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“Oh, no you won’t. If you want him in here so bad, he can stay forever.”

Mrs. Smetlar’s hand came flying down, and in the two seconds that followed, several things happened simultaneously.

Emelle gasped. Rodhi shouted. I lowered my blockade and funneled my Mind Manipulating power toward Mrs. Smetlar in the hopes to force her to freeze or change her mind, but my Object Summoning magic burst out of me instead.

Gileon’s desk rattled and tipped forward, crashing into her. Mrs. Smetlar screeched as Nuisance managed to flutter up with shelled wings, anger mottling her face with patches of purple as her eyes landed on Gileon himself.

“You. You just threw your desk at me!”

“No!” I shouted before Gil could try to explain, consequences be damned. But while the rest of the class glanced at me, Mrs. Smetlar didn’t appear to hear.

She pushed the desk off her and shot an arm into the air, long-fingered hands closing around Nuisance in midair like a bird plucking an insect from the sky.

And her fist tightened with an unmistakable crunch.

“There.” She unfurled her fingers to reveal a crushed lump of legs and splintered wings that fluttered once more before going completely still. “I was going to pin it to one of our boards so that you could continue to see it every day, but you don’t get that privilege after attacking an instructor, do you, young man?”

For a moment, the world stilled. Several jaws had dropped. Emelle pressed a hand to her mouth, eyes wide with horror, while Gileon stared and stared and stared at his dead friend, fat tears trickling onto his empty lap.

I started to stand, intending to rush over to comfort him, but Rodhi kicked me with his foot beneath the desk and gave a miniscule shake of his head.

Then he raised his hand.

Mrs. Smetlar’s chest was heaving, but victory flashed in her gaze at the fact that everyone was still seated, still following the rules, still obedient in the face of what she’d done. Blood thrummed in my ears, my stomach twisting at the realization that the fear of exile really controlled us this much. And once again, my powers hadn’t cooperated. Once again, I’d failed at helping someone in need.

If I could have just summoned Nuisance instead, or succeeded in Mind Manipulating her without my Object Summoning getting in the way…

“Yes, Mr. Lockett?” Mrs. Smetlar sniffed at Rodhi. “Do you have an issue?”

“I have several, actually,” Rodhi said, a hard edge simmering beneath his casual tone, “but yours are a lot bigger at the moment.”

He pointed at her head, where three giant huntsman spiders had just scuttled to perch on her quill-like hair. Several gasps punctuated the room as one of them crawled down the bridge of her nose until Mrs. Smetlar went cross-eyed…

And screamed.

Screaming and screaming, our History instructor spun in furious circles and swatted at herself again and again in front of the entire class, but the huntsman spiders managed to evade what poor Nuisance hadn’t.

All while Rodhi leaned back in his chair with a contented sigh.

“You really shouldn’t have done that,” Emelle said an hour later.

We’d just emerged from the classroom and paused in an alleyway where greenbrier vines plastered the walls and clouds of butterflies eddied above pools of standing water in the cobblestone. Emelle and I kept patting Gileon’s broad shoulders, trying to comfort him despite the fact that he seemed to be more in shock than anything else. He just kept blinking at the butterflies, as if Nuisance might whir out of their kaleidoscope at any moment.

“You’re right,” Rodhi said seriously, stroking his chin. “I should have called for some wandering spiders instead. More venom in their bites.”

“I’m serious, Rodhi.” Emelle’s forehead creased with worry. “I think Mrs. Smetlar knows you did it. And if she does, then you’ve just started a war.”

Rodhi shrugged as if to say been there, done that… which he had. But Emelle was right—by the end of the History lesson, Mrs. Smetlar had been peppered in swollen, raised spider bites and kept pinning a furious glare on Rodhi himself. Even if she didn’t know he had control of the majority of the island’s spiders, she seemed to blame him for pointing out the ones that had crawled onto her head.

Rodhi threw his hands into his pockets. “Not my fault if her Wild Whispering sucks so much she can’t even ask a few spiders to kindly move.”

“I just don’t understand,” Gileon said slowly, gazing vacantly into space. Tear tracks still stained his cheeks. “I didn’t throw the desk at her.”

Fresh guilt pinched at my stomach, and I grabbed his hand. “We know you didn’t, Gil. I’m so sorry, I…”

A sudden burst of passersby voices from around the corner made the words snag in my throat as Mr. Gleekle’s warning echoed in the back of my mind once more.

These are confidential matters, of course. Tell no one.