Page 174 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
“You don’t want this kind of blood on your hands,” Lexington continued confidently as Coen kept his arms firmly locked behind his back. “You’re too desperate to prove to the world that you’re good.” He licked a splatter of blood off his lips. “So prove it, Ms. Drey. Prove to me that you’re a good person and drop that sword.”
I took a deep breath. We didn’t have time for this conversation. Garvis was bleeding outnow. And with my subconscious stirring right behind my eyes, I didn’t need to perseverate on his words or wonder if they were true. I already had my answer.
“I don’t have to prove anything to someone who knocks other people down just to feel big,” I told him.
Old Veracious hummed in my hands, sending vibrations up my arms, into my chest, into my very soul.
When I pressed the edge of it against Lexington’s neck, those vibrations whispered all the truths about the man’s identity before me.Kitterfol “Kitty” Lexington, born of Andrea Brink and Fallon Lexington 37 years ago in Belliview on the island of Eshol. Mind Manipulator. Object Summoner. Good Council Elite. Assaulter. Madman. Parasite.
But one word stood out above all the others.
Coward.
Lexington’s eyes widened a fraction as he saw the determination settle on my face. His own face crumpled.
I hefted the pommel to the side and swung.
“No!” he blubbered. “St—”
The sword severed through his neck in one swift stroke, the cut so precise and clean that I barely felt the impact.
And the most famous Mind Manipulating head on the island bounced to the ground at my feet.
CHAPTER
50
Ididn’t waste a second longer watching where that head landed.
With a gasp, I pitched forward onto my knees next to Garvis, Coen dropping to his own beside me. Maybe there was a healer in the bunker or on the ship that Coen could Walk Garvis to in time. Maybe the puncture wounds weren’t as bad as they looked.
But when I trained my gaze on Garvis’s chest, it was to find it drenched in his own wounds, already deflated. His eyes had glossed over, and instead of final words, I heard a fleeting thought waft from his mind like a puff of the purest cloud.
I hope…
“No, no, no,” Coen breathed, shaking Garvis’s shoulders. “What do you hope? Tell me what you hope! Rayna—” He turned to me, desperation clinging to his lashes. “Tell him to come back so he can tell us what he hopes.”
I was frozen, staring at the chest that had not risen again.
Garvis… he hadn’t found his spark yet. Hadn’t traveled or found love or discovered something new. I hadn’t even had time to tell him thank you for saving me—not just now, but with allof those Mind Manipulating lessons he’d so selflessly gifted me time and time again.
He couldn’t be dead.
But when I tried to dive into his mind, there weren’t any more thoughts to cling to. There was nothing but a vague sense of a hundred empty curtains, fluttering away, away, away…and gone.
Death, it seemed, hadn’t been as patient with Garvis as Garvis had been with me.
“I’m so sorry,” I told Coen, a sob muffling my voice. I laid Old Veracious by his side, reached out, and gently slid Garvis’s eyelids closed.
Coen made a sound somewhere between anguish and fury, and I knew that if he could, he would bring Lexington back to life just to behead him again and again and again for what he’d ended.
A voice in my ear tugged my head sideways. I hadn’t even felt the fire ant scuttle up my body and onto my shoulder.
“We’re here,” it said.
Just in time, too. Because the next second, Coen’s eyes flashed open as fat plops of milky mist came drifting down from the dome above our heads. The dome itself seemed to be wiggling downward in ropes of antipower, reaching for us with pale hands.
“We’ve got to go, Rayna,” Coen rasped. “She’s coming.”
