Chapter 25
CHAPTER
Dazmine struck.
With a violent whistle through her teeth, the bulbous roots of a nearby tree came lashing out toward Terrin like a whip.
Only to meet a sudden gust of muggy wind that pushed it back.
“Oh, you want to play first?” Terrin tilted his head.
Dazmine didn’t answer. She was already crouching with a hum, telling the ferns and hawthorns to lasso his ankles and pull him down.
As soon as they did, Terrin sent a tornado of soil shooting upward, ripping through the shrubs and propelling him back to his feet.
Which prompted Dazmine to send a horde of mosquitos at him.
Which prompted Terrin to fling a cloud of smoke at the horde to suffocate them in midair.
Before I could get pummeled with either one of their magics, I sidled off to where Steeler was leaning against a tree, observing the proceedings with a mix of amusement and exasperation.
“How long do you think they’ll go at it?” he asked without looking my way.
Well, if he wasn’t going to turn to face me, I wouldn’t so much as glance at him either.
“Knowing Dazmine… a while,” I admitted.
Steeler snorted. “Knowing Terrin, they’ll be at it all night. I’ll give them a few more minutes before I Walk them both to the lighthouse where they can battle it out there instead of where someone might hear us.”
Not that it was unusual for random bursts of magic to rattle various parts of the jungle on the weekends as students practiced, but I could see his point: if anyone actually saw who was rattling this part of the jungle, they might recognize Terrin as someone who didn’t belong to the Esholian Institute—or the island at all anymore.
“I’m shocked you actually brought him here,” I said.
And okay, maybe my tone was a bit snippy, but Steeler still wouldn’t look at me. He always looked at me. Too much looking, in fact. And yet now that I’d succeeded in warding off one of my greatest threats for the time being, he wasn’t going to spare a single glance in my direction?
“Like I’ve said before, Drey, you’ve already involved her.
” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him cross his arms over his chest, his sharp ears poking through his hair with the movement.
“And from my experience, if we don’t give someone the answers they’re seeking, they’ll just start meddling.
Which would cause a bigger problem for all of us. ”
“How pragmatic of you.”
We both resumed watching Terrin and Dazmine throw Element Wielding against Wild Whispering, earth and wind and fire and air against all the insects and plant life in the vicinity.
I had to admit, Dazmine was… good at talking to the jungle. It followed her hums and whistles like war cries, reacting to her voice with passion and violence as opposed to the usual gentleness it offered me.
But soon enough, a whisper pushed against my blockade—like thoughts floating on a muffled wind—and I knew instinctually that a group of people were moving closer to our location.
Perhaps Mr. Gleekle and his mysterious posse of students were coming back, or maybe it was just a group of friends passing by, messing around during their free time…
Either way, I wasn’t surprised when Steeler disappeared in a flash, reappearing right between Dazmine and Terrin only long enough to let his eyes land on mine from across the trampled, battered space of jungle between us.
Then he reached out to grab them both, and they all three blinked out of existence. Leaving me alone.
I cringed at the thought of Dazmine experiencing that dragging darkness for herself. But if she was going to make such a ruckus in response to her wish coming true exactly as she’d asked for it…
Quietly, I crooned to the roots and vines and ferns, urging them to retreat back into their original positions.
I couldn’t do anything about the pile of ashes littered here and there or the various holes in the ground that Terrin had made, but soon the undergrowth swallowed up any evidence of his magic as it regrouped itself in response to my voice.
“You’re good at that, you know.”
Steeler had returned.
I kept my back to him, bending to stroke the safflowers on their quivering, serrated leaves.
“Good at what?”
“Good at encouraging. At healing. At growing.”
I snorted. “Maybe the right version of me is, but this is the wrong version of me, so no, I’m not good at healing or growing right now.” I clutched my basket harder. “I can barely manage to keep my best friend’s birdfeeder full for her. But you know what I am good at, Steeler?”
When he didn’t answer right away, I couldn’t handle it any longer—I straightened and rounded on him.
A jolt ran down my body, right to my toes, when I discovered how close he’d truly been lurking behind me.
“What else are you good at, little hurricane?” Steeler whispered.
I wiggled my toes to try to stop them from tingling. “Lying to Kitterfol Lexington.”
“Oh, I know. I was watching the whole thing. You did lovelier than I could have ever dreamed of—and I dream of you quite a bit.” He paused, his attention roving over every curve and dip of my face. “Is that what you wanted to hear, Drey? That you did lovely?”
By the orchid and the owl, I would not blush for this man.
“Or,” Steeler pressed on, eroding the distance between us with half a stride, “did you want to hear that I was going out of my God-forsaken mind while you faced that monster alone? That it killed me to simply hover and wait while he barged through the mist of your mind?”
“I—that’s not—”
I stumbled back.
His hand shot out and caught me by the small of my back.
“Or did you want to hear that I was so sure our plan would fail, so sure a Mind Manipulator in her first week couldn’t conceal memories from a Mind Manipulator in his fifteenth year that I had my fucking sleeves already rolled up, ready to progress the course of fate faster than intended?
That when you stepped away victorious, I couldn’t bear to face you because I knew if I did, I would grab you and pull you in close and never let you go again? ”
He was pulling me in close now, my breasts curving into the hollow beneath his chest. The tingling in my toes hadn’t gone away—it had traveled upward again, swirling around the warm pressure of his hand against my back.
“What I want,” I breathed up at him, “is to go check on Dazmine and learn some new Mind Manipulating tricks from Garvis. That’s it.”
Lies, lies, lies.
But with my blockade up, my thoughts wouldn’t be floating out to him right now, and I could tell he hadn’t lunged into my own mind for a taste of that subconscious truth that sat in its regal shrine.
“Well, good,” Steeler finally said on a stiff exhale, “because Garvis spent all week preparing his lesson plan for you, and Felicity’s currently destroying the kitchen in her attempts to make a three-course meal.”
“Well, good. Let’s go, then.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
There was no need for me to grab his hand this time. Not with his arm still locked tight around me.
The darkness simply picked us up and carried us away.
After Walking me to my room—empty, thank God—so that I could dump my remaining birdseed into Emelle’s feeder, Steeler whisked us straight into the lighthouse itself.
Here, Dazmine was glaring at Terrin from where she stood against the edge of the room, her body tense and ready to spring into action at any moment, like a rabid animal backed into a corner.
In the kitchen, Felicity clattered through the cupboards, singing a jaunty tune about a homeless sea monster amid boiling pots and sizzling pans. Next to the fireplace, Garvis gave me an awkward wave.
“Well, this is probably the most conflicting atmosphere I’ve ever witnessed,” Steeler muttered, withdrawing himself from me.
I ignored how his absence lingered around me like a cold sheet as Felicity spotted me, swung off the countertop, and leapt into my arms.
“Raynie! You’re here! I can’t wait for you to try my chickpea stew. Coco and I spent the week gathering herbs and spices for it, and I even nabbed a handful of peanuts for garnish.”
“Sounds like it’ll be delicious.” I made a show of inhaling the swirling scents of oregano and cumin before glancing over at Dazmine and lowering my voice. “How is she holding up?”
The monkey’s face turned solemn. “Not well. She dry-heaved for a good few minutes, then tried to get me to bite his head off as soon as she recovered.” Felicity nodded at Terrin. “Which is gross, by the way. I don’t eat heads.”
“I can hear you both, you know,” Dazmine intoned, sending the briefest glance my way. “And I just think it’s funny that I asked for a hostage, not to be taken hostage.”
For once, Terrin’s smile was faltering.
“What more do you want from me, woman? I literally risked my life to come tell you the truth about your friend’s exile.
But you tried to decapitate me before I could do so.
” His non-smile turned into a downright glare.
“So yeah, we had to bring you here where no one can hear me scream if you continue to try to decapitate me.”
“I’d hear you scream,” Steeler remarked, snatching a peanut from Felicity’s stock on the counter and popping it in his mouth before the monkey could beat his hand away.
“As would I,” said Garvis from the fireplace.
I winced but raised a hand. “As would I.”
“Truly, a male’s dreamiest end,” Terrin remarked without taking his eyes off Dazmine. “To bellow, not into a void, but straight into his friends’ ears.”
For the strangest slice of a second, a ripple of warmth went through me at the thought that Terrin might consider me a friend even though I didn’t remember a single interaction before last week.
Then Dazmine was turning all her spiteful, spitting rage onto Steeler.
“Brave of you to joke, when you’re the one who killed Fergus.”
The temperature in the room seemed to flake away. Even the flames behind Garvis fluttered, as if caught in all of our inhales.
“Do you deny it?” Dazmine asked, nostrils flaring, and even I cringed internally at the brazen way she faced him, her hands curled.
“No, I don’t deny it,” Steeler said finally, his posture tightening.
“You want to know why?” When Dazmine didn’t answer, he hissed, “Because that little asshole was about to fill her body with rot…” He didn’t have to point at me for everyone in the room to know who he was referring to.
“Just like he did to your good old Mr. Fenway last year.”
Dazmine’s eyes widened at the same time mine did. Steeler took the opportunity to let out a mirthless laugh that rippled down my spine.
“You didn’t know about that? You didn’t know that he used his weird obsession with fungus to murder one of your instructors and was planning on doing the same to your classmate? Well, guess what? Jenia Leake did. She was in on it. So maybe it’s a good thing she’s in prison, huh?”
With that, Steeler stomped toward the cottage door, wrenched it open, and slammed it shut again behind him.
In the ringing silence that followed, Dazmine’s shoulders sagged.
“Prison?” she whispered.
Terrin turned toward her, something keen and inquisitive in the way he observed the pinch of her eyebrows.
He jerked his head at the kitchen table.
“Why don’t you sit down like a good human, and I can tell you everything?”
For a moment, it looked as if Dazmine was contemplating being a very bad human. She glanced at the knife block behind Felicity, then at Terrin’s throat. Terrin responded by blowing her a kiss of smoke.
Finally, Dazmine gritted her teeth and stomped over to the table.
Five minutes later, with steaming bowls of chickpea stew in front of everyone—save for Steeler, who still hadn’t returned—Terrin and Garvis told us everything about the exiled ones.
How they weren’t thrown out to sea like we’d always been told, but hauled up to Bascite Mountain and experimented on.
Tortured. Locked away alongside the original five members of the Sorronian Good Council.
The information sounded vaguely familiar, as if it had been uprooted from a dream in the frigid foundation of my mind.
When they were done explaining, Dazmine was silent for a long time.
Terrin tracked the way she gnawed on her lip, deep in thought.
Finally, Dazmine looked up, not at Terrin, but at me.
“I will never forgive Jenia for what she tried to do… but nobody deserves torture. Not her, and certainly not all the other exiled ones that have been brought up there over the last five centuries.”
I nodded. The shock of re-learning what my previous classmates had planned to do to me tasted acrid in my mouth, like I’d swallowed a memory too fast. But Dazmine was right—nobody deserved what loomed over the island at the top of Bascite Mountain.
Apparently satisfied that I understood her sentiment, Dazmine swung her gaze back to Terrin, and they clashed like blades. One expression dry and unforgiving, the other glinting with sparks.
“I want to help,” she said. “I want to help break everyone out of that prison.”
Garvis and I exchanged surprised glances. Terrin’s mouth slashed into his widest grin yet.
“Welcome to the pirate side, Temperton.”
When Garvis suggested we take our Mind Manipulating lesson outside, I didn’t hesitate before agreeing.
Mostly, I wanted to escape the tension bursting in the cottage now that I was sure Dazmine and Terrin weren’t going to slit each other’s throats. But a quiet, sly part of me also wanted to catch a glimpse of Steeler—to see where he’d stomped off to. To find out if his mood had calmed.
Only, Steeler wasn’t outside at all. There wasn’t even a distant figure on the beach to indicate he’d gone on a long walk. He must have used his power to leave this part of the island entirely.
Which made that quiet, sly part of me wilt with the smallest sliver of disappointment.
The view was beautiful, though. The faintest beginnings of a sunset were just barely skimming over the water, turning the foamy shoreline a murky pink.
Seagulls picked their way across the rocks, yelling at each other over who had claimed which crustacean, but not in an unpleasant way.
The soft pulse of an ocean breeze swished fresh, salty air across my face.
After Garvis and I were both sitting cross-legged next to the dark imprint of the tideline, I smiled at him.
“So Steeler told me you made an entire lesson plan for me today. Do I finally get to learn how to control people?”
Not that I wanted to control anyone, necessarily. But if Lexington ever told me to choke myself again, it would be nice to throw a little of his own Mind Manipulating games back at him.
Garvis only shook his head.
“Not quite. I’m afraid that controlling somebody else’s actions is usually a fifth-year thing. But even so, we’ll be skipping several months of normal Mind Manipulating lessons to start working on one I’m hoping would benefit you the most right now.”
The sound of the sea beating against the island seemed to pick up speed.
“Oh?”
“Yes.” Garvis smiled. “I think it’s time we start the hunt for your missing memories.”