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“Oh, good!” My Wild Whispering magic translated the chattering sounds into a language I could understand automatically. “You’re awake! I was hoping I wouldn’t have to use the foghorn again.”
It was Felicity, dangling from one of the rafters above before dropping onto my bed with a toothy, widespread grin.
She’d been living with me here in the Wild Whisperer mansion ever since the lighthouse had been compromised, and to be honest, nobody ever blinked an eye over it. By our third year at the Esholian Institute, plenty of Wild Whisperers invited their animal friends inside, so everyone just assumed I’d found and befriended her in the jungle bordering our campus.
But living with a busy monkey in cramped quarters? Not for the faint of heart. Felicity liked to ‘borrow’ things from other sectors, it turned out, and her collection of random objects rose and fell in various piles on Dazmine’s old side of the room. Including a handheld foghorn.
“No need,” I told her quickly, patting her head and planting my feet on the floor. The last time she’d used that horn on me, I’d almost pissed myself at the sudden explosion of sound. “I’m wide awake.” And Coco says hi, I added, using my Mind Manipulating power to shoot the thought straight into her brain.
Felicity’s face fell for a moment. I wish he could visit us.
Me, too, I assured her. But we’ll all be together again one day.
God, I hoped it was true. I didn’t want my true emotions regarding that particular subject to leak into Felicity’s mind and ruin her usual morning cheer, so I yanked my mental blockade back up and scrambled to change the subject. “Where’s Willa?”
“Here,” a tiny voice squeaked from beneath my pillow before crawling out and onto my lap. “Hiding from the obnoxious primate, as per usual.”
“That was rude.” Felicity sniffed indignantly. “Raynie is not obnoxious.”
I rolled my eyes, a smile returning to my lips, and glanced across the room at the four-poster bed on the other side of the window. Emelle rubbed her eyes and sat up with a yawn.
“Morning,” I said, my chest warming at the sight of her. Last year, she’d hardly slept in her own bed, choosing to stay with Lander most nights instead. But ever since that incident in Hallow’s Perch last year…
Well, the one good thing to come of that hellish day was my repaired relationship with my best friends.
“Morning.” Emelle smiled softly and glanced at the window, where I always made sure to ask the ivy to leave a little opening in the pane. Even if I couldn’t see him, I always got a thrill at the thought that Coen might be able to see me through a gap in the foliage.
Right now, though, it wasn’t Coen looking in through the window. A dozen or more birds had gathered on the outside, hopping on the eave and pecking at the glass—including the bright blue cotinga who always brought news to and from Emelle’s family.
“Looks like we slept in,” Emelle said with a giggle. “Hold on! I’m coming!” She slipped out of bed to crack open the window, and they all came fluttering in, surrounding her with whizzing wings as she held up her birdfeeder.
“Hi!”
“Hi!”
“Hi!”
“Thank you!”
“Thank you!”
“Thank you!”
“Ugh.” Across the room, our other roommate, Cilia, smashed a pillow against her ears. “Make it stop. I need my beauty sleep.”
“Speaking of beauty,” Felicity piped up, already hopping off the bed to burrow into her mountain of stolen objects. “Are we thinking purple or blue today, Raynie?” She held up two of my old dresses that she’d oh-so-generously transformed with scissors over the last few weeks. “Or yellow, maybe?”
She held up another one that looked more like a strapless two-piece clinging together by two strips of fabric. I’d have to be okay with my belly button showing on that option… but it would still cover my thigh sheath I always wore.
“Hmm.” I pretended to contemplate. “You pick.”
I couldn’t help the sorrow from pinching my heart every time I looked at Dazmine’s old corner of the room. Her bed had been removed, her belongings annihilated, and nobody had been assigned to replace her spot in our room—a stain on these seemingly joyful, chaotic mornings I’d come to love.
A reminder that none of this would last.
That it was all doomed to come to an end one way or another.
“Yellow, then,” Felicity decided before I could descend into those dark thoughts too quickly. “Oh, and I’m almost finished making those friendship bracelets I was telling you about, so we can all wear matching ones soon! I made a tiny version for you, too, by the way,” she said to Willa.
