Chapter 15 #2
Biting back a grumble, I picked my way up the stone staircase and through the rickety doorway.
He could act like a gentleman all he liked, but it wouldn’t erase the hundred or so reasons I had to hate him.
Or the fact that he was a faerie—a faerie—and could literally splinter all of my bones like a pile of kindling.
As soon as I made it into the entryway, however, I stopped.
Those moving shadows I’d glimpsed through the windows—they were people. Four of them, all standing and murmuring to each other until this exact moment.
Now they froze and swiveled toward me: two identical women with the deepest, richest skin I’d ever seen; a man with grizzly red hair and more facial hair than Steeler himself; and a thinner man with a pointy chin, who stopped stroking his mustache to study me with wary eyes.
“Rayna!”
Before my heart could even lurch, one of the women had sprung toward me and twined her arms around my neck.
I shifted backward on instinct. The woman released me with a watery smile, wiping her nose with the edge of a sleeve.
“Sorry. I—I know you don’t remember me. But I missed you.”
Remember her? Missed me? Something in my chest shuddered at the realization that… that these were the pirates who’d breached the dome with Steeler last year. This was the whole group of spies Dyonisia was after. Right within my grasp.
Which seemed like a pretty big breach of the dome to me.
The cottage door snapped shut behind us, cutting off the howling sound of wind and waves. Steeler moved further into the room, where light from a billowing fireplace danced over a threadbare rug.
“Rayna, this is Sylvie, and her twin, Sasha.” He nodded at the identical sister still loitering a few steps away; she jerked her head at me in greeting.
“They’re both Summoners. And this is Terrin, an Element Wielder—” He gestured at the grizzly-haired man with his good arm.
“And Garvis, a Mind Manipulator like me.”
As soon as Steeler finished his last words, every eye in the room seemed to flick toward his brand—and the slash over it.
“She actually cut you?” Sasha piped up from behind her twin. “Did it work? Is your mind power gone?”
Her tone didn’t sound accusatory or shocked or anything other than curious.
And it was then that I knew Steeler knew. He knew why I’d cut his brand and what it was supposed to do to him… because he’d picked that information from my brain without my permission? Or because the pirates were already aware of this phenomenon?
“Not gone,” Steeler answered, massaging one of his bare pectoral muscles.
I looked away pointedly. “Just… damaged. Like the window through which it sees the world is suddenly cracked.” A pause, and I felt a quivering wave of dark energy brush against my mind, then retreat just as quickly.
“I can still hear all your thoughts, but they’re choppy. ”
So a single slice hadn’t been enough to destroy his magic completely, after all. But—later. I tucked away that information for later.
For now, I forced myself to face this group of traitors and—
“Coco? Is the talking human here?”
From the shadows of a side hallway, a scuffling figure bounded forward on rail-thin arms, its tail whipping and curling as it came to a halt at my feet.
I gaped down at the awe-struck face of a monkey. A young female, probably equivalent to a teenager judging from the lighter, pinker hue of her nose and the smaller row of teeth she flashed up at me in a smile.
“Oh, it is you,” she trilled, and clambered up my legs until she was hanging off my shoulder with one hand and inspecting one of my curls with her other. “You’re just as beautiful as he’s described. Is it true that you can understand what I’m saying right now? I’m Felicity, by the way.”
“H-hi, Felicity. I can hear you.” I glanced from her bright, fuzz-filled face to Steeler’s observing gaze and whispered, “What are you doing here so far away from the jungle?” Did he kidnap you, too? I meant to convey.
The monkey sighed, dropped my curl, and turned mud-brown eyes onto me.
“My family banished me from their tribe because I’m not…
” She lowered her voice, even though I was the only one in the room who’d be able to understand her.
“I’m not very good at telling jokes. For instance…
” She cleared her throat importantly. “Why did the orangutan divorce the chimp four weeks after he married her? This is the joke that got me disowned, by the way.”
I could feel the others’ eyes on us, and tried to imagine what they must be hearing: a lot of grunting, cooing, and barking.
“I don’t know,” I relented, the tiniest seed of amusement breaking through every other frenzied feeling inside me. “Why did he?”
“Because there was a thirty-day monkey-back guarantee!” When I snorted, the monkey—Felicity—said, “My family ripped me apart for using chimp and monkey interchangeably. If there’s one thing they value, it’s that we don’t have opposable thumbs or use human tools.”
“Oh. That’s… not very progressive.”
Dammit. That was definitely the wrong thing to say. Mr. Conine would have given me a big fat fail for that one.
But the monkey just beamed at me and clung tighter.
“That’s what I think, too! I’ve always wanted to learn how to use human tools and do human things.
I want to be a cook and a hairdresser and a candlemaker and so much more.
So when I fled to the edge of the jungle and saw Coco digging for clams on the beach… ”
She nodded over her shoulder, and my gaze whipped to Steeler’s. Coco? Coco as in Coen? By the orchid and the owl.
“He couldn’t understand me like you do,” the monkey continued happily, “but two lonely outcasts should stick together, don’t you think?
So I’ve been here, teaching myself how to cook and build things and even cut his hair ever since.
Well, I usually cut his hair.” She tossed a glare at Steeler.
“He’s been so busy the past few days that he hasn’t had time for his weekly trim. Which offends me, by the way.”
I didn’t have a reply to that. My body had resumed shivering against my will—from confusion or shock or residual nausea, I couldn’t tell. Faeries and lighthouses and monkeys… it was all too much.
Steeler seemed to track each shudder that wracked through me and said in a measured voice, “I think this would be easier if we all take a seat.”
A few plush armchairs and loveseats were crammed by the fireplace, and at his words, the others drifted toward them.
I stood rooted to the spot, though, as Felicity clambered down and bounded off to the small stretch of kitchen counter beneath a window overlooking the ocean. Lightning still flickered out there, flaring up the horizon with each strike. No pirate ships, which meant…
“You never left the island?” I asked Steeler, who was the only one still standing… waiting for me to take a seat first, it seemed. “You didn’t actually breach the dome last year?”
And because the monkey Felicity was already clattering around on the kitchen counter, grabbing mugs and teabags, I forced myself to go claim the last available armchair next to Sylvie.
Sinking into its cushioned frame, I let the warmth of the fire wash away the chills still crawling over my skin.
For the monkey, I told myself. Because she was obviously eager to make me feel…
at home. In an abandoned lighthouse. With five of the island’s most wanted fugitives.
God of the Cosmos.
Finally, Steeler followed. He didn’t sit, though. He loomed over us all with his hands shoved behind his back, the firelight illuminating every scar and burn I’d inflicted upon his body tonight.
“No, Rayna,” he said at last. “I left the island. We all did.” He gestured at the others, who shifted uncomfortably in their seats.
“But as soon as we made it to the ships, I… well, the maturing process started for me.” Here, something stiffened in his voice.
“In the turmoil, I forgot to take my suppressant pill, and I suddenly found myself in that darkness you just experienced. When I finally clawed my way out, I was back on the island.” A shrug, as if the idea of slipping through holes in space was no big deal.
“So I found this abandoned lighthouse—pretty sure it was used for spying on pirates once upon a time, until our fleets decided to move more southward—and decided to stay. But this is the first time the others have come back since they left.”
A hundred different questions should have been rattling around inside my head, but the only phrase that echoed back was—
“Suppressant pill?” I repeated.
Every bit of fidgeting from the others froze. The only movement came from Felicity, who was humming obliviously and transporting drinks to the grill over the fireplace to heat up.
Finally, Sylvie spoke up beside me.
“We all took the pills while we were on the island,” she said softly, the onyx of her eyes warping with tears. “Even Coen used to, before his own power broke free. They kept our natural faerie magic stifled while allowing the branded magic—” She nodded down at her shoulder “—to thrive.”
For the first time since Steeler and his bamboo scent had materialized in my room, my head jolted with a throb of pain. As if it knew.
“That’s ridiculous,” I choked out. “You can’t possibly be insinuating that I’m a…”
I couldn’t get that final word out, though.
As insane as it was to suggest Steeler was a faerie, as ludicrous as it was to believe that all his fellow pirates were faeries too, it was even worse to think that I could ever be one, that I would need a power inhibitor.
There were no signs, no underlying magical urges—
Because Steeler had been smothering them all along.
Find out what those pills are for, Lexington had ordered me.
Oh, they’re to hide every last trace of an extinct lineage in my blood, I imagined reporting back.
Could I really expect the Good Council’s most ruthless Mind Manipulator to just smile and call it a job well done and leave me alone after that?
No. I knew, as if something inside me had snapped the truth into place, that the Good Council wouldn’t take kindly to power they couldn’t control. Wouldn’t take kindly to creatures that might grow stronger than them, that might wield the ability to overpower them.
No. This all had to be a mistake. Maybe Steeler had targeted the wrong victim, fed me pills that didn’t actually do anything to me because there was no faerie blood in my veins to begin with.
The memory of Lexington forcing my hands to ram themselves against my own throat…
he would do so, so much worse, I knew, if he found out I wasn’t even fully human, and—
Across from me, Steeler’s eyes suddenly flew wide open. His hands whipped out from behind his back, rolling into fists.
“That son of a bitch!”
Garvis was up in an instant, followed by Terrin, who cried, “What’s wrong?” just as the twins echoed the same.
“Coen saw a memory of Lexington hurting Rayna through his fractured Mind Manipulating lens,” Garvis explained immediately, panting with the effort it took to hold onto Steeler—to stop him from using his new Walking power, I realized with a jolt.
Although… where the hell would he be wanting to whisk away to?
My answer came a moment later when Terrin growled, “Stop, brother. He’s Dyonisia Reeve’s favorite weapon.
Killing him now will just kickstart a bigger war you’re not ready to fight yet.
” He tugged on Steeler’s arm again. “This is why you wanted to give Rayna a second option, remember? So that she can protect herself from stuff like that.”
At the sound of my name, Steeler’s shoulders deflated. His cut had ripped open again, and small bulbs of blood welled from the clots.
As much as I didn’t want to feel an ounce of pity for the male who had stalked and kidnapped me, the sight of that blood made the knots in my stomach twist with something like guilt.
Shaking that feeling away, I stood and forced my way through Garvis’s and Terrin’s frames until I was crossing my arms in the space of Steeler’s body heat, the fire casting his form in a flickering orange outline.
Let him think me fearless. Let him think me brave. Anything to get the most important answer out of him.
“Tell me, Steeler. Why did you bring me here?”
His eyes flashed at the use of his surname—with surprise first, then with something that seemed to match the knots in my stomach. But what did he want me to call him? Coco?
“Your mind holds sensitive information… Drey.” I didn’t miss the mocking way he said my surname.
Nor did I miss how every other emotion seemed to dissolve in his voice in an instant, leaving nothing but those clipped, impassive words.
“Our faerie blood is just one secret that could get us all killed. And since I can’t be around you one hundred percent of the time to guard your mind, I’m offering you the ability to guard yourself. ”
Far-off thunder rolled through the floor in tiny vibrations.
Lightning flashed outside those windows again, ferocious clashes of light and cloud and sea that reminded me how very far away from the Esholian Institute I was now.
Only Dazmine would know who I’d marched outside to face, and even she would never be able to guess where Steeler had dragged me to.
But… guard myself? Of all the things Steeler could have kidnapped me for, offering me the ability to guard myself had not been on my list of potential torture techniques I’d have to endure.
“I don’t understand,” I began slowly. I had my knife and Wild Whispering, but how could anyone expect me to protect my mind? From Kitterfol Lexington? I couldn’t even stop Wilder from listening in on my thoughts.
Steeler bared his fangs again, this time in a genuine grin.
“How would you like to become a Mind Manipulator, Drey?”