Page 176 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
“Y-yes,” I got out.
“Good. I would have been disappointed otherwise.”
Dyonisia swept her gaze across Coen, lingering on him for a bit with a lip tugging upward in smug victory, then to me.
“What you mightnothave figured out, though,” she said, stepping closer, “is how intelligent my power is. It can sense both of your magics in my little web right now. Usually, I give Wild Whispering and Mind Manipulating powers a pass on the smothering effects, but right now… well, let’s just say I wouldn’t fancy you asking those crows to attack me.”
I said nothing, even as a creeping sense of dread slunk over me.
The crows—they were squawking and cawing in their reined harnesses, but I… I couldn’t understand them.
And my blockade had dissolved, but none of Dyonisia’s thoughts wafted out to me. I couldn’t find Coen’s mind or fall back into my own. My Mind Manipulating power was gone, too.
Like she’d said, Coen and I were trapped in this web together.
If only Nara’s pills had been ready in time. If only I had Object Summoning so that I could ram that poison down her slender throat.
“What do you want?” I dared ask.
Dyonisia gave me a smile masked in tight skin.
“You. I wantyou, Rayna.”
She took another step closer. I flinched back, but the sting of her antipower held me in place.
“But,” she continued, “how could I everhaveyou if you were in love with the enemy—mydearsister’s greatest weapon?” She nodded at Coen, still locked in that same position a few paces away. “How could I turn you into my own weapon if you chosehimand the massacre that is to come from him?”
“Massacre?”
“Yes.” Dyonisia nodded, her lips puckering with sincerity. “Look what he did to those poor exiled ones today. Hemutilatedthem. And he is prophesized to destroy the entire world if my sister asks him to.”
My heart broke into a furious rhythm at what she was confessing to me.
“You knew who he was the whole time he was at the Institute.”
It wasn’t a question, and Dyonisia didn’t bother nodding.
“It wasn’t hard to put the pieces together. Six kids suddenly exist in Hallow’s Perch where they hadn’t before? Please.” She tutted a laugh. “My mistake was my curiosity. I wanted to see if their Branded powers were more extraordinary than humans due to their faerie blood—I planned to take them in after their Final Tests, but you made sure they got away in the nick of time, didn’t you? You and your little spider spy?”
I swallowed all my protests. If I was going to stick to my plan…
“Well, you have him now.” I lifted a finger—all I could manage in the web—toward Coen. “I passed your test. Here he is.”
“Test?” Now Dyonisia actually lifted her chin in laughter. “Test? Don’t you see, child? This wasn’t atest. I don’t want Coen Steeler anymore. I wantyou. Your mission was just a way to turnyou against him—to make you hate him as you should. But it looks like that backfired on me, didn’t it?”
She gestured at Coen, then at Lexington, and I understood: she knew we’d killed him together. She knew we’d fought together back in that village square. She knew I’d fallen back in love with him. Why else would I be in Hallow’s Perch, defending his home village? Why else would we have been standing side by side, covered in blood that was not our own?
“It didn’t backfire,” I tried to lie.
Dyonisia’s perfectly white teeth glimmered in a smile.
“Oh, trust me. It did. But I am nothing if not a firm believer in a little discipline. Prove to me that you choose me—that you choose thisisland—over the Fated General. Prove to me that you are willing to sever his bloody destiny before it hurts the people you love.” She examined her nails. “Or I will enjoy dropping a bomb of my own power on Alderwick. And this time, I’ll make sure it suffocates every last drop of magic, no matter which form that magic takes.”
Fabian and Don. She’d threatened them before, and now she was threatening them again, but in a more tangible way. I could almost see the dome condensing over my tiny home village, prepared to fall.
Tears blurred my vision now as I looked at Coen.
His edges were warping through the mist. His warm brown eyes were fixed on me, though, and I found my answer within them.
