Page 136 of By the Orchid and the Owl
His voice surprised me; it reminded me of churning butter, the kind Fabian or Don might have once triggered with their magic back at home to make chocolate chip cookies. Soft. Silky.
But oily, too.
“I didn’t realize it was a crime to walk the beach,” I braved, sinceI don’t rememberseemed like a rather suspicious thing to say—although I doubted he would care about my drinking habits, to be honest. By the orchid and the owl, I really needed to stop drinking. It had cast me into the most horrible fog…
“It is not a crime to walk the beach,” Kitterfol answered smoothly, his face twitching as he clenched his jaw. The others around him shifted. “But you, Ms. Drey, are not walking. You are lying down, bruised and scabbed, with the famous white tiger from your Branding who just bounded off upon our arrival, and you are doing so mere hours after a boy went missing, a girl was found with her eyeballs torn to shreds, and five pirates breached the security dome.”
All of that information… what?
I focused on the most recent piece of it.
“Pirates breached the dome?” I cut a glance toward the shield, shimmery and nearly invisible in the distance, and hefted myself to my feet. “When? Are they still in here?” I paused. “A girl’seyeballswent missing?”
It felt like a joke. It had to be a joke. Some wild end-of-year prank.
Kitterfol’s tightened mouth, however, screamed nothing but seriousness. When another member of the Good Council whispered something into his ear, he said, “I’m not sure. Their work on her was… meticulous. I cannot find a single speck of him, but the holes in her memory certainly indicates so, and I think—”
Suddenly, he grabbed a fistful of my hair and wrenched my face to the side.
My scream spurted out of my throat before I could stop it.
“Marvelous,” Kitterfol breathed into my face, and I couldn’t spare an inch to flinch away, he held me so tightly. “Idoremember you and him together. Oh, how Dyonisia will be interested inthis. I think we should go talk to her now, don’t you?”
A Summoner in the group sent Kitterfol and me arcing up into the air, back toward campus.
Wind clawed at my skin as we rushed up and up, and my heart jostled around in my chest for a good two minutes before we were finally standing in the middle of the courtyard, that fountain tinkling merrily.
Besides the tinkling, though, it was quiet. Deathly quiet. Even the monkeys that usually chittered on the rooftops of the nearby Whispering sector had disappeared. Everyone, I knew, was either holed up in their houses, or taking their Final Tests—which would not be held in the Testing Center, but in various parts of the jungle around us. High up in the trees or deep inside hidden caves or at the bottom of lakes.
For some reason, the name Mrs. Pixton fluttered through my mind.
Okay, Ireallyshouldn’t have partied so hard last night.
“Come on,” Kitterfol Lexington said beside me, his smile slicked onto his face. “Inside we go.”
With his vise-tight grip on my arm, he marched us inside—but rather than to the archway with the Whispering motto engraved on its crown, he led me to the middle arch, one I’d never really looked at because Mr. Gleekle had always stood in front of it. There was nothing engraved above it besides the Good Council symbol, that bulbed star with a single dot in the center.
And there was nothing I could do besides follow him up.
To the dome itself. Or, rather, the attic beneath the domed roof.
I was panting by the time Kitterfol kicked open the door. My heartbeat scurried around in my chest, as thoroughly trapped as I was, and I barely even registered the arched golden beams swooping over our heads or Mr. Gleekle, Ms. Pincette, and some other members of the Good Council flanked behind a glittering glass chair.
All of it paled compared to the woman sitting in the center of it.
I hadn’t seen her since the Branding, but she was just as chillingly flawless as that night. Her skin glowed like honey-wrapped stars. Her hair of deepest black, framed by razor-sharp bangs, flowed past her shoulders, and her icy blue eyes were cutting into the girl kneeling before her.
I had to rub my eyes before I realized who that girl was.
“I don’t know,” Quinn Balkersaff was crying, her hair matted with twigs and dead leaves that camouflaged its usual vibrant ruby color.
“You were found,” Dyonisia replied without looking up at Kitterfol or me, “deep in the jungle, beyond the Esholian Institute border, huddled up inside a tower of ice thatyouconjured. Surely, that is abnormal behavior?”
Whereas I’d been surprised to hear how smooth Lexington’s voice was, I was even more surprised to find that Dyonisia’s was all shattered glass and broken thorns. I couldn’t blame Quinn for shuddering, even as I wondered how the hell she’d managed to get wrapped up in… whatever this was, too. Deep in the jungle? In a tower of ice?
“I don’t know,” Quinn said again, dragging in a deep breath. “I… I told you already. There was a prank. I was just going into the jungle to play a little prank with my friends. And then I ended up in the ice. I don’t… remember anything between those two instances. I’m sorry.”
The last time I remembered talking to Quinn, we’d been walking the same strip of rocky beach Jagaros had just found me dozing on. Maybe it was all related somehow? If so, I had to figure it out quickly, because I couldn’t stand the way Quinn trembled on her knees like that, no matter what words had slashed between us back then. She did not bow or shake or crack before anyone… yet she was doing all that now, before Dyonisia.
