Chapter 2 #2
“Your sister is one of our youngest, newest, and lowest-ranking members,” one of the elites said.
“She cannot defy Dyonisia Reeve’s orders.
And Dyonisia Reeve’s orders state that anyone who kills a neighbor, tampers with the shield, or tries to run away from the Esholian Institute during their training years shall be exiled permanently without—”
“I didn’t kill him!” Jenia spit, trying to crawl away now.
Something itched in the corner of my mind at that. Like a memory, tugging against the confines of my subconscious. Like I knew she was right. As horrible as Jenia was, as nasty as I remembered Fergus being, they’d been nothing but drooling, fondling lovers when it came to each other.
I strained to listen to Jenia’s next words while the crowd around the fountain swelled even more, the quiet gasps of onlookers rising to excited whispers instead.
Excited whispers that sickened me. Because nobody was stopping this. Nobody was plunging forward to help her up or tell the Good Council elites to back the hell off.
“I don’t know where Fergus went.” Jenia was sobbing now, still crawling. “But I didn’t touch him. Please.”
“On behalf of the Good Council,” the elite continued as if he hadn’t heard her, “we hereby sentence you to eternal banishment, to preserve the safety of the worthy citizens of Eshol.”
I expected Jenia to renew her screaming at that, but she froze instead, even as that halo of butterflies spun faster and faster.
I took a single step forward.
Don’t you dare.
The voice echoed in my head, right where the throbbing was.
I jumped. Whirled. And found nobody looking at me, all eyes still pinned to Jenia in the middle of the courtyard.
Who are you? I thought furiously, wondering if a Mind Manipulator was messing with me from within the crowd.
But that would have gone against the sector’s etiquette, which usually discouraged Manipulators from entering a stranger’s mind without permission.
And I didn’t know a single Mind Manipulator on a personal level. Unless…
The voice grazed my mind again, dark and fathomless, before I could solidify that terrifying thought.
Don’t intervene.
My heartbeat flew into a frenzy as the image of a wickedly handsome young man formed in my mind, with dark brown locks of hair and eyes as cold and unyielding as smoky quartz.
It had to be him. Nobody else would have felt so horribly familiar… which meant he was on the island, on this side of the shield, perhaps watching me right now. A Mind Manipulator’s power could only stretch so far.
Where are you? I asked now, my hands curling into fists, as if I could conjure my mother’s knife just by pretending to hold it.
My gaze scampered over the crowd around me, the buildings behind us, but I saw nothing, nothing besides onlookers craning their necks and my friends holding their breaths and various birds watching from the rooftops.
Why don’t you come out and talk to me face to face?
As if I could take Steeler on without my knife. My goddamned knife, which I still didn’t have on me, for God’s sake.
I could have sworn a low chuckle scraped through me.
Soon, he said.
No. Now.
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 that she, 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.