Chapter 5

I stared after her, suddenly feeling not so hungry anymore.

After all that effort to find her, she was just… gone. I could trail after her, try to locate the lions and their makeshift petting zoo, but the steel-gray look in Jenia Leake's eyes kept me rooted to the spot. And the way Quinn hadn't even glanced back to see if I was following or not… the stupid lump in my throat was back.

Throwing my last bite of sandwich in a nearby bin, I hauled in a deep breath.

Lander, I thought. Quinn might be overcome with this… this frenzy for the first few days until after the Branding, when things settled down, but Lander would understand this pit in my stomach and help me through it. And he might need support, too, always having been the shyest of our trio.

Resolve hardening, I licked the stickiness off my fingers and began my search. Again.

But as the sky overhead dampened with clouds and the fat plops of rain that usually accompanied nighttime began to fall, too many people were wafting into tents with their newfound friends. Thankfully, the tents were so big, there didn't seem to be any couples able to sneak into one on their own, so there was no moaning or any other kind of sex noise as I wove through them. But I did hear more tittering, more whispers like they were sharing secrets—sounds that made my shroud of loneliness tighten around me.

When only a few stragglers and the class royals patrolling the area were left wandering outside, desperation kicked in. I'd have to find a tent to sleep in, anyway. If anyone welcomed me.

I poked my head through the flap in the nearest tent and said, "Lander?"

Seven pairs of eyes. A few head shakes. I withdrew and tried another tent.

And another. And another.

Finally, when I was just beginning to think I'd never find a familiar face again, I peeked in the ninth or tenth tent and—

"Hey!" His boyish face lit up. "It's the girl who thinks I'm a teacher. What are you doing? Get your ass in here, darling!"

I only hesitated for a moment. The boy was sitting in a circle with four others, surrounded by pillows and blankets and little bags of toothbrushes and combs. Closing the flap of the tent behind me, I sat next to him.

"I do not think you're a teacher. I just didn't get a good look at your lack of facial hair before I spoke."

I felt a little bad, but the others snickered and the boy grinned.

"I'll take that insult." He stroked his smooth chin. "You see, my old man didn't grow a beard until he was thirty-five, so I'm kind of waiting for my stud to kick in."

"You're going to have to wait a long time, then," another kid laughed, and turned to me. "What's your name, by the way?"

"Rayna," I said again, but this time I didn't feel like I was… admitting something shameful like I had in front of Quinn. "What about you guys?"

They spouted off their names, which I promptly forgot, until—

"Rodhi," the smooth-faced boy said. I could remember that one. Even if he thought way too highly of himself, he was sort of sweet. He was the first one to show me an ounce of kindness, anyway, so when he peeked over his shoulder, as if someone might see us through the canvas of the tent, and brought out a silver, curved flask from his boot, I inhaled but… kept quiet.

"Whoa, you didn't tell us you snuck in some goodies!" one of the others exclaimed.

"Well, I was waiting for the right moment." Rodhi shook the flask, and I heard the sloshing of liquid. "I think there's enough in here for us all to take a nice gulp."

"What is it?" I asked, trying not to sound nervous.

Rodhi mimed throwing a lock of hair over his shoulder like a princess. "Just the most Grade-A bascale you'll ever taste in your life, darling."

The others rubbed their palms together eagerly, but I blinked. The most potent alcohol I'd ever had was some acai wine with Fabian and Don in front of the fireplace.

Rodhi noticed my hesitation. His smile slipped.

"You've never had bascale?"

"Uh…. My home village is pretty small." A lame exclamation, but a true one.

Rodhi stared at me incredulously, then shook his head.

"Okay, I'm going to pretend you were literally raised in a decrepit barn, then, and explain. You know how it's the metal bascite that activates our permanent powers when it merges with our skin and sinks into our bloodstream?"

I nodded.

"Well," he continued, "all that metal, native to the island, of course, is sitting at the top of the highest mountain of Eshol, just waiting to be stolen, you know? And sometimes, certain connected people who may or may not have grown up in Belliview, you might say, are able to nab some ale infused with bits of that stolen metal."

I stared at Rodhi, noting the features that did indeed mark him as someone who'd grown up in Belliview, the capital of Eshol that sat in the shadow of Bascite Mountain: the combed hair, the loose way he talked, even the crispness of his clothes.

"To be clear," I said, nodding at the flask, "there's actual faerie metal in there?"

Not that I knew much about bascite, the substance that would be burned into all of our shoulders tomorrow night. But I knew enough to blink at his flask as if it might catch on fire at any moment.

Rodhi nodded eagerly. "Essence of it, yeah. Drinking it doesn't give you any permanent magic, but as long as it's in your system, you'll get little wisps of power."

"So…" I shook my head, astounded that Fabian and Don and the other villagers had hidden this phenomenon from me. Or were we so far removed from the rest of Eshol that they'd truly never heard of it either? "You can know what sector you'll be in before Branding?"

Excitement flared in my chest at the thought. To just know what kind of power the brand would trigger in me would alleviate so much anxiety.

The girl on the other side of me, however, shook her head. "It's not like that."

"What?"

Rodhi shrugged. "It's like our powers don't know what shape they want to take until the actual Branding. Before then, drinking this stuff…" He smiled down at his flask like a mother might gaze at her newborn. "Totally random every time."

So it would be like rolling dice, then. A drinking game and nothing more. That didn't sound like it would undo the knot of worry in my stomach, but… I shook away my misgivings and said, "I'm in."

Anything, anything at all, to maintain the new, delicate friendship I'd formed with the people in this tent.

Rodhi clapped me on the back, unscrewed the cap, and said, "Bottom's up, bitches." Then he swallowed.

At first, nothing happened. Rodhi smacked his lips, set down the flask, and burped. I glanced around at everyone else's eyes, pinned on his face as if waiting for some kind of monster to claw its way out of his sockets.

"Might not be strong enough…" one of the boys started to suggest—and then he smacked himself in the face. "Hey, what the hell?"

"Ha! Do it again, but this time a little lighter." Rodhi stretched his arms up in the air, perfectly at leisure. "Wouldn't want to give you a bruise before Branding."

As commanded, the boy smacked himself in the face, gentler this time.

"You're Mind Manipulating right now?" I almost yelped.

Rodhi turned toward me. "Yeah! It's not super clear, but I'm getting a hazy outline of your thoughts. You're thinking about quills? Or is it quicksand? No, it's a quickie! Get your mind out of the mud, Rayna!"

Quinn. I was thinking about Quinn. He'd simply snagged the first sound.

I tossed aside the thought of her and forced my lips into the shape of a coy smile. "You can never judge a book by its cover."

Fabian had taught me that. Don, in response, had always told me that covers were the critical first impression that could make or break whether someone even gave a book a chance.

I brushed away thoughts of my fathers as Rodhi held the flask out to me.

"Your turn, my scandalous friend."

My stomach churned. "Um, someone else can go before me."

Rodhi only paused to take in the faltering smile on my face for a second. Next second, he shrugged and passed his flask off to the girl beside him. She drank.

The tent dropped into frigid cold, our breaths puffing out in front of us, frost icing the tips of our hair. The girl clapped her hands to warm it back up.

Around the flask went. With the next gulp, a single hibiscus popped up from the floor of the tent, right in front of the boy who'd hit himself in the face. He laughed, plucked it, and passed the flask. After the next kid took a swig, our pillows jiggled in place all around us, as if he were tugging at them using invisible strings.

His Summoning magic hit me with nostalgia, but I shook it off, once again, as the girl beside me shivered when her hair turned a startling shade of violet.

My turn, now. I grabbed the flask from her and brought it to my lips.

Only one drink, I told myself. It wasn't like I was going to get drunk on it.

I tipped my head back and drained the rest.

A cough snagged in my throat. The drink was sour, but also tinted with something undeniably sharp and metallic. Almost like blood.

I cleared the cough from my throat and handed the empty flask back to Rodhi, who cocked his head at me, waiting.

"Anything?" he asked.

I was about to shake my head, disappointment flooding me, when I felt it.

Something in my bones shivered awake.

Whispers wafted out from my newfound friends around me. Such little whispers that they felt like tickles crawling over my skin, and I quivered, but… then I could suddenly hear the grass shrieking below the weight of the tent, and my skin twitched all along my body, as if begging to shift into something else, and electricity crackled between the gaps in my fingers, and I felt an invisible hand reach out from me as if to pick up any loose objects and drop them in my lap.

I crawled backward, my back brushing the wall of the tent.

"Rayna, are you alright?" Rodhi reached a hand out toward me.

No. No, I wasn't. I…

I exploded with it.

Something—something I couldn't define. Not a wall of wind, but pure, malleable energy that burst outward and knocked my friends on their backs.

They screamed. Outside the tent, voices faltered, but I couldn't stop whatever it was from extending further and further outward, lifting the flap of the tent, pushing against the canvas walls as if eager for a way out. A sob cracked in my throat.

Pounding footsteps outside. A snarl at others to go away. I cradled my head as pain began to build there, shrieking for release, shrieking for me to explode again.

Someone stuck their head through the flap in the tent.

And I met his eyes—deep, gold-flecked brown like smoky quartz—through the haze of my pain.

The sector prince named Coen Steeler did not wear a single hint of a smirk this time.

His eyes scanned the inside of the tent, my friends picking themselves up and me huddled in the corner, rocking and cradling my head and shaking…

Before I knew it, he had bent toward me, picked me up, and thrown me over his shoulder before carrying me out of the tent, into the star-kissed night, and away.