Page 18 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
This time, his words echoed in my mind, too, and I felt the Mind Manipulation work on me as I’d thought it would from the beginning: he dropped my wrists, but I couldn’t run, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything besides part my lips and open my treacherous mouth for him.
Steeler held my mother’s knife with one hand and placed the pill on my tongue with those two large, steady fingers.
Okay, close your mouth now.
I did, loathing myself, loathing him. The pill was smooth and vaguely sweet and surely filled with some kind of pirate poison.
Swallow it.
I lifted my eyes to his, throwing every ounce of hatred I had into that gaze, and swallowed the pill.
He brushed a finger along my cheek. “Good girl.”
Even though my legs still wouldn’t move, locked in place against my will, I found my mouth.
“Fuck you.”
Steeler laughed humorlessly. “You already have, little hurricane. Now…” He held my knife back out to me, and my fingers closed around the handle. At the same moment, he placed something small and round in my other hand, and my fingers closed around that, too. But my arm stillwouldn’t moveas he began back-pedaling away from me at a leisurely pace. “See you next week, same time? I’m good with wherever—I’ll find you no matter where you are.”
With a distinctsnap, I felt his mind bubble pop.
All the insect voices rushed back to me in one droning buzz, the hoots and howls and distant thunder of night sweeping in like a tide.
My legs unlocked. I swung my knife hand back.
But Steeler was already gone.
And when I opened my other hand, it was to find a single black pearl nestled in my palm.
CHAPTER
8
“Thereyou are, Rayna!” It was Cilia, hiccupping and waving me over from where she stood with Mitzi Hodges and a group of nervous-looking inductees. “I was just telling the new girls about you and your famous Branding last year. You know, the tiger thing and all.”
Our induction chant had come and gone, then, and nobody had noticed my absence in the pandemonium of it all.
Except—no, I realized as I wended my way toward Cilia. Emelle was glancing at me from within a knot of new Whisperers over by the cuckoo clock between split staircases, a hint of concern crossing over her features. And Dazmine wasn’t eventryingto suppress the suspicion written all over gaze as she crossed her arms on the other end of the foyer, tracking my movement deeper into the room.
Pretending I hadn’t seen Dazmine and throwing my best attempt at a cheerful smile toward Emelle, I approached the group of young women all ogling me.
“Hi! Welcome to the Wild Whisperer house. How is everyone feeling?”
It didn’t even sound like my own voice coming out of my mouth. It was much too high-pitched, too bright and bubbly compared to the deep, dark pit eating my stomach whole.
I’d slid my knives back beneath my dress, and the pearl—well, since I didn’t have pockets,ithad gone down the crack of my cleavage. I didn’t know why I’d even kept it… except that I felt like I had to add it to my collection upstairs as a tally of sorts. For how many times Steeler had cornered me and forced me to take one of those pills and wiped away any recollection of the assault afterward.
A tally for revenge.
Cilia and Mitzi started introducing me to the new girls. Leyla. Randy. Kira. Idora. Shantelle. I tried to commit each of their names and faces to memory, but that was proving rather difficult when my memory itself was waiting for a certain Mind Manipulator to smear away the night’s events at any second.
Only, that never happened, and as the mingling swelled into partying, drinking, and new cliques wafting to separate armchairs or sofas, I began to wonder if Steeler was really going to keep his end of the bargain even though I hadn’t swallowed the capsule voluntarily.
Take this pill and I won’t bury this memory of us. You can show it to the Good Council—how you nicked me.
I didn’t want to show the Good Council, though. Didn’t want Lexington or Dyonisia finding out that a wanted fugitive had been within my grasp—literally—and even with the knife and training and sheath, I’d managed nothing more than to mar his perfect jaw.
“Nice of you to finally join us.”
