keeping his cigarette aloft with the other hand. Taking a step back, I said, "Oh, no thank you. I'm afraid I've already got enough blankets, but—"

"No, no, no." The man turned back around—this time with a folded piece of paper pinched between one of those meaty fingers and his thumb. "This is for you."

Emelle furrowed her brows at me. Perhaps I shouldn't touch it, the paper, in case this was some kind of marketing ploy… a Mind Manipulating charm that would force me to buy a blanket once I read what was on it, or a Shape Shifting trick that meant the paper was actually a quilt.

But I found myself reaching out for the paper even as Emelle let out a small gasp.

I unfolded it before I could think twice. And found my full name scrawled at the head of the page.

My knees went watery, as if all my bones had melted at the sight of that scrawl.

I would know his handwriting anywhere. I had spent my childhood years, after all, watching him write things down without even touching the pen.

Fabian had finally written back.