Page 128 of By the Orchid and the Owl
For out of everyone there, only Kimber would have known about my whereabouts. That knowledge would have existed in her mind and her mind alone—safe from Coen for as long as Coen refused to read her mind.
We had reached the edge of the jungle now, and were on the outskirts of the Shifter sector, full of rusted cages and wooden obstacle courses.
I caught a whiff,Coen said,right as I was about to throw the last ball through and win yet another victory for the Mind Manipulators.
A whiff of what?
Now we passed by towering perches that looked big enough for those giant birds who’d pulled me through the sky in a carriage so long ago.
A whiff of her triumph,Coen said darkly, and I understood immediately.
Kimbershouldhave been nothing but rage and fury the moment she realized the Manipulators were about to win the tournaments yet again. She definitely shouldn’t have beentriumphant—triumphant that she’d successfully kept Coen from me. That I was probably dead.
The intricacies of that game, not of pentaball, but the more sinister game that Kimber had been playing, made the pounding in my head begin to roil.
“I’d already thrown the ball when I dove into her mind and got it out of her,” Coen murmured down at me now. “So yes, we won, but I didn’t stay to celebrate. I ran right to the location I’d picked from her brain and found Lander and Emelle and the rest of Jenia. And they pointed me in the direction you’d run.”
The rest of Jenia. What the hell had Emelle done to her?
I didn’t have to wait for long to find out.
Within minutes, Coen was sweeping us toward my own house, where people milled about on Bascite Boulevard, either rejoicing or pouting about the game’s outcome, but… never looking at us. As if Coen had convinced them all to look away.
You know how my magic works extremely well for someone who’s not a Mind Manipulator.
You told me that’s what you did the night you carried me from my tent to the alleyway.Back then, though, I’d been flung unceremoniously over his shoulder, not nestled gently against his chest.
You remembered?Surprise flickered in his tone
Of course I did. I remember everything you say. Except the things you purposely take from me.
He was silent as he took me into my house and down the stairs, through a door I’d never entered. The sick bay.
In here, Coen finally placed me on my feet, but he didn’t let go. His arms wrapped around me, steadying me when I saw her.
The girl on one of the beds, who was staring blankly at the medic wiping the blood gingerly off her face.
Jenia was alive, that was for sure. I could see it in the shallow rise and fall of her chest, and in the way her fingers twitched on either side of her hips.
But her hair—that usually silky cascade of brightest blonde—was in bloody, matted patches, revealing strips of scabbed scalp beneath.
And those gray and sultry eyes that had seemed to follow and haunt and hate me ever since I’d met her on my first day here… they were replaced with bloody gauze that wrapped around her entire head.
Emelle, Coen said into me,got a few owls to use their talons.
We didn’t stay in the sick bay for long. Coen simply asked the medic to look me over and provide him with any medications necessary to help me heal. Then, after she’d handed him a vial of pain-relief powder, he simply told her to forget the entire exchange. And to not spread the word about Jenia, either.
Once we were in the safety of his room with that big white bed that had once rocked us into a skyful of stars (nobody watched us walk inside, still turning their heads away from us as if suddenly extremely interested in the walls), I turned to Coen blearily. He was busy unscrewing the vial and pouring its powdery contents into a cup of water from his bathroom sink.
“Doesn’t your house have its own sick bay? Why go to mine if you were just going to bring me here?”
Perhaps it wasn’t the brightest question, but the roil in my head was reaching a nasty level of pain, and I drank the cup of water almost eagerly when Coen brought it to my lips. It went down like the bitter tang of a melted coin.
“I was afraid my house’s medics would have a shield up against any Mind Manipulating tricks, and I needed to get medicine for you without anyone taking notice.”
“And why is that?” I slumped down on the edge of his bed, smoothing my fingers out against the spread of fluffy white. Like clouds. Like bliss.
Coen tilted his head at me.
