Page 179 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
“There.” Dyonisia brushed her hands against her dress. “Now I havetwoextra spaces on my Good Council to fill—Ms. Leake’s and Mr. Lexington’s. I’ll see to it that Mr. Gleekle contacts you about the initiation process at the beginning of next year. I daresay you’d be a good addition… if you can handle a little more power, that is.”
She clambered into the carriage and held out her hand.
I didn’t dare glance back at the alleyway now that her focus was trained on me. Coen could Walk Emelle and Lander back to the Institute when the coast was clear.
No, I didn’t look back.
And as a dark, fathomless presence returned to the periphery of my mind, hovering and guarding from his space between stars, I stepped forward and took my aunt’s hand.
The carriage ride back was much too silent and much too loud at the same time.
Dyonisia, the Wild Whispering coachman, and I kept our mouths shut as the crows hefted us up and over Hallow’s Perch—what looked like a pile of smoking ruins from above—and across the gentle rise and fall of the jungle canopy. I hadn’t realizeduntil now that the sky above all that mist and smoke had melted back into dusk.
The carriage ripped through the wind. I felt Dyonisia’s eyes as she studied me unabashedly, her lips pursing in distaste at the filth coating my skin and the jagged rips in the dress she had given me.
She still doesn’t trust you, came his voice in my head.
I’d felt his presence follow me, but I still had to bite back the surge of relief that threatened to well in my eyes at the actual sound of his voice as he rode his own wave of darkness alongside the carriage, trailing us in his in-between space while Dyonisia was none the wiser.
Iknow, I replied, hardly daring to blink. Indeed, my aunt seemed to be shimmering with an aura of mist, antipower coating her like a second skin—a film of protection from any kind of magic I could possibly throw her way.But at least now she thinks she can control me.
Maybe she can. Coen’s voice was a whisper.Maybe she controls all of us. When she had you in that dome of her antipower… I couldn’t get to your mind. I couldn’t hear you.
So he hadn’t heard me say that I loved him. And now he sounded so heartbroken, so angry at himself, that my fingers curled in my lap with the effort it took to hide how much I wanted to gather his face into my hands and smooth out every harsh line I knew rode his skin.
Well, you can hear me now. And I can hear you.
He still didn’t sound convinced.
I should have known you were in trouble with Lexington. I should have been there as soon as he dragged you away. I should have—
Stop that. You were literally fighting monsters. There’s no way you could have known anything while your mind was so preoccupied.
Well, therewasa way… but it was a rarity, an impossibility, and I tucked that small kernel of wishful thinking into the shrine of my mind.
I waited until the carriage tipped forward as the coachman instructed the crows to descend to ask,the exiled ones?
I’d asked Coen to whisk them all away before Dyonisia could catch sight of them in their original forms, but…
I got them to the bunker in time,he sighed.The village healers are tending to them.
So Kimber, Jenia, and the others hadn’t run away, after all. Dyonisia had no way of knowing that her own citizens had taken in the monsters she’d set on them, but that wouldn’t last forever. Eventually, one of those villagers would talk, and the news that Hallow’s Perch was harboring exiled ones would make its way to the Good Council. To her.
Did you see your family?I asked.
Yes.Coen’s voice hitched.My adoptive father is a Mind Manipulator, so our secret’s safe with him… but I had to erase the encounter from everyone else’s mind.
My neck didn’t so much as twitch in Dyonisia’s sharp-eyed presence, but my heart broke for him. He’d been trying so hard to leave other people’s memories untouched, only to have to erase himself from the very same villagers who had raised him as a boy.
It’s better that way,Coen whispered.I can’t share my Mind Manipulating power with everyone.
I could see the first sparkles of the Esholian Institute now as the carriage skimmed the treetops, aiming for the courtyard. I couldn’t believe how different this descent was from the one I’d made a year and a half ago. I was no longer riding the carriage with Quinn and Lander during the daytime, but touching down with the leader of the entire Good Council in the dead of night… and a voice in my head.
What about Dazmine and the others?I asked quickly.Terrin, the twins, Barberro and Nara?
I brought them all back to the ship. Barberro’s lower arm is absolutely mutilated, but he’ll live. And I’ll go fetch Emelle and Lander and bring them back to the Institute as soon as you’re back on your own two feet and Dyonisia is long gone.
Thank you.
