Chapter 36

We laid against each other afterward, suspended in space among those floating bits of moon. The clouds were long gone, a mere milky white sheen beneath us, and the boat swayed ever so gently as Coen stroked my arm.

I couldn't tell how long we lay entwined like that, just soaking in the aftereffects as if the glow of the moon had been absorbed in our skin. It was only when Coen went rigid against me that his mind trick fell away like a curtain and we were on his bed, in the tangled sheets, in his room once again.

"What is it?" I asked, sitting up. My hair, already curling again at the ends, fell over him. He looked as if he were listening to something I couldn't hear.

"Oh, it's just… everyone's minds are loud right now," he muttered, turning to shift aside a strand of my hair so that he could look at me fully. "Some of the guys in my house let it spread that I carried you into my room, and I guess we were…"

I almost gasped, horrified.

"Loud?"

If either of us had been loud, it had definitely been me. I'd forgotten, what with the clouds and stars, that only four walls separated us from the rest of the house.

Coen's half-wince was the only confirmation I needed.

I groaned, sinking back down. "So now it's going to spread to Kimber and she'll hate me extra hard."

She'd already made fun of me for "sharing" Coen with Sasha and Sylvie, of course, but now it would be officially cemented in her mind. And I had a feeling she'd punish me for it, either one-on-one or through Jenia and Fergus.

"I won't let her punish you," Coen said vehemently. "And it's just gossip. Everyone will forget about it tomorrow when someone cheats on someone with someone else's cousin's best friend. You know how it goes."

"Yes, I know." But I chewed my lip, gazing at the imprints on his ceiling. "I just didn't realize it would be so dramatic here. Or so petty. But I suppose that's what happens whenyouthrow a bunch of young adults together for years on end, huh?"

It had been bothering me, this constant… flippant spite. I couldn't imagine anyone in Alderwick sending a horde of beetles into someone else's face just because they'd been jealous of them once upon a time, like Kimber had done to Sasha and Sylvie back at the Element Wielder formal.

Coen cradled my naked body with his own.

"I'm not sure it ever goes away," he said thoughtfully, resuming his strokes against my arm. "The drama and pettiness, I mean. I think it just matures—grows into something that can hide behind the guise of a different name."

I craned my neck to look at him. "What doyoumean?"

"Well, mean girls grow up to be dangerous, manipulative women." Coen's eyes shuttered at that, no doubt thinking of Kimber. "Asshole guys grow up to be dangerous, abusive men. That's why it's so important to try to be the best version of yourself even in this phase of life they call ‘practice.' Ifyou'regoing to practice anything,youmight as well practice being good, right?"

I thought about that. Quinn's mother—had she once been a mean girl here at the Institute? A mean girl who'd passed her Final Test and found a way to manipulate and control others inside her own home rather than outside it? Perhaps cruelty towardyourpeers now translated to cruelty towardyourown children later.

A lump swelled in my throat. I let myself drink in Coen's face.

"You'regood," I said. "I feel that, deep down."

His eyes shuttered. When he kissed me again, it was slower than last time.

And so was what followed.

Drama and gossip continued to grow and fester as the dry season officially swept away all the layers of clouds and brought clear blue skies shimmering with hints of the distant dome over our heads.

Everyone was focused on the upcoming pentaball tournaments, where each sector would play against each other. This year, the Shape Shifters would play against the Element Wielders and the Wild Whisperers would play against the Object Summoners. The winners of those two games would play against each other, and then the winner of that game would play against last year's champions: the Mind Manipulators, of course.

"I heard the Mind Manipulators win every year," Rodhi said one day, slinging an arm around my shoulder while we walked to History together. "That true, darling? Or was Penny Ickers lying straight to my face?"

Penny Ickers, I knew from all the parties we'd attended, was a fourth-year Mind Manipulator who liked to tell exaggerated stories. But this wasn't one of them.

"It's true," I sighed. Behind us, Emelle and Gileon were arguing about the sentience of clams, although Gileon's quarrelsome nature extended to an uncertain whisper. Still, I tried to tune them out as I explained, "The Mind Manipulators can literally freeze the opposing team in place and win within seconds. Coen told me the trick to beating them is to immobilize them first, but… it's not easy."

Lately, I'd been forgetting how destructive Coen himself could be if he wanted to. Part of me couldn't blame the Good Council for controlling us so severely outside of the Institute. What would Alderwick have looked like if Mind Manipulators were throwing around their power out on the streets, freezing anyone they fancied? Or what if an Element Wielder were to do that with a literal blast of ice?

I hadn't worried about the pentaball tournament itself too much, though. The class royals of each house would pick five players for their sector's team, and as a first-year on Kimber's hate radar, I was definitely not going to make the cut.

"I hope I'm on the team," Rodhi said, almost mournfully. "I've made friends with the newest batch of mosquitoes over near the crocodile swamps and they promised me they'd fly over and bite the shit out of anyone I told them to."

"How generous of them," I said sardonically as we descended the steps into Mr. Fenway's classroom, where the old man was shuffling papers at the front. "Considering they would have no interest in biting people if it weren't for you."

"Hey." Rodhi lifted his palms. "They'd spare me and my team and absolutely mutilate the others. I think that's a pretty good strategy."

Maybe it would be, but I was still glad knowing that Kimber would rather pick a sloth than me. Pentaball was fun as a casual thing, but I shuddered to imagine myself on that field with thousands of eyes following my every movement. It would be like the Branding ceremony all over again, but with a ball instead of a tiger.

"At least you're able to talk to mosquitos." I took my seat while the rest of the class filed in and took theirs around us. "Whenever I try, they just whine."

It was true. I'd been resorting to taking jarred insects back home to try to communicate with them in the study room—to no avail. I wouldn't have been so concerned if it wasn't for Coen's insistent demand that I pass all of my next tests. Even Willa had taken to watching my failed attempts on the windowsill, audibly sighing whenever I cursed at the cockroach or maggot on my desk.

"You'll get there," Rodhi said, patting my hand. "I still can't make those damned monkeys laugh—their fault, of course. They've got a shit sense of humor. I mean, I think my gorilla jokes are funny, but they just run away whenever I even mention silverbacks."

We went quiet when Mr. Fenway began shuffling about, returning our latest essays about the famous Wild Whisperers in the Good Council over the last few centuries. I breathed in relief when I saw my passing score, but Emelle groaned.

"Ugh," she hissed under her breath. "Another fail."

"Who'd you write about again?" I asked out of the corner of my mouth.

"Adal Wessex the Third. Apparently, I—" Emelle squinted to read Mr. Fenway's notes at the top of the page "—didn't properly detail his affinity for mushrooms and other fungi, which he thought deserved the same respect as the other plants and animals of Eshol. By the orchid and the owl."

I tried not to glance in Fergus's direction at that. He'd been morose, quieter than normal since Gileon had beat the hell out of him, and I hadn't seen him conjure mold again … but that didn't mean he didn't have some kind of retribution up his sleeve. Had he learned some of his fungi skills from studying Adal Wessex the Third?

Emelle was still muttering down at her paper, so I yanked a smile onto my face and said, in an attempt to cheer her up, "I think you know why you failed, though."

At this, a sheepish smile crept onto her own. "Yeah."

Lander had gone after his queen, that was for sure. Emelle spent almost every evening at the Shape Shifter house now, slipping back into the bunkroom late into the night with her hair more ruffled than mine and a flush always tipping her ears.

Mr. Fenway gave a sudden cough at the front of the class, as if he'd heard.

"I was disappointed in a few of you while grading your essays, I must say. The Good Council is a crucial part of Esholian history, and it is always wise to know why, exactly, we must respect and cherish their presence at all times."

He smothered a cough with his arm and turned, to my dismay, toward Fergus.

"Take Mr. Bilderas, for example. You were assigned the first ever Wild Whisperer on the island, young man, yet you forgot to mention one very important fact in your paper." Another cough. "That Dyonisia Reeve herself branded him!"

Jenia rolled her eyes at Dazmine, but Fergus remained strangely impassive—even when everyone's eyes flicked toward his face still shaded with the last yellow remnants of that bruise from Gileon's fist.

"And why, sir, would that matter?"

He spoke like a skin-covered corpse. The back of my hands tingled.

"Because Dyonisia Reeve rarely does the actual branding, but when she does…" Mr. Fenway thumped his chest. "When she does, it is said that the magic is usually stronger. And while that might just be an old wives' tale, it is still… it is still…"

Mr. Fenway gagged, and when he did—

I saw something in his mouth.

Something dark and blossoming and rancid. Something familiar that had tainted my nightmares on and off for months.

My feet moved before my brain did. I was already knocking past desks before Mr. Fenway gagged again, hurling toward him. Someone screamed.

Before I could reach him, the old man tilted forward and crashed into the floor.

With black mold billowing out of his mouth.