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A door banged open before me. My feet tripped down a sharp-cornered staircase and along a new hall that reeked of iron. A grinding screech interweaved with my own as I was forced through more strings of antipower, into a mist-laced cell bordered by bars on three sides and a solid stone wall in the back.

I fell to my knees. The cell door grinded to a close, and the elites left without another word. I had no idea if Mrs. Smetlar had followed or if Dyonisia would be coming or anything beyond the streaks of pain spiderwebbing through me.

“Get in the corner,” a weak voice fissured through the dark.

I glanced up through tear-blurred vision to find a single pocket of space in the left corner of my cell that the milky mist hadn’t touched. Big enough for exactly one person and not a limb more.

One hand in front of the other, I began to crawl toward it. Shuddered with a great, heaping inhale when I finally made it to the empty space and all the pain leaked out of my body. At the same time, my magic flared back to life within my veins, no longer on the brink of destruction, but…

Through the heavy pants that racked my chest, I tried to summon a piece of rubble beyond the cell door. My invisible hands reached out but cringed away again as soon as they came into contact with the first string of mist.

Okay, so my powers were contained in this corner with me. That was fine. Expected, really. At least the lashing pain of antipower couldn’t touch me here.

Leaning my head back against the wall, sticky with sweat despite the cold, I unpeeled my lips from each other.

“Thank you,” I whispered to whoever had spoken to me.

“‘Course.” The voice was unfamiliar to me, barely loud enough to make out over the rattling of my heart. But another one from two cells down, larger and heavier than the first, spoke up at the sound of my own voice.

“Rayna? Is that you?”

My heart spiked up even more. “Gileon?”

I could only lean forward a miniscule inch before the strands of milky mist forced me back again. Thankfully, it was enough to see through the bars of the wall to my right. Past a barely-breathing body slumped in the corner of the cell next to me, I could just barely make out another familiar silhouette two cells down.

“Oh, Gil,” I rushed out. “You’re alive! Are you okay?” A horrible thought lurched in my stomach—that even if he was alive, he couldn’t have possibly made it to this point unscathed. “What did they do to you?”

“S’not so bad,” came Gileon’s voice. Not as weak as the other one’s, thank God, but still a bit slurred and sluggish. “He’s kept me company through it all.”

I was about to ask who he was talking about when an unmistakable thread of tiny words buzzed from his cell. I recognized who they belonged to instantly, and wondered how I’d never noticed that the Gileon fraud’s rhinoceros beetle—the one who had died in Mrs. Smetlar’s classroom—had also been a fraud.

Because Nuisance was here in this prison with us.

“They let you keep him?” I nearly laughed.

“Oh, no. I think they were trying to squish him, actually, but he’s a smart little guy, aren’t you, Nuisance?” Gileon cooed. “Flew down my shirt and all but disappeared till we got here. Then I found him snug in my sock.”

My laugh faded just as quickly as it had formed. All this time, Gileon had been here with nobody but a goddamned beetle to look after him… and I didn’t even know how much time that was. I should have noticed more signs that my friend was gone. Shouldn’t have trusted so easily this time around.

“When?” I asked now, leaning my head against the stone wall behind me once more. “When did they take you?”

“Hmmm.” I could imagine Gileon scrunching his forehead. “Last thing I remember was heading out the door to go to the Branding. Then some bullies came out of nowhere and started poking me with some floating sticks again. Really sharp sticks. I tried to fight back like Wren taught me, but…”

“There were too many of them,” I finished for him, throat closing up.

“Yeah. They got me cornered and then my head felt fuzzy and I fell asleep real quickly. When I woke back up they told me I was exiled, but I don’t remember taking the Final Test at all.” A pause. “Hey, you didn’t fail your Final Test, did you, Rayna?”

“No.” I swallowed a string of curses I wished I could fling at the Good Council and Dyonisia Reeve. “Neither of us did, Gil. It’s just their favorite excuse to hurt people.” Now it was my turn to pause—dreading asking the question, dreading the answer even more. “How badly have they hurt you?”

“Don’t think they’ve ever made me bleed. No more sticks to my body, anyway. Just up here.” A tapping sound, like Gileon had a finger to his head.

Mental torture. Was that what everyone got here, or just him?

“I’m sorry, Gil.”

“‘S okay.” Gileon genuinely sounded like he was trying to comfort me. “They stirred up my mind so good they dug up a few things I forgot about.”

Despite our grim circumstances, my curiosity perked up. “Like what?”