Chapter 45

"Mr. Conine thought a boar had dragged you off," Emelle said later that afternoon, right before the last pentaball game of the season.

She was sitting cross-legged on her bottom bunk, combing through Wren's hair while Wren cursed and I picked at my cuticles above them, deep in thought.

"Oops," was all I could manage. After a moment's pause from down below, where I just knew the girls were exchanging concerned glances, I cleared the apathy from my throat. "But he couldn't have been worried for too long, right? I mean, my boar was pretty vocal about the fact that I'd ran away from a fight."

Indeed, when I had trudged back up the slope to rejoin the class after parting ways with Sasha, Sylvie, and my spider, I'd been met with a would-be-amusing scene: Mr. Conine, on his hands and knees, consoling a pig who was grunting about how an "ugly witch" had petrified him and fled the scene of the crime.

When Mr. Conine had snapped his eyes up to where I stood, I'd told him I'd just been taking a pee and that I didn't know what the boar was talking about.

A necessary lie, because a few of my classmates had sat up to listen in on that exchange, including Emelle, Gileon, Rodhi…

And Fergus.

I still felt the weight of Fergus's gaze clinging to my skin, tacky and sticky and unnervingly aware. As if he alone knew exactly where I'd gone and who I'd met. I couldn't understand how Jenia let him touch her on a daily basis, not when her immaculate skin and hair looked as if they'd never seen a day of grease in their life.

I chanced a glance over at Jenia now, on the other side of the bunkroom.

Or, at least, where I'd thought she'd be.

Her bunk was empty, and Dazmine was pulling on sandals alone.

"I suppose not," Emelle said finally, reeling my attention back in. "Are you going to get ready on your own, Rayna? Or do I need to attack you with this comb, too?" She shot her arm out and wiggled the comb threateningly.

"I wouldn't advise that option," Wren called up. "It's like I went to hell early."

My laugh could have been chips of ice tumbling from my mouth.

"Yeah, wouldn't want that. I'll get ready myself, Melle."

Not that I cared about getting ready for the pentaball game right now—and not just because I had other things on my mind. It would also be the first time I would see Coen again, since he'd be playing for the Mind Manipulators. I wanted to see him, craved a good look at his face and form… but also didn't want to see him.

Seeing him would crack me. Seeing him would shatter me.

A whisper from Emelle down below: "Go ahead. I'll meet you in the stadium."

A groan and a creak later, Wren had lifted herself from the bed and passed me a distinctly non-Wren smile, full of what actually looked like sympathy and warmth, before hurrying out of the bunkroom, her raven-black hair now flowing behind her.

"Rayna." Emelle swung around and hoisted herself up my metal ladder. "Is this about Kimber?"

I blinked at her. "Kimber?"

"You know." Emelle rounded her eyes. "Since Kimber will be playing head-to-head with… him. I thought maybe you didn't want to watch that…" She trailed off, watching my face as it went through the various stages of realization.

"Kimber's on the Wild Whispering team," I said, monotone.

"Well, yeah. You knew that."

I had known that, yeah, but I'd forgotten. "And our house won the last game, so we'll be playing against the Mind Manipulators." Rusty gears were clicking into place in my brain. "I'll be watching my ex play against his ex. Great."

Now Emelle looked suspicious. "Please tell me you knew all this."

I cringed internally, remembering something she'd once huffed out while running after enchanted pieces of paper with me. I know you're hiding something, Rayna. I can see it in your eyes sometimes, something distant and—foreign.

Except Coen had erased her memory of Lord Arad, so he'd probably erased her memory of saying that to me, too. Which made my head spin with the logistics of what she did remember. Was that same thought brewing behind her eyes right now? Or did the loss of a memory mean the loss of an idea as well?

My lips parted. I sucked in a breath to tell her everything.

Emelle just held out a single hand and gave me a watery smile.

"I love you, Rayna. And I'll be by your side the entire time. If there's ever a moment where it becomes too much for you, just give the word and I'll leave the game with you, okay? But please try to get out and join us. Please."

I pressed my lips together, sucked back in the tears, and nodded.

"Okay," I said.

And took her outstretched hand.

The pentaball game was seconds away from starting by the time we hit Bascite Boulevard, where Lander was waiting for us right outside the Whispering house.

He stood in the empty street, hopping from foot to foot.

"Finally. I was just about to break in and see if you two were still alive."

"Sorry! Girl talk," Emelle sang back cheerfully.

Before Lander could finish rolling his eyes, Mr. Gleekle's voice leapt out from the stadium, amplified on those hundreds of streams of wind.

"Ladies and gentlemen! It's time for the final pentaball game of the season! Now, I've repeated the rules so many times I think my own ears might bleed if I repeat them again—" A chuckle scraped against us. "—so without further ado, allow me to introduce the ten magnificent young men and women before me now."

I gritted my teeth as Emelle and I joined Lander. In mere seconds, Coen's name would rattle through my eardrums, and I'd be damned if I let myself even blink abnormally in reaction to that. No, I could do this. I could—

A voice stopped me in my tracks.

No, not one voice. Hundreds of voices.

A cloud of flashing yellow and orange wings fluttered toward me.

In flowing, gargling accents, the butterflies said, "Rayna Drey."

My gape probably looked comical. I had half a mind to wipe out my ears with the sleeve of my shirt, make sure I'd heard correctly. Insects were talking to me?

"W-hat?" I asked, wafting toward them. "Do you need something?"

Emelle, too, had stopped and turned, her mouth popped open just as wide as mine was.

Lander, on the other hand, merely pressed his mouth together in a confused frown. He had no idea these butterflies had even spoken, I realized.

"You must come with us," they said now, their flowery tenors completely at odds with the urgency now creeping into their tones."It is Jagaros. He is in danger."

"What? Where?" I stepped toward the butterflies. Jagaros? I hadn't heard from him in… months and months now. "What kind of danger?"

"In the jungle," they answered in flowy unison, disregarding that last question. "We will lead you to him, but we must make haste before…"

"PETRA SCALLION," Mr. Gleekle cut in, his voice blasting through them.

The butterflies scattered for a moment, reformed their cloud, and began flitting away, toward the jungle on the other side of the Element Wielder house.

"Wait! I—"

I whipped toward Emelle and Lander to tell them to go to the stadiums without me—but I already knew what Emelle would say. Not just because of her set mouth and the way she'd planted her hands on her hips.

No, Coen might have erased Emelle's memory of doing this once before, but that didn't take away from the grit and will and stubbornness imbedded in her.

"I'm coming," she said firmly.

"I know."

I shifted my glance from her to Lander, who sighed, then reformed himself so fast, I gasped. Once second, he was the dark-haired, ebony-skinned boy I'd grown up with—albeit a bit taller than when we'd left Alderwick—and the next, he'd shrunk and bubbled and sprouted into a giant black panther, not quite as domineering as Jagaros himself, but with just as many teeth and claws.

"Get on," Lander growled at us.

Another shock. I was hearing him talk as an animal. God, the magic mathematics required to understand that concept already made my head burn.

But Emelle was already hoisting herself up onto his back (which made me think she'd done this before), and the butterflies had almost disappeared through the tree line now, so I didn't hesitate any longer.

I grabbed Emelle's hand and scrambled up Lander's flank, settling myself into the dip of his back behind her.

He bounded after the butterflies, and I shrieked as my head swung back from the force of it. When I lurched forward to fix my balance, I slammed into Emelle.

The ride jostled us the entire way into the jungle, through the trees in seemingly chaotic maneuvers. Mr. Gleekle's magic-enhanced commentary faded into the background before I could hear Coen's name, and soon the song of the jungle cocooned us fully. Kapoks and elderberries hummed softly. Thistles purred out silky tunes. Monkeys quarreled with each other about this or that.

But my eyes stayed on the butterflies, on the soft whispering of their wings as they plunged onward. I'd been so worried about seeing Coen again, but now my own heartbeat was cracking the ice in my veins as fear and dread slammed against my chest over and over.

Where was Jagaros? Where was he, where was he?

What had happened to him?

I couldn't imagine how a beast as swift and powerful and dangerous as Jagaros—a beast who'd once been a faerie king—could get tangled up in any kind of life-threatening situation.

Unless… my gulp stuck in my throat… unless Dyonisia had discovered the truth about his past…

I instinctively hummed at a tree up ahead, and it jerked one of its low-hanging branches out of the way before Emelle and I could hit it head-on.

If that was the case—if Dyonisia held Jagaros hostage right now—how could I help Jagaros? What could I do against the Good Council?

It was a good thing Lander had donned his panther form. From the bunches of muscles tensing and stretching beneath us as he carried us deeper into the jungle, I knew there was a horribly real possibility I would need them: his teeth and claws.

Finally, even the chittering of the monkeys faded, and the cloud of butterflies slowed. The hum of the jungle was deeper here, more slumbering. It felt like we'd walked right into a cave where a monster snored, from the way the canopy above us shielded us from a single drop of sun.

Here, there was just green darkness and…

"Jagaros?" I called.

The butterflies were fluttering toward a figure bathed in shadows. The figure stepped forward, and they swirled around her head, haloing her, swaddling her in their flickering colors.

"I told everyone over and over," came a steely voice that reminded me of endless gray mist, "that the butterflies love me. But did anyone listen? Did anyone care?"

I slid off Lander's back, falling into the rotting undergrowth beneath, where only the most festering flora could survive with such little light: snake plants and philodendron and devil's ivy. I squinted at the figure within the butterflies.

"Jenia?"

Her answering tut was all I needed to confirm it. Jenia Leake was here, in this long-forgotten pocket of the Eshol wilderness, instead of at the pentaball game.

"Where's Jagaros?" I demanded, my voice fracturing when I said his name.

"He's not here," came a new voice. "But I am."

And from behind Jenia, from between trees cloaked in moss and stitched together with vines, a grinning Fergus stepped into the green-tinted hue of dying light.