Page 17 of By the Orchid and the Owl
“Lander, don’t read too much into it. It’s her first time being around anyone her age besides you and me. She just needs time to adjust…”
He ripped himself away from my grip, hurt crunching his features.
“This is the first timeI’vebeen around anyone else our age, too, and you don’t see me going around, pawing at every hot girl I see. This is…”
“Talk to her, then,” I said, switching tactics, desperate to wipe that pain off his face. “Next time you get a chance, talk to her and tell her that there needs to be some new boundaries moving forward if you’re going to stay in a relationship together.”
Lander rubbed the bridge of his nose, as if willing himself not to sniff.
“I don’t know, Rayna. That sounds an awful lot like the start of a breakup.”
It did, but I didn’t want to confirm that out loud. I only slung an arm around his shoulder and squeezed tight. “C’mon. Let’s go find one of those carts of food, eat some lunch, and bask in the sunshine until Branding. Clear our minds.”
He nodded, his gaze dropping low, and I felt it for the first time in my life.
A spark of anger toward Quinn.
The Good Council arrived just as the stars were ebbing into view between clouds.
The arena had been utterly transformed. Instead of tents, there was now a stage set up right where Bascite Boulevard opened up to the field, a neat row of chairs for the Good Council members before it, and hundreds of smaller, more rickety chairs behind them, where all us inductees would sit until our names were called.
As we filtered onto the field and claimed our seats—the placement didn’t matter, one of the class royals declared as she directed us, since everyone’s name would be pulled out of a hat—I didn’t know where to look first: the arch of flickering flame above our heads, courtesy of older Element Wielders, the rest of the Institute’s students filling the stadiums surrounding us, or the Good Council members themselves.
Five of them had come to witness the Branding. Two men, two women, and one… I didn’t even knowwhatto call her. A goddess, maybe, because herskin glowed brighter than starlight, her icy-blue eyes framed by razor-sharp bangs and a thick flow of the blackest hair I’d ever seen.She sat in the middle of them all, front and center, far more regal than any of the so-called princes or princesses here.
As Lander and I settled into our seats, I observed the too-slender back of her neck over all the inductee heads in front of me, and a shiver nipped my own.
Shape Shifter. She had to be. Nobody else could achieve that level of beauty.
“I think she’s a crone,” Lander breathed, having followed my stare. “A crone trapped in a young woman’s body. It just… it doesn’t look right.”
He’d been in a strange mood since the Quinn thing and seemed to be saying the most ominous things possible in response to everything, but I couldn’t disagree.
That. That was who’d stare me down when the stamp of bascite met my shoulder, when it sunk through my skin to mingle with the blood in my veins and trigger… whatever monstrous magic had exploded from me last night.
If Coen was right and the Branding activated more raw, uncontrollable power in me,thatwas who’d feel the surge of it first. And from the way she sat, rod-straight, in her chair, I knew she’d be pissed if I so much as knocked her over.
The pill felt as heavy as a marble in my front pocket.
I had to decide, and soon.
“Young ladies and gentlemen!”
A middle-aged man with a jovial face hopped onstage. His cheeks were tight and shiny, and his rounded spectacles winked in the firelight. The crowd—from the soon-to-be branded to the onlookers in the stadium to the Good Council—fell quiet.
“I am your president, Mr. Gleekle, and I want to personally welcome you all to this crucial stage in your cultivation as worthy citizens of Eshol!”
His voice… it seemed closer than it should be, as if an unnatural wind had picked up each word and sent it streamlining straight to my ears. I was willing to bet everyone else was experiencing the same thing, and that the unnatural wind actually split off into thousands of different directions to amplify his speech.
“You see,” Mr. Gleekle continued, smiling wider despite the drop in his tone, “the world outside of Eshol is bursting with more than just pirates hungering for the magic that will soon be granted to you. It is full of slavers and murderers and thieves and monsters, dangers beyond our comprehension. This island is safe, but only if we make sure each and every citizen is able to control their magic and use it for the greater good of our society.”
Deep, pounding silence followed those words, as if even the beating of thunder in the distance had paused like the beating of our hearts. My mind churned with images of that four-fingered pirate and other vague, shadowy figures behind her. Slavers and murderers. Thieves and monsters. Perhaps the Good Council wasn’t so intimidating compared tothem.
Mr. Gleekle clapped his hands, and the spell broke. “Now, each of you are going to join us on stage when we call your name. Mrs. Wildenberg?” He motioned someone toward him with a fat finger. “If you could please bring the hat out.”
An older, ashy-skinned woman hobbled onto the stage, hoisting up an upside-down sunflower hat that had to have been enlarged by Shifter magic.
“Thanks, Joanne,” Mr. Gleekle told her, and then turned back to us. His eyes, I noticed through the glint of his glasses, stayed firmly away from the Good Council in the front row. “Mrs. Wildenberg will pull each of your names from the hat, completely at random, of course, and then I myself will brand you on behalf of the Good Council itself. You might feel a little pinch as your magic takes shape, but do not panic. Once it is clear which form your magic has taken, please join the rest of your new sector in the stadium until the end of Branding.”
