Page 167 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
“Okay. Then I need you to open up for me.”
Every particle in my body sang for his commands. It was easy, easier than anything I’d ever done, to funnel an opening in my blockade in his direction. And with his stream of consciousness flowing freely into my mind, merging with mine, we moved in harmony.
Whirling and ducking beneath wings and legs, we flashed in and out of existence around the monster Jenia Leake had become, slicing off the four remaining windows to her powers but never maiming anything vital. Never touching her head or her heart. Her shrieking reached a crescendo that raked nails through my ears, but…
The glints of Steeler’s sword and my knives had fused like stardust by the time the giant butterfly collapsed back into a girl.
A sobbing, rocking girl with gaping wounds on five separate parts of her body and a marred scalp with newly-grown tufts of hair.
Disgust whirred through me. Despite the fact that we’d just saved her from herself, I wanted to rip her waste of a head from her neck for what she’d done to Rayna last year. I wanted to smear her back into nonexistence, where she belonged…
“Sorry,” Steeler murmured. “That’s me.”
The next second, I felt him close his blockade, severing the flow of consciousness between us. The absence of him vibrated in my skull for a moment with a high-pitched ringing, but after a few heavy blinks, my thoughts were purely my own again.
And my own were abitless murderous.
I couldn’t see Jenia’s eyes because she had them pressed into her knees as she rocked, but I found myself squatting beside her anyway. Trying to steady her tremors with a hand to her back.
“Hey. It’s over. You’re okay now.”
Except I didn’t even believe my own words. Itwasn’tover. Itwouldn’tbe okay—not for Jenia, who surely couldn’t go back to Dyonisia now that we’d dismantled her ability to use her powers.
Just as I thought this, a flash of yellow wings snagged the corner of my eye.
I whipped my head toward it to find a familiar parakeet swooping from the smoke-clogged alleyway on the other end of the square—closely followed by its owner.
Steeler had followed my gaze. We both stiffened as Kimber Leake caught sight of her sister sobbing and rocking before me.
She lurched into a sprint toward us, cloak flapping, the Good Council dot in the center of her brand gleaming like a red eye.
I shot to my feet in preparation. I could feel Steeler’s grip tighten on the pommel of his sword as vividly as if he’d squeezed my own heart. If Kimber made a single move…
But by the time she skidded to a halt before us, gasping for breath, she had eyes only for the girl on the ground.
“Jenia. Jenia. It’s okay. I’m here.”
Kimber sank to her knees to wrap her arms around her sister, her back completely exposed to us and our blades. At that touch, Jenia’s tremors finally slowed. Her sobs quieted. Her breaths evened out.
The Good Council elite—the woman who had sabotaged me last year to no end, according to the memories I had resurrected—finally looked up.
Not at Steeler. At me.
It was perhaps the first time I could remember last year’s princess of our house looking at me with anything other than pure contempt. This was something deeper. Something spiked with pure fear.
“You… you didn’t kill her.”
Her yellow parakeet fluttered onto her shoulder and cocked its head at me, but kept its beak shut. No derogatory insults this time.
“No,” I said bluntly. “I didn’t.”
Screams and shouts still flung left and right from behind us as Garvis, Barberro, Nara, and stray villagers still fought the other exiled ones with their various weapons. There wasn’t time for pleasantries or heartfelt explanations on why I didn’t want to murder a classmate—even if she’d been a horrible one who’d wanted to murder me.
“You’d better get her somewhere safe and tend to those wounds if you don’t want her to die, though,” I added quickly, nodding down at that oozing wound on Jenia’s forehead and the blood leaking from the corners of her mouth. “There’s a bunker on the east side of the village.” I pointed in the same direction the others had gone earlier, and Steeler’s gentle nod in my head, the skim of his fingers on my lower back, told me I was right before I could even ask him for confirmation. “Dazmine Temperton’s there. She’ll help you.” When Kimber’s eyes flared, I pressed, “No matterhowshe and Jenia left off, she’ll help you.”
A single nod was all Kimber could seem to manage. But as she looped an arm around Jenia’s waist and hoisted her up on quaking legs, I felt a whisper in my head. Just for me.
The rest of the Good Council is here, Kimber told me, her Mind Manipulating voice like a skewer through my brain: unwelcome but straight to the point.They’re sitting in their carriages on the edge of the clifftop, observing the results of their…She winced.Of their test. I managed to slip away, but Dyonisia is going to realize he’s here soon.
