Page 13 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
CHAPTER
6
“Where’d you get that dress?”
All the girls in my dorm room were getting ready for the Branding the next morning, Emelle and Cilia helping each other with their makeup while Dazmine braided her hair in silence. Willa usually liked to perch on my shoulder during these kinds of things, but today she’d had to help her family with some kind of altercation with royal spiders (whatever that meant) so I was readjusting my new dress without her high-pitched commentary in my ear.
Of course, I had prepared for Emelle to notice my new change of attire. I’d come home from the Testing Center yesterday to find a spread of sleek dresses already on my bed, all tight on the top and flowy on the bottom to properly hide the new sheath now buckled to my thigh. There’d also been four straighter, more slender knives that I’d stuffed in those other smaller pockets immediately.
I hated how much I loved it. Hated that Dyonisia had somehow known, not only my knife’s size, butmysize. Thehandle of my crescent blade pressed firmly against my leg, but the sheath itself fit around me like butter melting into my skin. After my daily session with Jagaros, I’d worn it to bed beneath my nightgown and woken up to trade that nightgown with one of the dresses before the others had even stirred.
Now, confident that the dress was tied back in all the right places, that it truly hid the knives buckled to my thigh, I said as nonchalantly as I could, “Oh, an older Whisperer who had outgrown this kind of style gave me some of her old clothes.”
Itcould’vebeen true. Here at the Esholian Institute, the peddlers from the nearest village only came once a year to sell their goods, so it wasn’t abnormal for people to trade clothing amongst themselves.
Still, though, I cringed inwardly at the lie as Emelle’s gaze narrowed with suspicion.
“Well, I think it looks sexy on you,” Cilia said from where she sat powdering Emelle’s cheeks. We hadn’t known her too well last year, but ever since our new house princess had grouped the four of us together, she’d taken to Emelle and me nicely, and even tried to make conversation with Dazmine sometimes. “Maybe you’ll meet someone new at the Branding ceremony tonight.” She fluttered her eyelashes at me.
Dazmine seemed to pause her braiding.I’m going to find out what, she’d told me—which meant she was listening in on any clues about my current situation.
I threw what I hoped was a coy smile Cilia’s way. “Maybe.”
Meeting someone new was thelastthing on my mind, but with Emelle and Dazmine listening so closely… I had to play the part.
Besides, I already had a meeting with someone tonight. Steeler would leave a pearl, but this time I’d catch him when he did. Because I wasn’t planning on falling asleep or even climbing into bed, in case he’d been using his Mind Manipulating powerto force me to pass out before he hovered over me like a goddamned creeper.
No, I was going to lead him far away from the house and my friends and confront him in the jungle, where the trees and vines would be at my beck and call and my knife would be strapped to my body.
For the first time since I’d been tasked with catching him, I truly felt like I had a chance. Ignoring the ache that was slowly but surely spreading in my head, I patted some tinted beeswax on my lips and puckered them, feeling a genuine smile forming there.
Because now I knew where to stab Steeler to make it count.
Five hours later, the whole of the Esholian Institute flooded the arena, all of us breaking off into our different sectors. Lander went off to sit with his fellow Shape Shifters, so Emelle and I waved goodbye to him and found Wren and Gileon smashed together in the Wild Whisperer section of the stands. Cilia and Mitzi Hodges were chatting behind them, but Dazmine, I noticed, was nowhere to be found. She’d left our room after finishing braiding her hair, and I hadn’t seen her since.
“Where’s Rodhi?” Emelle asked now, gently swiping away a moth fluttering near her face. The onslaught of dusk had beckoned all kinds of flying insects, it seemed—more than usual.
Wren shrugged. “I’ll bet you five coppers he’s off trying to woo Ms. Pincette for the hundredth time.”
Ms. Pincette was the youngest instructor at the Institute—and the strictest. Rodhi had been obsessed at first sight.
Emelle snorted. “You just need more coppers after losing that bet to him. No way am I betting on that when you’re probably right.”
Wren chose to ignore this and swatted at another insect, this time a whizzing rhinoceros beetle with two tiny horns. “Can you get out of myfacefor like, one second?”
The rhino beetle whizzed over to Gileon instead, whose gaze went cross-eyed trying to keep track of it. To my surprise, he reached out a single finger until the beetle settled on it before saying in his slow, deep voice, “Don’t worry about her. She’s only mean on the outside.”
The beetle cheeped something I couldn’t hear from the other side of Wren. Gileon smiled, said something back, then gave a gasp.
“What? You don’t have a name? Well, that’s okay! I can name you. How about… uh… let me think. Uh…”
“Nuisance?” Wren supplied.
“Yes!” Gileon’s whole face lit up. “Nuisance. Good idea, Wren.”
“God help me,” Wren muttered.
At that moment, Rodhi seemed to materialize from beneath us, squirming his way between bodies and squeezing himself between Emelle and me. “I’m here! It hasn’t started yet, right? What’d I miss?”
