Chapter 48

Jets of blood squirted from that wound, spraying Coen's wrist with speckled dots of bright red.

Fergus fell forward, like a broken puppet, smashing his face into the floor of the jungle and only twitching once before he went still.

Yet movement still blossomed from beneath him—pools of blood spreading from under his neck before sinking into the spongy, thirsty ground.

A scream had twisted into a knot in my throat, stuck somewhere between horror and relief and even more horror as I watched Coen, his face still tight with wrath, grab one of Fergus's lifeless wrists and drag him to the marsh.

Where he hurled the body in.

And then red exploded as the crocodiles lunged and began to feast.

I watched the flower of blood unfold in the marsh, my eyes tracking that color rather than the frenzied jerking and tearing of the crocodiles.

My knees felt hollow. Dead. My classmate was dead, and I should be turning to Coen and asking him how he could have done that so callously without giving thought to any other options.

"Thank you," I whispered instead.

Coen's face took on a sort of sagging quality as he looked at me. His mouth parted, the edges of his eyebrows fell, his jaw loosened. Even his fists uncurled, letting the dagger fall into the foliage like it had never existed.

But what came out of his mouth was still rigid and tight.

"You're bruised."

Indeed, my bruises were peppering my vision, mottling the sight of Coen with blue and gray and black. My head bellowed where that first rock had hit me. The scream lodged in my throat had mixed with bile, turning acrid.

The world gave out.

I must have woken up barely five minutes later, because when a gentle swaying motion pulled me back into consciousness, I could see through my lashes that I was cradled against Coen's chest as he carried me through the jungle.

"Emelle." My voice was a ghostly version of its old self. "Lander." Quinn.

"They're safe." Coen didn't look down at me as he strode easily through the underbrush. From the way the shadows were peeling back, I thought we might be getting close to campus. "Lander ran off Quinn and that Summoner kid, and Emelle…" His lips pinched, almost like he was smothering a smile. "She got Jenia."

"Got Jenia? What do you mean got?"

Even though relief swamped me at the knowledge that Lander and Emelle—and Quinn, too, despite her continuous betrayals—were all still alive, my heart hollowed at that last part.

Had we lost two classmates today? Was Jenia as cold and lifeless and gone as Fergus? If so, my confusing mix of emotions for her fate could come later; first, I'd have to make sure Emelle was alright. Surely, she'd be devastated if she'd had to resort to murder.

But Coen's lips relaxed a moment later, and he shook his head.

"Emelle didn't kill her, if that's what you're asking, but… you'll see."

I didn't have the strength to press that issue so I simply leaned my head against Coen's chest for a moment and listened to the way his heartbeat thumped against my ear, matching the length of his strides.

Coen had come for me. Even though we were separated, even though his consciousness never even flitted through my mind anymore, he'd sensed something was off and tracked me to the marsh.

During the pentaball game? Or after?

"Did you win?"

Coen nearly stopped in his tracks at that hushed question. For a moment I thought it was because of a twisting of trees in our way. I sent a soft hum spiraling out toward them, and their branches bowed to form a pathway.

Coen lurched forward again, but this time he was sparing glances down at me.

"You never cease to amaze me with the kinds of questions you ask. You're bruised and scraped and covered in dirty swamp water, and you want to ask me how the game went?"

"Yes," I said firmly. "Kimber was… I think she was—"

Trying to distract you, I finished in my head.

And as if that were an invitation—which, maybe it was—Coen melted into my mind, filling those cold spaces between my vines of ice that had now wrapped so tightly around my heart, I wasn't sure if they'd ever break. But whereas his consciousness was all buttery warmth, his entire body had gone rigid against me.

Kimber was definitely trying to distract me, and I regret to say that it worked for a good ten minutes. I didn't want to touch her thoughts, to read her mind for even a second and feel all her hate and jealousy, so I couldn't predict her next moves.

How did you know I wasn't in those stadiums, then? I asked.

For out of everyone there, only Kimber would have known about my whereabouts. That knowledge would have existed in her mind and her mind alone—safe from Coen for as long as Coen refused to read her mind.

We had reached the edge of the jungle now, and were on the outskirts of the Shifter sector, full of rusted cages and wooden obstacle courses.

I caught a whiff, Coen said, right as I was about to throw the last ball through and win yet another victory for the Mind Manipulators.

A whiff of what?

Now we passed by towering perches that looked big enough for those giant birds who'd pulled me through the sky in a carriage so long ago.

A whiff of her triumph, Coen said darkly, and I understood immediately.

Kimber should have been nothing but rage and fury the moment she realized the Manipulators were about to win the tournaments yet again. She definitely shouldn't have been triumphant—triumphant that she'd successfully kept Coen from me. That I was probably dead.

The intricacies of that game, not of pentaball, but the more sinister game that Kimber had been playing, made the pounding in my head begin to roil.

"I'd already thrown the ball when I dove into her mind and got it out of her," Coen murmured down at me now. "So yes, we won, but I didn't stay to celebrate. I ran right to the location I'd picked from her brain and found Lander and Emelle and the rest of Jenia. And they pointed me in the direction you'd run."

The rest of Jenia. What the hell had Emelle done to her?

I didn't have to wait for long to find out.

Within minutes, Coen was sweeping us toward my own house, where people milled about on Bascite Boulevard, either rejoicing or pouting about the game's outcome, but… never looking at us. As if Coen had convinced them all to look away.

You know how my magic works extremely well for someone who's not a Mind Manipulator.

You told me that's what you did the night you carried me from my tent to the alleyway. Back then, though, I'd been flung unceremoniously over his shoulder, not nestled gently against his chest.

You remembered? Surprise flickered in his tone

Of course I did. I remember everything you say. Except the things you purposely take from me.

He was silent as he took me into my house and down the stairs, through a door I'd never entered. The sick bay.

In here, Coen finally placed me on my feet, but he didn't let go. His arms wrapped around me, steadying me when I saw her.

The girl on one of the beds, who was staring blankly at the medic wiping the blood gingerly off her face.

Jenia was alive, that was for sure. I could see it in the shallow rise and fall of her chest, and in the way her fingers twitched on either side of her hips.

But her hair—that usually silky cascade of brightest blonde—was in bloody, matted patches, revealing strips of scabbed scalp beneath.

And those gray and sultry eyes that had seemed to follow and haunt and hate me ever since I'd met her on my first day here… they were replaced with bloody gauze that wrapped around her entire head.

Emelle, Coen said into me, got a few owls to use their talons.

We didn't stay in the sick bay for long. Coen simply asked the medic to look me over and provide him with any medications necessary to help me heal. Then, after she'd handed him a vial of pain-relief powder, he simply told her to forget the entire exchange. And to not spread the word about Jenia, either.

Once we were in the safety of his room with that big white bed that had once rocked us into a skyful of stars (nobody watched us walk inside, still turning their heads away from us as if suddenly extremely interested in the walls), I turned to Coen blearily. He was busy unscrewing the vial and pouring its powdery contents into a cup of water from his bathroom sink.

"Doesn't your house have its own sick bay? Why go to mine if you were just going to bring me here?"

Perhaps it wasn't the brightest question, but the roil in my head was reaching a nasty level of pain, and I drank the cup of water almost eagerly when Coen brought it to my lips. It went down like the bitter tang of a melted coin.

"I was afraid my house's medics would have a shield up against any Mind Manipulating tricks, and I needed to get medicine for you without anyone taking notice."

"And why is that?" I slumped down on the edge of his bed, smoothing my fingers out against the spread of fluffy white. Like clouds. Like bliss.

Coen tilted his head at me.

"The Good Council will be back tomorrow, and this time Dyonisia Reeve will be with them." When I only stared at him, he added, "My Final Test is tomorrow, Rayna. At the crack of dawn."

I shot straight up, pain be damned. I'd forgotten. Forgotten that the Final Test for all fifth-years occurred the morning after the last pentaball game. And as much as I'd accepted the fact that Coen and I weren't together anymore, I still hadn't wrapped my head around the idea that after tomorrow—whether he passed or failed—he'd be gone from this part of the island. Possibly back to the sea.

"Are you prepared?" I yelped.

Coen put a hand on my shoulders and eased me back down onto the bed.

"Yes. But I still don't want Dyonisia finding out about what happened just now with Fergus and Jenia. Or Lander and Emelle. It's safer if no one knows the truth."

Here we were again. Back to the notion of spreading lies for everyone's safety. While I couldn't entirely disagree with him on this, I still felt a chill brush goosebumps over my skin at the… the unfairness of it all. That Lander and Emelle would never remember how they refused to leave my side, how they'd come with me, how they'd stood by me in the face of such callous cruelty, all because Coen had—

"I didn't erase their memories," Coen said.

My head snapped up, sending a bolt of pain through me again—although it was perhaps dampened compared to before as the pain relief medication worked its way through my system. "What?"

"I didn't erase their memories," Coen repeated. "Not Lander's or Emelle's. And I don't think I'm going to erase Jenia's or Quinn's or that other kid's memory either."

"Why?"

I couldn't believe I was asking that, but I was. Something about the pain relief sweeping through me seemed to make my tongue feel heavy, yet quick to blurt out whatever it was I was thinking immediately.

"Because." Coen's mouth pulled up into one of those smirks I'd missed so much. "I already spread a rumor through campus that Fergus and Jenia got into a huge couple's fight during the pentaball game and destroyed the shit out of each other. Obviously, Jenia won."

My mouth fell open. "And you think people will believe that?"

"Absolutely. Rumors are more convincing than outright lies, and besides." Coen's gaze dropped from mine, fixing to the floor. "I'm trying to keep people safe without having to steal their memories. I'm sure once Jenia hears that bit of gossip about herself, she won't refute it. If she did, she'd have to admit she was in on a plan to murder three of her classmates, which is sort of against the rules, as I said on the very first day you arrived."

My eyelids were heavy, but I blinked against their weight.

"You killed Fergus."

"With a dagger, not with magic," Coen said. "No one will know."

"So what Fergus said was true?" I asked. "Magic leaves traces? It tethers you to the thing you bestow your magic upon?"

"Did he say that?" Coen mused. "I suppose he was right, though I've never heard it worded that way. Either way, he deserved his ending after what he did to you." His eyes bounced from bruise to bruise on my face and neck.

Just as I was about to open my mouth—to say what, I didn't know—Coen whipped toward the door.

"Your friends are here. I won't let them stay long, but I could hear their worry screaming for you from about a mile away, so I sent them a message that you're safe here with me. And I figured you'd want to see them, anyway. Make sure they're okay with your own eyes."

Won't let them stay for long? That wording implied Coen expected me to stay here overnight. With him. In this room.

Or maybe that pain relief powder was scattering all rational thought.

I didn't have time to think about it, though. The door swung open, and Lander and Emelle rushed in, followed by—I blinked heavily—Terrin, who immediately held out his hands and formed two solid blocks of ice out of thin air.

"Good God of the Cosmos, lady," Terrin said, blinking back at me. "You look worse than her."

He didn't even have to nod at Emelle, who had scurried to my side and was now throwing her arms around me. She smelled like sweat and blood, and a shower of bruises fell down her face.

"You're alright," she gasped. "I was—Rayna, I've never been so scared in my life. Lander ran Jenia to the sick bay and then we immediately went back to look for you, but Coen did that mind-to-mind thing you always described—" A quick, nervous glance in Coen's direction. "—to tell us that… that…"

"Fergus is really dead?" Lander asked, dropping to my other side.

"Yes," I whispered. "But you can't go talking about what happened." I looked at Emelle. "Even to Wren and Rodhi and Gileon. It wouldn't go over well."

I didn't have to specify why this was. Both Lander and Emelle nodded. Perhaps they didn't know about the prisons at the top of Bascite Mountain or the true fate that awaited if any one of us failed our Final Test, but they knew enough about the Good Council to keep their mouths shut.

Exile was still a grim future, after all.

"I did something horrible," Emelle wheezed, pulling back to clutch at her chest. "I couldn't get them to stop, the owls. Not after I told them…"

She trailed off, concern pinching her blood-speckled forehead. I had just enough alertness left to ask, "What did you say to those owls to get them to… do what they did?" For Emelle would have had to speak in riddles and timeless wisdom in order to get her request across.

I heard Emelle's response right as I was drifting off. Right as I felt Coen's hand cup the back of my head and lower me onto his pillows. Into powdery sleep pitted against Terrin's slabs of ice that soothed every aching point on my body.

Oftentimes evil things hide in a cloak

Or beneath piles of ash or mold.

But evil prevails if we tuck in our tails

Against eyes gray as silver and hair bright as gold.

When I woke, Emelle, Lander, and Terrin were gone, and I was tucked deep in Coen's bed.

It was dark, but when I lifted myself up, I could make out the faint silhouette of his figure on the floor. Sleeping with a skimpy pillow and blanket.

Each of his breaths, heavy and on the verge of snoring, sent an ache through the sore parts of my body.

It shouldn't be like this. Me in his bed. Him on the floor. Us not pressed together, sharing heat and breath and touch.

What had he said last night? I'm trying to keep people safe without having to steal their memories. He was trying. And maybe that was enough for me. I didn't necessarily need a Coen that was one hundred percent honest all the time, but I needed him to at least try to think of other solutions before he just… whipped out all his deceit that had become a part of him.

Even if I refused to keep him locked in this dome with me, I could have one more night with him.

"Hey. Coen."

I winced as I slipped out of bed and gently touched the sides of his head.

"Hmm?" He jolted out of his sleep. "Rayna. Is something wrong?"

"No. I just… you don't need to sleep on the floor. That can't be comfortable."

During the months we'd dated, I'd never seen Coen take a sip of ale, but I did know what it was like when he was drunk with fatigue, half-asleep and nearly sleepwalking. And this, I decided when he pressed his forehead against mine and lifted me back up onto the bed, was one of those times.

He sank into place beside me. Stroked his thumb along the side of my neck, so gingerly it felt like a feather on glass. His breath was filling my open mouth, and I didn't close it, missing the taste of him on my tongue, wanting more…

My ice wasn't quite gone, but there was a part of it that wanted to be melted. Right now. Right here. I wanted to be a puddle of heat beneath him and—

"Rayna?"

I jolted away from Coen at the squeak, and he lifted himself up and away.

"Who's there?" he asked, in a surprisingly alert voice.

I knew who it was, though, and I patted the bed until Willa came scurrying up onto the covers, clutching something in her tiny, sharp claws.

"Willa? What's going on?"

"The Good Council is here for the Final Test," Willa panted, and I clutched Coen's arm. "All of Dyonisia Reeve's spiders have arrived from Bascite Mountain. I've been warding off the ones near you, but this one—" She nodded down at her closed paws. "—claims it's on your side. So I thought I'd give it the chance to explain before I bite its head off."

God, Willa could be ruthless. Just as ruthless as Sasha and Sylvie.

"I just want to see the top of the world," came a moaning voice.

For the second time since I'd hired it, my spider had gotten itself trapped. Perhaps it wasn't the best spy, but I wasn't about to let Willa bite its head off.

"It's mine," I told Willa instantly. "Let it go so it can speak to me."

To Willa's credit, she didn't hesitate. She released the spider instantly, and soon eight, green-tinted eyes glimmered up at me from within the darkness.

"I've come to warn your soulmate," the spider said.

I inhaled to correct its use of the word soulmate, but it continued quickly.

"Dyonisia Reeve found out about Coen Steeler and his peculiar band of childhood friends.She is not even going to give them a chance to pass their tests tomorrow morning.The Final Test is a trap."