Page 111 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
“You will, child. You will.”
I could almostseesteam, like the milky mist of our dome, pouring from her ears. With a swish of her dress, she turned and flowed out of the room, leaving a trail of inky black splatters behind her.
Ten seconds after the door smacked shut, Ms. Pincette and I stood side by side in utter silence.
Thirty seconds later, we were still standing side by side in silence only broken by the occasional plop of goo from ceiling to floor.
It wasn’t until an entire two minutes had leaked by that my Spiders, Worms, & Insects teacher rounded on me in utter fury.
“Are you happy, Ms. Drey? Isthiswhat you really wanted?”
She gestured at the splotches of leech goo still dripping from overhead, speckling the walls, puddling on the floor.
“No,” I said somberly.
Then uncurled my fists and brought up the black-as-midnight strand of hair pinched between my fingers—just a little something I’d grabbed from Dyonisia’s head along with the goo.
“But this is.”
CHAPTER
33
Iknew you could do it.
Steeler’s smug voice was loitering right outside the wall of my mind by the time I got back to my room, my hands rummaging hastily through all my drawers for a bottle or container I could put Dyonisia’s single strand of hair in for safekeeping.
I didn’t waste time getting to the question that seared on the tip of my tongue as my fingers speared through all the little black pearls in my nightstand—Steeler continued to give me one at the end of every week, and I always accepted it. For my tally, of course.
“Why is my innate power able to surpass the effects of the pills in that Testing Center?” Nobody else was in the room at the moment, not even Willa, so I didn’t care that I was speaking aloud as if to an invisible person. “Is it… is my power trying to take shape?”
A deep, sharp thrill shot through my chest at the thought that maybe this was it. Maybe, if I stopped the pills altogether, mymagic would explode into form and I would finally get to find out what itwas. Maybe even use it against Dyonisia.
Steeler’s voice was hesitant in my head.
It takes a catastrophic event for a faerie’s power to take shape.
I scoffed. “Falling into a bed of leeches is a catastrophic event.”
No. Steeler shook his head inside mine.Falling into a bed of leeches is triggering, sure—just like drinking bascale or getting branded is. But not enough for your power to do more than throw a tantrum. For it to actually burst into shape, you’d have to endure something traumatizing beyond repair. Something that wrenches out your lungs and heartstrings, knots them together, and stuffs them back in like a life-ending punch to the gut. One you can’t straighten from unless your power springs to life and helps you back up.
I paused with my hand still in the drawer, surrounded by pearls.
That’s weirdly descriptive.
I tried to not let myself wonder about Steeler’s own burst into power. How he’d said it had happened right after he’d left me on that beach…
In my mind, he gave a careful, casual shrug.It’s textbook. Some faeries in Sorronia will purposely put themselves through a catastrophe if their power hasn’t matured by their mid-twenties.
I wrinkled my nose at that thought—of someone harming themselves for power. But whatever those normal faeries did in Sorronia, it was clear I was doing the opposite here in this dome: purposely suppressing my innate power’s tantrums.
Except those tantrums had broken through that suppressant every time I was in the Testing Center now. Maybe not to takeshape, exactly, but to rage and kick and whirl at… something. I just didn’t know what.
Steeler’s voice grazed along the wall of my mind.
I was always scared that one of our powers—mine or Terrin’s, Garvis’s or the twins’—would break through the pill’s suppressant like yours have. I always told them not to drink any alcohol, even if it wasn’t bascale. Not to eat any funny foods or take any suspicious medicine in case it tipped them over the edge of what the pills can contain. But nothing ever happened to us. My fear was just paranoia—until you.
A pause that felt like a breath of star-riddled darkness.
