Page 101 of By the Orchid and the Owl
In the chaos that followed, in the rushing and screaming and jostling as people ran to go find a class royal or someone else who could help, I was the only one who watched Fergus—how he slipped through the tumult and vanished.
Even Jenia kept her eyes locked on Mr. Fenway’s body as everyone bowed over it, trying to shake him awake, though I had a feeling she’d watched him leave out of the corner of her eye. She, too, knew of his connection with mold.
She, too, knew he’d done it. Killed Mr. Fenway.
I was still silent and shaking by the time Mr. Gleekle charged into the musty, rotting classroom and bent next to Mr. Fenway’s corpse overflowing with mold.
“Oh, my God.”
“What the hell is coming out of him?”
“He decayed from the inside out!”
I couldn’t hear what Mr. Gleekle was saying over the wails and cries of my classmates, but I floated toward him like a ghost, knowing I had to tell him. Had to tell him that Fergus had murdered a teacher simply because that teacher had embarrassed him.
Don’t.
Coen’s voice dripped with deadly command.
Come to me, Rayna. Leave the classroom. Don’t say a word. Right now.
I didn’t know where he was, but I didn’t question him. That tone had me obeying without thought—not because he was using mind control on me right now, but because… because I simply trusted him. I turned, not even pausing to tell Emelle or Rodhi where I was going, and stumbled my way up the steps, into piercing sunlight, where his waiting arms gathered me into a crushing squeeze.
He must have heard the panic in everyone’s mind and come running.
“Why?” I choked. “I know he did it, Coen. Why shouldn’t I tell?”
All around us, instructors and students were flooding into the Wild Whispering sector, asking each other what was going on. Monkeys chittered on the rooftops, filling each other in. Birds flitted overhead, screeching, “Death! Death! Death!”
Nobody paid attention to Coen and me, huddled against the wall.
“There was a murder three years ago during the annual pentaball tournament,” Coen muttered, his eyes roving the oncoming surge of people. “The Good Council showed up to investigate. They don’t take deaths lightly, because…”
He finished that sentence in my mind.Because it demonstrates an overabundance of power and ruthlessness. If you tell Mr. Gleekle your suspicions about Fergus, you will be interrogated in full, and the Good Council will know about…well, everything you know.
I cocked my head at him, suddenly suspicious about the way he’d worded that.
There was no time to contemplate it, though. Coen tugged me forward, and there was a possessiveness in his vice-like grip that certainly hadn’t been there a month ago. I might have resisted if that horrid image wasn’t plaguing my mind: Fergus’s black mold overflowing in Mr. Fenway’s gaping mouth.
“Here we are.”
We rounded a corner, pressing into a dark shadowy area of the Manipulator sector, where a granite pathway led to a pristine white box of a building.
I blinked, surprised to find them already waiting for us—Garvis, stroking his mustache excessively, Terrin, bouncing on the balls of his feet, and Sylvie clinging to Sasha’s arm.
“In,” Coen ordered them all.
Garvis turned, hooked his thumb into a metal latch, and slid a hatch sideways into the wall. After we’d all trampled inside, the hatch glided shut behind us.
“What is this place?” I managed to say.
There was only one room in this building, and it was so empty and white and symmetrical that my head began to spin.
Four identical walls. A smooth ceiling. A polished marble floor. No windows. Just that camouflaged hatch behind us.
“We call it the Isolator,” Coen answered. “It’s one of the classrooms we use for our Blocking & Shielding lessons, but I’ve never dared bring you here before because people are usually using it to practice. Right now, though, while everyone is focused on Mr. Fenway, I figured we could all use it to talk.”
“The Isolator,” I repeated.
