Page 43 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
Walked. All my life, society had revolved around the five different types of magic. Now Coen Steeler was obviously carrying around a sixth one—as fully formed as all the others, and just as powerful. Maybe even more so.
I clawed a drenched curl away from my face impatiently. “Why not Walk me straight inside anyway?”
“Because, as I said…” Steeler’s voice held nothingbutpatience, the bastard. “You have to choose this for yourself. But if you don’t…” And now he winced as a forked tongue of lightning struck the sealine behind him. “I’ll have to take your memories of the pills again. I don’t think I’m currently capable of it—” A glance down at his oozing cut. “But give me a few hours, and I think it’ll heal.”
Was he admitting that his Mind Manipulating had been wounded but not fully destroyed? I folded my arms, holding back a shiver.
“What, no third option? Just this mysterious alternative or continue to endure your constant mind invasions?”
Steeler winced again, but this time it was gone so fast, I almost wondered if I’d imagined it. A smirk pulled up one of his cheeks.
“I suppose I could also just lock you up here forever.”
Exactly what I had suspected. I stomped past him, toward the lighthouse, willing myself not to lean toward him when I passed close enough to smell that rich, earthy scent of black bamboo.
“Then you aren’t giving me a true choice after all, are you?”
As much as I wanted to be the one to wrench open the door and face whatever—orwhoever—waited for me inside all by myself, Steeler beat me to it.
In a heartbeat, he reemerged on the wraparound porch ahead of me, opening the door and holding it for me.
Biting back a grumble, I picked my way up the stone staircase and through the rickety doorway. He could act like a gentleman all he liked, but it wouldn’t erase the hundred or so reasons I had to hate him. Or the fact that he was a faerie—afaerie—and could literally splinter all of my bones like a pile of kindling.
As soon as I made it into the entryway, however, I stopped.
Those moving shadows I’d glimpsed through the windows—theywerepeople. Four of them, all standing and murmuring to each other until this exact moment.
Now they froze and swiveled toward me: two identical women with the deepest, richest skin I’d ever seen; a man with grizzly red hair and more facial hair than Steeler himself; and a thinner man with a pointy chin, who stopped stroking his mustache to study me with wary eyes.
“Rayna!”
Before my heart could even lurch, one of the women had sprung toward me and twined her arms around my neck.
I shifted backward on instinct. The woman released me with a watery smile, wiping her nose with the edge of a sleeve.
“Sorry. I—I know you don’t remember me. But I missed you.”
Remember her? Missed me? Something in my chest shuddered at the realization that… thatthesewere the pirateswho’d breached the dome with Steeler last year.Thiswas the whole group of spies Dyonisia was after. Right within my grasp.
Which seemed like a pretty big breach of the dome to me.
The cottage door snapped shut behind us, cutting off the howling sound of wind and waves. Steeler moved further into the room, where light from a billowing fireplace danced over a threadbare rug.
“Rayna, this is Sylvie, and her twin, Sasha.” He nodded at the identical sister still loitering a few steps away; she jerked her head at me in greeting. “They’re both Summoners. And this is Terrin, an Element Wielder—” He gestured at the grizzly-haired man with his good arm. “And Garvis, a Mind Manipulator like me.”
As soon as Steeler finished his last words, every eye in the room seemed to flick toward his brand—and the slash over it.
“She actually cut you?” Sasha piped up from behind her twin. “Did it work? Is your mind power gone?”
Her tone didn’t sound accusatory or shocked or anything other than curious.
And it was then that I knewSteelerknew. He knew why I’d cut his brand and what it was supposed to do to him… because he’d picked that information from my brain without my permission? Or because the pirates were already aware of this phenomenon?
“Not gone,” Steeler answered, massaging one of his bare pectoral muscles. I looked away pointedly. “Just… damaged. Like the window through which it sees the world is suddenly cracked.” A pause, and I felt a quivering wave of dark energy brush against my mind, then retreat just as quickly. “I can still hear all your thoughts, but they’re choppy.”
So a single slice hadn’t been enough to destroy his magic completely, after all. But—later. I tucked away that information for later.
For now, I forced myself to face this group of traitors and—
