Chapter 36
CHAPTER
So do you want me to call you princess now? Because I will—gladly.
Against my will, a deep thrill unfurled in my belly when Steeler’s voice grazed against my wall merely twenty minutes after Walking me back to the Institute that night.
I’d just slipped into a nightgown and settled into my pillow, curling my blanket around me in the dim starlight that squeezed through the window and dappled the ground of my dorm.
Knowing that he was still somewhere out there within Mind Manipulating range, lurking in the dark, maybe even watching my silhouette through the window—why did that send tiny explosions cascading through my bloodstream?
I’m not a princess, I replied, turning over in bed to hide my smile from Cilia and Dazmine. Emelle was, once again, with Lander for the night. I’m a foreign queen’s long-lost sister’s estranged daughter. There’s a difference, Steeler.
A slight pause that had me shivering, waiting. If the queen never has a child, you could very well be Sorronia’s preferred heir, Rayna.
Yeah, an heir who would have to fight for a throne I don’t want and never asked for in a country I’ve never seen. And even if I won, which I wouldn’t, and you know it, any female willing to challenge me could usurp and kill me at any time. No, thank you.
Another pause, this time deeper and more thoughtful. I wrapped my blanket tighter around me. You wouldn’t have to fight Her Majesty if she passed you the crown in a symbolic duel, he said finally.
There it was again. A feral, possessive snapping of teeth deep inside my chest at the way he said Majesty, though I immediately stuffed it back down before it had a chance to really bite.
And do you think the queen would? Just pass me the crown?
Not that I would ever even accept it. While a part of me did yearn to see Sorronia and the rest of the world beyond this dome, the island of Eshol…
it was my home, and I had a feeling I would always drift back to it if I ever did end up sailing away.
But Steeler’s silence inside my head was enough to confirm the assumption that had been bubbling in my periphery since Barberro’s declaration: the Sorronian queen might not want my head on a dinner plate, but she’d never pass me the crown.
Both Steeler and I knew it, felt it, even though there was no real proof.
That’s what I thought, I told him. So don’t call me princess. Little hurricane is fine.
I thought he would try to argue further, but his tone just turned slightly gloating instead. Oh, so you admit it?
What?
That you’re a hurricane. In other words, absolutely devastating.
My heart fluttered again. I didn’t realize I’d wrecked you so much for you to think of me like that.
He chuckled. I mean, you punched me in the face once.
I nearly gasped aloud, but managed to bury my face in my pillow. I did not.
Oh yeah. Gave me a black eye and everything, but don’t worry. It was a sexy punch.
I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing for the hundredth time that I could remember… but every time Garvis and I tried to find those missing pieces, the mist would dissolve right as Steeler was about to come into the picture. As if my brain itself had been eating away at any moment that involved him.
Show me, I breathed out on a mental whisper before I could think better of it. Show me from your side.
I was almost positive he wouldn’t. The only reason he’d herded me toward those other memories in his mind was to give me the truth I needed, not to let me in to the private things tucked away in the deepest parts of him.
To my surprise, a rough, calloused hand grabbed mine inside my mind as if he’d been there all along—which he had.
Come here, then, little hurricane.
He dragged me toward his mind, catching me when I nearly fell into a heap in front of his colossal moonstone gate. My nerves lit up as I remembered what my mouth had done in this exact spot… but this time, Steeler led me right through his gate without blocking my way.
Hand in hand, he led me down spirals, spin-offs, and side corridors of moonstone that towered over us until we came to a halt in front of a particularly vibrant pocket of mist, the Cosmos twinkling and swirling high, high above.
My past self was leaning against a stalk of black bamboo in this memory, closing my eyes and inhaling the scent of it.
Everything was still and peaceful—until a branch creaked.
Leaves swished. I turned just in time to find Steeler emerging from the depths of the grove without a single speck of wicked humor in his eyes.
No, in this memory, his face only held depthless sorrow.
The first time he’d snuck back to campus to give me a pill, I realized with a jolt. One week after he’d had Garvis bury my memories. One week after he’d left me.
For a moment, my past self looked like I was about to tremble backward. The Steeler in this memory raised his palms and opened his mouth, evidently thinking I’d view him as a random stranger in the jungle, an obscure threat rather than a target I’d been ordered to capture.
Then I shrieked, rushed forward, and pummeled him right across the nose. And yeah, I kind of did look good doing it, even though my present self cringed at the crack of cartilage that followed.
“You,” I shouted, punching him again, “gross,” –punch— “monster. I’m going to—”
Steeler recovered from his shock in time to hold me away at arm’s length before I could land a fourth one, scouring my mind for information about what the hell was going on.
It wasn’t until several seconds had passed and I’d sent a humming command to the bamboo that his eyes flared open and he muttered, “By the moonbeam and the fucking mist. I forgot about that.”
The memory. The fabricated one that Lexington had given me—he could see the hatred it had given me spewing from my eyes as the nearest stalk of bamboo began to twine around his throat.
Steeler flashed out of existence before it could choke him and appeared behind me. I screamed, whirled, raised my fists again, and—
“Sleep,” Steeler commanded shakily.
I slumped, but he caught me before the floor could. Hoisting me up, he cradled me against his chest, staring down at me with shock-wide pupils that actually glistened. Maybe it was just the condensation of the mist, but I could have sworn tears were streaking down his cheeks.
He fumbled in his pocket one-handedly and brought a pill to my lips.
“Take this. Just take it and… I’ll fix this. I’ll find a way to fix this.”
His voice snagged on the syllables of that last word. Sleepily, my past self heeded his Mind Manipulating command. I opened my mouth for the pill and swallowed it before slumping back against his chest, my eyes rolling in their sockets.
Steeler backed up against a stalk of bamboo and just held me, rocking my sleeping body against his. He didn’t move from that position for several hours, until bats began to swoop overhead, moths began to flutter around him, and a low growl sprang from the shadows.
You need to put her back before someone wonders where she is.
It was strange to hear Jagaros speak, not through my Wild Whispering magic, but through Steeler’s memories that had dissected his thoughts from the dark.
“I… I can’t,” he breathed, not looking up from my dreaming face to pinpoint the tiger’s lithe form that stalked to a halt before him.
“She doesn’t just remember me. She—she hates me.
I saw it in her eyes. Felt it in her mind.
I can’t put her back or she’ll just keep thinking of me as a goddamned villain every time I return for her. ”
Jagaros chuffed, his eyes gleaming like two moons in the dark. Then be the villain, Coen Steeler. Play the part until you don’t have to anymore, until you can whisk her away for good. That way you’re not confusing her subconscious or pulling her mind in two different directions.
His whiskers twitching, his tail flicking, he looked so much like a protective father figure as he let his slitted pupils flicker toward my sleeping face that a lump knotted in my throat.
When Steeler only continued to rock me, Jagaros repeated, Be the villain—do you understand?
This time, when Steeler looked up, I could see that dark, wicked glimmer lighting up the smoky quartz of his eyes along with the first purplish bruise of a black eye.
“Yes, I understand.”
Good. Because I’m going to make sure she can do more than just throw a few punches at her enemies, so you’d better come prepared next time.
Steeler didn’t wait any longer. Hoisting himself up with me still lolling against him, he whipped us away into his realm of darkness—straight into my Wild Whisperer room.
The other girls were all fast asleep in their own beds, but Steeler was so quiet as he lowered me into my own that none of them so much as muttered or stirred.
When he dug into his pocket for a second time, it was to bring out one of those little black pearls that he carefully set on my nightstand: the scene I’d always imagined since the morning I’d woken up to find one next to me.
“Sleep tight, little hurricane.”
His voice was little more than a sigh that might have been a gust of warm air against the windowpane.
Then he was gone.
When the mist of this memory began to replay, Steeler in real time waved it away.
I turned to him, processing the reality that I was no longer that sleeping, helpless girl in his past. I was in his mind now, and I could damn well do more than throw a few punches.