Page 12 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
I waited for a blow, either a sharp reprimand or possibly the sting of her hand on my cheek. But only lethal quiet bore down upon me.
“Where is your weapon now?” Dyonisia finished, tilting her head.
I blinked up at her. Cleared my throat and tried to keep the mask over my face. “I thought it might not be… appropriate to carry a knife around everywhere I go.” Especially considering the no-killing rules that Jenia had been accused of breaking—and banished for.
Dyonisia smiled, baring her wine-tinted teeth.
“Well, then, it’s a good thing I have just the gift for you, isn’t it?”
She turned and picked up the burgundy package beside her glass of wine. I hadn’t given it much thought upon first glance, but now I watched her slide off all those ribbons and bows and unfold the box beneath, then hand me the complicated strip of leather inside.
“It’s a thigh sheath,” Dyonisia said. “I had the best of my blacksmiths in Belliview tailor it especially for that knife of yours. So that when youdomeet up with Coen Steeler—soon, as you said—your weapon of choice will already be on you. You will have to stop wearing those wretched pants, of course, and startwearing dresses like a proper Esholian lady. I will have some delivered to your room.”
So many alarms blared through me at those words. The fact that Dyonisia had been spying on me, watching me so thoroughly that she somehow knew the exact shape and curve of myknifewas one thing. The idea that I wasn’t just her bait, that she truly expected me to fight a dangerous Mind Manipulator and potentially win—that was another.
I took the sheath and turned it over in my hands, feeling the cold nip of the buckles and the flexible pocket where my knife would go. There were also several other smaller pockets on either side of the main one, as if to host an array of shorter blades, too.
“I thought you wanted me to catch Steeler so that you could…” For some reason, the words lodged in my throat. “I didn’t think you’d want me to…”
“Oh, I don’t think you’d be able to kill a pirate, my dear.” Dyonisia’s laugh sounded like teeth splintering in her throat. “As I told you all those months ago, those pirates are becoming more and more powerful, breaking through the shield, planning more attacks on our seaside villages, murdering our innocents. But a well-aimed blow—perhaps to his undeserving brand—” And here, her fingers reached out and traced the brand etched into my own shoulder. “…it might hinder his magic as well as his strength.”
I couldn’t help but jerk away from her touch. Had she really said…?
“You mean to tell me that our magic can be destroyed if our brands are maimed?” I asked, horror clamping down in my gut.
Dyonisia whisked up her wine glass and brought it slowly to her lips. After she’d had a long sip, she said, “The brand itself is like the doorway to your magic, child. Shut the door, and there’s no way for that magic to interact with the outside world.”
It took every ounce of restraint within me to not trace my own fingers over my brand, to feel the scarred ridges of that so-called doorway. In my entire year of Wild Whispering, I’d never felt so much as atinglefrom that circled star when I was talking to a plant or animal, but I supposed… supposed that it made sense, even so.
If I could catch Coen and stab him right on that spot…
“Can I ask you a question?”
Those words were tumbling out of my mouth before I could rethink them. Dyonisia raised a slender eyebrow briefly, but nodded.
“Is there ever a reason someone would have… two brands?”
Now her nostrils flared, as if scenting my fear. I didn’t know which of the five types of magic she had, but I thought not Mind Manipulating, or else she wouldn’t drag Lexington around everywhere she went. Still, though, I tried to keep images of Jenia Leake out of my head just in case. Tried and failed.
Dyonisia had gone very, very still.
“Why would you ask such a preposterous thing, child? The Branding is a sacred process between humans and the magic those faeries discarded here centuries ago. What reason would someone have to get a second one?”
Again, the words just tumbled out.
“Maybe to strengthen their magic,” I said, and for the briefest moment, met the ice in her gaze. My own wall of ice seemed to quiver.
Dyonisia leaned back, smiling with her teeth.
“And why would anyone want to do that?”
I could have sworn she purposefully shifted her hair, then, her curtain of midnight black that always covered her chest and shoulders. A sliver of me thought I knew what I’d see: multiple brands, a display of strengthened power, a warning to me to quit asking questions.
Yet her bare shoulder flashed, and I saw… nothing.
Not a single brand, not a single scar, not a single burn.
As if she didn’t have any of the five powers at all.
