Page 72 of By the Orchid and the Owl
“I think… I think I’m afraid that you’ll abandon me like Quinn did, if I mess up somehow. I’m afraid I’ll hold you back by clinging to you, and you’ll resent me just as much as she did.” My vision swam as the full weight of what I was saying sunk in. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“Oh, Rayna.”
Emelle folded her arms around me and brought me close. She didn’t say anything for a moment, just squeezed and rocked, before pulling back to look at me.
“You can cling to me all you want, okay? That’s just the beauty of getting to pick your friends. Some people don’t like that level of closeness, but I do.” She smiled. “And I’m so grateful you chose to say hi to me after the Branding, because I couldn’t ask for a better best friend to go through these next five years with.”
Now I choked on a watery laugh.
“I think I’m the lucky one, Melle. But thank you. And I promise I’ll let you know next time I go running off.” I swiped a wrist across my eyes to clear the tears beading on my lashes. “By the way,” I sniffed, “how didyourtest go?”
“Ugh.” She leaned her head against the sofa’s back pillows. “I couldn’t get that stupid owl’s riddle. Or, I guessI’mthe stupid one, because I gave it a slug when apparently it had been asking for a toad. So said Mr. Conine.”
I blew out a whistle. “I nearly failed that one. And the cockroaches killed me.”
Almost literally.
Emelle cocked her head at me now. “When you say you called for Coen to distract you…?”
“No. We didn’t have sex.” I glanced around for signs of Jenia or Kimber before whispering, “but we did kiss.”
Emelle squealed and clapped her hands. “I knew it. You look likesomethingwent down between you two.” She gestured at my hair. If it had been a nest before my time with Coen, I couldn’t imagine what it looked like now. “Where did you go, anyway?”
I was spared having to answer this question by the sudden appearance of Rodhi, who had barged upstairs from the common area and panted, “Cookies. Wren and Gileon made cookies downstairs. Apparently, Gileon’s tired of all the combat training with Wren so he forced her to do something else for a change, and I thought I’d give you the courtesy of letting you know before I eat them all.”
“How sweet of you, Rodhi,” I said, trying not to roll my eyes.
“Anytime, darling.” He winked at me. “Hope your night was as fun as your hair suggests it was, by the way. Did you and Steeler finally smash?”
This time it was Emelle who saved me from answering by jumping up.
“I’m gonna go grab Lander. He wouldn’t want to miss cookies.”
Rodhi and I slipped each other smirks as Emelle ran out the front door.
CHAPTER
26
The weeks following that first test were… brutal.
Not because the instructors themselves ramped up their lessons, but because our entire class found an aggressive new desire to outperform everyone else. Nobody fell asleep in History or The Language of Plants anymore. Nobody held back in Predators & Prey or Spiders, Worms & Insects. Even Jenia quit cutting through the teachers’ voices with her whispers, her attention directed at each lecture with the sharpness of cold-cut steel.
A majority of the class, it seemed, had failed at least one portion of the test. And from the rumors see-sawing between the girls’ and boys’ houses, it sounded like only about two-thirds of us would improve enough to pass the test in five years, if we were anything like all the Wild Whispering classes before us.
Which made it a relief, one day in late fall, when Terrin caught up to me and Emelle as we were walking back to the house and invited us to his Element Wielder snow formal—an annual event placed strategically the weekend before the second test.
“To get everyone’s mind off their own nerves,” Terrin explained, just as we all three came to the bridge arching over the estuary.
I couldn’t walk over that bridge without remembering the tunnel winding along somewhere beneath it, and what had happened between Coen and me at the end of that tunnel. Of course, it had happened a few more times throughout these last few weeks, but always in Coen’s room, never in that cave gilded with gemstones. And we’d never gone all the way.
Still, though, I blushed as our footsteps clinked over the metal archway.
Terrin shook back his shaggy head of hair and surveyed me. “You alright, Drey? Your cheeks look a little flushed. Is it something I said?”
I knew better than to fall for his oh-so-concerned expression. Coen himself had told me that out of all his childhood friends, he and Terrin were the most alike, so I caught the smug little glint in his eyes and the way his mouth had quirked.
“Oh, no, I’m actually cold, Terrin. Aren’t you?” A lie. Even in the wet season, the only part of the island that actually got cold was the top of Bascite Mountain or the places Element Wieldersmadecold.
