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Lockett wrinkled his nose. “Wild Whisperers can’t get lost. The trees always lead us home. And my spiders don’t like anyone else telling them what to do, do you, babies?” he cooed at the creatures on his shoulders.

My back muscles twitched as my tattoo began to undulate. By the moonbeam and the mist, I was going to rip somebody’s head off. And since Lockett was the only one within arm’s reach at the moment, it was probably going to be him if he didn’t tell his damn spiders to take me to Rayna right now.

Or was all this murderous rage just Mydusia’s command coursing through me? Was this proof of a compulsion to kill a branded citizen right now? Is this what it would feel like to stand in front of Rayna herself?

At that moment, those branches on either side of us touched me again, waxy leaves brushing against my skin like a nudge forward. Not Lockett. Only me.

The trees always lead us home.

Her. Home. Her.

And I knew. I knew just as surely as I had memorized that beautiful, clever mind of hers that she had left me a trail to follow through the trees—had told them to lead me to her. I wasn’t a Wild Whisperer by any means, but those branches were urging me toward one of their favorite ones.

“Go home,” I ordered Lockett again, and this time I didn’t look back to catch his reaction or make sure he listened.

I just broke into a run.

Left. Right. Uphill. Through shallow rivulets and over rotting logs and between the colossal roots of fig trees. Even when thunder boomed around me and rain poured from the canopies above, I didn’t stop pushing my legs, faster and faster.

Maybe they hadn’t branded her yet. Maybe I could reach her in time.

Or maybe I was too late. Always so afraid of touching her that I’d never touch her again, never hold her in my arms, never grip her face and kiss her lips—

Lurching to a stop, I nearly stumbled off the edge of a cliff overlooking a basin beneath me. A stone platform hulked at the bottom, bordered by towering pillars—one of which had toppled and smashed to pieces against the stone.

But nobody was there.

“Rayna!” I shouted into the open air.

Wind howled against me now, rain pelting me in the face. The tree branches had stopped guiding me forward, rising back to their original positions. This was the end of the path, and surely where the secret Branding ceremony had taken place.

So where were they all? Where was she?

“Rayna!”

I Walked to the basin next to the fallen pillar and spun in furious circles, my shirt clinging to me in the rain. The shriek of the storm was the only thing that answered back, but nothing was louder than the boil of my own blood in my ears.

I shouldn’t have ever left her. Should’ve never assumed she’d be safe here at the Esholian Institute, pretending to be an ordinary student when she was extraordinary in every way—and therefore a target. More than that, I shouldn’t have ever waited to ask her the one question that had been roiling in my chest for ages.

“Rayna!” I called again, closing my eyes.

My mind speared out in every direction, grasping for hers, searching desperately for that beacon that would reel me home. And suddenly…

There. Straight ahead. Past the pillars. Through the trees. Far away, but close enough for my Mind Manipulating power to sense the faintest streams of her light.

In a blink, I was half a mile north, on one end of a small glade surrounded by ironbarks—a lone figure backed against a tree, breathing heavily, on the other.

“Oh, little hurricane.”

My voice was barely more than a cracking whisper, but Rayna’s head snapped up as soon as I spoke the words aloud. Even from across the glade, through the sheets of rain, I could make out her red-rimmed eyes and wild, terrified expression.

Why the hell was she all alone? Had they really injected her with more bascite and dumped her off to handle this all by herself?

“Coen?”

Just like my voice, Rayna’s was a soft ache I could barely make out. But as soon as I took a step forward, her eyes widened. She shook her head, reaching out to scrabble at the wood of the ironbark behind her as if she could melt into it.

“Don’t come any closer!”