Chapter 50

"Rayna Drey."

My eyes fluttered against a haze of orange. It was like wrenching myself out of the deepest dream, but I managed to lift myself onto my elbows.

"What? I don't—"

After blinking away the last of my blurred sleepiness, I found the piercing eyes.

"Jagaros! Oh, I haven't seen you in forever!" I threw my arms around the massive, silky neck, and pulled back to inspect him. "What are you…?"

I gazed around. The sea lapped against the shore not far from me, and a storm seemed to be fermenting on the horizon. But otherwise, it looked like a perfectly normal morning on the island of Eshol.

So why had I fallen asleep on this patch of gritty sand? Had I really drunk that much last night with Emelle and Rodhi, to have ended up here?

I groaned and pressed my fingers into my temples.

"Ugh. I think I could use a few pets right now, Jagaros. I feel like shit."

Jagaros was swishing his tail at me, his pupils skinny as wires.

"You look like shit, Rayna Drey." He paced around me. "And when the Good Council asks you why you look that way, you should tell them you were roughhousing with me a little too hard."

I instinctively glanced at my arms, where I saw…patches of bruised skin.

What had happened?

"Oh, God. I am never drinking again."

"Good." Jagaros tilted his head up toward the cliff, his ears flattening against his skull. "They're almost here, Rayna, and I don't fancy being here when they are. But I must ask you before I take my leave." His gaze refocused on me with predatory stillness. "Did you ever happen to find a map? I'm sorry I've been away for so long, but I had other things to attend to, so I couldn't ask sooner."

I bobbed my head back.

"A map? Of campus? Jagaros, I don't know what you're talking about. And who's almost here? Has Wren come to kick my ass for wandering off after a night of drinking, because—"

Shouts wrenched my attention upward. High up on the cliff, a group of people were looking down at Jagaros and me.

Every hair on Jagaros's white and black body sprang upward, and a high-pitched hiss escaped his mouth.

"Forget the map. I just thought it might have been the one thing you—" He shook his head and rubbed it quickly across my neck, nearly knocking me sideways. "Stay cautious. Stay curious. And stay clever. Okay? I'll see you later."

He leapt away, streaking alongside the cliff faster than I could respond.

More confused than I'd ever been in my life, I watched the group of people from above float toward me. And I recognized him, the one in the middle: mullet splitting into braided strings that dangled down his back, a wide jaw, pitted brown skin.

Nobody would be forgetting Kitterfol Lexington anytime soon. I remembered all too clearly the night he'd come investigating after Mr. Fenway's death, how Emelle and I had cuddled close together on the bottom bunk while he and his crew had paced Bascite Boulevard, cleaving each and every mind for pieces of evidence.

Tingles swept around my neck like a noose when Kitterfol landed before me.

He surveyed me. I surveyed him, still on the ground.

I didn't dare move.

"Interesting," he murmured eventually.

The others around him gathered round. A headache pulsed at the base of my head, and I knew that for whatever reason, the greatest Mind Manipulator on the Good Council had just split my memories wide open in search of… something.

"Why are you down here?"

His voice surprised me; it reminded me of churning butter, the kind Fabian or Don might have once triggered with their magic back at home to make chocolate chip cookies. Soft. Silky.

But oily, too.

"I didn't realize it was a crime to walk the beach," I braved, since I don't remember seemed like a rather suspicious thing to say—although I doubted he would care about my drinking habits, to be honest. By the orchid and the owl, I really needed to stop drinking. It had cast me into the most horrible fog…

"It is not a crime to walk the beach," Kitterfol answered smoothly, his face twitching as he clenched his jaw. The others around him shifted. "But you, Ms. Drey, are not walking. You are lying down, bruised and scabbed, with the famous white tiger from your Branding who just bounded off upon our arrival, and you are doing so mere hours after a boy went missing, a girl was found with her eyeballs torn to shreds, and five pirates breached the security dome."

All of that information… what?

I focused on the most recent piece of it.

"Pirates breached the dome?" I cut a glance toward the shield, shimmery and nearly invisible in the distance, and hefted myself to my feet. "When? Are they still in here?" I paused. "A girl's eyeballs went missing?"

It felt like a joke. It had to be a joke. Some wild end-of-year prank.

Kitterfol's tightened mouth, however, screamed nothing but seriousness. When another member of the Good Council whispered something into his ear, he said, "I'm not sure. Their work on her was… meticulous. I cannot find a single speck of him, but the holes in her memory certainly indicates so, and I think—"

Suddenly, he grabbed a fistful of my hair and wrenched my face to the side.

My scream spurted out of my throat before I could stop it.

"Marvelous," Kitterfol breathed into my face, and I couldn't spare an inch to flinch away, he held me so tightly. "I do remember you and him together. Oh, how Dyonisia will be interested in this. I think we should go talk to her now, don't you?"

A Summoner in the group sent Kitterfol and me arcing up into the air, back toward campus.

Wind clawed at my skin as we rushed up and up, and my heart jostled around in my chest for a good two minutes before we were finally standing in the middle of the courtyard, that fountain tinkling merrily.

Besides the tinkling, though, it was quiet. Deathly quiet. Even the monkeys that usually chittered on the rooftops of the nearby Whispering sector had disappeared. Everyone, I knew, was either holed up in their houses, or taking their Final Tests—which would not be held in the Testing Center, but in various parts of the jungle around us. High up in the trees or deep inside hidden caves or at the bottom of lakes.

For some reason, the name Mrs. Pixton fluttered through my mind.

Okay, I really shouldn't have partied so hard last night.

"Come on," Kitterfol Lexington said beside me, his smile slicked onto his face. "Inside we go."

With his vise-tight grip on my arm, he marched us inside—but rather than to the archway with the Whispering motto engraved on its crown, he led me to the middle arch, one I'd never really looked at because Mr. Gleekle had always stood in front of it. There was nothing engraved above it besides the Good Council symbol, that bulbed star with a single dot in the center.

And there was nothing I could do besides follow him up.

To the dome itself. Or, rather, the attic beneath the domed roof.

I was panting by the time Kitterfol kicked open the door. My heartbeat scurried around in my chest, as thoroughly trapped as I was, and I barely even registered the arched golden beams swooping over our heads or Mr. Gleekle, Ms. Pincette, and some other members of the Good Council flanked behind a glittering glass chair.

All of it paled compared to the woman sitting in the center of it.

I hadn't seen her since the Branding, but she was just as chillingly flawless as that night. Her skin glowed like honey-wrapped stars. Her hair of deepest black, framed by razor-sharp bangs, flowed past her shoulders, and her icy blue eyes were cutting into the girl kneeling before her.

I had to rub my eyes before I realized who that girl was.

"I don't know," Quinn Balkersaff was crying, her hair matted with twigs and dead leaves that camouflaged its usual vibrant ruby color.

"You were found," Dyonisia replied without looking up at Kitterfol or me, "deep in the jungle, beyond the Esholian Institute border, huddled up inside a tower of ice that you conjured. Surely, that is abnormal behavior?"

Whereas I'd been surprised to hear how smooth Lexington's voice was, I was even more surprised to find that Dyonisia's was all shattered glass and broken thorns. I couldn't blame Quinn for shuddering, even as I wondered how the hell she'd managed to get wrapped up in… whatever this was, too. Deep in the jungle? In a tower of ice?

"I don't know," Quinn said again, dragging in a deep breath. "I… I told you already. There was a prank. I was just going into the jungle to play a little prank with my friends. And then I ended up in the ice. I don't… remember anything between those two instances. I'm sorry."

The last time I remembered talking to Quinn, we'd been walking the same strip of rocky beach Jagaros had just found me dozing on. Maybe it was all related somehow? If so, I had to figure it out quickly, because I couldn't stand the way Quinn trembled on her knees like that, no matter what words had slashed between us back then. She did not bow or shake or crack before anyone… yet she was doing all that now, before Dyonisia.

"Very well," Dyonisia said, finally moving her icy attention to me, still in Kitterfol's grip. "You may go, Ms. Balkersaff."

Quinn shot up, turned, and stumbled a step when she saw me. Her cheeks were streaked with days-old makeup, and I'd never seen such bags under her eyes. But she didn't say anything, didn't even nod, as she scurried past us and shot down the staircase.

Dyonisia crossed her legs, and I kept my eyes on the sharpness of a single bare ankle when she gestured with a single, long-nailed finger.

Kitterfol pushed me forward. I lurched toward her until I was within her grasp.

The ice in her eyes slid from bruise to bruise, then settled back onto my face.

"I was roughhousing," I blurted. "With a tiger. It's a Wild Whispering thing. But I was also drunk." I think. "And that was a… bad combination. I'm sorry."

Oh, Quinn and I were in deep shit if we'd managed to snag the Good Council's attention this badly. Cursing myself, I forced my gaze to lift. To clash with the fathomless void that seemed to brew within the woman's pupils.

She'd given me the creeps then, and she gave me the creeps now.

Her lips were the color of mattified blood as they parted to finally speak.

"I am going to tell you everything, child, and you are going to listen."

I knew I didn't have a choice, so I stood there and endured the grating sound of her voice as she filled in the foggy gaps in my memory.

The five pirates who'd breached the shield—they had left from the Institute. They'd been spies all along, and my house's very own princess, Kimber Leake, had discovered and reported them.

But it seemed they hadn't left a trace of themselves behind, nothing for the Good Council to snatch or uncover. Including their relations with everyone on campus. The people they'd talked to or hung out with.

"But according to Lexington," Dyonisia said, her pupils flickering toward the Mind Manipulator behind me, "you were… familiar with one of them. Hence why you have the bruises."

My world seemed to quiver to a halt.

"What do you mean?" I raised an arm to inspect one of the purple patches on my skin.

Kitterfol Lexington stepped forward, a smile toying on his face.

"When I came to investigate Frank Fenway's death, I took a peek into everyone's mind—just part of the investigative process, of course—and I saw you in bed with him. Oh, don't worry." He waved a hand at the horror that stole over my face, because no, impossible, I'd been cuddled up with Emelle. "I know you weren't with him on an… intellectual level, or else we'd have to charge you with treason right here and now." A smooth, slimy laugh. "You were just one of his oblivious pets that he liked to use and abuse."

That smile danced on his lips. I shoved my fists against my stomach to keep from puking. I wasn't quite sure what he meant by "pet," but it definitely didn't sound good. It didn't sound right.

Even Mr. Gleekle and the other Good Council elites were glancing at each other behind Dyonisia. Ms. Pincette's face had turned ashen, and for the first time since arriving at the Testing Center, I realized she was holding something against her chest like a lifeline: a spider in a jar.

"I wouldn't have let anyone use or abuse me, sir," I said, tight-lipped.

"Your old memories say otherwise," Kitterfol replied, smugness dripping from every word. "Would you like me to show you? It will be a rather flimsy copy, given that it transferred from your head to mine and back to yours, but I can show you what I saw."

My head was nodding before I could think better of it.

Suddenly, the memory poured into me: grainy and gray, but textured and real.

I saw myself, chained to a bed that wasn't mine. Spread open and utterly exposed before the wickedly handsome young man who'd done it to me, who was—

"Stop!" I cried. "Stop! I don't want to see it anymore."

The image retracted like a worm.

I tried not to stare at Kitterfol.

"What did you say his name was? The one who…"

I touched a bruise. I had recognized the man in the memory, but didn't know his name. Dark brown locks of hair. Tan skin. A constant smirk. He'd been one of the class royals I'd seen upon my arrival at the Esholian Institute, but I hadn't even noticed him in passing since then.

Or, at least, I didn't remember noticing him in passing. That memory Kitterfol had let me glimpse… I couldn't see how it was a lie.

"Coen Steeler."

This came from Dyonisia, and I whipped my head back toward her.

"His name is Coen Steeler, and he is a dangerous lunatic who might have murdered you at any moment, you poor child. You are lucky to be alive."

Coen Steeler. I repeated the name to myself, and felt the first flickers of rage at what he had done to my past self. The trauma he had inflicted upon me and then ripped away, so that any pain or fear or rage I felt seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

The headache from before circled to my forehead, pressing in.

"Yes," Dyonisia confirmed, unmoving as she stared at me. "He used you, abused you, and erased everything about that from your head before he left. But if he can get through the shield twice, he can get through the shield a third time."

Distant shudders sent tremors up my feet. Wherever they were in the jungle, the fifth-years must have finally started their Final Tests. But nothing seemed like a greater test than the woman who sat before me, leaning ever so carefully forward.

"You are going to find him for me, child. You are going to lure him back in and capture him and hand him over—along with all his little pirate friends—and if you do that, I can promise you a front-row seat to all of their executions."

I let her eyes bore into me. Stay cautious. Stay curious. Stay clever, Jagaros had said. I didn't know how that fit into this moment, but it did, somehow. I was sure of it.

"What makes you think I'd be able to lure him back in—ma'am? If I was just his pet." And why not assign Quinn the same task? I didn't dare ask out loud.

Jagaros had advised me to lie about the bruises. To say they'd come from roughhousing with him. That meant I was missing something, some crucial piece of the puzzle about these bruises on me. If only I'd had more time with Jagaros to ask what he knew about all of this.

Dyonisia stretched out a single finger until her nail grazed my cheek.

I fought an urge to slap her hand away.

"Predators can't stay away from their prey, dear one. And you seem to have been his favorite meal. I am confident you will catch him for us."

The words fell from my throat before I could stop myself.

"And if I don't?"

Kitterfol sucked in a breath behind me—of glee or dread, I couldn't tell. Mr. Gleekle's face tightened with that signature fake smile of his.

Dyonisia fell back into her glass chair that sparkled so much like a throne.

"I don't see why you would refuse to help your fellow Esholians, child. Breaches are happening more and more frequently around the island. Why, just in the past month, two of our coastal villages have been ransacked. Almost a hundred have died." My mouth dropped open. When had all this happened? Without the Institute getting hold of such knowledge? Almost a hundred dead from pirate attacks in the last month? "And I am sure," Dyonisia continued, "that you would not want such attacks to reach Alderwick. To reach Fabian or Don. Would you?"

She knew their names. My body snapped into rigid attention.

"No," I whispered. "No, I would not want that."

"Good. Now I have something to show you. Tessa?"

Dyonisia made a lazy motion behind her, and Ms. Pincette hurried forward with that jar, handing it over without a single shake of her hands. But I could tell by the ashy pallor of her face, by the way she refused to make eye contact, that all her usual strictness and bravado had leaked away in the face of this woman we all answered to.

"I don't take disgraceful, treacherous behavior lightly," Dyonisia said, slowly unscrewing the jar's lid and dumping the spider onto the floor in front of her. I recognized the green-eyed thing, somehow, but didn't know why, and that bothered me nearly as much as anything else. "This creature, for instance." Dyonisia's predatory gaze, it seemed, had pinned the spider to the spot. "My other spies tell me it was working against me. It warned the pirates of my presence and allowed them to escape."

She shifted her attention up to me, and in the absence of her gaze, the spider made a break for it, scuttling off, screeching something that sounded like, "Top of the world!"

Dyonisia reached out with her high heel and crushed it into a smear of pus and guts.

Its legs were still twitching when I brought my gape up to her face.

Smiling, she said, "That's what Coen Steeler's execution will be like when we catch him, child. Quick. Painless. Merciful. But predators like those pirates like to play with their prey." Her eyes focused on my neck, where I was sure a bruise had flowered based on the pulsing ache there. "And I would not want you to have to witness your fathers' bodies, broken and mangled and wrecked like this spider's, knowing their death was stretched out by the man who had you chained."

The image of that bloomed in my mind, and a fear I'd never known before—cold and as icy as Dyonisia"s eyes—began to wind through the bones of my body.

I dipped my head.

"I will find Coen Steeler for you, ma'am."

"What's wrong, darling?" Rodhi slung an arm around my shoulder. "We get a whole three-month break before classes resume! You should be smiling."

The rest of my friends were walking alongside us, too, as we took a midnight walk through campus. Lander was popping into different animals at random, making Emelle burst out with giggles while Wren rolled her eyes at Gileon, trying to keep her grin hidden beneath her pursed mouth.

We weren't the only ones. It seemed that out of everyone on campus, only Quinn and I had been brought into the Testing Center for questioning. Everywhere we turned, groups of people swaggered this way and that, celebrating the end of a year and the months-long break we'd get before our next one started. The Element Wielders sent sparks shooting and spiraling through the air, lighting up all of campus with their sizzling magic.

In three months, a fresh batch of eighteen-year-olds would arrive at the courtyard. I'd be in the stadiums for the Branding this time, watching as bursts of power exploded from them all.

I couldn't stop thinking about the ones who'd taken their Final Tests today, though. Many had passed, but some had failed—had joined the carriages behind the Testing Center that would take them out to sea and force them through the shield.

The same shield Coen Steeler had apparently escaped through this morning. Would he be one of the pirates waiting for them on the other side? Would he jump his previous classmates, ripping into them and stealing more magic for himself? Or would he just chain them up, too?

I made myself smile up at Rodhi.

"Oh, nothing's wrong. I'm just wondering who attacked Jenia."

That wasn't necessarily a lie, actually. Jenia Leake's sudden appearance in the sick bay with bloodied gauze wrapped around her head was another thing that seemed weird… as if I was supposed to have that memory, that knowledge of how it had happened, but it had leaked out from between my fingers. One of those five pirates had to have been involved—why else would Jenia's older sister have investigated their childhoods and turned them in?

"Want my guess?" Rodhi asked, a manic glint in his eyes. I was used to that glint by now. It meant he was about to make a comment about Ms. Pincette's ass or something else as equally rude and inappropriate.

"What?" I asked, huffing out my exasperation.

"She was looking in the mirror for too long and it shattered."

At that moment, Lander popped into a peacock, and even Wren muffled a laugh against her sleeve when he screeched out a pathetic warble that sounded a lot like Mrs. Wildenberg. I'd asked each of them if they'd been approached by someone from the Good Council this morning, keeping my question purposely vague, and they'd each looked at me with a blank stare—even Emelle, who'd woken up with Lander, had only asked me in a quiet, concerned tone, "Why? Did something happen, Rayna? Where were you last night anyway?"

I'd simply shaken my head and mumbled something about a hangover. Better not to get them involved, not when their biggest concern right now was the screech of Lander's cringy attempt at mimicking a peacock.

I was grateful for the distraction of their joy, anyway.

While everyone else started warbling back at Lander, I threw a glance out toward the sea. I couldn't see the ships speckling the horizon right now, but I knew they were out there, lurking, like always, on the other side of the shield.

And Coen Steeler was on one of them.

Predators can't stay away from their prey, dear one.

If it was true—if he'd put these bruises on me, if his people were killing more and more innocent civilians by the day—then I'd feel no regret when I did what I had to do.

Lure him in. Catch him. Turn him in to the Good Council for execution.

For Fabian and Don and the coastal villages and myself, I could do that. That icy fear had coated my veins as soon as I'd left the Testing Center, locking itself into place and filling me with something cold and empty—like the space between stars.

But that coldness and emptiness could be honed. I thought about my mother's knife, still sheathed and buried deep in an inside-pocket of my bag. I'd never used it. That was something I remembered very clearly, as if the scrap of knowledge had been left out like a beacon, like a shiny coin for me to pick up and turn round and round in my mind to inspect.

Next year would be different.

I would be different.

I'm ready for you, Coen Steeler, I sent out into the night filled with sparks.

But this time I would be the predator, and he would be the prey.