Page 10 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
Elbows and hips and hair lashed at me. The scent of anxiety and giddiness and desperation stung in my nose like acid, but I kept plunging against the flow of it all until—
“Rayna?”
My head jerked sideways at the familiar image of golden-brown hair and a pair of thick, knitted eyebrows.
“Wilder.”
For a half second, my gaze tugged between the boy from my home village and the last flashes of the parakeet’s wings.
Then Kimber’s bird became nothing but a bobbing speck, and I knew it was a lost cause. But Wilder… he’d rooted himself to a standstill amongst the sea of his peers, watching me with those swirled hazel eyes I’d completely forgotten about until now.
“You’ve grown,” I said, moving to the side of Bascite Boulevard to avoid that push of bodies. Wilder trailed after me without a second glance at the class royal he was supposed to be following, his hands slipping into his trouser pockets.
Indeed, I was squinting against the glare of sunlight as I peered ever so slightly up at him. Back in Alderwick, where we’d both grown up, he’d always been on the shorter, stouter side—I rememberedthatregarding the times we’d snuck into his uncle’s shed to explore each other’s mouths and tongues—but now he was just stout.
Wilder smiled slightly and toed the cobblestone. “Yeah, I guess I have. Meanwhile, you look the same.” His eyes lifted to mine. Searching and assessing. “Except I heard you can talk to animals now.”
“What? How did you—?”
Nobody at the Esholian Institute—save for the Good Council elites themselves—were supposed to have contact with the outside world. I’d certainly never written home about my new gift… or—had I? A too-familiar pounding behind my eyes told me there was yetanotherforgotten memory that might answer that question, but I ignored it, pushed the pain down and down.
“A crow told my uncle that he’d talked to you, apparently,” Wilder said now, his half-smile freezing over his teeth. “My whole family’s got the Whispering magic, remember?”
Yes, I had known that, but it was another tidbit of Wilder’s life that hadn’t crossed my throbbing mind until this moment. He’d even been named after the magic, for God’s sake. After his eldest cousin, twenty-five years his senior, had come home fromthe Institute as an Object Summoner, his mother and father had named him Wilder in the hopes that it would spur the magic to take their desired shape in his blood.
Purely superstition. The Branding activation had no rhyme or reason. The fact that most of his family had the Wild Whispering power was just a testament to how the sectors stuck together, maintained friendships, and married each other long after the Final Test.
I couldn’t help the frown from creeping onto my face, though.
“A crow?” I couldn’t remember ever meeting a specific crow. Owls and kingfishers and toucans, yes, but never crows. They liked to keep to themselves.
Wilder inhaled to respond. Inhaled—and then stopped.
A shadow fell over the space between us, and an oily, slithering quiet filled the buzzing in my head. As if the shadow had muted the world both inside and outside of me.
I turned to find Kitterfol Lexington’s grin in my face.
“Catching up with old friends, are we now, Ms. Drey?”
Lexington’s voice was as slimy and invasive as I knew his mind was, from the times I’d felt it probing my own. My stomach swooped in response, as if he’d placed me on the edge of that cliff behind the Testing Center and forced me to look down.
I pulled what I hoped was a neutral look over my face.
“He’s not a friend.”
I saw a moment of hurt flash across Wilder’s face from my periphery, but I didn’t let that neutral mask budge. No way in hell was I going to let Kitterfol Lexington, the most lethal Mind Manipulator on the Good Council and my personal tormenter, get his claws into Wilder. It was why I’d downplayed my friendship with Emelle, Lander, and the others around him, too, why I’d avoided thinking about my ownfathers. To keep his attention away from the people I loved.
But as Lexington’s eyes inched from me to Wilder, I knewheknew the truth. Knew he was penetrating the memories Wilder and I had shared in that shed so long ago, from both of our perspectives. He always pursued the most private, intimate ones that held his interest.
Which was why he’d never dug further into my mental images of those pearls. What use did he have in thoughts about jewelry pieces?
Now, Lexington’s grin cracked wide open.
“Well, I trust yournot-friend can make his way to the arena by himself.” Lexington faced me fully with that cruel mirth swimming in his eyes. “Your presence is requested in the Testing Center.”
“In the Testing Center?” I repeated, momentarily taken aback.
Of all the times Lexington had flown in to get me to report on my progress, he’d only ever cornered me in random places on campus, never taken me to the Testing Center for another official interrogation.
