Chapter 43

"Leave us," Ms. Pincette told the spiders.

She waited until they'd scuttled further into the foundation of the Testing Center before swiveling her attention back on me, a single eyebrow tilted.

"You're not even going to try?"

The question was prim, her mouth still puckered like plucked roses. She had laced her fingers together in her lap.

"No," I said. "There's no point. I can talk to worms and spiders just fine, but insects themselves don't want anything to do with me."

I still didn't know why—perhaps me being faerie had something to do with it? I'd been poring over that map every few nights for answers, sneaking the thing in and out of the space behind the cuckoo clock after everyone else had gone to bed. But there was nothing in it to hint that faeries would have more trouble talking to insects than humans did. Especially since most faeries couldn't talk to animals at all. It was a unique gift that only developed naturally in a few.

And besides, that wasn't what I wanted to talk about now.

"You work for the Good Council," I said instead, so coldly it sounded like the words might chip off before they left my mouth.

A space of a breath. Ms. Pincette's eyes flickered.

"Not directly. I'm not on the Good Council, Ms. Drey."

"But you report to them. You give them a list of failed students, right?"

Yet for some reason, you're protecting me.

Another flicker in her eyes, this one like smoke drifting over ashes.

"They expect some failures every year. I can't spare everyone."

I waited for her to continue. Those damn vines were going to choke me from the inside-out…but I couldn't ache for Coen right now. Not when I was determined to pick apart all the answers he refused to give me. Not when my instructor was admitting to me that she handed over her own pupils like fish on a platter.

"Why do you do this for them?" I breathed out. "If you know they're taking your students to Bascite Mountain and… and experimenting on them—torturing them—why do you even work for them? Wouldn't it be better, more humane, to get some silly little job in a silly little village and never think about them again?"

Except part of me knew it would be impossible to forget about the Good Council even in the smallest, most faraway village.

All it takes is one person breaking the law, one person using magic on the streets in an inappropriate manner, one execution in every village, for people to obey, Coen had said… Coen, who'd watched them string up his childhood friend and lash him until his skin was in bloody strips.

Still, though, Ms. Pincette could have removed herself from any involvement.

For the first time since I'd laid eyes on her, my sharp-eyed instructor melted into a distinctive softness, as if each of her features were cowering rather than slicing.

Behind me, the swarm of locusts continued their chorus of rattling screeches.

"I failed my Final Test," Ms. Pincette whispered finally, her eyes anchoring onto mine. "I wasn't one of the strong ones. I was one of the weak ones. I could pass every History exam and talk to every animal and befriend every spider, but I couldn't for the life of me understand what those damn trees were singing. So I failed."

I waited, still cold, still trying to push down my vines of ice. I had never felt so far removed from my childhood self, from the girl my fathers had raised.

"They took me to the mountain." Ms. Pincette's voice was merely a whimper. "They… did things to me."

Slowly, her eyes still embedded in mine, she lifted a corner of her tunic and revealed a flash of her bare stomach.

I didn't even have enough breath to gasp.

How many times had Rodhi rattled on about how much he'd like to see what lay beneath Ms. Pincette's clothes? So many times, I had blocked it out. But I was certain now, more than I'd ever been certain before, that Ms. Pincette would never show him. Not because of the age gap or inappropriate power dynamics, but because what lay beneath her clothes was an absolute tangle of scars, crisscrossing ropes of raised flesh that wrapped around her ribcage and rose up to her armpits and…

I pressed a hand to myself. Not to rein in a gasp.

To keep myself from vomiting.

Ms. Pincette let her tunic fall back into place.

"When they were done doing those things to me," she said rather dryly, like her last tears had fossilized behind her eyes years ago, "they asked me if I'd like to die, or if I'd like to teach."

Oh. Oh, oh, oh. I felt my sculpture crack, just the tiniest bit, near my heart where it screamed and flailed and bucked at what Ms. Pincette had just revealed.

"I'm sorry," I got out, slumping. "I should have never suggested—"

"—that I'm a useless lump of shit on this island that keeps manufacturing new test subjects like pawns in some centuries-old game most of us don't even know we're playing?" Ms. Pincette suggested, a droll smile tightening her face.

I didn't answer. Couldn't. The locusts had reached a pitch too loud for me to think through.

Had every member of the Good Council been subjected to such horrors before they'd agreed to join? Had Mr. Fenway and Mr. Conine and Mrs. Wildenberg failed their tests once upon a time—either for demonstrating too much power or not enough—and been dealt just as many scars and that same horrible choice?

Ms. Pincette seemed to read the question on my face.

"I think not," she said. "I think Dyonisia Reeve is a masterful marionette who knows exactly what to say or do to get people on her side. With me, she knew I wouldn't work for her willingly and that I was useless enough to bargain with."

A twitch tugged at the corner of Ms. Pincette's lips at that. Failed. She had failed her Final Test, something I'd been so afraid of my entire life—and suffered a fate worse than banishment and pirates. Worse than what I'd always feared.

"So," Ms. Pincette continued before I could elaborate on that, "I let them experiment on me until I'd lost my sense of purpose and soul and everything else besides the pain. That's why I joined her ranks, let her give me a new name, promised her I'd never contact my family again—my family who thinks I was exiled long ago. Because it's this or death, and I've always been a coward."

I didn't know what to say. The thrum of my heart was lost among the chorus of locusts, and my tongue was nothing but a stone in my mouth.

Ms. Pincette could call herself a coward and a failure and a useless lump of shit. She could hide all of that behind her prim and proper mask… yet she'd lied for me, made an illegal map for me, sent the spiders away for me time and time again…

That didn't seem cowardly.

My tongue was still heavy when it said, "Why me?"

Because I knew she'd never done this for anyone else. Knew it deep in the place those vines were rooted and my raw magic eddied, trying and trying and trying to wake up.

Ms. Pincette flicked an annoyed glance behind my shoulder, at the locusts.

"Oh, shut up," she barked at them—and they dropped into ringing quietness.

Then she leaned forward, got a good look at my face, and leaned back again.

"I sense something in you, Rayna. I don't know what it is, yet, but I've learned the hard way to always trust my gut."

She smiled that dry, cracked smile, and I thought of the spiders she'd sent away, suddenly feeling as if a few invisible ones were scuttling up and down my face.

But no, that was just the awareness in Ms. Pincette's eyes as she looked at me. Beheld me.

"My gut says that whatever you're leashing in there," she whispered finally, nodding at my chest, "is what could finally shatter this God-forsaken dome and free us all."

There was no Coen to greet me outside the Testing Center when I finally made my way down the stairs and pushed myself outside. My name had been called earlier than usual for Mr. Conine's test, so patches of pink still bruised the sky this time.

More people than I was used to milled by those lampposts to talk about their test results or lean over the railings and look out at the ocean. I hardly spared a glance at the ships dotting the dappled horizon, and was only focused on the direction of my own footsteps when I heard it—a distressed voice.

Dazmine's.

I shot a look over at the fountain, where she was facing Fergus and Jenia.

All three of them abruptly stopped talking when they noticed me. The gray in Jenia's eyes zeroed in on me, and she crossed her arms. Fergus's mouth formed a wicked V with his smile. Dazmine looked away.

"Move along, Drey," Fergus called. "Unless you think you've got a little… fungal infection? In that case, I'd love to help you."

I recoiled. The verbiage. The knowing smile. He knew that I knew he'd killed Mr. Fenway, and he was casually inviting me to die the same way.

And since Kitterfol Lexington hadn't caught him the first time around—or if he had, he hadn't cared—Fergus could kill me without any immediate repercussions, no matter what the so-called rules were.

I didn't let myself recoil again. Didn't let the fear creep out onto my face. Instead, I deadpanned, "No, thanks," and strode off in the other direction.

When I was out of sight, though, when I had made it across the bridge and was on the safe side of Bascite Boulevard, I plunged into the foliage past one of the Element Wielder houses, where I crouched in the ferns until my heartbeat steadied.

Legs clicked among the leaves.

I paused. Counted to ten. Felt its hairy, twitching presence. And as those vines of frigid cold crawled up and down the inside of my spine, I found my voice again.

"What would it take," I breathed at the eight green-tinted eyes staring out at me from a nest of stems and leaves and spiderwebs, "for you to be my spy?"