Page 98 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
There would be no explanation of Dyonisia’s originsafterdinner. There would be an explanationnow.
I pinned him with my best expression of fearlessness. “Felicity wants you to start from the beginning.”
And so did I. No more holes. No more gaps or half-truths or missing pieces. If I was going to peer into the monstrous possibility that Dyonisia Reeve might have given life to me—that the knife she’d made a sheath for had been hers from the very beginning… well, I needed to know everything.
When Steeler made the smallest of glances toward Dazmine, who had lowered herself into the seat beside me, I nodded. She was already involved, already formulating plans to get Jenia back from Dyonisia whether any of us liked it or not. No hiding the truth from her, either.
Steeler nodded back and cleared his throat.
“Okay, then. I’ll start with once upon a time, when there were three faerie sisters with powers that marked them as royals.”
Terrin paused with a mouthful of dumpling already in his mouth. Garvis scrunched his eyebrows. Obviously, the two of them knew where this was headed with just those few words. My own thoughts flashed back to Steeler’s pendant with the engraving of the Sorronian words and the three female faeries wearing crowns.
“The eldest sister,” Steeler continued, eyes tacked to mine, “could steal anyone else’s faerie magic with a single glance and keep it for herself to wield forevermore.” His jaw twitched, as if such a thing disgusted him. “Her name was Mydusia, and she became queen when their mother grew to a weary age and passed her the crown during a symbolic duel.”
“A symbolic duel?” Dazmine tilted her head.
Terrin was the one who answered her, forcing himself to swallow his forkful of dumpling with a thump to his chest.
“According to Sorronian tradition, any female can claim the throne so long as they challenge the existing queen to an official duel—and win, of course.”
Dazmine raised her eyebrows at him. No matter how many weeks had passed since their first encounter in the jungle, she always looked half inclined to eat him alive.
“This Mydusia person is still the queen of your realm?”
“Yes,” Terrin said.
“And in theory, any one of us females in this room could challenge her to a duel and take her place? Even Felicity?”
“Oh, I like that,” Felicity piped up. “I would be a good queen.”
Terrin boomed out a harsh laugh. “Millenia’s worth of powerful faeries with astounding innate magic have continuously challenged our current queen, and they’ve all ended up in pieces. The monkey wouldn’t come out of it with half a tail left.”
Although Felicity’s face fell, I couldn’t say I was surprised.
If the current queen could actuallystealother faerie magic with a single glance and wield it for herself… well, nobody she faced would prove a threat to her. She could render her opponent completely magic-less, then simply use their own power to destroy them.
“What about the other two sisters?” I prodded. “What were their powers?”
“The youngest, Chrysanthia, had the power of Camouflage,” Steeler answered with a more relaxed jaw now. “Much like her older sister, she could mimic the magics around her… but more as a mirror, a reflection, nothing she could keep forever. She was gentle, aloof, and perhaps a touch mad—but welcomed and loved throughout the queendom despite this.”
The power of Camouflage. I wondered what that would be like, to be able to echo every power around you. To be able to hear the song of the jungle, the cacophony of minds, the pull of objects, the morphing of skin and bone, and the call of the elements all at once.
“What about the middle sister?” I asked, dreading the answer but knowing what it was deep in my coiling gut.
Steeler closed his eyes. Garvis tensed beside him.
“The middle sister, Dyonisia, could suppress other faerie powers with a misty, milky magic I am sure you are all well familiar with.”
Dazmine sucked in a sharp breath and Felicity made a small, “Oh!” while my heart only curled into a tighter ball.
Dyonisia Reeve wasn’t just a faerie. She was a faerie… princess? Or, at least, the younger sister of the queen of Sorronia. A royal.
Steeler opened his eyes again, meeting mine.
“Dyonisia was rebellious and wild-spirited from the day she took her first breath, they say. And yet the three sisters remained close for hundreds of years—until Princess Chrysanthia went missing.”
I blinked. That wasn’t what I had been expecting at all.
