Page 99 of By the Orchid and the Owl
We laid against each other afterward, suspended in space among those floating bits of moon. The clouds were long gone, a mere milky white sheen beneath us, and the boat swayed ever so gently as Coen stroked my arm.
I couldn’t tell how long we lay entwined like that, just soaking in the aftereffects as if the glow of the moon had been absorbed in our skin. It was only when Coen went rigid against me that his mind trick fell away like a curtain and we were on his bed, in the tangled sheets, in his room once again.
“What is it?” I asked, sitting up. My hair, already curling again at the ends, fell over him. He looked as if he were listening to something I couldn’t hear.
“Oh, it’s just… everyone’s minds are loud right now,” he muttered, turning to shift aside a strand of my hair so that he could look at me fully. “Some of the guys in my house let it spread that I carried you into my room, and I guess we were…”
I almost gasped, horrified.
“Loud?”
If either of us had been loud, it haddefinitelybeen me. I’d forgotten, what with the clouds and stars, that only four walls separated us from the rest of the house.
Coen’s half-wince was the only confirmation I needed.
I groaned, sinking back down. “So now it’s going to spread to Kimber and she’ll hate me extra hard.”
She’d already made fun of me for “sharing” Coen with Sasha and Sylvie, of course, but now it would be officially cemented in her mind. And I had a feeling she’d punish me for it, either one-on-one or through Jenia and Fergus.
“I won’t let her punish you,” Coen said vehemently. “And it’s just gossip. Everyone will forget about it tomorrow when someone cheats on someone with someone else’s cousin’s best friend. You know how it goes.”
“Yes, I know.” But I chewed my lip, gazing at the imprints on his ceiling. “I just didn’t realize it would be so dramatic here. Or so petty. But I suppose that’s what happens whenyouthrow a bunch of young adults together for years on end, huh?”
It had been bothering me, this constant… flippant spite. I couldn’t imagine anyone in Alderwick sending a horde of beetles into someone else’s face just because they’d been jealous of them once upon a time, like Kimber had done to Sasha and Sylvie back at the Element Wielder formal.
Coen cradled my naked body with his own.
“I’m not sure it ever goes away,” he said thoughtfully, resuming his strokes against my arm. “The drama and pettiness, I mean. I think it just matures—grows into something that can hide behind the guise of a different name.”
I craned my neck to look at him. “What doyoumean?”
“Well, mean girls grow up to be dangerous, manipulative women.” Coen’s eyes shuttered at that, no doubt thinking of Kimber. “Asshole guys grow up to be dangerous, abusive men. That’s why it’s so important to try to be the best version of yourself even in this phase of life they call ‘practice.’ Ifyou’regoing to practice anything,youmight as well practice being good, right?”
I thought about that. Quinn’s mother—had she once been a mean girl here at the Institute? A mean girl who’d passed her Final Test and found a way to manipulate and control others inside her own home rather than outside it? Perhaps cruelty towardyourpeers now translated to cruelty towardyourown children later.
A lump swelled in my throat. I let myself drink in Coen’s face.
“You’regood,” I said. “I feel that, deep down.”
His eyes shuttered. When he kissed me again, it was slower than last time.
And so was what followed.
Drama and gossip continued to grow and fester as the dry season officially swept away all the layers of clouds and brought clear blue skies shimmering with hints of the distant dome over our heads.
Everyone was focused on the upcoming pentaball tournaments, where each sector would play against each other. This year, the Shape Shifters would play against the Element Wielders and the Wild Whisperers would play against the Object Summoners. The winners of those two games would play against each other, and then the winner ofthatgame would play against last year’s champions: the Mind Manipulators, of course.
“I heard the Mind Manipulators win every year,” Rodhi said one day, slinging an arm around my shoulder while we walked to History together. “That true, darling? Or was Penny Ickers lying straight to my face?”
Penny Ickers, I knew from all the parties we’d attended, was a fourth-year Mind Manipulator who liked to tell exaggerated stories. But this wasn’t one of them.
“It’s true,” I sighed. Behind us, Emelle and Gileon were arguing about the sentience of clams, although Gileon’s quarrelsome nature extended to an uncertain whisper. Still, I tried to tune them out as I explained, “The Mind Manipulators can literally freeze the opposing team in place and win within seconds. Coen told me the trick to beating them is to immobilize them first, but… it’s not easy.”
Lately, I’d been forgetting how destructive Coen himself could be if he wanted to. Part of me couldn’t blame the Good Council for controlling us so severely outside of the Institute. What would Alderwick have looked like if Mind Manipulators were throwing around their power out on the streets, freezing anyone they fancied? Or what if an Element Wielder were to do that with a literal blast of ice?
I hadn’t worried about the pentaball tournament itself too much, though. The class royals of each house would pick five players for their sector’s team, and as a first-year on Kimber’s hate radar, I was definitelynotgoing to make the cut.
“I hope I’m on the team,” Rodhi said, almost mournfully. “I’ve made friends with the newest batch of mosquitoes over near the crocodile swamps and they promised me they’d fly over and bite the shit out of anyone I told them to.”
