Page 173 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
Garvis?
Yeah. Coen’s working on the last monster, but I saw something pull you backward and figured you might need a bit of assistance.
I grimaced.Maybe just a bit.
Lexington’s face pinched together at my silence. When he spoke next, it was through clacking teeth.
“I’m not going to ask you again, girl. How. Did. You. Get. Mind Manipulating. Power?”
Knowing that Garvis was near, I allowed myself to sneer right into his face.
“The same way you did, Kitterfol. By taking it from a faerie.” I leaned in closer, pressing my own neck into the point of a knife until a sting of pain flared against my skin. “Only mine was willing to share.”
Lexington’s chest swelled. By the looks of those veins popping in his forehead, I could tell he was about to disregard Dyonisia’s apparent no-killing orders in light of what I’d just done: beaten him at Mind Manipulating.
But just as he was blowing out a reeking breath and all of my knives were twitching forward, a glint of metal caught both of our eyes.
Garvis came leaping into the alley with his machete raised high. Lexington managed to jolt to the side to try to avoid it, but he didn’t make it far enough.
The machete crashed down on Lexington’s left shoulder, right over his original brand.
Bone cracked. Warm and sticky pinpricks splattered my face. At Lexington’s howl of pain, my knives spun around as if of their own accord, controlled by his Object Summoning power…
Garvis didn’t have time to tug his machete back out.
He didn’t have time to back away.
He didn’t even have time to raise his arms.
The knives burrowed into him from every direction—impaling his stomach, his heart, his lungs.
And my world slid sideways as Garvis toppled.
A scream was fracturing in my mouth, ripping my vocal cords apart, shredding all the words I couldn’t say to pieces.
And then he was there—Coen, right in front of my face, dripping with gore and grasping me by the back of my neck.
“Rayna. I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize you were gone until I cut off the last brand and heard you scream. What—?”
He read everything in my eyes and pivoted, processing Garvis on the ground, surrounded by a spreading pool of liquid I refused to name. Lexington himself had been staggering backward with the machete still lodged in his shoulder, but at the sight of Coen and Old Veracious before him, he straightened with a hiss.
“You—” he began, eyes moving hungrily to the sword.
Just like Garvis hadn’t had a chance to defend himself, though, neither did Lexington.
I had already opened myself up to Coen again, and with our consciousnesses merging just like it had before, we moved as one.
My hands shot forward to take the pommel of Old Veracious while Coen materialized behind Lexington, locking his wrists behind his back, and growling in a voice that dripped with predatory command, “Stand still. Do not use your Object Summoning power or any power at all. Watch the reflection of the light as it leaves your eyes.”
Through our open connection, I knew Coen’s rage and grief and fear had been strong enough for the command to latch onto him.
Lexington went still, his pupils forced to tack onto the glinting blade before him and the reflection that shimmered in the steel.
But his mouth was still able to move, and I knew he was talking to me.
“I’ve been in your mind, girl. I know your deepest fears.”
I adjusted my grip on the sword.
