Page 129 of By the Orchid and the Owl
“The Good Council will be back tomorrow, and this time Dyonisia Reeve will be with them.” When I only stared at him, he added, “My Final Test is tomorrow, Rayna. At the crack of dawn.”
I shot straight up, pain be damned. I’d forgotten. Forgotten that the Final Test for all fifth-years occurred the morning after the last pentaball game. And as much as I’d accepted the fact that Coen and I weren’t together anymore, I still hadn’t wrapped my head around the idea that after tomorrow—whether he passed or failed—he’d be gone from this part of the island. Possibly back to the sea.
“Are you prepared?” I yelped.
Coen put a hand on my shoulders and eased me back down onto the bed.
“Yes. But I still don’t want Dyonisia finding out about what happened just now with Fergus and Jenia. Or Lander and Emelle. It’s safer if no one knows the truth.”
Here we were again. Back to the notion of spreading lies for everyone’s safety. While I couldn’t entirely disagree with him on this, I still felt a chill brush goosebumps over my skin at the… the unfairness of it all. That Lander and Emelle would never remember how they refused to leave my side, how they’d come with me, how they’d stood by me in the face of such callous cruelty, all because Coen had—
“I didn’t erase their memories,” Coen said.
My head snapped up, sending a bolt of pain through me again—although it was perhaps dampened compared to before as the pain relief medication worked its way through my system. “What?”
“I didn’t erase their memories,” Coen repeated. “Not Lander’s or Emelle’s. And I don’t think I’m going to erase Jenia’s or Quinn’s or that other kid’s memory either.”
“Why?”
I couldn’t believe I was asking that, but I was. Something about the pain relief sweeping through me seemed to make my tongue feel heavy, yet quick to blurt out whatever it was I was thinking immediately.
“Because.” Coen’s mouth pulled up into one of those smirks I’d missed so much. “I already spread a rumor through campus that Fergus and Jenia got into a huge couple’s fight during the pentaball game and destroyed the shit out of each other. Obviously, Jenia won.”
My mouth fell open. “And you think people will believe that?”
“Absolutely. Rumors are more convincing than outright lies, and besides.” Coen’s gaze dropped from mine, fixing to the floor. “I’m trying to keep people safewithouthaving to steal their memories. I’m sure once Jenia hears that bit of gossip about herself, she won’t refute it. If she did, she’d have to admit she was in on a plan to murder three of her classmates, which is sort of against the rules, as I said on the very first day you arrived.”
My eyelids were heavy, but I blinked against their weight.
“You killed Fergus.”
“With a dagger, not with magic,” Coen said. “No one will know.”
“So what Fergus said was true?” I asked. “Magic leaves traces? It tethers you to the thing you bestow your magic upon?”
“Did he say that?” Coen mused. “I suppose he was right, though I’ve never heard it worded that way. Either way, he deserved his ending after what he did to you.” His eyes bounced from bruise to bruise on my face and neck.
Just as I was about to open my mouth—to saywhat, I didn’t know—Coen whipped toward the door.
“Your friends are here. I won’t let them stay long, but I could hear their worry screaming for you from about a mile away, so I sent them a message that you’re safe here with me. And I figured you’d want to see them, anyway. Make sure they’re okay with your own eyes.”
Won’t let them stay for long?That wording implied Coen expected me to stay hereovernight. With him. In this room.
Or maybe that pain relief powder was scattering all rational thought.
I didn’t have time to think about it, though. The door swung open, and Lander and Emelle rushed in, followed by—I blinked heavily—Terrin, who immediately held out his hands and formed two solid blocks of ice out of thin air.
“Good God of the Cosmos, lady,” Terrin said, blinking back at me. “You look worse thanher.”
He didn’t even have to nod at Emelle, who had scurried to my side and was now throwing her arms around me. She smelled like sweat and blood, and a shower of bruises fell down her face.
“You’re alright,” she gasped. “I was—Rayna, I’ve never been so scared in my life. Lander ran Jenia to the sick bay and then we immediately went back to look for you, but Coen did that mind-to-mind thing you always described—” A quick, nervous glance in Coen’s direction. “—to tell us that… that…”
“Fergus is really dead?” Lander asked, dropping to my other side.
“Yes,” I whispered. “But you can’t go talking about what happened.” I looked at Emelle. “Even to Wren and Rodhi and Gileon. It wouldn’t go over well.”
I didn’t have to specify why this was. Both Lander and Emelle nodded. Perhaps they didn’t know about the prisons at the top of Bascite Mountain or the true fate that awaited if any one of us failed our Final Test, but they knew enough about the Good Council to keep their mouths shut.
