Chapter 32 #2
I swung a leg over the edge, feeling the ice behind Dyonisia’s eyes carve glaciers into the dips of my spine.
The brand on the back of my neck seemed to burn with the attention, but…
I think all that hair of yours will hide it, Steeler had said once.
I’d never been so grateful for the tangled mess of my curls that hid the truth crawling in my veins;
I was a Wild Whisperer and a Mind Manipulator.
And I would use these leeches to steal a hair from Dyonisia’s head.
Closing my eyes, sucking in a breath, locking up my muscles…
I rolled into the tank.
The squelch of leech bodies cushioned my fall, and I winced when some of those fizzing whispers stopped abruptly. But too many more twisted toward me, anchoring onto my legs and arms with their sticky undersides.
Oh, God. A scream was running jagged fingernails inside my lungs, for I had purposely told the leeches the wrong thing.
To them, a friend meant someone with good blood.
What I should have said was that I was a foe and my blood was poison, but I couldn’t let Dyonisia witness me excelling at this test when Ms. Pincette had given her completely opposite information. I couldn’t let myself pass.
I needed to fail. Needed to fall into Dyonisia’s arms begging her to let me stay on the island despite my disappointments. To have a sobbing, blubbering reason to wrap my arms around her neck and take a hair while she was too distracted by all the sucker marks on my body.
Except as the first leech latched onto me, pulling in warm mouthfuls of blood from my underarm, I felt something open an eye in my chest.
When more oily black bodies clung to me, sending pinpricks secreting up and down my limbs, I felt it strain against the smothering bars that contained it.
“Get off me,” fell out of my lips.
Because that numbness, that life being sucked right out of my skin—I’d felt this way for too long. Like a buzzing husk, too full of fear to fall asleep properly, too empty of joy to wake up all the way.
I couldn’t take it anymore. Ripping a leech off my forearm, then my shin, then my chest, I said it again. “Get off me. Get off me. Get off me.”
The leeches didn’t respond. I’d told them I was a friend, and they’d already gotten a taste of my blood.
I tried to stand, but sparkles of light jiggled in the forefront of my vision. My lungs wouldn’t expand for a full enough breath. In my desperate haze, I locked eyes with Ms. Pincette, and she lurched forward, past Dyonisia, as if to help me.
Just before she reached the tank, the thing in my chest broke through the pill’s suppressant.
Leeches ripped themselves off my body, flying upward in a whirlwind and splattering into each other high above my head—forming a blob of oily black goo that writhed and bubbled in midair.
Then burst.
Globs of goo sprayed in every direction, hitting the walls and ceiling and doors and floor… and Dyonisia’s face.
With my heart scrambling to catch up with what the hell had just happened, I launched myself out of the tank and toward the founder of this island, who had frozen in her chair with her nails digging into its velvet arms.
“I’m so sorry, ma’am, I didn’t know that was going to happen.”
Truth. I could have never planned that, even though I knew it had happened with the cockroaches last year.
But that thing in my chest that felt so wild and monstrous was already fading back to sleep, like a curtain had stifled it once more.
And oh shit, shit, shit, Dyonisia’s perfect, glowing face and hair was dripping with the leech goo.
I reached out to grab handfuls of the stuff off her head.
The movement seemed to shake Dyonisia from her furious stupor. She swatted my wrist away and rose to her feet as swift as a serpent strike.
“Stop, before you cause any more damage, you insolent child. I shall have a Summoner remove the rest.”
She hooked her nose down at me, her nostrils widening as she scoured the length of my body and lingered on my shoulder brand.
“I have a great many plans for you, Ms… Drey. It’s up to you whether those plans involve chains and scalpels or crowns and thrones. Do you understand?”
Yes, I understood, despite the cold pit those words dragged into my stomach. But I slid a mask of terrified ignorance over my face, curling my hands into fists.
“No, ma’am. I don’t.”
“You will, child. You will.”
I could almost see steam, like the milky mist of our dome, pouring from her ears. With a swish of her dress, she turned and flowed out of the room, leaving a trail of inky black splatters behind her.
Ten seconds after the door smacked shut, Ms. Pincette and I stood side by side in utter silence.
Thirty seconds later, we were still standing side by side in silence only broken by the occasional plop of goo from ceiling to floor.
It wasn’t until an entire two minutes had leaked by that my Spiders, Worms, & Insects teacher rounded on me in utter fury.
“Are you happy, Ms. Drey? Is this what you really wanted?”
She gestured at the splotches of leech goo still dripping from overhead, speckling the walls, puddling on the floor.
“No,” I said somberly.
Then uncurled my fists and brought up the black-as-midnight strand of hair pinched between my fingers—just a little something I’d grabbed from Dyonisia’s head along with the goo.
“But this is.”