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My knees trembled as Mr. Gleekle beckoned me with a single, meaty finger. I stepped toward him, my breath scattering in my lungs.

I could practically feel my mind fraying to pieces already, scales erupting from my skin, fire exploding from me uncontrollably, the trees flattening around me.

Coen! I cried out into nothingness, as if he could hear me from wherever he was. But our mind-to-mind connection only worked when he was in range. We weren’t vigates, didn’t have a bond that stretched across the world.

And the end of the poker erupted in crackling flames right before my eyes.

“Now, before we begin, Ms. Drey, I will need you to repeat after me.” Mr. Gleekle raised his hand, and I mimicked. “I, state your name.”

I swallowed, hating myself. “I, Rayna Drey.” Rayna Drey Reeve, my subconscious whispered, but even if Mr. Gleekle knew my real name, I wouldn’t dare say it out loud in front of the other pre-elites.

“Do hereby swear that I will uphold the values of the Good Council,” Mr. Gleekle continued, and I repeated it, “by leading and protecting the people of this island, using whatever force necessary, until the end of all my days.”

“Until the end of all my days,” I echoed, my stomach roiling.

“Very nice.” Mr. Gleekle inhaled through his nose, triumph splattering across his pupils. “Once you officially join the Good Council, you will repeat that oath under more… official circumstances. Now, if you would please lift your right arm—I know it’s a rather awkward spot for a brand, but we can’t have your peers seeing it and getting jealous, can we?”

“No, sir.” I forced the words through my teeth.

And lifted my arm.

Once upon a time, I’d been high up on the hilltop behind me, looking down on a scene just like this with Rodhi and Dazmine. Now it was me who watched Mr. Gleekle bring that brand closer and closer, the flames dwindling until the metal was a wicked orange glow mere inches away from the underside of my arm.

Maybe I should shove the brand back into Mr. Gleekle’s face. Try to Mind Manipulate every pre-elite behind him before they could turn their plethora of powers on me. Ask the jungle to protect me as I fled.

But my subconscious knew what would happen if I didn’t comply. Perhaps I’d known, all along, that I could not leave this island while Dyonisia Reeve still ruled it, because as soon as I did, as soon as I ripped myself from her control…

I will enjoy dropping a bomb of my won power on Alderwick, she’d informed me last year. And this time, I’ll make sure it suffocates every last drop of magic, no matter which form that magic takes.

…she would go after the people I loved.

So I closed my eyes as, for the third time in my life, a brand touched my skin.

CHAPTER

19

COEN

My feet landed, catlike, on the roof of the Mind Manipulator mansion.

Immediately, something prickled the back of my neck, a sense of wrongness I couldn’t pinpoint. The air was dense, muggy with fog, and thunder rumbled in the jungle behind me. Bascite Boulevard was mostly quiet, with a few stragglers stumbling home from whatever party they’d been at, but nothing looked out of place.

Glancing at the Wild Whisperer mansion across the street, I speared my mind toward Rayna’s room, knowing she’d be awake, waiting for information about Jagaros and the Uninhabitable Zone.

But Rayna wasn’t there.

Every inch of my body went still with lethal alertness. It was nearing midnight, and she wasn’t in her room. Usually, her mind was like a beacon, a call to home, but I didn’t sense it anywhere in the vicinity.

My magic rumbled within me, a dark, fathomless power rolling over my bones. I could sense Felicity sleeping in Rayna’s bed, but I’d never been able to decipher the images in animal minds as well as Rayna herself could, so I swept into Emelle’s mind—currently flitting through dreams—and found the information I needed there instead.

Rayna had gone to a party with Felicity and two other girls from her house.

But she hadn’t returned.

Pacing along the gables now, I let my Mind Manipulator power explode outward with more force than I’d used since Hallow’s Perch, my dread sharpening it back into the weapon it had once been. Mind after mind after mind after mind… I flipped through them all, scouring for recent memories of that Object Summoner party, of Rayna and what could have possibly happened to her.

Until I landed on one in particular.