Chapter 7
CHAPTER
In the space of half a heartbeat, I plunged my hand through the slit of my dress, yanked out the crescent knife, and threw it.
I might not have been the best at hitting a specific spot yet, but I could have sworn the blade was going to stick somewhere—in his neck, in his stomach, in the broad planes of his chest. If I could nick him now, I’d have a chance at getting close enough to that brand on his shoulder.
But my knife just clattered to the alleyway’s weed-cracked ground. Right where Steeler had been standing a breath ago.
“What the—?”
I spun around to find him on the other end of the alley, where he was crossing his muscled arms. Somehow, he’d moved around me during that span of time it had taken me to blink.
A Mind Manipulating trick. It had to be some kind of advanced Mind Manipulating trick. My heart a raging tempest in my throat, I reached for one of the smaller, slimmer knives…
To find that Steeler had moved again. Closer.
He eyed my knife with interest.
“That’s new.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
I raised the knife again, but didn’t throw yet, letting my eyes mark the spot where his brand would rest beneath his tunic to gauge the distance between us.
The entire alleyway had gone mute, as if Steeler had blasted a bubble around us.
I couldn’t even hear the constant whining of the insects anymore.
“You mean in all your sick fantasies you used to subject me to,” I went on, shifting my stance ever so slightly, just as Jagaros had taught me, “I never got to play with you like you got to play with me?”
Something shuttered in Steeler’s eyes at that. Like the smoky quartz had sunk into the deep, dark cavern that was his wretched soul.
“All I need you to do,” he said, his voice as dark and fathomless as it had been in my head two days ago, “is take this for me.”
He raised his hand, and in the ribbon of moonlight shining down into the alleyway, I saw a single, pearl-sized capsule between his fingers.
What the hell was it? Some kind of Manipulating drug? A sedative, perhaps, or something to make my head hurt?
Of course, the pain in my head had gone curiously quiet, but perhaps that was just my adrenaline overriding it.
“I’ll bite your hand off if you bring that thing anywhere near my mouth,” I said, and threw the new knife.
It spiraled in midair, but it was so much lighter than my crescent one that my aim was off. I watched it draw close to him and slice past his jaw.
Then Steeler moved so fast, my scream didn’t have time to leave my throat before two strong hands were pushing me against the Manipulator house wall, anchoring my wrists above my head.
The knife clattered to the ground a half second later.
“Get off me.”
It was all I could say, even though I knew he wouldn’t. God of the Cosmos, I’d never seen anything move as fast as him—unless he was jumbling up my brain’s sense of speed and time.
I couldn’t help what I did next. Couldn’t help thrashing and yanking and kicking and squirming, trying to break that hold of his on me like the snared mouse I was. Every point of contact between us seemed to shock me, like little zaps of lightning trying to strike me down.
Steeler just surveyed me, unmoving and unrelenting.
I went still, panting, and cranked my head up to look at him. This close, I could smell his breath and sweat and—was that black bamboo? Had he been spying on my sessions with Jagaros, hanging out among the plants? Or was this another trick, another way to sedate me?
“Get off me,” I said again, this time through gritted teeth.
“Are you going to reach for another knife and deliver another nick to my jaw if I do?” Steeler asked, cocking his head. Satisfaction squirmed through me as I saw the small trail of blood oozing from the cut I had inflicted. Just a nick, but enough to sting.
I’d absolutely reach for another knife to do that again if given the chance.
“No,” I said.
Another one of those wicked smiles flew to his face, and now I could’ve sworn his teeth were as sharp and pointed as the rumors claimed about those pirates beyond the dome.
He knew I was lying. He didn’t even have to enter my mind to hear those loud and proud thoughts that were probably wafting right to him.
I tried not to let my eyes flick to the vines crawling up the wall of the opposite Wild Whisperer house.
One hum, and I could have them lasso his neck like a noose.
But—shit. From the way his grin sharpened, those teeth flashing like goddamned fangs, I knew he was hearing that plan unfurl as surely as if I’d said it out loud.
I’d have to wait, then, until he was thoroughly distracted. There could be no forethought, no warning, or else he’d be able to move out of the way in time with that strange lightning speed of his.
“Tell me where you learned to play like that,” Steeler said carefully, nodding down at the slit in my dress where I’d pulled the knife from. “Is Dyonisia Reeve teaching you? I’ve never seen that sheath before.” His eyes skimmed up and down my body. “Or that dress.”
I’ve never seen that sheath before. And what had he said earlier? Hello again? I’d thought he was referencing our first meeting since he’d erased all my memories three months ago, but what if…?
My breath left me in a single, livid gush.
“You haven’t just been watching me while I sleep,” I hissed as the realization poured into me.
I didn’t care that his eyebrows shot up.
Didn’t care that he almost seemed to loosen his grip on me before pressing in harder.
“You’ve been meeting me, talking to me, forcing me to take whatever the hell that is—”
I nodded upward at his hands around my wrists, where he’d kept that single pill safely and firmly pinched between thumb and finger. Our altercation hadn’t made him fumble it an inch.
“You’re doing this every week,” I breathed out, hating him, hating him, hating him, “then erasing my memory of it every time.”
Steeler spared a half-glance sideways, as if checking to make sure his little Mind Manipulating bubble around us was still intact. It was.
“Not erasing anything of yours, actually. Burying them. Along with all your other wonderful, winning memories of me.”
I’d kill him. Kill him. I wondered if Dyonisia would fault me for bringing back a beaten, bloodied carcass instead of a living hostage.
“I see you’re a monster through and through,” I managed to say. “No wonder my head’s been getting worse and worse with you constantly meddling with it. Screwing with me once wasn’t enough, huh?”
When his eyes flared open—in shock, it looked like—I hummed.
The ivy on the opposite wall sprung toward us like vipers.
Steeler moved again. There wasn’t even a blur of motion, just him pinning me to the wall one second, slashing the vines with my crescent knife miraculously in his hand the next, and returning to pin me again before I could so much as twitch.
The remaining halves of the chopped vines slunk back to their climbing position on the wall, looking wilted. Defeated.
“How did you do that so fast?” I didn’t dare look up at my knife, now clutched in his pill-free hand above my head.
Steeler didn’t answer. He was panting, at least. Good. That should have winded him, however he’d done it. He returned his focus to my face, and all hints of that smug humor was gone.
“What do you mean your head is getting worse and worse?”
If he didn’t want to answer my question, I definitely wasn’t going to answer his.
But I felt him sink into my mind anyway, a deadly, murderous presence, to taste the answer for himself. To taste the way my head had been pulsing with pain more and more over the past few months.
He actually closed his eyes then. Just for a moment, but long enough for me to chance a glance upward at my knife poised above me.
When he reopened his eyes, I snapped my own away from the knife, to his moving mouth. “I’ll make you a deal, little hurricane.”
There it was again, that nickname. I hadn’t thought much of it the first time he’d said it, too focused on his sudden appearance in the alleyway to care. Now, though, I tucked away the information for later. Assuming there would be a later.
“Take this pill,” Steeler continued, “and I won’t bury this memory of us. You can show it to the Good Council—how you nicked me.”
He angled his face to bare his jaw for me again, and I almost bristled at the crusted blood. A scratch. That’s all I’d given him. Just a stupid little scratch.
“How thoughtful,” I crooned, and the venom dripping from my voice wasn’t a lie. There was no mask in this bubble with Steeler and me. Just him and my unfiltered hatred. “But I’d rather you kill me than make a deal with you. You have the knife. Go on.”
Maybe if he moved to slice my throat, he’d hesitate long enough for me to grab the handle and turn it against him. That lover of yours, the octopus had said. Surely, even if Steeler had mistreated me during our twisted relationship, he’d hesitate before spilling my guts out, right?
Steeler sighed through his nose.
“Please don’t make me force you, Rayna.”
Rayna. How dare he call me by my first name, the name my friends used. Hurricane was better. It matched the raging of my blood.
“Why?” I asked, giving my arms a yank. His hold didn’t budge. “I thought you love forcing yourself upon me? Or do you deny that?”
For a shuddering moment, I almost hoped he would deny it. I couldn’t get that memory Kitterfol had shown me out of my head, but perhaps the chains had been… consensual. The thought felt wrong, but what if…?
Steeler didn’t answer, though—and that was answer enough.
Now my very bones seemed to quiver from the restraint, begging me to move, to get my arms around his strong column of a throat and squeeze. But there was no way out of this… not with his abnormal strength and speed.
“Did you make me do things other than have sex with you?” I asked now.
The back of my nose stung as I felt the words form in my mouth, the fear I’d been holding back from even myself after Dazmine had confronted me in our doorway.
“Did you make me… kill Fergus Bilderas? Or hurt Jenia Leake in some way?”
Pain. For a moment, all I saw was pain rippling in Steeler’s eyes, a perfect mirror of my own. Maybe we were both monsters, if I’d murdered a fellow classmate—even as a Manipulated puppet.
But Steeler yanked a smirk onto his face the next moment, as if the pain truly had been just my reflection, and not his own.
“Oh, no. I didn’t make you do anything back then. Killing that kid was all me. Now, open up.”
This time, his words echoed in my mind, too, and I felt the Mind Manipulation work on me as I’d thought it would from the beginning: he dropped my wrists, but I couldn’t run, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything besides part my lips and open my treacherous mouth for him.
Steeler held my mother’s knife with one hand and placed the pill on my tongue with those two large, steady fingers.
Okay, close your mouth now.
I did, loathing myself, loathing him. The pill was smooth and vaguely sweet and surely filled with some kind of pirate poison.
Swallow it.
I lifted my eyes to his, throwing every ounce of hatred I had into that gaze, and swallowed the pill.
He brushed a finger along my cheek. “Good girl.”
Even though my legs still wouldn’t move, locked in place against my will, I found my mouth.
“Fuck you.”
Steeler laughed humorlessly. “You already have, little hurricane. Now…” He held my knife back out to me, and my fingers closed around the handle.
At the same moment, he placed something small and round in my other hand, and my fingers closed around that, too.
But my arm still wouldn’t move as he began back-pedaling away from me at a leisurely pace.
“See you next week, same time? I’m good with wherever—I’ll find you no matter where you are. ”
With a distinct snap, I felt his mind bubble pop.
All the insect voices rushed back to me in one droning buzz, the hoots and howls and distant thunder of night sweeping in like a tide.
My legs unlocked. I swung my knife hand back.
But Steeler was already gone.
And when I opened my other hand, it was to find a single black pearl nestled in my palm.