Page 32 of By the Orchid and the Owl
“My breakup last year… it didn’t hurt because I actually loved him. It hurt because our parents had sworn us to be married and I wanted so badly to please mine. But we… weren’t compatible in our ideas of how to have a good time.”
Emelle’s ears flared with a sudden pink hue. She lowered her voice even more.
“He liked to spank and choke and… a lot of other things that I didn’t enjoy.”
“By the orchid and the owl,” I muttered, the phrase slipping out after only a few days of hearing the older women say it all the time. “I’m so sorry, Emelle.”
She shrugged. “My parents will just have to get over it. I’m happy to be free of him, and after seeing your friend Lander go through so much grief over losing someone heactuallyloved… it changed my perspective a bit. Your turn, now.”
I paused. I couldn’t risk telling her about what had happened the night before Branding, not when certain listening ears might report it to the Good Council.
What was a secret I’d never told anyone? Something, perhaps, I hadn’t even admitted to myself?
It spilled from me before I could rethink it.
“There’s a fifth-year who I think is… really attractive.” God, that sounded so lame, but Emelle’s eyes widened all the same. “Like,” I forced myself to continue, “I’ve never been super into anyone back at home.” Indeed, I hadn’t even thought of Wilder since I’d left Alderwick, and I was sure he hadn’t thought of me. “I’ve kissed exactly one boy, and that was more because I was curious about what it would feel like than anything else. And I did enjoy it, but not as much as I imagine I’d enjoy kissinghim.” I was rambling now, trying to scramble through the realization.
“Who?” Emelle whispered.
“I—do you hear that?”
We both paused.
Like the subtlest of fingernail taps against glass came aclick, click, click:multiple spider legs scuttling closer to hear what we were saying.
Emelle mouthed something to me. I nodded, and stooped down low. She hooked one leg around my neck and mounted herself up on my shoulders.
I raised her up on trembling legs, letting her peer over the upper ledge of the bookshelf.
“Got them!” she exclaimed. “Let me down.”
I lowered her to the floor as a few fellow classmates glanced in our direction, looking puzzled and frustrated. Emelle opened her hands to reveal two long-legged orb weavers hulking in her palm.
“Very good, ladies,” Ms. Pincette said from across the room.
We decided to wait for Rodhi before heading back to the house, which took… a while, surprisingly.
By the time he emerged from Building 3B, grinning so widely I thought his face would crack open, the rest of our class had already filtered past us. I could hear the clamoring sounds of other sectors heading home for the day, too.
“What the hell…?” I began.
“I’m going to marry her,” Rodhi declared, catching up with us.
“Who?”
“Ms. Pincette, of course. Have you ever seen a woman so fine?”
Emelle giggled into her hands. I gaped at him in horror.
“She’s an instructor!”
“So? I’m technically an adult, aren’t I? And evenyouthought I could pass as a teacher myself. Sometimes you think so small, darling.”
He began marching in the direction of the courtyard, not a single doubt slumping his narrow shoulders. Exchanging raised eyebrows, Emelle and I followed.
We rounded the corner of a building. And stopped.
There in front of us, four people squatted behind one of the pillars on either side of a stairwell that snaked back to the courtyard: Jenia, Dazmine, Fergus, and a boy I’d never seen before—from another sector, then.
