Chapter 17
CHAPTER
A quick flash of pain seemed to lock its jaws around my throat.
Then I was on my knees as a myriad of different voices slammed into me from everywhere all at once.
Oh, shit.
She fell down.
Is she okay?
Nope, not okay.
This was a bad idea.
Coen’s going to go berserk.
Should we help her up?
Oh no, now she’s screaming.
Sure enough, I was screaming—screaming and slapping my hands over my ears as if both things at once might drown out the voices that were whipping me in the face left and right.
It wasn’t just the sheer number of voices, but the screeching cacophony their overlapping made in my ears. The way they seemed to crawl and writhe over each other until I couldn’t distinguish my own thoughts from the alien probing of others.
Then a voice cut through the onslaught with a growl that I thought might be real, not just in my head.
“Put up the blockade for her, Garvis. Please. Do it now.”
Instantly, the voices seemed to slam against an invisible wall hovering inches from either side of my head.
Still on my knees, I removed my hands from my ears and cranked my head up, panting, to lock eyes with Steeler. His lips opened, but—
Poor thing is still so pale. I hope she’s not going to upchuck.
Now my head whipped toward the corner of the room, where Felicity was wringing her tail in her hands on the sofa’s armrest.
Her thoughts. Those had definitely been her thoughts, shooting right through the blockade Garvis had wrapped around me.
But now that it was only her, it wasn’t so…screechy. In fact, her mental voice sounded sweet and crystal clear, like she’d actually spoken the words out loud.
“I’m not going to upchuck,” I said to the monkey, still breathing heavily. “I’m…” I trembled to a stand. “I’m okay now.”
Steeler’s gaze whipped between Felicity and me, something like surprise widening the unyielding hardness in his pupils.
“You can hear what she’s thinking?”
I rubbed the dizziness from my eyes. “More clearly than everyone else.” I paused. “That’s not normal, is it?”
Even though I’d always known Mind Manipulators could control animals, I’d never known of one to actually talk to any animal mind-to-mind. In fact, I didn’t even know how Steeler had been able to communicate with Felicity to offer her a place here in the lighthouse.
Every part of Steeler’s body seemed to be relaxing as the seconds ticked by and Garvis’s blockade held firm—at least from the humans in the room. Clearly, my screaming had grated on his eardrums because he’d looked ready to burst out of his skin when those shrieks had first ripped out of my throat.
Now that I was calm, a sense of shame was creeping up my cheeks. Had I really just been on my knees screaming? At Coen Steeler’s goddamned feet?
“No,” Steeler said eventually, massaging his jaw over the spot where I’d nicked him last week. “Usually, animal minds are muddy, hard for us to wade through. There are very few animals who have mental images and words clear enough for us to understand.”
Sasha cocked her head at me, clearly intrigued.
“Sounds like her magics are working together, not clashing.”
From her tone of voice, I felt like the implication of that statement held a lot more weight than I was currently able to understand, but…
My memories. That’s why I’d agreed to this whole ordeal in the first place: to be able to get my own memories back and guard myself from my enemies.
I gathered a shaky breath and leveled a stare back at Steeler.
“Okay, it worked.” The fact that this meant the Good Council had been lying to us about the Branding process…
another thing I didn’t have the mental capacity to think about right now.
So I only said, in my most commanding tone yet in the hopes that my new Mind Manipulating power would force him to obey, “Now give me my memories back.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Terrin raise his eyebrows, Garvis shift on his feet, and the twins exchange glances. Felicity’s thoughts flitted out to me, soft and bright as moth wings in the moonlight.
Uh oh, this isn’t going to go over well.
Steeler didn’t obey. He just crossed his arms over his chest—still stupidly bare—and clucked his tongue.
“I never said I’d give your memories back if you did this, Drey. Just that I would stop burying your new ones every week.”
A molten wave of rage flowed from my head to my fingertips.
Before I knew it, one of those fingers was flying forward, jabbing him right between his annoying pectoral muscles.
“Are you kidding me, Steeler? You claim you’ve been stalking me, drugging me, invading my mind, and now kidnapping me for months all to hide secrets even more detrimental than the fact that we’re both faeries or that Dyonisia is keeping five of our kind imprisoned at the top of Bascite Mountain.
” I couldn’t even rake in a deep enough breath, my lungs were so filled to the brim with rage.
“If that’s all true—if you haven’t been doing this all to me just because you’re a sadistic monster—then you’d give me my entire mind back now that I can protect those secrets myself. ”
“Oh, look,” Terrin said suddenly. “The fire’s getting low.”
He looked pointedly at the twins, who jerked their heads at the pile of logs nearby and sent them soaring into the hearth over the bed of simmering coals. Terrin busied himself with stoking the flames, though I was sure he could ignite a wildfire within seconds if he wanted to.
I, on the other hand, kept my eyes glued to Steeler’s face and my finger glued to his chest, glad for the bit of privacy everyone else was momentarily giving us.
“Garvis.” Steeler didn’t even glance down at that single point of contact between us. “Remove the barrier again.”
“Coen, she’s—”
“Remove it.”
I bristled at the way he spoke to his so-called friends, but then—then the protective wall around my head melted away.
The cacophony of voices pounded into me again as Terrin, Sasha, and Sylvie whirled around to gape.
He’s pushing her too hard.
We should’ve never agreed to this.
Aaaand she’s on her knees again.
Damn, that girl can scream.
It’s way too late for this kind of shit.
A nod from Steeler and Garvis wrapped the barrier back around me, cutting off the voices.
I sat there, hunched over on the rug, breathing through the panic that seemed to scrape jagged fingers down the back of my neck where my new brand still burned.
Steeler lowered himself to a crouch right in front of me and grabbed my chin, forcing me to look up at him.
I didn’t have the strength or the willpower to wrench myself away.
“The only thing that comes naturally about Mind Manipulating are those voices in your head,” he said, his lips moving a breath away.
“Eavesdropping on inner thoughts, commanding actions, stealing or guarding memories—that all takes work. And your new power, Drey, needs a lot of work before I can trust you to protect yourself.”
Before he could trust me? Trust me? I would never be able to scowl enough to properly convey how I felt just then.
“What do you expect me to do?” I half-laughed up at him.
“Waltz right into the Mind Manipulator classes and announce myself as a new student?” I dredged up as much sarcasm as I could muster in my current state.
“Hey Wilder, I’m in your sector now. Just got a second power from the person I’m supposed to be handing over to the Good Council.
No big deal. Oh, and the Good Council isn’t actually good. ”
Steeler’s eyes shuttered once before he released my face and stood with surprising swiftness and grace.
“Of course I don’t expect you to do that. That’s why you’ll be coming over here every Sunday to the lighthouse. To train.”
“If you think I’m willing to spend another second with you—” I started, scrambling to my feet for the second time tonight.
“Not with me,” Steeler interrupted. “With Garvis.”
That made me clamp my mouth shut. If Steeler was as obsessed with me as Dyonisia and he himself claimed, shouldn’t he want to force me into spending every single second with him?
Garvis spoke up before I could piece these words together.
“I’m not so sure the fleet will be happy if—”
“—the Fated General lets you leave the ship for a measly few hours once a week?” Steeler interrupted, and I felt my eyebrows furrow.
The Fated General? Was that some fancy name for the captain of their ship?
Steeler continued before I could think too hard about it.
“That’s hardly long enough to make anyone look twice.
” After a pause, in which he and Garvis seemed to engage in a short but intense staring contest, he added, “I can’t bear to be in her mind that much anyway. Not right now.”
Once again, my eyes were drawn to his mutilated brand, the cut I had inflicted.
It was already healing, but suddenly a treacherous part of me was itching to tell him to go put some salve on it in case it got infected.
The same for the clotting wound on his arm, too.
Both injuries had drastically hindered his Mind Manipulating power tonight—one by limiting his ability to use it, and the other by giving most of it away.
Garvis swiveled his gaze to me now.
“Are you okay with me training you, Rayna?”
“Yes,” I said before I could think twice. Regardless of what he was, his eyes were just too sad and gentle not to trust.
Garvis bowed his head.
“Okay, we’ll start right now, then. So you can function without my blockade when you go back to the Institute in the morning.”
In the morning. I rubbed my eyes again and glanced at the clock above the mantelpiece. Its twitching hands told me it was already a little past midnight: only seven hours until Ms. Pincette’s class. Dazmine, Emelle, and Cilia would have turned in for bed by now and discovered my absence.
But Garvis was right. He wouldn’t be there tomorrow to shield me against the onslaught of voices, and on campus there would be thousands to wade past, not just five. I needed his instruction.