I was ready to search the Seed Landing from top to bottom as soon as we left the library, but Prevna pointed out that five people could cover more ground quicker than two. Given that I couldn’t logically contradict that statement, I followed her back to the garden.

Wren was under the amber tree arguing with Chirp while Dera sat on the lip of the pool on the other side of the platform shaping bone. Loclen was nowhere to be seen. Wren cut off her argument with Chirp as soon as she noticed us and the little bird did an angry hop before flying off in a huff.

Prevna rose her eyebrows at Wren when we reached her. “Trouble in the tent?”

Wren rolled her eyes, somewhere between annoyed and amused. “Not really. Sometimes he just likes to put up a fuss when I ask him to do something.”

Curiosity welled, but not even the distancing cold in my ribs was enough to push me to entangle myself in her personal troubles. That would just be asking for trouble. Fellen was proof enough of that.

Wren asked, “Learn anything?”

Prevna called Dera over, who looked up with a start and blushed as she fumbled with the bone in her hands and on her lap before hurrying over, and Prevna filled them both in. They became more somber with the additional news about Jin. Wren even became a bit cross.

“They should treat us better than this. If they had a good mentor before, another one should have been lined up in case something happened!”

Prevna smiled sardonically. “I don’t think we rank high enough for such a consideration. We haven’t proved ourselves yet.”

Dera quietly added, “I don’t think the whisper women have a lot of people to spare.”

Wren crossed her arms. “Then why give us a mentor at all?”

“Would you have learned the sling on your own? Tested your blessing further?” Prevna pressed.

After a long moment of contrite silence she nodded. “Jin might be bad at teaching, but she has given us a push.”

Dera tucked some hair behind her ear. “She might not be an official trial like we thought, but this also gives them a good idea of how we deal with…difficulty. Perhaps they even like it more this way since there’s another measure to test us by.”

I kept still despite the spark of surprise her words caused. I was used to thinking of her as the sweet, quiet girl Wren was overtly attached to, not someone who could and would think about the all the nuances of our situation after quickly adjusting her understanding of it. I hadn’t even thought to make a distinction between Jin as a trial vs a difficulty, but the later definitely opened up our options; the situation was no longer pass or fail that way.

Still, that didn’t mean they were much closer about deciding what to do. I was in favor of skipping all of Jin’s lessons once she returned, but I didn’t share that and I had the benefit of my childhood of training to already have learned most of what she “taught” to some extent. The snippets about the inner workings of the whisper women being the exception, of course, but I figured I could learn most of what I needed from the library or once I graduated from Seed Landing.

They talked in circles for a while longer before Prevna finally heeded my growing look of impatience and prompted sweetly, “Something to share, Gimley?”

I glared at her but, not wanting to waste more time, spoke, “Shawsh also said that everything we need to earn our first blessing—the one of shadows—can be found here, in our area. According to Clara that’s all we need to become Sprouts and not be directly under Jin’s thumb.”

“Did they say anything else? Any hint on what we need to find?” Wren asked.

I shook my head. “That’s why we should start to look right away.”

“We didn’t find much when we were looking for Jin,” she pointed out.

Prevna shrugged one shoulder. “I doubt whatever we’re looking for is person sized.”

Loclen brushed aside the curtain of pine needles blocking the garden entrance then and stepped inside, Chirp flying in after her. He landed on Wren’s shoulder and she murmured thanks. He twittered, still sounding a bit miffed, even as he leaned into her stroking his head.

Loclen finished winding her way through the garden a minute or two later. “What’d I miss?”

Wren had the unfortunate pleasure of filling her in. Prevna allowed Loclen all of three seconds to soak in what she heard before asking, “Where were you?”

Loclen’s lips pressed together in irritation. “Taking care of something. Last I checked we aren’t tied to this garden.” She surveyed us. “Are we going to go look?”

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I nodded. “Right now.”

Then I skirted around them and headed for the garden entrance. Everyone was filled in, I had played my part, and now I was to go off on my own and be alone and start the process to truly become a whisper woman.

Something soft but surprisingly strong and callused stopped me in my tracks. I looked down to find Dera’s hand encircling my wrist. My wrist. It felt nice and alarming and entirely too real. I could feel every inch of where her skin touched mine, the pressure of her fingers, the way my hand was limp in hers, but tension was coiling up from my fingertips to my shoulder. A gust of wind pressed against us, tugging her hair and slipping into the cracks of her grip, chilling my other hand. I could hear her breath and the blood beginning to pound in my ears. The cold in my chest struggled to retain control, but suddenly everything it had been holding back was right there, pressing on my thoughts, like a film of lake algae punched through by a diving huntress.

I wasn’t outside my body anymore and the last time she had touched me she had shackled my wrists together.

I flinched and then, embarrassed and angry at the show of weakness, ripped my arm from her grip. I didn’t even take time to register her reaction or ask why she had grabbed me before I strode through the garden, barely keeping from running.

I had been surrounded by people. People I could hurt, who might be learning how to hurt me. There was the possibility, however inconvenient and annoying and problematic that Jin could ruin my chance to become a whisper woman, the only thing I was allowed to be. I could dismiss her as a bad mentor and continue on my own or I could settle for her lessons to keep her placated and pursue the goddess’s boon in my free time. Each was a risk.

But my throat closed at the thought of spending another day in a version of her tent, trading time and pride for scraps of what I really wanted.

I couldn’t do that again.

Especially now that I knew how poor that trade really had been. The myths gave me knowledge, yes, but they had yet to become truly useful in the Seedling Palace. And healers could be recognized by the Beloved. I could've had both, healing and stories, rather than be ripped apart choosing between the two.

I could have been who I wanted and who I had been marked to be.

It would have been difficult, painful. A struggle still. But I could have been both.

I wasn’t paying attention when I went to cross the narrow paths. My hands were slack on the rope, my feet placed more from distracted memory than focus. The world dropped out from under me when I wasn’t even a third of the way across.

Someone screamed behind me and I struggled to grasp back onto the rope but it was gone. My stomach surged up into my throat as I plummeted into empty air. Branches whipped past. I reached for them, trying to break my fall, but my building momentum tore the ones I managed to grab from my fingers.

Then something slammed into me and I felt pain, sudden and deep, bloom all across my side. Ignoring it, I scrambled to latch onto the railing that had arrested my fall. For a few breathless seconds, I felt myself slipping back into empty air before I managed to get my leg over the railing and I tumbled onto the platform it enclosed.

Laying prone on my back I stared up at the narrow paths, panting from exertion. Which was when I saw a pouch dangling from the bottom of the narrowest, ropeless path and I skipped right over fear to fury.

Done.

I was done playing by everyone else’s rules. They could think they were so clever and pride themselves on stupidly dangerous hiding spots. I wasn’t going to ruin myself for them. If they wanted to piss on someone, they could storming well do so on themselves.

I struggled to my feet. Breathing hurt. My legs shook. But if I had to be in my body, it could at least do what I wanted.

I took shallow breaths and walked forward. Chance had it that a whisper woman stood not far away on the path connected to the platform I landed on. Her eyes were wide with shock, but her lips were black and that was all that mattered.

“Take me back up there.” I tried to reach up and point toward the narrow paths, but had to limit the gesture when the pain flared in my side.

She stared at me. “You need to go to the healers’ nests.”

I made a rude gesture, past caring. “Up there.”

Her face hardened. “Careful, Seedling.”

“Fine.” Seeing that she wasn’t going to be any help, I moved to step past her. My shoulder might have checked hers.

Thousands of ants were biting and crawling under my skin. I crumbled to the ground, more focused on trying to scratch them out and crush them to death than staying standing. But when I looked at myself, there wasn’t any ants, no telltale bumps beneath my skin even as I felt the incessant biting and skittering. The pain in my side flared again as I twisted and squirmed, but I couldn’t help it. Then, just as suddenly as it started, the terrible sensation faded.

The whisper woman looked down at me. “Pay attention in the future. It might save you a bad fall and angering your superiors.”

I didn’t think, I acted.

Rage directed my hand into the poison pouch and found the jar of crushed Black Root. I popped the lid and scooped up a finger full in the same motion as I surged to my feet and tackled her. She went down.

Ants started to bite and crawl again, but nothing mattered except in that moment except for one single goal: making someone pay. I got my arm around her throat and swiped the glob of Black Root in her mouth when she opened it to yell. She spat most of it back out.

But that didn’t matter.

The glob I had scooped up was at least twice the normal dose and it hadn’t been watered down.

She elbowed me in my hurt side and I folded. Pain, from my injury and her stupid ants, shifted back into focus and I stayed on the ground.

She swiped at her mouth. “Feral bitch.”

The whisper woman was already starting to sway though and I saw her frown and touch her throat next. One look of affronted disgust later and the ant sensation surged before cutting off and she hurried to the closest decent sized shadow. She disappeared.

I lay on the path, dazed and hurting and still full of impotent fury. For all intents and purposes, I had lost again with nothing to show for it.

Useless.

I growled and used the railing to pull myself back up. I refused to be that. I would show Jin and my cohort and the whisper women, I wasn’t the one who ended up full of regret when I was pushed too far. I needed to show them that I was in control, that I wasn’t just some weak seedling they could kick around. Messing with me had consequences and I was tired of curbing my impulses.