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One of the rules at the Esholian Institute was that we couldn’t kill each other, but the whole system was designed to make us turn on each other anyway, I realized. The Final Tests felt like a competition. The fear of exile made us desperate to dominate our peers. The secret second Brandings gave some students power over others. And my aunt stirred it all up so, so well, like her own secret concoction.

So why wasn’t she here to oversee the results of her experimentation now?

Coen’s voice filled my head again. Maybe she’s scared.

Of what? I watched Mr. Gleekle and Mrs. Wildenberg clamber onstage with the giant sunflower hat and the cart filled with different branding pokers. You’re the only one worth fearing around here, I told Coen, and she thinks you’re dead.

He laughed out a dark note. I think you’re underestimating yourself, little hurricane. She thinks I’m dead because you stabbed me in the heart. And she doesn’t have her favorite bodyguard and bed buddy around anymore because you cut off his head. Coen’s voice was filled with nothing but pride, but my body tensed at the memory. The blood. The screams. And what Coen was suggesting…

You think Dyonisia Reeve is scared of me? There’s no way.

She knows you’re part-faerie, Coen argued, the daughter of her long-lost sister. She knows she only has you on a leash, not under complete control. And you have a lethal tiger on your side.

I haven’t seen Jagaros in months, I replied automatically, my stomach twisting at how wrong that felt. Ever since the king of old had stalked into my life, it had felt like our lives were intertwined somehow, like I should be seeing him more than I did, but he always managed to slip away right when I seemed to need him most.

I could only hope Jagaros had followed through with his promise and helped all of the exiled ones from Hallow’s Perch to somewhere safer.

Still, Coen continued more softly, Dyonisia might not want to risk turning her back on you. For good reason, too. She doesn’t even know that you’re a Mind Manipulator or that I’m just waiting for her to lift a finger toward you.

Just then, a huffing and puffing Wren pushed her way through the Wild Whisperers around us to take a seat on the other side of Emelle, Gileon right behind her.

“Cutting it kind of close, aren’t we?” Rodhi muttered.

“Gileon lost track of time weightlifting with his stupid rhinoceros beetle again.” Wren glared over her shoulder at Gileon, who settled into his seat with a sheepish smile. All around us, the crowd was quieting. To the left of us sat the Shape Shifter sector, where Lander would be watching the ceremony with his peers, and to the right, the Element Wielder sector, where—no. I didn’t want to think about Quinn. And just then, Mr. Gleekle spread his arms wide onstage.

“GOOD AFTERNOON, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!” His voice carried to everyone on a thousand different streams of wind. “I am your president, Mr. Gleekle, and I wanted to welcome each and every one of you newcomers to the Esholian Institute for Magical Allocation and Refinement, where worthy citizens are made.”

I cringed at the phrase he regurgitated every year, knowing now how far it was from the truth. We weren’t being made into worthy citizens here. We were being cultivated into weapons of destruction for Dyonisia to use against the Sorronian queen.

“The world outside of Eshol is bursting with monsters, you see,” Mr. Gleekle went on. “Not just the pirates, who would gladly steal our magic, but other dangers beyond our comprehension, too.”

I felt Coen snort at that. The pirates wouldn’t steal our magic even if we were all dumped on their ships like a bucket of sardines. They had their own innate powers to use against us. The only thing keeping them from storming into the prison at the top of Bascite Mountain and reclaiming the faeries held hostage there was Dyonisia’s misty antipower wrapped around the island and threaded through the essence of the prison itself. Even Coen couldn’t Walk straight into it.

“This island is safe,” Mr. Gleekle continued, and I saw a few heads nod around me, “but only if we make sure each and every citizen is able to control their magic and use it for the greater good of our society.”

If you can’t, he didn’t need to add out loud, if you fail your Final Test, you’ll be thrown out to the monsters of the sea.

Only, that was a lie, too.

All of it was.

But all I could do was sit there and watch Mr. Gleekle nod at Mrs. Wildenberg and clap his hands with a strained, would-be-jolly smile as she dipped her own withered hand into the upside-down sunflower hat that Shape Shifters had enlarged. She pulled out a slip of paper and read the name aloud.

“Adria Nexton!”

After a few beats of silence, a girl in the third row of first-years stood up and smoothed out the wrinkles in her trousers. She walked rigidly up and onto the stage, then turned to face the crowd with her hands balled into shaking fists at her sides.

I wished I could somehow ease her nerves. I had once stood there, just as anxious as her.

Like all the other times, an Element Wielding instructor blew fire onto the end of a poker, turning it a glowing orange brand, and handed it to Mr. Gleekle, who said in his faux cheerful voice, “Just a pinch.”

He pressed the brand against the girl’s left shoulder.

And the ground in front of us split apart.

The entire stadium pitched forward, shouts and screams exploding everywhere. I nearly collided with the back of the person in front of me as the chasm yawned wider, threatening to swallow our entire sector whole. A few Wild Whisperers in the front went careening, limbs flailing, into the darkness before an Object Summoning instructor yanked them out again and an Element Wielding instructor rushed forward to close the chasm back up.

“Element Wielding!” Mr. Gleekle exclaimed, rubbing his hands together as if half of us hadn’t just about fallen to our deaths. “How splendid! If you’ll just join your sector, now…”