Chapter 19
CHAPTER
I righted myself instantly, stumbling back a few paces away.
Garvis, it seemed, had managed to stay upright the whole time he’d been in my mind with me, because he was observing us with quiet calculation on his own two feet as if nothing had happened.
“You shaved” fell out of my mouth as I took in Steeler’s appearance.
God of the Cosmos, that was such a stupidly obvious thing to say. But he had, and his hair was cut back to its original length, revealing those sharp, elongated ears while a crisp, long-sleeved tunic covered all his muscles and scars.
Steeler blinked at me, then shrugged. “Felicity wouldn’t quit chasing me around with her scissors and razor until I sat down.”
I glanced over his shoulder at the monkey, who paused from scratching her armpits long enough to say, “I also got him with the witch hazel just like you asked. He whimpered like a baby, by the way.”
A snort escaped me at the thought of Coen Steeler whimpering like a baby, and Felicity gave me an appreciative flash of her teeth.
Steeler quirked a brow and breathed into my mind, I take it you didn’t get a chance to practice blockading?
I swatted at my ear, startled.
How are you—?
Apparently, the witch hazel healed my ability to use whatever Mind Manipulating power I have left… which is why I was able to go in and save you.
I felt every inch of me bristle at the implication that he’d heard my fears of being stranded in my own mind.
“Get out of my head,” I snapped out loud.
Steeler crossed his arms and smiled. “Make me.”
I resisted the urge to stomp a foot. “You are so…”
His eyes tracked the twitch in my leg, as if knowing exactly what I’d been itching to do. “I’m so what, Drey?”
Full of yourself. Infuriating. Annoyingly capable of getting under my skin. I couldn’t pick out of the tangled insults, so I just turned to Garvis instead.
“Can you teach me how to blockade? Right now?”
“Yeah, but…” Garvis glanced at Steeler over my head. “We were in your mind for two hours, Rayna. Are you sure you don’t want to rest a little bit first? Usually, inductees go to bed after their first—”
“Two hours?”
I gaped at the clock on the mantlepiece. Sure enough, those ticking hands were now indicating it was two in the morning. Five hours until my Spiders, Worms, & Insects class.
There was no way I was getting a wink of sleep tonight, but adrenaline had revamped the energy in my veins anyways.
“Yes, I’m sure. I need to be able to block out pesky voices—” I flung a glare at Steeler, which he returned with a smirk. “—by the time I get back.” A sudden question bubbled in my empty stomach. “You will be taking me back, right?”
Steeler shrugged with way too much grace for that smug look crawling all over his face. “Unless you beg me to keep you. I don’t think I could say no a second time if you did.”
I rolled my eyes harder than I ever had in my life and turned back to Garvis. “I’m ready. If you’re not too tired,” I added awkwardly, suddenly realizing how smudged his kohl liner had become.
“Oh no, I’ll be fine. I’ve had later nights than these.” Garvis sighed at the ceiling for a second, then said to Steeler, “But I think you need to leave again, Coen. Whatever’s happening between you two is way too distracting for me to work with.”
Steeler and I, both on the verge of saying something, snapped our mouths shut in unison, looked at each other, and looked away again.
“Fine,” he finally said curtly. “I need to go hunt for some breakfast anyway. Felicity, you coming?”
The monkey bounded off the kitchen countertop, her tail flying behind her as she said to no one in particular, “Gladly.” Then her thoughts added: Coco and Raynie hiss and sneer at each other more than two baboons fighting over the same coconut.
As the cottage door swung shut behind them, I puffed out a sigh.
Apparently, I was Raynie now.
The next few hours passed in a sickening blur, but by the time the first blotches of dawn graced the horizon outside the lighthouse windows, I could do it: sink into my own mind, gather the ghostly essence of my internal wall, and push it out, out, out like icy vapor, until it wrapped around my entire body.
It wouldn’t keep a Mind Manipulator out, necessarily, but it would keep all the unwanted voices from crashing into me.
And it would keep my own thoughts from floating outward to anyone else.
Hiding individual memories was harder. Garvis and I spent our last bit of time packing snow into blocks of ice and building them up around the misty replays of the events this weekend, blocking off that part of the maze.
That way I would know they were there, I could access them, but as long as Lexington didn’t know to look past innocent-looking dead ends…
Hopefully, he would never find them.
“Eventually you’ll be able to Manipulate your own mind with more ease,” Garvis said at last, collapsing on one of the sofas as the first seagulls began cawing outside.
“You won’t have to use your hands to build internal blockades or move memories around—you’ll just be able to do it with half a thought.
But that requires getting to know your subconscious better…
which most Mind Manipulators don’t do until their second or third year. ”
Yeah, a friendship with my eerie subconscious clone wasn’t happening anytime soon. I’d just have to be content with the archaic way of Mind Manipulating for now.
I collapsed in the armchair beside Garvis, daydreaming about a bath, just in time for the cottage door to fly open again.
My body jolted upright, but it was just Steeler stomping in with Felicity on his heels—not with a bucket of dead mollusks like I’d been expecting, but with a basket of fruits: papaya and mango and what looked like maracuya from the reddish coating of the smaller ones.
“What, did all the clams sleep in today?” I asked with a bit more attitude than I’d intended. My mouth had started watering at the sweet and tangy smell of all the fruit after so many hours of Mind Manipulating on an empty stomach.
“No, but I felt you cringe when I mentioned hunting for food. I know you wouldn’t want to eat something you might’ve once conversed with—even if they are just clams.”
Steeler began unloading the fruit onto the kitchen counter and slicing them up with a kitchen knife while Felicity dropped a lumpy sack of something else next to him.
I didn’t really know how to respond as I watched them.
It was strangely… considerate of him to keep my food preferences in mind.
I’d eaten meat my whole life until the day I’d become a Wild Whisperer, when our house cook had begun making my every meal using the fruits and vegetables and seeds the jungle willingly gave.
It was like an unspoken rule to avoid meat in our house, one that I hadn’t even thought much about until now.
Perhaps it was the realization I was about to tell Coen Steeler thank you that made me say, “Well, I’m not hungry anyway.”
“Yes, you are, Drey.” When I opened my mouth to argue, Steeler said, “I’ve got shiny new faerie ears, remember? I can hear your stomach grumbling. And Mind Manipulating requires lots of fuel.”
Shit. He was right. My stomach gave a particularly aching lurch as Steeler slid all that colorful array of fruit onto four separate plates from the dusty cupboards, and Felicity opened her sack to scoop out handfuls of macadamia nuts beside each helping.
Maybe a few bites wouldn’t hurt before we returned to the Institute…
Steeler dragged a chair back and gestured for me to sit in it.
“Eat. You too, Garvis.”
Hesitantly, I took my seat, holding back the second thank you ready to spill out of my mouth. As soon as Felicity and Garvis picked up their utensils and started eating, my restraint broke.
I gorged myself.
And I didn’t care that Steeler was watching me every time I licked the sticky juice off my fingers, didn’t care that his pupils followed the bob of my throat each time I swallowed.
He could stare all he liked, but I wasn’t going to show any manners after the twenty-four hours I’d just endured: dragged through space, told I was a different species, branded with Mind Manipulating, and facing my literal subconscious without any kind of reprieve. Until now.
Now I was content to stay silent and listen to Garvis make small talk with Steeler, flexing my new Manipulating blockade around me as if it was the thinnest film of malleable ice.
“—everyone made it back to the ship okay?” Garvis was asking.
“Yes. Nara says hi.”
“What about Barberro?”
“I believe togu vi fyka arana were his exact words.”
Garvis gave a small chuckle and wiped his mouth.
“And the Fated General—”
“—will punish anyone who tries to stop you from leaving with me once a week,” Steeler interrupted firmly, his own smile fading. “Trust me.”
The wording of that seemed strange, somehow. I stopped flexing my blockade around me to listen to him a little more intently—only to find him already fixated on me.
He plunked a gray pill onto the patch of table before me.
“We have an issue regarding this, though, I’m afraid.”
Ah, yes. The suppressant pill that supposedly stifled my natural, faerie power… although, come to think of it, Steeler hadn’t provided any proof that I even was a faerie. But I decided to humor him anyway.
“Oh? What’s the issue?”
“Lexington’s going to be expecting an explanation for the pills next week, and I know you know you can’t tell him it’s a way to hide your forbidden power.
Of course, I could just kill him…” Steeler seemed to lose himself in some kind of sick murder fantasy, but Garvis cleared his throat and he shook himself back to the present.
“But Dyonisia has a dozen other Mind Manipulator elites at her disposal to replace him with, so that would just be a temporary solution anyways.”
I chewed on my lip.
“Are you saying you’re going to plant a false memory in my brain? One that lies about what the pills truly do?”
“Oh, no.” Steeler pushed back his bowl. “I promised myself I’d never plant a false memory in your head again.
” Before I could mull that over, he leaned forward onto his elbows and said, “But we could… reenact the moment I told you about them, if you’re comfortable with it.
That way you can keep the truth hidden within your internal blockades while Lexington observes the reenactment instead. ”
My frown only deepened.
“But if we reenact that moment, what would you say the pills even do? No matter what, Lexington will want me to get him one so that he can study it. Figure out how it works. Use it to his advantage.”
Over the last several months, I’d felt Lexington in my mind so often that I was beginning to sense his motivations, his desires, his need for control.
I knew he didn’t care about me catching Steeler the same way Dyonisia seemed to.
He worshiped his ruler but wanted to dominate her at the same time.
And if there was a single Mind Manipulating trick that he didn’t understand, even if it was in drug form…
Steeler furrowed his brows, leaned back, and crossed his arms.
“Killing him is sounding better and better every—”
“But maybe we could flip the table on him,” I interrupted.
When Steeler gestured at me to go on, curiosity evident in the way his brows unfurled, I cleared my throat.
“What if we dangled it over Lexington’s head—something he wanted so desperately he’d do anything to obtain it?
Even if it meant he had to play the game on our terms. Even if it meant he’d go behind Dyonisia’s back to get it. ”
Steeler glanced at Garvis, who shrugged and nodded. Felicity beamed and clapped her hands.
Steeler himself leaned back in his chair again, a surprised smile lifting up one side of his mouth.
“I think you’re more devious than I give you credit for, Drey.”