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The ground melted beneath my feet, sucking me downward, just as that same rot from before twined around my ankles. A jelly-like sensation stole over my bones, immobilizing me even further, while the air seemed to tighten like a calcifying cocoon around me. Worse yet, my Walking power seemed to calcify with it.

But I smirked in the face of it all, because I knew what was coming.

A blast of fire swelled overhead. The faeries cowered against the singing heat as Terrin rose from the other side of the parapet, lifting himself with nothing but wind. At the same time, the trees bordering the walkway unfurled their branches and wrapped around every faerie’s torso, holding them hostage.

Dazmine appeared at my side just as Terrin dropped himself to my other.

“We’re not calling upon Jagaros,” I told the white-haired faerie, halfway sunken through the ground with rot still tying me up. But now he and his fellow warriors were just as trapped as I was. A perfect stalemate.

“Who sent you, then?” the faerie grunted, struggling against the ropy branch locking him in place. “Dyonisia Reeve?” He eyed my left shoulder, where a tattered sleeve revealed my brand. “Or the wretched Queen of Sorronia?” He eyed my ears and my neck, where the tips of my back tattoo tapered away.

I shook my head.

“Neither. Rayna Drey did.”

I was certain he wouldn’t recognize the name, but an unmistakable flash of shock swept across the faerie’s face. His studded eyebrows quirked, and he quit struggling with a sharp-toothed grin.

“Why didn’t you just say that from the beginning?”

CHAPTER

15

RAYNA

“Well? Is anyone going to answer?”

It was our first Spiders, Worms, & Insects class of the year, and Ms. Pincette stood facing us at the head of the classroom, wearing an expression that suggested she might have just swallowed a mouthful of larvae. Her lips pursed distastefully as her gaze swept across each of us.

Rodhi, to nobody’s surprise, flashed a hand in the air. Or, more accurately, two lazy fingers, his legs extended and his free arm draped around the back of his chair.

Ms. Pincette sighed. “Anyone else?”

The question had been ‘Why am I disappointed in you all?’ and honestly, I had no idea. We’d barely had time to file into her classroom after petting and playing with spotted ocelots in Mr. Conine’s class. How could we have disappointed her in the span of thirty seconds?

I couldn’t seem to get my brain to work properly anyhow. It kept straying to Coen, who would be in the Uninhabitable Zone right about now.

Had he found Jagaros? Was he alright? I could only imagine what dangers lurked in a place deemed unfit for life—quicksand? Mudslides? Predators? Traps? Whatever it was, why was Jagaros there, of all places?

Nobody spoke, but Rodhi’s fingers remained airborne. After several seconds of stifling silence, in which I forced myself to refocus on the class before me, Ms. Pincette crossed her arms and jerked her chin at Rodhi.

“Very well. Go ahead, Mr. Lockett.”

“The giant centipede,” he said nonchalantly, as if that had been the most obvious answer in the world. Beside him, Gileon glanced between him and Ms. Pincette with furrowed eyebrows, like he was worried Rodhi was about to ask for her hand in marriage instead. “You’re pissed none of us were able to talk it out of its violent rampage.”

“Disappointed,” Ms. Pincette corrected. “But yes, you are correct.”

She didn’t look at Rodhi as she tucked a strand of chestnut hair behind her ear and turned to unveil a small tank sitting on the desk to her right. But I caught the slight uptilt of her lips, as if she were struggling to suppress a beat of pride.

Then, of course, my eyes dropped to the tank itself, where several dozen yellow-leg centipedes crawled over each other on a bed of coco fiber.

A ripple of discomfort passed over me. I remembered all too well what those arched legs and sharp forcipules looked like enlarged and up close. Emelle stiffened next to me, too.

Ms. Pincette nodded down at the tank. “I have taught you that centipedes are incredibly defensive hunters with a knack for exploration and expansion, yet none of you thought to use that information to your advantage when faced with the Shape Shifted one. Therefore, we are going to practice today. Come.”

With that, she grabbed the tank of centipedes, tucked it under an arm, and marched toward the classroom door.

Rodhi jumped up after her. As one, the rest of us got up to follow them outside, where she led us through winding alleyways and down a set of curved stairs, to a sunken patio between the Wild Whispering sector and the Shape Shifting one.