Chapter 32
CHAPTER
The first quarterly test started the same way it had last year.
All the second-years swarmed the outside of the domed building until the third-years were finished and Mr. Gleekle ushered us inside.
Each sector streamed to their own archway crowned with the respective mottos. I felt the hidden brand on the back of my neck tingle as I passed BY THE MOONBEAM AND THE MIST on my way to the Wild Whisperer one.
What would it be like to take those tests instead of the ones I was supposed to? Would I pass them, or would my weekend lessons with Garvis amount to nothing compared to the daily classes other Mind Manipulators got?
A pair of cool blue eyes in the center of the room flicked toward me, and I froze. Mr. Gleekle, with his shiny, tightened smile permanently stamped on his face, had caught me looking at the wrong archway.
Shit. I bowed my head and let the crowd sweep me onward, where I clambered up my own staircase and sat in the waiting room outside the first Wild Whisperer testing door next to Emelle, Rodhi, and Gileon.
My heart was pounding in my ears at that eye contact Mr. Gleekle and I had just made; he knew me as Rayna Reeve, and now he’d just seen me staring at the Mind Manipulator archway with—I couldn’t deny it—longing on my face.
Thankfully for my nerves, it didn’t take long for Mrs. Smetlar to appear from behind that first door.
“In, in, in,” she said with a clap for each word. “Or do none of you think that the History of the Esholian Biome matters?”
“Not really, no,” Rodhi muttered a little too loudly.
Mrs. Smetlar’s glower couldn’t have oozed with more hatred as we took our seats in a neat row of desks topped with papers and pens.
“There will be no talking unless you want a fail.” She lowered herself into the bloodred armchair at the head of the classroom. “There will be no peeking over at your neighbor’s paper unless you want a fail. There will be no bouncing of knees or fidgeting unless you want a fail.”
That last one had been directed at Rodhi, I was sure. His whole body stilled in his seat at those words, and another surge of rage rushed up my throat at the small ways she managed to be cruel to my friends.
“Begin,” Mrs. Smetlar said.
We flipped the paper over. I squinted down at the first question.
In 215 AF, a rogue Shape Shifter turned a lizard into a dragon. How did Wild Whisperers of the time calm the dragon before elite Shape Shifters could turn the beast back into its original state?
My neck muscles burned with the effort it took not to peek over at Emelle beside me, but I saw from my periphery that she was wrinkling her nose in confusion, too.
Dragons were one of those legendary creatures in bedtime stories that Esholian adults used to warn children off from bad behavior…
alongside vampires. I’d never even heard Mrs. Smetlar mention the existence of a dragon on the actual island—even if it had started out as a simple lizard.
I moved to the next question.
In 427 AF, a Good Council elite was attacked by a silverback on his trek from one village to another. Which Wild Whisperer was behind the attack, and what did the Good Council do to punish him?
What the hell? I’d never heard of a silverback attack either.
Once again, the brand on the back of my neck seemed to tingle. Surely, this wouldn’t be the time to use my Mind Manipulating power, not when a hundred other Mind Manipulators were demonstrating their magic somewhere on another floor in this building.
But despite Mrs. Smetlar’s earlier warnings, the sound of rustling rose as more and more classmates scratched their heads, bit their pens, scrunched their eyebrows. From the edge of my vision, I could see a smile slowly raising Mrs. Smetlar’s sharpened cheekbones.
It couldn’t hurt to open up my blockade for a second.
I funneled the opening toward her just like I had with the dolphins until her harsh, raspy thoughts filled my head.
Fools. Utter fools. I’m such a good teacher, and they don’t even appreciate me. If any of them had been paying attention, they’d know I’ve never taught them any of this. Just proves that they’re all going to fail their Final Test no matter how great I am at my job.
Thickened rage boiled in my blood. None of us could remember these questions because Mrs. Smetlar was testing us with material she’d never taught. To make sure we failed our first quarterly test.
At that moment, she pointed a cracked yellow nail at Rodhi, who couldn’t hold back any longer: his knee jiggled.
“You,” she started.
I didn’t hesitate to intervene.
Clinging to her outermost thoughts, I pulled myself forward until I fell into the confines of her mind, the bristled walls made of dead sticks and thorns and moldy bits of feathers.
Her consciousness was as hunched and gnarled as her body had once been, wholly focused on Rodhi and the fail she was about to give him simply because he’d fidgeted.
Do you really think that’s fair? I whispered into her mind.
Mrs. Smetlar swatted at her ear. “What? Who is that? Who’s talking to me?”
One by one, my classmates looked up from their papers.
Do you really want to give anyone a fail over a faulty test? I asked.
Inside her mind, that hunched consciousness still hadn’t recognized me standing by her unlocked gate—and would never recognize me without a Mind Manipulating power of her own.
Hopefully, she thought a Good Council elite was nearby, checking on proceedings by probing instructor minds from a floor above or below.
Slowly, Mrs. Smetlar dropped her hand. She narrowed her beady black eyes at Rodhi but said through mashed lips, “It seems I’ve accidentally given you all the wrong test. My—my apologies. I will give you all a pass this time for your… discretion.”
“Well, you just made my day brighter for the first time ever.” Rodhi clapped his hands together and popped up, bounding for the waiting room without a backward glance.
The rest of the class followed suit, muttering.
Hesitantly, I withdrew from that moldy nest of a mind to do the same, glancing at Mrs. Smetlar’s pursed, quivering lips as I passed.
Hoping I hadn’t just made things worse.
I was the last to be called back into the classroom for Mr. Conine’s test, where I successfully lulled a weasel to sleep by singing it a lullaby about its favorite thing: killing frenzies in the moonlight.
Mrs. Wildenberg had nodded off against her own chest by the time I entered her testing room and passed right by all the cold cups of tea and pots of curare plants littering the table before her.
Dyonisia Reeve was waiting for me in the last testing room.
She sat in the bloodred armchair like she had during our last meeting under the dome, the perfect picture of rejected royalty. Ms. Pincette stood behind her with her hands knotted behind her back.
To their left, a tank of oily black leeches streaked the inside of the glass with a crisscrossing mess of mucus trails.
“I’m glad to see you are wearing those dresses I bought you.”
I jerked my head back to the woman—faerie—in the armchair.
Dyonisia’s gaze cut to the slit in my current attire, as if seeing through the fabric to the sheath dutifully strapped to my thigh. One side of her mouth squeezed up in satisfaction.
She can’t be my mother. I’m nothing like her.
Now that I knew Dyonisia had to keep a harsh leash on her own power encircling the island, I didn’t have to worry she had the magic of Mind Manipulating to hear my thoughts. It was a strange relief, to be able to think what I wanted without the fear that she’d overhear.
I gave a slight bow of my head.
“Thank you for the dresses, ma’am. They are very pretty.”
I hate the dresses. Not because they’re ugly, but because they came from you.
Dyonisia sat back, her hair shimmering with the movement.
“Lexington reports great success with your weekly check-ins. He says you are closer to capturing your target than ever before.”
I didn’t let a single part of me twitch as that news sunk in—that Lexington had followed through with our deal. That he’d been lying to Dyonisia every week in the hopes that I could grow closer to Steeler and steal his entire stash of Nara’s pills.
Good.
“But.” When Dyonisia raised her chin, I traced the ebb and flow of her hair over her shoulders. “Ms. Pincette reports that your power fails in the face of her class’s tasks. Why do you think that is, child?”
Oh yes, she definitely knew I was part-faerie, mother or not. I could see that knowledge in the predatory tilt of her head, in the wild ice that seemed to be cracking behind her pupils as she observed me.
“I don’t know, ma’am.” I rubbed my chest, right where my memories had shown me my innate power stemmed from. “Sometimes it seems like something is brewing in here and wants out.”
Behind Dyonisia, Ms. Pincette’s eyes flew open in alarm. She gave a jerky shake of her head, but I ignored it.
Dyonisia nodded at the tank of leeches. “Let me see.”
I glanced at Ms. Pincette, who cleared her throat.
“Your task today, Ms. Drey, is quite straightforward: don’t lose a single drop of blood.”
That seemed more like a warning than a task. I wasn’t quite faking the shivers that strummed my body as I forced myself toward that wretched tank I’d come to loathe.
The leeches seeped and dribbled over each other, the faintest fizzing sound emanating from their squishy mass—whispers of half-baked thoughts, words that trailed off like mush.
When I stepped up onto the stool beside the tank, it took a surge of willpower for me to bow my head over the edge and whisper down into the squirming depths: “I’m a friend. I’m a friend. I’m a friend.”
Ms. Pincette had taught us that much like worms, each segment of a leech’s body had to echo information down to its other parts, so repetition with a slight fizzing, spitting of our tongues was key.
“Frien… fr… frien…” they whispered back.
“Yes, friend, friend, friend.”