Page 87 of By the Orchid and the Owl
“—got his tooth knocked out.”
I had no interest in watching people pummel each other to bruised and broken bits, and was about to suggest to Coen that we ignore it when his face went pale for the second time tonight.
“What?” I asked abruptly, casting around for signs of Emelle. She was still wrapped around her hookup in the corner, completely oblivious.
“It’s…” He winced, and I knew he was scouring the minds of everyone downstairs. “It’s Fergus.” And now his eyes widened. “And Gileon.”
CHAPTER
31
My heart jumped. I was racing toward the ladder before I knew what I was doing, pushing people aside for the first time in my life. A few sneers shot my way, but I didn’t care. And even though Coen was calling after me, I refused to slow down.
Fergus must have snapped. Must have discarded Coen’s earlier warning and decided to mess with Gileon for fun. And if Gil had been hurt, his teeth knocked out or worse…
As soon as my feet landed on the floor below, I was flying downstairs. I didn’t know how I could help, what I could do, but I knew I had to be there. Had to stop it, somehow, before my sweet, too-innocent friend was hurt beyond repair.
But when I finally shoved through the dense, circling throng in the foyer and beheld what had happened, I lurched to a halt.
Gileon was standing upright, his brow furrowed in concentration, but there wasn’t a scratch on him. Not a single trickle of blood or blossoming bruise.
Fergus, meanwhile, was spitting blood through a mangled mouth, bobbing before Gileon with his fists raised. There was no sign of mold or other magic, just the two of them facing off in a circle of eager onlookers. As the pieces slid into place, I realized that Fergus must have tried to trip Gileon, and Gileon, in turn, had knocked his tooth out.
And suddenly, I was trying really, really hard not to smile.
Fergus roared and barreled forward again, the whites of his eyes screaming with popped blood vessels. Gileon wasn’t fast enough to side step him, but just as Fergus brought his elbow back for a punch, he managed to catch his wrist, hold it back with ease, and bury his own bunched hand into Fergus’s face again.
“Oooh,” someone in the crowd groaned.
Jenia’s scream cut through the gasps as Fergus whipped sideways and crumpled to his feet. She broke through the onlookers and sank to her knees beside him, shaking his shoulder.
As Coen sidled up beside me, folding his arms over his chest and passing me the most suppressed smirk I’d ever seen, I caught sight of Fergus’s face: mangled jaw, shredded lips, blood-drenched chin… and a few more yellow-stained teeth scattered on the floor around him.
Fergus had tried to poke at Gileon for the last time.
From across the room, I caught the dazzling flash of Wren’s triumphant grin.
Gileon’s victory was about the only thing anyone could talk about for the next several days within the Wild Whispering sector, but even that topic dwindled away as the second quarterly test drew near.
“Mitzi Hodges claims she overheardMr. Coninesaying we just have to convince a snake and a mongoose to quit fighting this time around for the Predators & Prey test,” Emelle said during Spiders, Worms & Insects as we tried to coax out pill bugs from some mangrove roots in the arboretum. “No riddles this time, so it should be easier to pass.”
She’d been very careful not to mention Lander’s name since he’d disappeared with Quinn at the formal, and I hadn’t seen Lander himself to ask what his so-called “talk” with Quinn had been about. I almost would’ve thought I’d been imagining a spark between my two friends if Emelle hadn’talsosteered clear of the topic of her random hookup anytime I tried to bring it up.
I studied her, watching as she pressed her lips to the bottom bark of the mangrove tree and emitted a peculiarcwip! cwip! cwip!sound that was supposed to lure the pill bugs out. When nothing happened, she withdrew and bit her lip in frustration.
“Emelle,” I began for what seemed like the hundredth time, “about the other night…”
“Oh, look!” She shielded her eyes from the strip of sunlight through the canopy and twisted away from me. “Here come Rodhi and Gileon.” Okay, she still didn’t want to talk about the Element Wielder formal. Noted. “Guess they’re not having much luck either.”
Indeed, the two were traipsing toward us, Gil’s head brushing the branches above, with absolutely defeated expressions. Our other classmates were scattered in pairs throughout the rest of the arboretum, too, but we hadn’t witnessed any of their failures or successes yet, and I hadn’t seen Ms. Pincette since she’d released us with instructions.
“Any luck?” I asked them.
“Well,” Rodhi said morosely, leaning against our tree, “I managed to get one little roly poly to poke its head out, but it took one look at my face, said—what did it say, Gil?”
“Ah, a demon!” Gileon mimicked.
“Yeah, that.” Rodhi slumped against our mangrove tree. “Thankfully Ms. Pincette didn’t see that. She was too busy scolding Jenia—which just reminded me why I can’t give up on that wonderful woman, even after all her little rejections.” He closed his eyes. “I’ve never been so turned on as I was just now, listening to that.”
