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“By the moonbeam and the mist,” he breathed finally. “I love you.”

I melted into him, wishing it was his physical arms that wrapped around me. “How do you say that in Sorronian?”

“What? By the moonbeam and the mist?”

“No. I love you.”

“Oh.” Coen smiled and pressed my head against his chest. “Neh vi otla.”

“Neh vi otla,” I told him back, my lips against his heart.

He tensed for a moment, then tightened his embrace around me. When he finally pulled back, he placed something in my hand that felt like a small ball of warm honey—a slice of moonbeam, condensed into the shape of a pearl. A small, delicate piece of Mind Manipulating magic that he’d been doing time and time again now that he didn’t trust himself to get close enough to gift me real pearls.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

By the time I pulled myself back into my own mind half an hour later, blinking up at the midnight clouds hovering overhead, I kept my fingers closed for a moment, imagining that the bead of moonlight was truly still nestled in my palm.

When I uncurled them, however, my hand was empty. Like always.

“Neh vi otla,” I repeated to the empty air, wondering if it would reach him.

And when I thought about the Sorronian words branded into the back of my neck, the first wisps of an idea began to form in the middle of all my fear.

CHAPTER

7

COEN

I waited until Rayna had climbed back into her bed and fallen into what looked like peaceful dreams before standing up on the Mind Manipulator mansion’s roof.

We’d been so close tonight, lying on two separate rooftops on the opposite side of Bascite Boulevard—only the width of a single street between us. From a star’s point of view, it might have looked like we were side by side.

With one last glance through Rayna’s window, I wrenched myself away and Walked back to the flagship bobbing on the sea outside the dome, all the other vessels in the Sorronian fleet scattered on the dark horizon.

My feet clunked against the quarterdeck, my body falling so heavily that I almost tipped sideways when the ship swayed in time with the waves beyond. Dizziness swirled around my vision, and I had to blink several times before I could make out the figures before me: a few deckhand faeries down below, who were busy adjusting the sails as a sharp wind cut over us, and two more familiar, closer ones who whipped around at the sound of my appearance.

“Coen!” Terrin unfolded his arms, as if he’d just been in the middle of some kind of argument. “You’re later than usual. Did you finally take Rayna into an abandoned classroom and—hey, what was that for?” He rubbed his elbow where the young woman next to him, Dazmine, had just reached out to smack him. “It’s an honest question!”

“It’s a tactless question,” she hissed.

“Oh, and I should take tact lessons from you?” he snarled back. “You’re the last person in the world I’d expect to know anything about that.”

“I need Nara and Barberro,” I panted out before their bickering could escalate any more. A pause later, I added, “And also Sasha and Sylvie.”

“Are you sure?” Terrin turned his attention back to me, offense written behind the grizzly ginger beard he’d been growing out over the last year. “Whatever you need, brother, I can—”

“—give me an antidote to whatever caused this?” I finished for him with raised eyebrows, lifting the side of my shirt to reveal the still-bleeding wound.

Only, it wasn’t simply bleeding now. A greenish stain had spread beneath my tan skin, spiderwebbing into my veins, and pain pressed a hot poker into my ribcage with every breath.

“Shit,” Terrin whistled at the sight. “Getting Nara now.”

He pivoted and sprinted off, leaving me alone on the deck with the deckhand, who spared me quick, furtive glances as they passed by, and Dazmine.

Who folded her arms and frowned at me.

“Did Rayna get hurt, too?”