Page 91 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
The boy named Mattheus shook his head with a too-serious expression stamped over his face. “Until I can blow steam out of my asshole, too, I will never be satisfied.”
Sasha tutted and Terrin punched him in the shoulder.
Groaning, Steeler passed over the bottle of what must have been bascale, filled with several particles of the five different types of bascite all mixed together. Rodhi had once claimed the effects were random, that our powers just didn’t know what shape to take until the actual Branding, but now I knew: with so many separate magics swimming in that liquid, the blood probably reacted to the strongest one in each individual swallow.
I held my breath, a chill of familiarity sweeping over me as the scene played out almost exactly like mine had in the tent with Rodhi. Like me, these teenagers had shapeless power lurking in their blood, easily triggered by the drink. But unlike me, none of them had exploded upon their first gulp. Now, though…
Mattheus chugged the remains, coughed, and wiped his mouth with his wrist. The others leaned in.
His eyes glazed over.
A shiver wracked his body.
Then it burst from him: not any of the five sanctioned magics, but hisownmagic, formless and raw and unending.
Steeler and Garvis, Terrin and the twins—they all flew backward off their logs, their backs slamming into the ground. Wails and moans rose from the five of them while Mattheus scrabbled at his chest, trying to contain the energy that was pouring out of him.
But he couldn’t. And where my recollection of my own memory had stopped abruptly after a few seconds, this one kept going.
And going.
And going.
Neither Steeler nor his friends could get up against the surge of power. They couldn’t do anything besides cower and cover their heads and wait for several adult figures to come sprinting toward them from the village, shouting out questions.
The mist changed.
Mattheus stood limply in the village square, each of his arms chained to a post behind him. I wanted to scream at him to run when Kitterfol Lexington strode up to him with a leather whip in his fist.
And a grin on his face.
“Ladies and gentlemen.” Lexington turned to address the crowd of villagers all smashed together behind a long line of Good Council elites. His braids were shorter in this memory, but only slightly. “This is what happens when our blood cannot handle the magic we are gifted.” He swept a hand toward Mattheus behind him. “Chaos and destruction that threatens the safety of the entire island. This boy was not yet Branded, but he did steal a small amount of bascite and proved himself unworthy of even that. And such danger to our community will not be tolerated.”
When the whipping began, I turned away. I didn’t want to see.
But I heard each slap of leather against skin, heard the mutters and screams of onlookers fill the square until my eyes locked on young Steeler—how he strained and pushed against an older man’s arms, sobbing, reaching out for his friend he could not help.
And maybe it was because I was in Steeler’s mind and could taste his thoughts and knowledge like fog settling on my tongue, but I knew the man was his adoptive father, knew this adoptive father was a branded Mind Manipulator and had wiped Mattheus’s memories… when I chanced the smallest glance upward to inspect the teenage boy on the stake again, I realized his eyes had smoothed over with glossy nothingness. He was already mentally gone.
Even as his skin hung in bloody strips over his bones.
With a guttural scream that tore through my chest, Steeler ripped through his father’s arms.
Only to collapse to the cobblestone a second later.
Another thing I knew instinctively: his father had just ordered him to go to sleep so that he could not interfere. Could not get hurt.
The mist changed.
Teenage Steeler was on a boat by himself, an oar clutched in each hand. The churning milkiness of the dome hovered just ahead of him, where another vessel bobbed toward him from the other side.
Was it the Fated General? I couldn’t tell, but whoever it was, they must have chosen to meet Steeler on a night when the ocean rose and fell in waves soft enough for the both of them to row themselves out here without magic.
Finally, this other vessel stopped right before the border. It wasn’t the Fated General, after all, but a beautiful, silver-haired faerie in a rowboat on the other side of the shield.
“You came,” Steeler called through the dome.
Something fundamental had broken in his voice. It was no longer hard and cold, but… fractured.
