Chapter 38 #2
“Well, yeah. You and I both know I’m the only one who would die for her. And she knew it, too.”
I couldn’t tell if Rodhi looked sad or upset about this fact. His face had gone slightly taut, as if trying to mask something deeper. The topic obviously wasn’t something he was comfortable discussing, so I grabbed at a question that would pivot us away from Ms. Pincette.
“Does Dyonisia know?”
Rodhi’s face lit up. “Oh yeah. And she’s pissed. But her Wild Whisperers on the Good Council have no idea who’s behind the resistance because… well, we’ve been killing their spies faster than they can scuttle back up the mountain to report it.”
I stared at him, suddenly in awe.
“And you’ve been—what? Using the dolphins for transportation?”
It made sense why Rodhi had made such instant friends with the creatures during Mr. Conine’s class. He’d already been friends with them. It was a wonder none of us had caught on.
Rodhi, however, was squinting as a new water spider crawled up his body and whispered something into his ear.
His eyes switched to me, then to the trees where I had heard rummaging not too long ago.
“We know you’re there, Temperton!” he called out. “ You don’t have to hide anymore!”
My mouth popped open as a frustrated sigh came from within the trees. A few seconds later, the branches rustled and… Dazmine did indeed step out onto the riverbank, brushing mud off her shirt.
“Were you following me?” I asked her incredulously.
“Well, yeah.” She didn’t even have the audacity to look ashamed, though she shot a filthy glance in Rodhi’s direction. “You looked really dodgy at the marketplace.”
“Are you serious right now?”
Dazmine had still been coming with me to the lighthouse every Sunday, going round and round with Terrin about whether this or that plan would help break the exiled ones out of prison—which often resulted in more bickering than my ears could handle.
Yet that shared secret between us, the Sundays we spent together…
I’d thought it had made us, not friends, exactly, but allies.
“You still don’t trust me?” I asked.
Rodhi was looking back and forth between us with raised brows.
“I was starting to,” Dazmine said with a lift of her chin. “But then I saw you heading in the same direction as Mr. Gleekle and all those students about half an hour ago, and I wanted to see if you were going to join them.” Her chin went even higher, but—
“What did you just say?”
“I was starting to trust you…”
“No. About Mr. Gleekle and a group of students? You saw them take off into the jungle?”
Dazmine nodded. “During the height of the Cardina buzz, yeah. They looked really dodgy, too. So when you headed off in the same direction…” A bit of shame finally split through the hardness in her gaze.
My heart thumping against my ribcage, I turned to Rodhi. “Do you think your spiders could find out where Mr. Gleekle is right now?”
I wasn’t really sure how the spying system worked—or whether he had access to more spiders than just the ones on his shoulders—but Rodhi’s mouth burst into a huge grin as soon as one of them whispered into his ear again with those velvety legs resting against his neck.
“I think they already know exactly where Mr. Gleekle is.”
After hastily collecting the poison dart frog eggs, I had the jungle take my satchel and hide it for me—just for an hour or two, I told it.
Then Rodhi, Dazmine, and I slipped into the river and onto the backs of the dolphins that emerged shyly from the water’s depths, giggling and splashing each other until Rodhi told them where to go.
I clung to the dorsal fin of mine, wrapping my legs around its slippery torso as it plunged forward through the river system.
Left, right, right, center, center left.
Rodhi’s spiders whispered in his ear, telling him which direction to lead us when the river split into separate streams—sometimes against a sudden rush of current, other times up a shallow, murky waterway caked in layers of algae.
Finally, just as I was wondering if I’d ever get the taste of moss and rot out of my mouth from how many times I’d accidentally swallowed a splash of water, Rodhi looked back and put his fingers to his lips.
He and his dolphin eased to the bank, and I told mine to follow.
Behind me, I could hear Dazmine muttering the same to her own dolphin.
Here, the jungle was absolutely crowded with strangler figs. It even seemed to sing a different tune than it did around campus, this one a deep baritone compared to its usual sweet humming.
When Dazmine, Rodhi, and I clambered off our dolphins and onto the shore, that tune paused for a second, noting the newcomers with a hesitation that made my skin prickle.
This way, Rodhi mouthed, pointing straight ahead.
Waving goodbye to our dolphins, Dazmine and I snuck after him.
We crept forward for several minutes until the sky finally opened up overhead, sending a spray of rain down onto the fig canopies and water rolling down their twisted trunks.
Only when the rain had completely overtaken the deep tune of the jungle with its deafening drumming did Dazmine tap me on the shoulder and point to her own head.
I nodded my understanding and funneled an opening in my blockade toward her as we continued to follow Rodhi.
You’ve seen Mr. Gleekle with a bunch of students before? she asked.
Yes, I sent back, ducking under a gnarled fig branch. Once. Right before that first time you met Terrin, actually. I thought it was just a strange one-time occurrence, though.
Now that I knew about that letter Dyonisia had sent Mr. Gleekle…
I couldn’t let this go. He was obviously some kind of player in this game, not just a pawn.
So why would he be taking groups of students into the jungle outside of regular class periods?
Was he interrogating them? Testing them? Or just giving them extra help?
Do you trust him? Dazmine asked. I thought she was talking about Mr. Gleekle until she nodded forward at Rodhi’s back as he hopped over a log with limber ease.
Oh. Yes. More than you trust me, apparently.
A beat later, Dazmine thought, I’m sorry about that. I don’t trust anyone or anything anymore—not since Jenia. It’s nothing personal.
I felt the tinge of her sorrow behind those words, as if maybe she wished she could change that, and I hefted my blockade back up. She’d probably claw my brain out of my skull if she knew I could sense her deeper emotions behind those carefully-controlled thoughts.
Just then, Rodhi halted in front of us. Dazmine and I snuck to either side of him, crouching and peeking through the dripping fig leaves ahead.
What I saw made my lungs twist with shock.
Embedded deep in a basin that looked like it had been carved of magic, a circular stone platform swam in shadows made of towering pillars and twisting vines. Mr. Gleekle himself stood in the center of this basin, surrounded by a circle of those same students I’d seen before and holding…
A poker.
Sucking in a breath, I strained to listen to whatever he was telling them, but it was as if an invisible film of glass separated us from the basin below. The rain splattered against the barrier and rolled off, and none of their thoughts drifted up to me either.
Dazmine craned her neck, squinting at the strange barrier and leaning forward through the fig leaves for a better look—
She hissed a curse through her teeth as Mr. Gleekle’s head jerked our way.
We all ducked low.
“Do you think he saw me?” Dazmine breathed.
Rodhi shook his head when a spider whispered in his ear.
“Don’t know. The spiders can’t even get in to hear what they might be saying. Whatever they’re doing down there, they don’t want anyone to know about it.”
Whatever they were doing seemed obvious to me: Mr. Gleekle was conducting his own private Branding ceremony…
but with students who already had powers, judging by the boy with the brand on his shoulder who stepped into the center of the circle and raised his left arm, exposing the spot where I thought I’d seen a second brand on Jenia all those months ago.
Is there ever a reason someone would have two brands? I’d asked Dyonisia at the start of the year.
To which she’d only responded with a question of her own: What reason would someone have to get a second one?
Not a no.
Just not an explanation of why. Why give some students extra brands but not others?
“You were right, Rayna,” Dazmine breathed. “Jenia must have—”
We all winced when Mr. Gleekle stamped the poker into the soft part of the boy’s underarm.
“Damn. I’d rather have my own nipples twisted than get branded there,” Rodhi murmured. “That would hurt and tickle.”
Not even two seconds later, the air beneath that invisible film of glass appeared to whoosh away from the boy, knocking Mr. Gleekle and the circle of students onto their asses. One of them in particular fell into a rare stripe of sunlight, and—
Before I could inhale sharply at what I had just seen—at who I had just seen—the glass-like structure around them exploded.
Four or five giant fireballs burst from the newly-Branded boy, arcing high up in the air and whistling back down…
One of them toward us.
Rodhi, Dazmine, and I turned and ran just as it came crashing down where we had been moments earlier, blasting a hole into the ground with a flare of heat that singed my skin from behind.
The force sent the three of us sprawling, while the echoing boom of the rest of the fireballs landed in other areas of the jungle around us. If it wasn’t pounding down rain right now, I’d probably worry about the fig trees catching on fire.
As it was, I looked over my shoulder to find the fire already sizzling out.
“Well,” said Rodhi from where he lay in the mud on his stomach, “that was a little more intense than a regular Branding.”
Dazmine and I exchanged glances as we got to our feet. From the sharpness in her eyes, I was pretty sure she’d seen it, too: another newcomer in whatever cult Mr. Gleekle had created.
I’d recognize that glossy sheet of ruby-red hair anywhere.
Quinn.
Raindrops rolling down her forehead, Dazmine turned to me with a glint of rage that seemed to breathe sparks onto my own ice.
“Okay, that’s it. It’s time to get that bitch to talk.”