Page 12 of By the Orchid and the Owl
My turn, now. I grabbed the flask from her and brought it to my lips.
Only one drink, I told myself. It wasn’t like I was going to get drunk on it.
I tipped my head back and drained the rest.
A cough snagged in my throat. The drink wassour, but also tinted with something undeniably sharp and metallic. Almost like blood.
I cleared the cough from my throat and handed the empty flask back to Rodhi, who cocked his head at me, waiting.
“Anything?” he asked.
I was about to shake my head, disappointment flooding me, when I felt it.
Something in my bones shivered awake.
Whispers wafted out from my newfound friends around me. Such little whispers that they felt like tickles crawling over my skin, and I quivered, but… then I could suddenly hear the grass shrieking below the weight of the tent, and my skin twitched all along my body, as if begging to shift into something else, and electricity crackled between the gaps in my fingers, and I felt an invisible hand reach out from me as if to pick up any loose objects and drop them in my lap.
I crawled backward, my back brushing the wall of the tent.
“Rayna, are you alright?” Rodhi reached a hand out toward me.
No. No, I wasn’t. I…
I exploded with it.
Something—something I couldn’t define. Not a wall of wind, but pure, malleable energy that burst outward and knocked my friends on their backs.
They screamed. Outside the tent, voices faltered, but I couldn’t stop whatever it was from extending further and further outward, lifting the flap of the tent, pushing against the canvas walls as if eager for a way out. A sob cracked in my throat.
Pounding footsteps outside. A snarl at others to go away. I cradled my head as pain began to build there, shrieking for release, shrieking for me to explode again.
Someone stuck their head through the flap in the tent.
And I met his eyes—deep, gold-flecked brown like smoky quartz—through the haze of my pain.
The sector prince named Coen Steeler did not wear a single hint of a smirk this time.
His eyes scanned the inside of the tent, my friends picking themselves up and me huddled in the corner, rocking and cradling my head andshaking…
Before I knew it, he had bent toward me, picked me up, and thrown me over his shoulder before carrying me out of the tent, into the star-kissed night, and away.
CHAPTER
6
“Breathe. Deeply. Right now.”
Pure, primal command laced his every word. He’d hauled me through the campsite and into a narrow alley between two of those mansions on Bascite Boulevard, and set me on the ground with my back against the wall.
I grappled at my throat, choking on it. The power and the pain.
“In and out,” he commanded again, sinking onto his knees before me. “With every inhale, you are going to suck that power back in. With every exhale, you are going to feel the pain leave your body. Okay?”
“I can’t,” I gasped. “It wantsout.”
Indeed, it was tearing at me from the inside-out, roaring for more and more and more. But I didn’t want to explode again. Didn’t want to hurt anyone else.
“I know,” Coen said, still aggressive, but… with a hint of gentleness now. “But you have to contain it, so you will. In and out, like I said. Do it with me.”
