Page 170 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
I redirected my own focus to Lexington’s face, flexing my blockade like a bubble around me. The fire had pushed away all the wildlife in the area, so my Wild Whispering power wouldn’t be of any use to me right now. I’d have to rely on Mind Manipulating. If I could just slip into Lexington’s mind and command him to let me go…
Lexington himself squinted at me, taking a step closer.
“Did you know that Dyonisia has a strict no-killing policy when it comes to you? I can’t slice your throat open right now, or she will slice open mine for disobeying. But there is a part of Mind Manipulating that’s not taught at the Institute…”
Another step closer. I lowered my blockade a notch, and my knees buckled at the cascade of ugly, slimy thoughts that barreled into me.
“I can destroy your consciousness,” Lexington continued, the glee in his irises dancing with mania. “Your body will live, but your mind…well, you will be dead in the ways that matter but alive in the ways that don’t. ThenbothDyonisia and I will get what we want.”
The rest of his thoughts were too slippery for me to grab onto. I couldn’t dive into a rotten cesspool like that, squirming and writhing with so much hatred and malice. I just couldn’t.
“Please don’t.”
My knives only floated toward me, one of the tips grazing my nose.
“Please don’t,” Lexington mimicked in a high-pitched warble. “It’s too late for manners, girl. No matter how you did it, you lied to me. And the greatest Mind Manipulator in the world does not tolerate liars.”
Then he lunged into my mind.
CHAPTER
49
Ifell back into my own mind just as Lexington crashed into my foundation with a resoundingthud.
His invasive consciousness had grown bigger since last night’s events. The length of his fleshy body stretched out like one of the bulbous roots of a palm tree. His head was reared up to twice my height, and the gaping hole in his face spread wider than a spoked wheel.
I no longer had my knives—either in the real world or in my own mind—but I remembered all of my lessons with Garvis like he’d imprinted them on my soul.
Eventually you’ll be able to Manipulate your own mind with more ease. But that requires getting to know your subconscious better… which most Mind Manipulators don’t do until their second or third year.
If I wanted a fighting chance at preventing Lexington from destroying the integral part of me in here, I neededher.
My subconscious.
I was already turning to run, but the sight of my own mind nearly stopped me in my tracks.
My walls—they weren’t covered in thick slabs of ice anymore. Only the thinnest veil of frost bordered the edges, while steady trickles of water ran down the moss-lined cracks in stacked stone.
And between those cracks—vines and flowers. Climbing hydrangea, jasmine, and a beautiful, drooping plant of purple petals I’d never seen before, all glittering with dew drops beneath the light of my sickle moon. I hadn’t even realized until this moment that my foundation was no longer snow, but a stone pathway leading toward my gate, surrounded by bursts of wildflowers among trees.
There was no time to gawk, though.
I shot toward my open gate and the maze of hedges beyond.
Another thud sent tremors through the ground behind me. From the furious hiss that followed, I could tell Lexingtonknew. He knew I was a Mind Manipulator now that I’d run from him, but I didn’t stop even as I flew threw my gate and took the main pathway straight into the center of my mind.
In the real world, my body stayed pressed against that dead-end brick wall, suffocated with a band of exhaustion from all the fighting and running in the smoke. In here, though, my muscles and lungs felt alive with the scenery I sprinted past. The hedges were at once soft and domineering, the rosebushes beautiful and thorny, the trees gentle and powerful. The streams of melted ice gathered along the pathway and streamed inward, a gurgling creek leading me straight to my destination.
Leading Lexington, too.
I could hear his monstrous form sliding along after me, a sort of hissing friction that strung mucus along my foundation. It made me cringe, both inward and outward, to have his presence taint such a sacred place.
Because that’s what it felt like in here. Sacred. Something I wasn’t surprised I’d had to coat in armors of ice for so long to protect what lay beneath—what hadalwaysbeen beneath.
Thisis what Steeler had seen in me on my first day at the Esholian Institute.Thisis what he’d said he could have gotten lost in. Neither a vicious jungle nor a perfectly-trimmed arboretum, but something in between. A wild garden that was made of more than just trees and flowers: stone and water and the faintest flow of wind at my back.
What would Lexington do to it if he caught me? If he destroyed me? Would it still exist, or would all of this wilt and crumble and decay?
