Page 69 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
And hoisting me up.
Through snarled limbs and vines that parted a path for me, past lizards freezing on bark, snakes looped lazily around boughs, frogs, monkeys, and even a singular sloth dripping with moss.
My stomach bottomed out as the branches fed me to a neighboring tree that grabbed me with stiffer, clawlike limbs and passed me toanothertree. And another and another.
Deeper and deeper, the jungle carried me along its braided chain.
Until it finally plopped me down gently on a bed of branches somewhere in the upper half of the canopy, where waxy leaves the size of my face cradled either side of me and a pair of fierce yellow eyes fixed onto mine.
“Interesting,” Jagaros said, uncrossing his paws.
He appeared to have been lounging in a flattened fork in the tree, but now his ears pricked on high alert as I readjusted myself, straddling one branch while I gripped another one with a tight fist.
“Hello,” I forced myself to say. For manners’ sake.
“I thought you no longer wished to talk to me.” Jagaros’s pupils had gone arrow-straight as they focused on my face. “Orare you done throwing a temper tantrum like you’re three years old again?”
“That depends.” I blew away a hawk moth fluttering near my face. “Are you going to give me one straightforward answer this time?”
“That depends,” Jagaros retorted. “Are you going to ask questions that won’t jeopardize all of our safety while you’re still learning to protect the secrets in your mind?”
No. The answer to that was no. This time, I planned to ask him all the questions I wanted and eavesdrop on the hidden thoughts simmering right behind that feline skull. It definitely felt like a massive invasion of his privacy, but if Emelle’s village had been attacked by pirates and Jagaros was working with them…
I let it dissolve around me, my blockade.
Then I said, “Iknewyou were working with Steeler this whole time. You sound just like him.”
There. Let him deny it out loud but confirm it mentally.
But when Jagaros spoke, his outer thoughts matched his verbal growls so precisely, the two sounds merged into one.
“I’ll take that as a compliment, Rayna Drey, given Coen Steeler’s the only one I approve of for you.”
I was too stuffed full of shocked rage to even scoff at that.
“Okay, one, you’re not either of my dads.”
I pushed down the urge to think of Fabian and Don right now. I missed them hard enough to hurt, and the idea thattheymight be next, that Alderwick might suffer the same attack as Merkwell…
“Two,” I pushed on, “Idon’t approve of Steeler for me. Did you know that his precious pirate family just demolished most of Emelle’s village? That her family might bedeadbecause of him?”
I could feel the quivering take over my entire body now, and the branch I straddled actually seemed to be tensing, as if preparing for me to fall or lunge toward Jagaros and claw his eyes out.
But Jagaros didn’t even blink.
“Those monsters weren’t pirates that attacked Merkwell.”
My quivering stopped. My very heartbeat stopped.
“What? How do you know? What were they, then?”
Once again, Jagaros’s mental and verbal words merged into one, his stark honesty evident in the absence of even the faintest echo.
“Something far more unstable and dangerous. I do not know any more than that.”
He paused as that sunk into my gut like a vise clamping down.
Steeler hadn’t been involved in the attack today.
