Page 108

“Wonderful! The first pair back!”

Wonderful? My fists curled. How could anyone say that in the face of a dead student? How many more had died today, all for the chance at joining the very same elites who suppressed us? Did I even blame them? On the island of Eshol, it was either control or be controlled. Gain power or relinquish it.

To her credit, Quinn didn’t smile either. She only stared down at her hands, painted gray with ash.

“Um, as promised, I will personally recommend both of you to…um…Dyonisia Reeve.” Mr. Gleekle eyed the corpse again and glanced away, clearing his throat. “And you will both get your preferred job assignment. After today, I daresay you have demonstrated the ability to pass your Final Tests.”

He let out a chuckle that didn’t mask the fear brimming in his eyes when I stared him down. My powers tumbled over each other beneath my skin, a raging tempest that only just started to brew.

Refusing to break eye contact, I lowered the pre-elite’s body to Mr. Gleekle’s feet, then stalked off toward the staircase leading up to the Testing Center without a word.

“Are you still mad at me?”

I heard Coen’s footsteps trailing behind me before I saw him. I hadn’t even bothered returning home, simply marched straight into the jungle where the humming of the trees could wash over my furious pulse.

“I just think it was a big risk, showing up in the Testing Center like that.” I turned and jolted to a stop, head jerking up to find him much closer than I’d anticipated. Without taking his eyes off my face, he lifted his arms and placed something in my hand.

Not a knife this time. A sandwich. The same kind he’d made for me after my very first test, seed-filled bread with spiced avocado and tomato.

“Oh. Thank you.”

I lifted it to my mouth, my stomach giving a violent lurch as it remembered that food existed. That I hadn’t eaten all day. But I made sure to keep glaring as I took a bite so that Coen wouldn’t think this would make me forget what he’d just done.

“You fought a mutant by yourself,” I continued through a mouthful. “That was dangerous, Coen. You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”

He waved a hand. “Not a possibility. I would never just die moments before I got to see you again. That would be a stupid waste of my eyesight.”

I glared even harder. “You made me use my knife again.”

“You’re going to have to use them again eventually, Rayna.”

“And why’s that? Why can’t I just dump them right here and leave them behind forever?” I cast a hand around at the boughs climbing skyward around us. Imagined myself throwing the only remnant of my mother into the bushes.

Coen’s eyebrows creased. He stepped close enough for our chests to touch and stroked a thumb along my jaw, his black bamboo scent wrapping around me. “Because you have an uncanny knack for knowing what the right thing to do is. So if it was the right thing to do to abandon them, you would have done it already.”

I didn’t even realize I was crying until he leaned forward and kissed away a tear trailing down my cheek. His mouth moved to mine, achingly slow and gentle, before he pulled back just enough to let me breathe.

“Do you ever feel like you keep pushing it away?” I whispered against his lips. “The moment when you have to confront the feeling?”

It had been like a ghost hovering over me, a dark cloud haunting me since the moment Kitterfol Lexington had used my own knives to impale Garvis. To end his life and our friendship forever. A suffocating shadow, always freezing my bones in the face of danger, stuffing itself down my throat until my chest felt heavier than the world.

Coen knew what I meant instantly. He knew because he shared the same dark cloud, the same weight, the same pain.

“All the time.” His voice fractured in his throat. “I felt this way with my mother and Mattheus, too. Like maybe if I ignored it, it wouldn’t be real. Maybe my mother simply found her way out of the alleyways and into a warm, loving home. And maybe Mattheus is still sitting around a campfire somewhere, sneaking sips of ale.”

“And maybe Garvis is still wading through the ocean,” I said, not sure if it was a sob or a laugh building deep inside, “trying something new, hoping…”

My voice faded into the night. “I hope…” Garvis had said before he passed, his last declaration to the sky. All this time, I’d wondered what he hoped. But maybe that had been it. He’d simply hoped in a world where it was hard to do so.

“Excuse me. Are you going to finish that?”

The quiet, rather mournful voice came from the branches above my head. I squinted upward to find a familiar red-coated creature with rounded ears.

“Billy, you eavesdropper!” I sighed and lifted the last half of my sandwich until one of the opossum’s paws flashed down to snatch it.

“Wasn’t eavesdropping,” came his reply. “Was just…”

“Pretending to be dead,” I finished for him. “Yeah, I know.”