Page 65 of By the Orchid and the Owl
Horrors that sounded a lot likeslice you openandpillage the magic from your blood.
Once, that hallucination Coen had bestowed upon all the first-years seemed like the worst thing that could happen. Now, I had a very vivid imagining of Dyonisia Reeve doing even worse—with all the tools Fabian and Don usually used in their little blacksmith shop in Alderwick. Sledgehammers and pliers. Nails and chisels. A forge.
Shivering, I crept to the ice box behind the kitchen doors, nabbed a chunk of paper-wrapped cheese, and hurried back up to the study room. There, I whispered Willa’s name into the stale, motionless darkness.
Her squeak of a voice answered me within seconds.
“I was beginning to worry that you’d forgotten today.”She scrambled onto a nearby desk. “How did your test—”
“Willa.” I unwrapped the cheese and placed it in front of her tiny paws. “Do you know of a place where I could talk to someone in private? Without the risk of any spiders overhearing?” I willed my heart to slow, to align with my breathing, to take hold of the fact that I wasn’t in any imminent danger. Not yet.
Willa cocked her head at me and sniffled.
“The eight-legged beasts don’t like water very much. Especially flowing water. Maybe near the estuary?”
“Perfect. Would you be able to pass a message to your family in the Mind Manipulator house?” I’d learned by now that all the mice shared their own kind of social community within the walls of each structure on Bascite Boulevard, often visiting each other and hosting little crumb parties. “Tell Coen Steeler to meet me on the bridge in five minutes. Can you pass that message along?”
“Sure, but…” Willa scurried around the hunk of cheese, ignoring it completely. “What’s wrong, Rayna? You look ill. Have you eaten anything tonight?”
“No, but I’m not hungry. I just have to speak with Coen.”
Preferably face to face. Because what I’d just learned… I felt like my scrambled mind would never be able to convey it all properly. I needed to voice it all aloud.
Willa gave me a beady-eyed look, her whiskers twitching, then scampered away.
Coen,I tried one more time.Coen, can you hear me?
Maybe it made me a coward to try to reach him this way, via minds and mice instead of just knocking on his front door and asking whoever opened it if I could come inside to see him.
But I heard Jenia’s voice in my head:Why’re you holed up in his room every weekend, then, if not to sleep your way to the top?andI couldn’t stand the thought of all those smirks that would follow me to his private bedroom, or the gossip that would meander its way back to Jenia and Kimber.
Before I could overthink my decision, I hurried back to the foyer and out the door, starting toward the bridge with my head bowed against a sudden sprinkle of rain.
The gurgle of the estuary rose around me as I leaned against the metal guardrails, waiting for him. And as the minutes leaked by, my worry grew.
Where was he? Surely, it had already been five minutes, right? Of course, he might have been sleeping, or talking to someone, or playing a card game, or performing prince duties, or… or… or… the possibilities swirled in my head, nibbling at every corner of my mind like swarming insects—
“Rayna? What’s going on?”
I whipped toward the sound of his voice and almost lunged forward to embrace him out of pure relief, but stopped myself. We’d never hugged, and he might find such a thing awkward or unwelcome, so I twisted my hands together instead.
“What’s the point of being a Wild Whisperer?”
That wasn’t what I’d intended to say, but it tumbled out anyway, my tongue completely out of my control.
“If I was a Mind Manipulator, I could have just read Mr. Conine’s mind to see ifheknew what the owl wanted to eat instead of playing stupid word games. I could have read Mrs. Wildenberg’s mind to find out if the hibiscus were saying yes or not. I could have forced the cockroaches to leave me alone instead ofbeggingthem to get off me.”
Coen had frozen, watching me as if I were an injured bird.
“What happened to you?” he asked, each word clipped and restrained.
I pressed my hands to my face. “I just… I needed to tell you about my test, and I needed to do it where there’s no chance of us being overheard, so I asked Willa, and—” My eyes had traveled to his hands clasping a pair of straps around his shoulders “—is that abackpack?”
Coen’s eyes narrowed in the rain-flecked starlight. “Yes,” he said, as ifIwere being the suspicious one. “Willa told me you hadn’t eaten so I thought I’d pack you some food.”
He ate up the distance between us in a single stride and lifted a hand from one of his straps, hovering it near my temple as if to brush away my hair.
“May I?”
