Chapter 49

"Tell me everything," I said immediately, and I could feel Coen tense beside me as he no doubt heard the translation play out in my brain.

"The fifth-years will gather at the Testing Center for their Final Tests in the morning, but instead of staying with their instructors like usual, they'll be leaving with different members of the Good Council to various parts of the island."

"So as soon as Coen and his friends step foot in the Testing Center…?"

"The Good Council will whisk them away along with everyone else," the spider confirmed. "But rather than take them to a testing site, Dyonisia will drag them straight to the prisons at the top of Bascite Mountain." A contemplative pause. "The other spiders are absolutely gleeful about her trickery."

"Shit," I spat. "Shit! Coen?"

"Already on it." His voice rang softer, more sorrowful than I would have expected. Where was the panic? Where was the frenzy brewing in my own chest? "I've sent messages to Garvis and Terrin and the twins, and—"

"And?"

His hand was sweeping along my back now.

"And they're going to meet me at the Throat in fifteen minutes. We have to leave the island before dawn."

I'd expected this, but it didn't stop the burn from swelling in my throat.

I cleared it away and turned back to my spider.

"Thank you so much. You didn't hear anything about Dyonisia Reeve discovering anything about… about me, did you?"

It clicked its fangs like pincers. "No. Nothing about you or your own friends."

My relief was short-lived as Coen scrambled upward to begin throwing things in a bag from under his bed: his favorite clothes and lightest knife and the dried fruit he always stashed in his bedside drawer for a midnight snack. The fact that I knew all of these things made the sting in my throat tighten and constrict now.

"Rayna?" Willa asked gently, still sitting on the top of his bed.

I watched Coen pack his supply of pills as well, the dozens of them rattling in a tin canister he kept buried beneath his socks, and hope flared where I felt tears.

He wasn't leaving any behind for me. Did that mean—?

I was much too frightened to finish that thought. In case it wasn't true.

The moment Coen was done packing, I knew because he stilled, his face bowed toward the far side of the room. I could see the back of his jaw muscles working up the courage to say something to me.

"I'm coming with you."

Before he could turn, I slipped onto the floor.

"Rayna." The hoarseness in his voice—the pure, aching regret—curdled my stomach. "You can't. Dyonisia doesn't know what you are, so your safest bet is to stay here and—"

"If this is about the shield, then I'm willing to test it. Maybe I'm immune, too."

Coen laughed dryly, finally turning toward me. "I've seen faeries disintegrate on the spot just from grazing the shield. It's not a physical barrier, Rayna. It's an anti-power that targets the magic in your blood and strikes."

I couldn't bite my tongue.

"Well, maybe if you'd told me more about your immunity and the nature of the shield, I could have come up with a solution long before now. You think I want to stay here, the only… the only you know what on an island with the Good Council who'd like nothing more than to strip me open and investigate every drop of my blood?"

Within two steps, Coen had dropped his bag and was shoved up against me, his head angled down to meet my own.

"Don't you ever think I'm going to leave you helpless, Rayna. I'm not going to let her touch you. But you have to trust me on this one."

"I. Can't. Trust. You," I ground out, and now our noses were nearly brushing. "You said so yourself, Coen. That's why we broke up. Because I can't trust you."

"Oh, really?" Even now, even in this situation, his near-growl had my knees weak. "I was under the impression that we broke up because you were trying to protect me. By cutting me out so that I wouldn't stay here on the island, where Dyonisia can get to me."

I felt my eyebrows shoot up, felt the argument gather in my lungs.

"And no, I didn't need to read your thoughts to figure that one out," Coen persisted before I could let it loose on him. "I have your mind memorized like the palm of my own goddamned hand, Rayna. I know you'll continue fighting tooth and nail for the people you love unless you think you're holding them back—which you weren't doing to me, by the way. Because whether we're officially together or not, whether I'm on this island or not, I'm going to make sure you have the tools and power you need to survive these next four years."

For a moment, I thought he would kiss me. His lips hovered in the spaces between mine, filling my breathlessness with his own air.

But his eye didn't even dip to my mouth as I said, "I might not be immune to the shield like you are, but I'm accompanying you and the others to the very edge. You're going to need a Wild Whisperer to keep the jungle from reporting you to the Good Council."

I clamped my mouth shut, then—cutting off the shared air between us. After another second's thought, I side-stepped him and scooped up his fallen bag.

Now it was Coen's turn to clamp his mouth shut. I had him. He couldn't argue with that, because it was true. Parts of the jungle would witness his escape and tattle to the Wild Whisperers of the Good Council, unless I warded them off.

"Fine," he said, once again soft and sorrowful and nothing like his usual self. "But just to the shield."

Fine. I hated that word, but I just turned and led him out his own bedroom door.

In the end, I was glad I'd forced myself to come.

The monkeys were awake far past their bedtime, chittering about the "moon goddess" who had just arrived. Just as we found the hatch buried deep among the ferns, one of them chanted down, "Hey, wanna hear a joke?"

None of the others—Coen, now holding his own bag again, Garvis, Terrin, Sasha, or Sylvie, all weighed down with bags of their own—looked up. To them, the monkey's question was nothing more than another chirp in the early dusk. Coen grunted as he started to heave the hatch aside, then stopped when the twins rolled their eyes and ushered it upward without lifting an arm.

But I paused and chewed my lip as I met the monkey's eyes above us.

"Do you want to hear a joke?" I challenged it instead.

The others stopped to stare at me.

"Sure," the monkey replied, pretending to sound indifferent.

"What do you call a five-hundred-pound gorilla with silver on its back and fangs in its mouth?"

"I don't know. What?" It clutched the branches above it and lowered itself ever so slightly, its black tail curling around a stray limb.

"Nearby," I hissed.

The monkey shrieked and scrambled deeper into the trees.

It wasn't my best work ever, not with the stress beating against my ribcage, but I knew that the monkey wouldn't go hopping from tree to tree prattling about the six humans—or faeries—it had seen sneaking away. It would be warning all the other monkeys about the supposed gorilla in the vicinity.

We lowered ourselves into the Throat.

In there, Terrin lit our way with a floating ball of fire, Coen walked slightly behind me with his hand halfway outstretched as if to catch me if I fell, and I told every spider to leave us. I also formed a vibrating hum in my throat that sent even the most innocent of earthworms wiggling away, until I sensed nothing in the tunnel with us—no life beyond our six beating hearts and pulsing lungs.

No one said anything. We didn't dare talk, as if the echoes of our voices would fling back up to Dyonisia Reeve, wherever she was right now. Somewhere on campus, according to my spider, preparing to capture my friends as soon as the first bird pierced a song through the morning sky.

But I could feel their terror, buzzing in front of me and behind me like swarms of hidden wasps. They'd all known this day would come, but they hadn't expected it to happen before their Final Tests. Right now.

I thought I was going to faint from lack of breath; I couldn't get in a good lungful. It was one huge, painful thing to have Coen torn from me, disentangled from my every attempt to hold him close… but it was another, smaller hurt to also have to say goodbye to his friends. Terrin. Garvis. Sasha. Sylvie.

Would I ever see any of them again?

Right as we got to the cave of gemstones, both Coen and Garvis stopped.

And clutched their own scalps.

"What is it?" I asked immediately, grabbing Coen's wrists.

"She's found out," he rasped. "I don't know how, but she knows we've escaped. And—"

He didn't even have to finish the sentence. The next moment, something happened beneath our feet: a kind of swaying shudder that made the ground buck.

"Terrin?" Sasha asked sharply.

"Wasn't me. That wasn't even Element Wielder magic, from what I could tell."

Terrin's ball of light popped into ashes, and he slammed a hand downward, steadying the cave floor. But everything else outside the cave still seemed to shudder and shake, if the wavering motion of colors through the waterfall was any indication, and when Terrin swept away the cascade of raging water, we saw…

"By the lockpick and the lyre," Sylvie whimpered.

The moon looked like a marble stuck haphazardly in the sky—a marble that was cracking down the middle as Dionysia's shield began to… change.

Cracks lashed down its surface like lightning. The surface itself, usually nearly invisible, grew foggy and opaque, like the same milky residue of the Uninhabitable Zone had slithered over the entire world. And tendrils of that milkiness were lashing out, fingers of fog striking and curling and snatching in every direction, as if desperate to catch whoever went through.

The dome… it was alive.

There was no other explanation. The dome was alive, and it answered to Dyonisia just like everything on this damned island answered to her, and I burrowed my fingernails deeper into Coen's wrists as if I could get him to stay away from that toxic horror of misty fingers and claws just by holding on to him tighter.

"You can't go through that."

"We have to go through that," Coen said, meeting my eyes. "And right now. Before it gets worse." He flicked them toward the twins. "Sasha? Sylvie?"

They seemed to understand his plea, because within moments, my feet had lifted off the ground, and I felt their Summoning energy fling me off the edge of the cliff.

It was like falling with ropes tied to each of my limbs. Right before we hit the rocky ground so far beneath us, the descension slowed, and the twins yanked us all—as well as themselves—to a halt before we could crumple to our knees.

"Transport, Terrin," Coen said, more panicked than before as the dome swirled and broke and lashed harder than ever. "Find us some transport."

Terrin peered out at the brewing sea, then closed his eyes in concentration.

Within seconds, a ferocious current of water broke through the shield and shot toward us, hurling an oversized boat our way, swinging with ropes and sails. Terrin had it plunge past the breakers and come to a halt right within the shoreline of low-tide, where it bobbed in wait, looking so much like a larger version of that polished wooden boat in Coen's room when we had both exploded with shards of the moon.

Except whereas that boat had brought us together, this one would be pulling us apart.

And suddenly, I was angry at this vessel for even existing. Where had it come from? The faeries? Did they just have uninhabited boats bobbing around in case Coen and the others ever needed them?

There would be no time for those questions. There would be no time for anything anymore.

"I—"

I didn't know how to possibly watch them leave. I didn't know how to say goodbye. That ice hadn't shattered or melted, but it was splintering off now, stabbing me from the inside-out.

"Rayna." Coen gripped either side of my face, his thumbs stroking beneath my chin. "You know what I have to do."

"No." I backed away from him. Pushed away from him. "No. Don't. You said you were trying to keep people safe without having to steal their memories."

Because I knew, right then, that he'd gone back on his word at the first sign of trouble. That he'd erased what happened with Fergus and Jenia from Emelle's and Lander's minds. Probably from Quinn's and the Summoner's as well.

"Yes," he said softly. "I did. And…" His face blanched. "I've erased our relationship from everyone else on campus, too. Even from Willa. Kitterfol Lexington won't find a single trace of us in anyone's mind. You will be deemed uninvolved and innocent, and you will not be hurt."

The realization sunk claws of jagged glass into my chest. He wasn't just going to take away my knowledge of Bascite Mountain and the pills and my power and my faerie blood… but every memory I'd ever had with him as well.

Half of my mind, my soul, would be wiped clean.

"Please." I had pitched into a shrill wail against my will. Tears raked sharp prickles down my cheeks. "Please, Coen. Take whatever you want, but don't take away us."

Drops of rain—no, of mist, of milky, unnatural mist—began to pepper his forehead. Sliding down to his parted lips as he looked at me.

"Hurry, Coen," Terrin warned, panting with the effort of keeping that boat still.

"Don't you dare!" I shrieked, trying to step away.

"Garvis," Coen said, the pain in his eyes anchored onto mine. "I can't do it. You're going to have to. I…" His voice cracked. "Every memory I was involved in. Every memory that would get her into trouble. Don't take them from her, just… hide them. Lock them away so deep that no one else will be able to find them. I… I can't."

Garvis moved as if to touch me, but I shot backward, back toward the cliff. Maybe if I could get far enough away, his magic wouldn't be able to reach me.

But I knew that would be futile even as I forced my strides to lengthen, forced my arms to pump. If Coen had already picked out the memories of everyone on campus, Garvis would sure as hell be able to pick mine out, and—

Sasha and Sylvie's ropes of magic pulled me back.

I flailed against them, kicking and screaming and twisting, but they eased me to the smoothest patch of shore and pinned me against the ground.

"I'm so sorry, Rayna."

I knew by the clogged pinch of Sylvie's voice that she was crying, too, but I didn't care.

"Let me go! Don't touch me! Don't you dare!"

Coen's face was in front of mine, suddenly, bowing over me, blocking my view of the top of the curling, spitting dome.

"Breathe," he commanded.

"No."

I wished I hadn't taken my pill last Sunday, wished my power could rise up and strike him away from me. Away from my mind and the precious things it held.

And as soon as I thought that, a bit of it seemed to lift its head up inside me. To sniff the air and reach, sensing my panic, sensing my need for that power to spear through the bars that contained it and attack.

Except I didn't want to attack Coen. I wanted to keep him. I wanted to love him. And even when I knew I couldn't have all that, I just wanted one more goddamned night with him.

"I will come back for you," Coen said, and now the smoky quartz of his eyes shimmered with tears. "I'll make sure you get your pills every week, and I'll form a plan, and I'll come back for you and take you away from here as soon as I can."

I didn't stop thrashing. The tears didn't stop swelling and biting into the corners of my eyes and burning my cheeks as they spilled down.

"How can I possibly believe you after everything you've—"

"Because I fucking love you, Rayna."

Coen's voice was suddenly louder than the roar of sea and dome and the ringing in my ears. His lips grabbed mine in an urgent kiss.

"I love you." He kissed me again. "I love you." Again. "I love you." I was kissing him back, desperate to cling to any part of him that I could, to inhale his bamboo scent forever. "You are the hurricane that has ravaged my heart, Rayna, and you are the only one who can put it back together." Coen ground his forehead into mine, until our lips were resting in the curves and spaces of each other, and our breaths became one. "I will come back for you. I will make you pick up my pieces. And I will pick up yours."

Then we were kissing again, a perfect blend of flesh and breath, ebbing in and out of each other until the mist gathered around us in an endless swirl.