Chapter 8
CHAPTER
“There you are, Rayna!” It was Cilia, hiccupping and waving me over from where she stood with Mitzi Hodges and a group of nervous-looking inductees. “I was just telling the new girls about you and your famous Branding last year. You know, the tiger thing and all.”
Our induction chant had come and gone, then, and nobody had noticed my absence in the pandemonium of it all.
Except—no, I realized as I wended my way toward Cilia.
Emelle was glancing at me from within a knot of new Whisperers over by the cuckoo clock between split staircases, a hint of concern crossing over her features.
And Dazmine wasn’t even trying to suppress the suspicion written all over gaze as she crossed her arms on the other end of the foyer, tracking my movement deeper into the room.
Pretending I hadn’t seen Dazmine and throwing my best attempt at a cheerful smile toward Emelle, I approached the group of young women all ogling me.
“Hi! Welcome to the Wild Whisperer house. How is everyone feeling?”
It didn’t even sound like my own voice coming out of my mouth. It was much too high-pitched, too bright and bubbly compared to the deep, dark pit eating my stomach whole.
I’d slid my knives back beneath my dress, and the pearl—well, since I didn’t have pockets, it had gone down the crack of my cleavage.
I didn’t know why I’d even kept it… except that I felt like I had to add it to my collection upstairs as a tally of sorts.
For how many times Steeler had cornered me and forced me to take one of those pills and wiped away any recollection of the assault afterward.
A tally for revenge.
Cilia and Mitzi started introducing me to the new girls.
Leyla. Randy. Kira. Idora. Shantelle. I tried to commit each of their names and faces to memory, but that was proving rather difficult when my memory itself was waiting for a certain Mind Manipulator to smear away the night’s events at any second.
Only, that never happened, and as the mingling swelled into partying, drinking, and new cliques wafting to separate armchairs or sofas, I began to wonder if Steeler was really going to keep his end of the bargain even though I hadn’t swallowed the capsule voluntarily.
Take this pill and I won’t bury this memory of us. You can show it to the Good Council—how you nicked me.
I didn’t want to show the Good Council, though. Didn’t want Lexington or Dyonisia finding out that a wanted fugitive had been within my grasp—literally—and even with the knife and training and sheath, I’d managed nothing more than to mar his perfect jaw.
“Nice of you to finally join us.”
I turned to find Dazmine striding past, a drink in her hand. I opened my mouth to make up an excuse, but her eyes lifted to something over my shoulder, and I turned to find Emelle, Wren in tow, pushing toward me.
By the time I glanced back, Dazmine had melted back into the crowd.
“Here.” Emelle offered me a glass, but I shook my head—even though the whole memory removal thing had probably caused my sense of fogginess and haze last year, I still didn’t want alcohol to cloud up my mind more than it already was.
Wren snatched the drink right out of her hand instead, but Emelle studied me with those big, brown, too-wary eyes. “Is everything okay, Rayna? I lost you right after the ceremony ended.”
“Oh yeah, I… I had to step away for a bit.” I thumbed my temples. “Headache.”
It wasn’t the whole truth, and God of the Cosmos knew guilt flooded through me when I said it, but it wasn’t a complete lie, either. Now that my adrenaline had faded, the pain was creeping back into my skull, winding its tight band around my head.
“You should ask Gil what his mom does to treat chronic head pain,” Wren supplied. “She’s a medic, remember?”
“Or Rayna could just go to our house’s medic,” Emelle said, that look in her eyes only growing as I avoided her gaze. “You know, like I’ve been suggesting for the past three months.”
“Yeah, well,” I muttered, “for the past three months, our house’s medic has been busy taking care of Jenia Leake.
” It felt wrong to utter her name, as if the memory of her was supposed to be banished, too.
But I didn’t think I’d be forgetting Jenia anytime soon.
Not with Dazmine stomping around and Kimber as the representative Wild Whisperer on the Good Council and the truth about Fergus’s death suddenly swirling around in my head, round and round and round.
Killing that kid was all me.
If I’d had any doubts that Steeler and his group of pirates were part of the breaches and massacres happening to coastal villages around Eshol before, I had absolutely zero now. He, Coen Steeler, had murdered one of my fellow Wild Whisperers.
Which meant he could murder my friends, too.
I cranked another smile onto my face and gripped Emelle’s shoulder. Wren, I knew from experience, would probably swat me away like a mosquito if I tried to touch her, but I directed my words to her as well.
“I think I’m going to head to bed.” To add the newest pearl to my twisted little collection. “We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”
Indeed, tomorrow was when our second year at the Esholian Institute would officially begin. We’d have all the same classes, but we’d be expected to plunge deeper into our magic than ever before.
Wren drained her glass and held it up like a toast.
“As soon as you get your head to start feeling better,” she said wryly, “we’re going to work on getting you hammered.”
“Goodnight to you, too, Wren,” I said with a feeble half-laugh.
Emelle only pursed her lips, and I felt her watch me all the way to the staircase, where I begged myself not to stumble—or do anything else that might reveal what a mess I was—on the way up.
The silence of my cold, dark room hit me with relief. I was too drained to do anything besides collapse into bed, still in my dress, and pull the pearl from between my breasts.
As soon as I did so, a voice squeaked out, “Do you still remember?”
It was Willa, scampering across my pillow and sniffling against my hair.
“Yes,” I breathed. “I remember.”
As soon as Steeler had left me, I’d immediately run to the girls’ Whisperer house—but rather than barge inside, I’d found some of Willa’s cousins hanging out in the cracks of the foundations, taking advantage of the surplus of insects out and about.
I’d told them to go find Willa herself, and when she’d scurried out to me five minutes later, breathless and asking what was wrong, I had poured it all out to her as fast as I could: Steeler, his speed and strength, the cut on his jaw, the pearl and the pill.
I’d told her to relay it back to me in case I lost my memory of it.
Now, she nestled into the crook of my neck and said, “Weird. At least he’s a man of his word?”
I snorted. “I don’t care if he’s the most honest man alive.” Or the most beautiful, with all that tan skin and those stupid muscles. I swallowed against the dryness in my mouth. “He killed Fergus. And he force-fed me a drug against my will.”
A drug I still didn’t know anything about—whether it would make me act a certain way or think a certain way or simply kill me in my sleep.
“His people murdered innocent civilians a few months ago,” I went on to Willa, “and are trying to get in to do so again. I… I’ve got to tell the Good Council that I need help—that he’ll be here next week, in this very room, at dusk, and that I need help catching him.”
The realization that I couldn’t do it alone was almost a tougher pill to swallow than the one I just had. But even with Dyonisia’s cold-cut gaze, hidden intentions, and toxic politics, she and I agreed on one thing, at least: Steeler’s head belonged on a pike.
Before he finally grew bored of me and came for the people I loved.
After a hearty breakfast of cocona and scrambled eggs the next morning, we all headed out for our first classes.
Now that we were second-years, we’d be starting our week off with Ms. Pincette rather than A History of the Esholian Biome, much to Rodhi’s delight—he was practically skipping down Bascite Boulevard as we joined the flow toward campus.
Still, it was strange not to head directly to that musty classroom Mr. Fenway had once haunted, where we’d first learned that bascite came from faerie blood.
Stranger still was the idea that somebody else would be teaching in his stead, since Mr. Fenway had fallen ill and passed away last year.
Try as I might, I couldn’t remember much about his death beyond that he’d had some sort of fungal infection…
which made me wonder if Steeler had been involved in that memory too, somehow.
If he’d killed Mr. Fenway just as he had Fergus.
“How long till you think Rodhi jizzes in his pants?” Wren muttered, wrenching me from these thoughts as we crossed the estuary bridge and came to the courtyard where all the different sectors branched off.
The angle of the sun made the Testing Center cast a long shadow over half of it, as if trying to cloak that spot where Jenia had been hauled away.
“Uh.” I swapped glances with Emelle, who was biting her lip. “I’m going to pass on trying to imagine anything related to Rodhi’s jizz.”
“Hey.” Rodhi whirled and pointed an accusing finger at us. “I can hear you guys tittering. Be warned—say one bad thing about my manly cream and I’ll set an army of spiders on you.”
Wren stopped and clutched her throat, gagging.
“Oh, ew. My breakfast just came back up.” She resumed walking, her hand still clasped around her throat. “By the orchid and the goddamned owl, Rodhi, never say manly cream again or I’ll have Gileon beat you up.”
Gileon, of course, heard none of this; he was too busy lagging behind, discussing weightlifting with the rhinoceros beetle that had apparently stuck with him after the Branding.
The beetle sat on his shoulder much like how Willa would sit on mine, occasionally fluttering its shelled wings when it got to a passionate part of the conversation.
“Alright, I’ll see you weirdos later.” Wren waved to us at the entrance to the Wild Whisperer section, looking relieved at the prospect of parting ways.
“I’ve got Predators & Prey with Mr. Conine, so hopefully I’ll encounter something dangerous enough to take my mind off the taste of vomit in my mouth.
Have fun with your new lover, Gil!” And she whisked away down a side passageway.
“Nuisance is not a lover,” Gileon called after Wren halfheartedly, then looked down at the small, horned creature on his shoulder. “He’s a very special friend. Aren’t you, Nuisance?”
The beetle cheeped a yes, and Gileon followed Emelle, Rodhi, and me down the familiar twists and turns to Ms. Pincette’s classroom with a grin widening his face again.
The Wild Whisperer sector vibrated with life, as always.
Monkeys chatted to each other on rooftops, tossing cringy jokes back and forth and pulling each other’s tails.
Birds—kingfishers and honeycreepers and herons—traded gossip as they swooped and zoomed over our heads.
I could even hear high-pitched, breathy voices every time we passed a cloud of butterflies, although we didn’t pause long enough to listen in.
Before long, we were back in Ms. Pincette’s classroom, and it almost felt the same as last year.
Except now I wore a slitted dress instead of pants, a knife handle pressed against my thigh beneath it, and I was all too aware of an unknown drug circulating through my body.
I didn’t feel any different, but perhaps it had yet to take hold.
“I won’t tell you to settle down,” came a punctual voice I hadn’t heard in months.
The last time I’d seen Ms. Pincette, she’d looked much too pale in the face of Dyonisia Reeve, but could I blame her?
I was practically pissing myself at the thought of seeing Dyonisia again, especially to tell her I couldn’t manage the task she’d given me.
But when Ms. Pincette snapped the classroom door shut and turned to face us, I saw that she looked much better than before.
Her chestnut hair was tucked neatly behind her ears, her eyes glistened with their usual sharp intensity, and her chin was once more held high.
Only the vaguest hint of undereye circles told me she might still be haunted by… something.
“I won’t tell you to settle down,” Ms. Pincette repeated, walking back to the head of the classroom, where a single, cloaked tank stood on a pedestal, “because you are adults, and it’s your own lives at stake if you don’t take this class seriously.”
That shut everyone up. I’d never seen Rodhi go so still in his seat beside me, every hair on the back of his neck on high, predatory alert.
“Now.” Ms. Pincette swung to face us once more, her hands clasped behind her back. “I’m sure you’ve all noticed the surplus of insects around campus lately. It’s just our luck that we have a plethora of fire ants willing to help us learn about…”
She unveiled the tank before her with a graceful flourish.
“… the hive mind.”