By the Orchid and the Owl: The Esholian Institute Book 1

Chapter 6

“Breathe. Deeply. Right now.”

Pure, primal command laced his every word. He’d hauled me through the campsite and into a narrow alley between two of those mansions on Bascite Boulevard, and set me on the ground with my back against the wall.

I grappled at my throat, choking on it. The power and the pain.

“In and out,” he commanded again, sinking onto his knees before me. “With every inhale, you are going to suck that power back in. With every exhale, you are going to feel the pain leave your body. Okay?”

“I can’t,” I gasped. “It wants out.”

Indeed, it was tearing at me from the inside-out, roaring for more and more and more. But I didn’t want to explode again. Didn’t want to hurt anyone else.

“I know,” Coen said, still aggressive, but… with a hint of gentleness now. “But you have to contain it, so you will. In and out, like I said. Do it with me.”

And he mimicked breathing for me, such a simple task I’d taken for granted before now.

Still gasping, I copied him, pretending he was my mirror image, pushing out the pain and reeling the power back in. In and out. In and out.

After a few minutes—or maybe it was an eternity—the nameless terror faded. Like a monster dissolving back into my blood.

I leaned my head back against the wall of the mansion behind me.

“What was that?” I asked weakly.

Coen didn’t answer. He only stood and crossed his arms, and even in my exhausted state, my eyes caught on those muscles folded over such a broad chest. This man could snap my neck in half a second, if he wanted to. He was a fifth-year, meaning he had to be around twenty-three years old, and here I was, barely eighteen and ready to puke on his shoes at any moment.

Yet he’d helped me through it. Had seemed to know what it was. So I clenched my teeth to keep them from chattering and repeated, “What was that?”

Coen clucked his tongue. In the dim light cast by the dusting of stars overhead, I could see a vague smirk returning to his tan face. “Well, well, well, aren’t you demanding, for someone who owes me her life?”

“My life?” I repeated, trembling to a stand, if only so I didn’t feel so much smaller than him. My knees quaked, but I locked them in place.

“Yes, your life.” Coen narrowed his eyes at me, as if unsure whether to take me seriously or not. “That right there was raw power, without shape or form or container, triggered by the bascite in that stupid ale you drank. And it could have blasted you to bits that I would have had to clean up if you hadn’t gotten hold of it like you did.”

“That’s why you saved me, then? So that you didn’t have to clean up bits of my literal flesh?”

I don’t know where my anger was sprouting from, but that little half-smile tugging at the edge of his mouth, the way he continued to stand there with his arms folded as if I were a naughty child… it heated me.

He only fed that heat when he said, all trace of gentleness gone, “More or less. Now.” He rummaged in his pants pocket and brought out a pearl-sized pill pinched between his forefinger and thumb. “Luckily for you, I had this on me tonight. Take it.”

“I don’t need a pain reliever,” I said, even though an ache still touched the back of my neck. “My head is—”

“This isn’t a pain reliever.”

I stared at him. Don’t eat any funny mushrooms, Don had told me jokingly before I’d left. This wasn’t a mushroom, but it might as well have derived from one, for all I knew. What the hell was happening to me right now? I just… wanted to go to sleep, not face… this.

Coen sighed at my silence.

“It’s a power inhibitor. It’ll prevent that—” he swirled his free finger in my direction “—from happening tomorrow when they brand you. Because when they brand you,” he pushed on before I could retort, “that same bascite that triggered your innate power tonight? It will be permanently infused in your blood, and in a higher dose. So you won’t just have one of the sanctioned magics in your system. You’ll have that monster, too. Constantly triggered. Constantly raging.”

That monster. I blew out a puff of shaky air.

“Maybe I should find an instructor. Tell them what happened. Maybe someone can help me harness it, or get it to go away, or—”

“No. Listen to me.” Coen dropped his folded arms. “What’s your name?”

My voice was a jumbled murmur as I said, “Rayna Drey,” for the third time tonight, suddenly so, so weary.

Coen pinched his brow together. “Rainy Days?”

“No.” My voice rose now. “Rayna Drey.”

“I see. Rainy Days doesn’t make much sense anyway, does it? You’re not a soft little drizzle.” His lips tilted up. “You’re more like a raging hurricane.”

“No, I’m not.” I didn’t want to be a hurricane. I didn’t want to be destructive.

Coen ignored me. “What village are you from… Rayna?”

“Alderwick.” I kept my eyes on the pill still between his finger and thumb.

“Pretty repressed village? Full of frightened, branded adults who conceal their magic unless it’s for a Good Council-sanctioned job?”

My eyes snapped from the pill to his face.

“Thought so.”

Coen leaned closer to me, and it took every shriveled piece of my remaining willpower to keep my stance rigid, to not let him push me back against the wall.

“There is a reason, Rayna Drey, that every single place on this island besides here at the Institute is so heavily stifled. Here, we can do whatever we want, go wherever we want, bed whomever we want, because they have eyes on us everywhere.”

They. The Good Council, I knew, and goosebumps scuttled along my arms.

“But out in the villages,” Coen continued, “they have to rely on sheer fear. All it takes is one person breaking the law, one person using magic on the streets in an inappropriate manner, one execution in every village, for people to obey. To stay small and quiet and never expand the limits of their power that they found here at the Institute.”

I couldn’t escape the weight of his daggered gaze as his words sunk in.

“The Good Council,” I began slowly, tasting the words as I said them, “wouldn’t take kindly to power they didn’t grant me. Power they can’t control.”

A nod. I stroked my throat, the inside of it gritty from my haggard breathing.

“They would exile me? Before the test?” I paused. “Right on the spot?” That demonstration earlier today had seemed like an unnecessary threat with my Final Test lurking so far in the future. I couldn’t imagine facing that woman with the missing finger now. Tomorrow.

Coen didn’t nod this time. He didn’t have to. I let my hands drop.

“Well, shit.” A thought struck me. “But how can I even keep this a secret? All those inductees in the tent saw it happen.” It didn’t feel right to call them friends anymore, as if I’d betrayed their trust somehow.

Coen swiped his free hand through his hair. “Yeah, about that. I erased their memories for you… just short-term,” he added as my mouth dropped open in horror. “No big deal. They won’t remember a thing after entering their tent for the night. And don’t worry about all those people I hauled you past.” A smug smile as his eyes raked down my body, as if remembering what it felt like slung over his shoulder. “I made them feel very interested in looking away.”

I stared at him.

“You’re a Mind Manipulator.”

He didn’t even deign to answer that; it was obvious.

“But…” I swallowed. “I saw you standing on nothing but solid air this morning. I thought you were an Element Wielder. Or maybe even an Object Summoner, levitating yourself.”

“Oh, so you were checking me out?” His lips curled. “But very astute, I’ll give you that. I was actually standing on the fountain in the middle of the courtyard. I simply changed everyone’s perception of what they saw. Wanted to look as cool as everyone else, you see.”

I almost gasped. Almost, but didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. To think that he was such a powerful Mind Manipulator that he could manipulate everyone in that crowd at the same time...

To think that he’d already been in my mind, manipulating me, that he’d probably been the main caster of that pirate ship illusion…

“Stay out of my head,” I snapped suddenly. “Don’t enter it again without my permission.”

His eyes flared for a second—in shock—before narrowing with that sly smile.

“Of course. Now, are you going to take this or not?” He held out the pill again.

I folded my arms, a perfect, dominating replica of him earlier.

“Why do you have it?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“Where did you get it?”

“I can’t answer that either.”

I scoffed. “Bet you’re fun at parties.” It was a lame insult, but the only one my jumbled brain could think of.

I wasn’t expecting it when he leaned even closer, so that I could smell the rich, earthy scent of him, something that reminded me of the grove of black bamboo outside the eastern side of Alderwick. When he whispered against my hair, his breath tickled my neck.

“I am the king of parties here at the Esholian Institute.” His hands—rough, wide, and strong—were in mine suddenly, placing the pill in my palm and folding my fingers over it. “I appreciate your dilemma, little hurricane. Under normal circumstances, I would tell you to never accept a drug that some random man offered you in an alley, so it’s up to you whether you take this or not. But if you don’t…” He withdrew slightly, frowning down at me. “You’d better figure out how to contain that power, because the Branding will make it ten times stronger.”

He turned without another word and strolled away, down the alley and onto Bascite Boulevard, leaving me standing in an alley with a pill and a pumping heart.