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Gileon shifted slightly in his cell. “Like me going through the mist when I was little. Seeing things. A beautiful city that looked like it was growing straight from the jungle. Little silver snakes that turned into creatures who look just like us but with…”

“Pointed ears and teeth?” I asked, a chill sweeping through me. Had Gileon wandered into the Uninhabitable Zone as a child? As a human, he would have been able to pass through that area of Dyonisia’s mist without harm.

“Yeah. But when they saw me, I got scared and ran back through the mist and a Mind Manipulator was waiting and he…” A shudder ran through Gileon’s voice. “He stomped all over my mind so I would forget about the creatures. But he also stomped all over other things. Like what I’d learned in school. My numbers and letters and everything like that.”

A frown dug into my cheeks.

Clearly, Gileon had come across the Ranuqian faeries as a child, and the elites had banished his memories so that he couldn’t spread the truth—damaging other parts of his brain in the process. That was all horrible enough as it was, but something else about his story seemed to be scraping against a locked door in the back of my mind. Like a missing key.

Little silver snakes. Had he witnessed a display of shifter-like power?

I would have pried even more, but the bang of a door down the hall halted my words in my mouth. The person in the next cell over emitted a low, wobbly moan of terror as the sound of clomping footsteps drew nearer.

Someone was coming.

Gileon didn’t say another word, but the whirr of shelled wings came zipping through the bars of my cell. When Nuisance landed on my shoulder, my Wild Whispering magic was still able to understand him in this mist-less corner.

“Friend says you’ve got to hide how brave you are. Friend says they won’t stop ‘til they think they’ve got you all squished. Friend says you’ve got to pretend to break.”

I nodded, knowing that Nuisance was speaking for Gileon. “Okay,” I whispered under my breath. “Thank you.”

The beetle whirred away just as a figure appeared on the outside of my cell, a face cast in the murky glow of all the strings of antipower threading through.

Not Dyonisia Reeve, but one I recognized all the same. He’d been at the Branding earlier this year, one of the five who’d sat before the stage. Rodhi had even pointed him out as one of the cruelest elites from Belliview.

Gregor Bilderas. Fergus’s father.

He surveyed me through the bars like a sculptor analyzing a new batch of clay. Greasy, graying hair curled at the nape of his neck, and he had the same hooded eyes as his son had. Not a single expression crawled over his face when I stared back.

“You’re lucky, you know,” he finally said.

His voice was so calm, so emotionless, that I could almost pretend there weren’t about a dozen instruments floating behind his back, poised for him to grab. Just as the pre-elites had whispered about, the strings of mist weaving through him obviously didn’t cause him any pain or suppress his Object Summoning power.

And whatever second power he’d been branded with.

I swallowed, forcing my mouth to move. “How am I lucky?”

“Well, you’re going to die here, at the highest point on this island, instead of some disgusting, lowly swamp. With three powers, too.” Gregor Bilderas’s hooded eyes moved from my left shoulder to my right arm to the pulse drumming in my neck, as if he could see through my flesh to the back of it where Coen had branded me. “A truly remarkable feat.”

I tried not to glance at the floating instruments again and failed. None of them would have been found in Fabian and Don’s shop, but I could make out general shapes. A screw-like device big enough for a thumb. A metal claw. A curved, chisel-like rod that looked like it could scoop out any eyeball.

My hands began to tremble.

“I don’t think there’s anything remarkable about what you plan to do to me.”

“Oh, I disagree.” Bilderas made a jerking motion with his head, and my prison door screeched open. “Pain is an inevitable part of life. Being on the receiving end of a… customized infliction of it either turns you into someone who drowns or someone who rises to the top.”

“Is that what you told your son, too?” I asked, and immediately wished I hadn’t.

Bilderas’s face didn’t betray a single flicker of emotion. No anger. No excitement. No smugness. Nothing.

“As far as I’m concerned,” he said smoothly, “I never had a son at all. And you never had the gall to rise all on your own.” He took a step inside, his instruments floating after him, and my nails dug into the prison floor. Like I could claw my way out of this. “Now pick a finger. We’ll start small.”

A plea clogged in my throat. My heart battered fists against my ribcage, trying to break free. I closed my eyes, picturing Coen holding my hand beside me. Emelle on the other side. Lander. Rodhi. Wren. Dazmine. Fabian. Don. Gileon, who really was here, who would hear every sound he got out of me.

I couldn’t help it then. I lifted my left hand and threw an obscene gesture Bilderas’s way.

He didn’t smile, exactly, but his mouth twitched. An eager glint had finally cracked through the shells of his hooded eyes.