Page 120 of By the Orchid and the Owl
Emelle just held out a single hand and gave me a watery smile.
“I love you, Rayna. And I’ll be by your side the entire time. If there’s ever a moment where it becomes too much for you, just give the word and I’ll leave the game with you, okay? But please try to get out and join us. Please.”
I pressed my lips together, sucked back in the tears, and nodded.
“Okay,” I said.
And took her outstretched hand.
The pentaball game was seconds away from starting by the time we hit Bascite Boulevard, where Lander was waiting for us right outside the Whispering house.
He stood in the empty street, hopping from foot to foot.
“Finally. I was just about to break in and see if you two were still alive.”
“Sorry! Girl talk,” Emelle sang back cheerfully.
Before Lander could finish rolling his eyes, Mr. Gleekle’s voice leapt out from the stadium, amplified on those hundreds of streams of wind.
“Ladies and gentlemen! It’s time for the final pentaball game of the season! Now, I’ve repeated the rules so many times I think my own ears might bleed if I repeat them again—” A chuckle scraped against us. “—so without further ado, allow me to introduce the ten magnificent young men and women before me now.”
I gritted my teeth as Emelle and I joined Lander. In mere seconds, Coen’s name would rattle through my eardrums, and I’d be damned if I let myself evenblinkabnormally in reaction to that. No, I could do this. I could—
A voice stopped me in my tracks.
No, notonevoice. Hundreds of voices.
A cloud of flashing yellow and orange wings fluttered toward me.
In flowing, gargling accents, the butterflies said, “Rayna Drey.”
My gape probably looked comical. I had half a mind to wipe out my ears with the sleeve of my shirt, make sure I’d heard correctly.Insectswere talking tome?
“W-hat?” I asked, wafting toward them. “Do you need something?”
Emelle, too, had stopped and turned, her mouth popped open just as wide as mine was.
Lander, on the other hand, merely pressed his mouth together in a confused frown. He had no idea these butterflies had even spoken, I realized.
“You must come with us,”they said now, their flowery tenors completely at odds with the urgency now creeping into their tones.“It is Jagaros. He is in danger.”
“What? Where?” I stepped toward the butterflies. Jagaros? I hadn’t heard from him in… months and months now. “What kind of danger?”
“In the jungle,” they answered in flowy unison, disregarding that last question. “We will lead you to him, but we must make haste before…”
“PETRA SCALLION,” Mr. Gleekle cut in, his voice blasting through them.
The butterflies scattered for a moment, reformed their cloud, and began flitting away, toward the jungle on the other side of the Element Wielder house.
“Wait! I—”
I whipped toward Emelle and Lander to tell them to go to the stadiums without me—but I already knew what Emelle would say. Not just because of her set mouth and the way she’d planted her hands on her hips.
No, Coen might have erased Emelle’s memory of doing this once before, but that didn’t take away from the grit and will and stubbornness imbedded in her.
“I’m coming,” she said firmly.
“I know.”
