Page 131 of By the Orchid and the Owl
“It’s mine,” I told Willa instantly. “Let it go so it can speak to me.”
To Willa’s credit, she didn’t hesitate. She released the spider instantly, and soon eight, green-tinted eyes glimmered up at me from within the darkness.
“I’ve come to warn your soulmate,” the spider said.
I inhaled to correct its use of the wordsoulmate, but it continued quickly.
“Dyonisia Reeve found out about Coen Steeler and his peculiar band of childhood friends.She is not even going to give them a chance to pass their tests tomorrow morning.The Final Test is a trap.”
CHAPTER
49
“Tell me everything,” I said immediately, and I could feel Coen tense beside me as he no doubt heard the translation play out in my brain.
“The fifth-years will gather at the Testing Center for their Final Tests in the morning, but instead of staying with their instructors like usual, they’ll be leaving with different members of the Good Council to various parts of the island.”
“So as soon as Coen and his friends step foot in the Testing Center…?”
“The Good Council will whisk them away along with everyone else,”the spider confirmed. “But rather than take them to a testing site, Dyonisia will drag them straight to the prisons at the top of Bascite Mountain.”A contemplative pause. “The other spiders are absolutely gleeful about her trickery.”
“Shit,” I spat. “Shit! Coen?”
“Already on it.” His voice rang softer, more sorrowful than I would have expected. Where was the panic? Where was the frenzy brewing in my own chest? “I’ve sent messages to Garvis and Terrin and the twins, and—”
“And?”
His hand was sweeping along my back now.
“And they’re going to meet me at the Throat in fifteen minutes. We have to leave the island before dawn.”
I’d expected this, but it didn’t stop the burn from swelling in my throat.
I cleared it away and turned back to my spider.
“Thank you so much. You didn’t hear anything about Dyonisia Reeve discovering anything about… aboutme, did you?”
It clicked its fangs like pincers. “No. Nothing about you or your own friends.”
My relief was short-lived as Coen scrambled upward to begin throwing things in a bag from under his bed: his favorite clothes and lightest knife and the dried fruit he always stashed in his bedside drawer for a midnight snack. The fact that I knew all of these things made the sting in my throat tighten and constrict now.
“Rayna?” Willa asked gently, still sitting on the top of his bed.
I watched Coen pack his supply of pills as well, the dozens of them rattling in a tin canister he kept buried beneath his socks, and hope flared where I felt tears.
He wasn’t leaving any behind for me. Did that mean—?
I was much too frightened to finish that thought. In case it wasn’t true.
The moment Coen was done packing, I knew because he stilled, his face bowed toward the far side of the room. I could see the back of his jaw muscles working up the courage to say something to me.
“I’m coming with you.”
Before he could turn, I slipped onto the floor.
“Rayna.” The hoarseness in his voice—the pure, aching regret—curdled my stomach. “You can’t. Dyonisia doesn’t know what you are, so your safest bet is to stay here and—”
“If this is about the shield, then I’m willing to test it. Maybe I’m immune, too.”
