Page 69 of By the Orchid and the Owl
For a moment, only the crash of the waterfall blared around us.
“How did you and the others get through it all those years ago?” I whispered. “Whatisthe dome, anyway?”
I’d always imagined it was a staticky material made of different types of magic. Perhaps a solid wall of air woven with a Mind Manipulating charm to stay away, or a vault of iron that the Shape Shifters made appear invisible.
Coen seemed to shiver. He stepped away from me, dragging his fingers through his hair and looking toward the waterfall instead—or perhaps he was looking past the waterfall, toward the place where his old home bobbed on the sea.
“Think of it like a sort of… disease. Or a poison made solid.” He still didn’t look at me, as if he were ashamed, when he said, “And Terrin, Garvis, the twins, and I—we’re all immune to it. That’s how we got through.”
I tried not to gape. Tried to process the information without letting it show on my face.
“So in theory,” I said, stepping closer to him again, “you five could go in and out as you please? The shield isn’t actually keeping you in?”You could return to your family whenever you wished, if they still remembered you. If they’d still take you back.
The thought made me wonder if my own mother was immune as well, if that’s how she’d stepped foot on the island and met Fabian and left again just as easily after I was born. If she’d left at all. I wouldn’t know unless Fabian ever returned my message.
“In theory,” Coen agreed, his eyes flitting back to mine.
I felt a tickle in my mind, a gentle probing. Shadows seemed to cross his face.
“Do you know why your power slipped through the suppressant?” he asked.
“No.” I started, surprised that he was even asking me. “I’d assumed it was just something that happened from time to time.” The silence between us swelled with crashing water. “That’s… that’s never happened to you?”
Coen shook his head slowly. “The pill has never failed any of us before. I can’t remember the last time I actually felt my own power, having taken a suppressant every week for… what is it? Seven years now?” Another tickle in my mind. “Can you explain to me what it felt like, to lose a bit of it?”
I knew he could access my memories, that he could see for himself—hadalreadyseen for himself. What he wanted now was my own verbalized perception.
“It felt like…” I looked around as if I might be able to find the right words sparkling on the tips of each gemstone. “It felt like a slice of it slipped through the bars of a jail cell or something.” I couldn’t help but imagine the spindly pieces of cheese that curled at the end of a cheese grater. The slice of power had been just as thin, just as malleable, just as localized.
Coen’s lips twitched as he saw that image in my mind, too. But the smile never fully took form, because the next second he tipped back his head and sighed.
“I wonder if we should increase your dose.”
“Absolutely not,” I started. “Not when I don’t even know where you get them or how you make them.”
A pained expression. I almost wanted to smooth out the sudden lines in his forehead with my fingers. To force his worry to soften.
“I have to pay for them, you know,” he said quietly, “and part of that payment involves my… confidentiality. They don’t want the Good Council to know what they’re providing me with.”
I considered this. Imagined a pharmacist or herbalist in Coen’s adopted village, mixing special powders of who-knew-what and filling those pearl-shaped capsules with the mixture. The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t blame the herbalist—or whoever they were—for making Coen swear his secrecy. If the Good Council found out…
“Fine.” I unleashed a breath. “I can respect that.” I let myself get lost in the cascading glitters, the warped, pulsing starlight around us… if only to give my brain a break fromthinkingso hard. “This place is beautiful, you know.”
“It is, isn’t it?” But Coen hadn’t followed my gaze. His stayed on my face.
I returned my focus to him.
“What is it?” I could tell something was bothering him about my own expression. “Do I have tomato juice on my face, or something?”
Unfortunately, no, or I’d lick it off for you.
His voice was merely a wisp in my mind, as if he’d let that thought pass through his defenses. I supposed if he was already loitering in my head, it would be hard to contain his own thoughts from me. I didn’t know whether to nudge him playfully or protest or wipe my mouth, as if I could feel where he’d lick me—but before I could decide, Coen rushed on.
“I just don’t want you to worry about us—me and Garvis, or the twins and Terrin. I can feel the… the weight of your fear for us, but we’re going to pass the Final Test. All five of us.” His eyes blazed with those flecks of quartz, and I suddenly found him more mesmerizing than the waterfall or gemstones. “And when your time comes, Rayna, you’re going to pass it, too. You have years to practice your control, so in the meantime, that’s exactly what I want you to do, okay? Practice, and enjoy your friends, and—”
I tore myself away from him suddenly.
“So we’re just supposed to ignore this possibility of a torture chamber overlooking our entire island?”
