Page 7 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
A tongue clucked inside my head.So impatient, as always.
Clenching my jaw so fiercely it popped, I swung my attention back to the courtyard, where the two Good Council elites were already bending in unison to scoop Jenia up from where she still knelt.
Steeler had… had distracted me. And now it was too late.
As soon as they touched her, Jenia twisted and thrashed, shrieking viciously again—and almost managed to loosen herself from their grips. One of the Good council elites caught her by the sleeve. Fabric ripped, and for a split second I saw—
No. I almost fell into Emelle, who caught me with warm hands as I blinked at what I could not have possibly seen: a circle of seared flesh right beneath her armpit where that fabric had ripped.
Like Jenia Leake donned a second, hidden brand.
“You bitch,” the Good Council elite cursed right after she managed to elbow him in the jaw with that same arm.
Except, her body didn’t hit the ground.
It jerked right before impact, levitating, floating up to rest between the two men in a bubble of what I assumed was Summoning magic. I didn’t have to see Jenia’s fluttering lashes to know they’d made her pass out, probably by sending the blood from her head to her toes.
The butterflies that had been spinning above her head fell to the ground in heaps of membranous wings. Dead.
The elites didn’t even glance down at them. They merely walked briskly through the path the onlookers had made for them, toward the Testing Center and the sea beyond it.
“Well, shit,” Rodhi said, not a single spark of humor lighting up his voice for perhaps the first time in his life. His eyes were glued to the heap of dead butterflies where Jenia had been. “I’ve always wanted that to happen to her just to get her to shut up, but now that it actually did… well, that was fucked. Like, really, truly fucked.”
Everyone else was hissing whispers to each other, and I knew that Dyonisia Reeve had ordered it to be so public to serve as a warning to everyone else.Don’t mess with the shield. Don’t run away. And don’t kill your fellow Esholians.
But despite the fact thatshe,Dyonisia,was the one who had done this to one of her own citizens, I couldn’t help the fury from spilling in a different direction. Toward that dark, invasive voice.
You monster, I seethed inside my own head, which had resumed throbbing.Of course you wanted to stop me from intervening. You’ll get all Jenia’s magical scraps when they toss her overboard, won’t you?
Nothing answered within my own mind.
As if Steeler had never been in there at all.
CHAPTER
3
“I’ll meet you guys in the dining hall,” I said ten minutes later, when we’d all made our way back down Bascite Boulevard toward our houses. “I’ve got to go grab something for my head.”
Indeed, my headache had only increased its tempo on the walk over, probably due to the burst of conversation as everyone who’d witnessed Jenia’s exile ran off to tell the rest of the Institute what had happened. The birds, too, flew overhead, chirping and squawking about the gossip to every Wild Whisperer they could find. Only my own group remained somber, as if even Rodhi couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Okay.” Emelle tried to smile at me, but her lips wobbled. “But don’t be late. I heard Cook convinced some lemurs to bring her morel mushrooms for the potato pie tonight.”
It was the best bit of normalcy she could offer after what had just happened. I squeezed her hand in thanks and nodded at the others before racing into my house’s foyer ahead of them, up the stairs and to the second-year’s floor. Here, chipped woodendoors lined the hallway, interspersed with windows where potted plants waved from their windowsills as I passed.
After our fourth quarterly test last year, my class of Wild Whisperers had switched from the communal bunkroom to this hall of four-person dorm rooms, so I now shared a space with Emelle and two others: a girl named Cilia, who hung with Mitzi Hodges, and Dazmine Temperton, who—
Walked out of our room right as I was opening it.
Well, shit. In the chaos of the last half an hour, I’d forgotten… forgotten that Dazmine had been Jenia’s best friend. She rarely talked to any of us, always slipping out of bed first thing in the morning and returning late at night, her face always impassive, unreadable.
Now, though, Dazmine’s usually perfect, bronze-toned cheeks were streaked with tears, and her chin was quivering.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered before I could think twice about it. “I know Jenia and I didn’t really get along, but I’m still sorry that it happened to her. That there was nothing anyone could do.”
That there was nothing you could do, I meant to say beneath the layers, because from the puffiness of her face, I knew my frustration wasnothingcompared to her agony at losing her friend forever.
Dazmine took a step back. Her gaze squeezed into something hateful and cold.
