Page 181 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
Those slivered pupils studied me, surprise slicing through them.
“I thought such a thing might aid both of us for different reasons, yes. You so that you could see where your lineage is from, and me…”
He didn’t finish that thought, and I didn’t lower my blockade to snatch the answer out of the air. I was too exhausted, too weighed down, for more secrets—or the revelations beneath them.
“There’s one in my bag that Dazmine left in the bunker of Hallow’s Perch” was all I said. “When you get there, you can have it.”
The faerie king of old twisted his maw in a feline version of a smile, canines glinting yellow in the moonlight.
“Thank you.”
With a leap, he was off, that silky, striped coat bunching over the ridges of his back, his tail whipping behind him.
When he was gone, I leaned against the Mind Manipulating mansion, listening to the hum of the vines that crawled up the wall.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever get the last twenty-four hours out from under my eyelids. Images of monsters and dead bodies cycled in the darkness behind them every time I blinked.
My plan with the pills had failed, but maybe, if I could secure a spot on the Good Council, I could destroy Dyonisia Reeve from the inside-out. I just had to come up with another plan.
For now, though, I needed to recoup.
As I leaned my head against the wall, just breathing in all the muggy scents around me, a soft breeze toyed with the ends of my hair.
I opened my eyes to find an object floating toward me from the sky, dark and circular. The wind eddied around me, jostlingthe string of black pearls to and fro before sliding it gently over my head.
The wind is my friend, the Cardina jeweler had told me.
And her friend was finally delivering what I’d been waiting for.
No sooner had it rested against my chest than a voice—not in my head, but one carried by the wind—sent electricity shooting through each of my senses.
“What a pretty necklace.”
Coen appeared before me for only a brief slice of time.
Then his hand reached out and tugged me into his swirling darkness, where far-off lights flickered all around us.
There, in that space between stars that I’d come to know and love, we hovered against each other, our bodies fitting together like the God of the Cosmos had carved us side by side during our Making.
Coen grazed my new necklace with his fingertips.
“It’s my tally,” I said in answer to his silent question.
A melancholy smile lifted his lips.
“For?”
“How many times you came back for me.” A pause lumped in the base of my throat. “How many times you chose me over everything else. Besides, they were just too precious to sit in a drawer, you see.”
All of that was only half of it, though. I’d also asked the Cardina jeweler to make me this necklace so that I could wear my love for the male before me right on my chest, where everybody could see it but only I would know what it meant. My missing memories hadn’t triggered that realization in me… it had been developing for a long time. Slowly and painfully, but beautifully, too.
My subconscious had known it all along.
Coen leaned back to thumb my jaw with a tenderness that left my skin aching for more.
“They’re even more precious against your skin, little hurricane. And I will gladly spend every day trying to earn back just as many reasons for you to be proud of wearing it.”
“I already am,” I whispered, “and you already have.”
