Chapter 27
CHAPTER
Alderwick looked the same as I’d remembered it from afar.
A wide dirt street split the many cottages and shops, leading to a village square that more closely resembled a lopsided circle.
The jungle was thick here, blocking our view of the clouds and the sky above it, but all the windows down below twinkled as merrily as stars.
Smoke twirled from a few chimneys—including my own.
Steeler had dropped us off at the top of a slope overlooking my old house. Even though I was sure nobody would see our silhouettes melting into the darkness of the trees up here, I could easily see the shape of the cottage I’d grown up in surrounded by all those lights down there.
My heart tugged violently as a figure flitted within my old kitchen window—stumpy and flat-footed, that had to have been Don.
And following him a second later, more slender and graceful… Fabian.
Homesickness welled in my throat. My fathers were so close.
So close, and I couldn’t go down and talk to them.
Couldn’t knock on the door or let them know I was here, watching them putter throughout the house I missed with every aching heartstring.
My Wild Whispering power didn’t sense any spiders scuttling along the many branches and leaves surrounding us, but there were other ways for the Good Council to spy on its citizens.
Beside me, Steeler leaned against the trunk of a kapok tree and folded his arms, staring down at the village below.
I cleared away the burn in my throat.
“What are you looking for?”
“I’ll let you know when I find it.”
Judging from the way he closed his eyes, a deep furrow wrinkling the space between his brows, I was willing to bet he wasn’t looking for anything physical—he was looking for something in somebody’s mind.
Fine by me. As long as he wasn’t taking or harming, only looking, I was content to stand there and squint at my old house for more signs of my fathers.
Smaller objects were whizzing through the kitchen now, spoons and spatulas and baking sheets. I could practically smell the cookies they were baking together, and the pang of homesickness became so strong that I had to look away before the tears in my lashes could spill.
Steeler’s eyes were still closed, his brow still furrowed, but he seemed to sense my attention anyway.
“Don’t judge me, Drey. I used to be able to do this kind of thing in a few seconds flat. Now…”
Now I’d scarred the use of his Mind Manipulating magic and taken half of it for myself. It was no wonder he had to concentrate so much harder. Still, I shot a glance behind us as an owl screeched in the distance and something else rustled in the foliage much closer.
“Not judging you this time,” I said, “but it might not be a good idea to stand in the middle of the jungle with your eyes closed nearing nighttime. There could be any number of predators nearby.”
“Good thing I have a Wild Whisperer to guard my back, then.”
I stared at the wry smile picking up his lips, even as he kept his eyes closed. My knives were still buckled to my thigh, yet he didn’t seem the slightest bit concerned that I might slice open his throat while he stood there unguarded.
Can you stop looking at me? he asked suddenly, his voice crashing through my blockade. The weight of your gaze is utterly distracting.
How can you tell I’m looking at you with your eyes closed?
Let’s call it a sixth sense, little hurricane.
Biting down on a smile, I jerked my gaze away, and decided to train it on the jungle behind us rather than the village and my fathers down below.
The croaks, hoots, and screeches of nighttime were beginning to roll in, but a certain stillness within the darkness beyond my vision had the Wild Whispering part of me stilling as well.
Something was quiet—much too quiet—amid all the noise.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, they picked up on the reddish tint of a pair of feline eyes trained on Steeler as he continued to lean against the kapok.
“Hey!” I called out, just as I sensed the large cat lowering itself into a crouch.
It was smaller than Jagaros, but still lethal enough to do some serious damage with those claws if it pounced—probably a leopard. Which meant it would be territorial over any potential meal. Which meant I had to play its game.
When the leopard’s red-tinted eyes flicked over to me in surprise, I hissed, “Back off. He’s my prey.”
“Yours?”
The leopard slunk forward just enough for me to know I was in deep shit if I couldn’t convince it of my superiority in the next thirty seconds. It had obviously taken one glance at me and figured I was the smaller, weaker one of the two.
“Mine,” I repeated firmly, hand floating to my sheath.
I shifted my body until I was between the leopard’s line of vision and Steeler himself—Steeler, who hadn’t moved an inch from his position against the goddamned tree, as if he didn’t know or care that he’d just become a wild cat’s next hopeful snack.
“If he is yours,” the leopard purred, “then why haven’t you sunk your claws into him yet?”
I hesitated, hit hard with the question, and that single pause was my downfall.
“Oh, that’s right. You don’t have claws.”
And it pounced.
Not at Steeler. At me.
I was already ducking and twisting, a knife in each hand. I dragged each one down the leopard’s backside in two quick slashes, mimicking claw marks—not deep enough to seriously maim, but just enough to sting a little. To warn away.
When the cat screeched, rolling over the foliage and slamming into a protruding tree root, I snarled, “No, but I have these.”
It wasn’t just me who brandished my knives now, though. The jungle itself, vines and branches I’d hummed out to, hoisted up each of my blades that I’d asked them to pluck from my sheath within the span of a few seconds.
The leopard took one look at all those shiny claws pointed in its direction and scrambled up and away, yowling as it went.
“Thank you,” I muttered to the trees, sending out another hum.
As quickly as they’d snatched my knives, the vines and branches deposited them back, and soon I was staring at Steeler as he finally opened his eyes and turned to face me.
“So.” A smug smile twisted his mouth. “I’m your prey, huh?”
I couldn’t believe he was just standing there, completely at ease, after what had just happened. He’d heard me talk to that cat, even if he couldn’t hear the cat’s responses, and he hadn’t twitched a single sculpted muscle.
“So what if you are?” I dared ask.
“Well, does that mean you want to pounce on me, too?”
Yes. “Only to wipe that smirk off your face.”
The way he cocked his head at me, a single lock of deepest brown hair falling over his forehead, made me suddenly want to squirm… as if I weren’t the predator, after all.
“And how are you planning on doing that? Because trust me, Drey—if you laid a single hand on me, I think I’d only be smirking harder.”
My blood pulsed in my ears. “Maybe I’d take your whole head.”
“Hopefully you’re on your knees when you do.”
I almost did fall to my knees at those words, purely from shock. But I managed to keep most of my face impassive and leaned in to whisper back, “I’m surprised you’d let my teeth near anything so precious.”
The breath of his sudden laugh tickled against my face, mellow and sweet. “Now you’re calling me precious, Drey? I don’t know what to do with all this flattery.”
Fortunately for the flush that had ridden up my entire body, a light flickered off down below, and both of our heads swung toward the village that had once been my home.
I needed to get my imagination away from images of me on my knees, gripping Steeler’s thighs, before I melted into a puddle on the jungle floor.
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
To my surprise, that furrow between his eyebrows returned. When Steeler glanced back at me, all the mischief and light in his eyes had faded away.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t find anything at all.”
After my lesson with Garvis the next Sunday, I still hadn’t found anything either—no mist in my mind that could fill the gaps in any of my unearthed memories.
Dazmine and Terrin were doing just as abysmally. As Felicity clattered about in the kitchen, I watched Dazmine pace around the living room, spouting off her frustrations regarding all those crumpled plans of theirs turned to ash in the fireplace.
“So Steeler can’t Walk us straight into the prison, because there’s some kind of power suppressor infusing the whole place.
An Object Summoner wouldn’t be able to lockpick the front door for the same reason.
And even if we got a Shifter to turn one of us into an elite so that we could gain entry that way, there’s no guaranteeing they’d be able to maintain our altered appearance once we made it through. ”
Felicity paused in the middle of kneading some type of dough on the counter, each of her long fingers clumped with goo.
“Monkeys wouldn’t bother with such subtlety, you know. We’d just storm the prison with sticks and stones. Sharpened, by the way.”
“What’s she saying?” Terrin asked Dazmine.
“Basically, that we should just get a whole army of your faerie pirate friends to help us outright attack Bascite Mountain until they hand the prisoners over.”
Terrin coughed out a humorless laugh.
“And we could do that, if someone would just decide to lead the attack…”
Steeler’s gaze shot up to land on me, as if sensing the way all of this strategy talk made my brain buzz with exhaustion.
After another week of nonstop Wild Whispering lessons followed by a Mind Manipulating one, I felt like I needed a break from my own magic.
From my own mind. Even for five minutes.
“Hey, Drey,” he called, hoisting himself up, “have you ever been inside a lighthouse?”
I wrinkled my brow, gesturing around us.
“No, not the keeper’s cottage. The actual lighthouse.”
He jerked his head upward, toward the darkened tower that loomed over the cottage.
An invitation, I realized. To get away to somewhere quieter.
If I accepted it, though, I’d be putting myself in a room alone with Steeler for the first time since we’d reenacted the scene with the sundew, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hold myself back from the desires that had been swishing low in my belly ever since.
“Okay,” I heard myself say anyway.
I could feel everyone’s smirks follow us as we made our way out the door, closing it behind us and starting toward the other set of crumbling steps that led to the tower.
Inside, it was nothing but cold, wet stone—lichen drooping from the cracks—and a metal staircase that wound up and up and up, so tightly we’d have to go one at a time.
When Steeler gestured for me to go first, I could practically feel the burn of his attention on my ass as I began the climb.
That burn seemed to settle right between my thighs, until I couldn’t resist swinging my hips a little more than necessary, relishing the sound of him sucking in a breath from behind me.
When we finally neared the top, I stepped up into a pentagonal room bordered by nothing but fogged glass, handrails bordering each of the five sides, and an enormous dead brazier squatting in the middle of it all.
I drifted to one of the handrails, resting my fingertips on it and squinting through the fog to find the horizon of the ocean in the distance. I definitely felt like I could see further than I ever had before up here.
“It’s a nice view.”
“Yes,” Steeler said without taking his eyes off me, “it is.”
“Who do you think built it?”
“My guess is the first humans who came to the island after Dyonisia conquered it…but not to find ships in a benevolent way. I think it was probably more of a warning to stay away.”
I turned back toward him. When he took a step toward me, everything around us—the brazier, the glass walls, even the ocean beyond—seemed to dissolve like melted snow.
“I know you’ve warned me to stay away, little hurricane. But I’m not warning you to stay away. My own memories are very much intact, and now that you’re a Mind Manipulator…”
The blood in my veins froze with rigid intensity as I stared at Steeler, my eyes rooted to the curve of his jaw and the way it was so close to giving that familiar smug smile with a hint of a challenge.
Now that I was a Mind Manipulator, I didn’t even need to find my own memories of our moments together. I could access Steeler’s. Could judge our past relationship for myself from the formation of his mist.
“Of course, you’d have to get past my gate.” Steeler gave a skeptical wrinkle of his nose. “Which I doubt you could do, but…”
“You’re on.”
The words were out before I could rein them in. That glittering amusement in Steeler’s eyes—I wanted to rise up to the challenge. I would get past his damned gate and watch all the mist I wanted even if it was the last Mind Manipulating thing I did.
“Just tell me how to… how to dive,” I said, tasting that phrase in my mouth for the first time and intuitively knowing it was the right one.
“You’re sure? You truly want to see what lies within me—for better or for worse?”
I found my gaze tracing the dark brown locks of his hair, the shape of his nose, the point of his ears and fangs.
Finding new parts about him that I hadn’t let myself notice before.
How one eyebrow tilted up ever so slightly at the end while the other tilted down.
How a splash of smile lines creased the side of his mouth that smirked the most. How a single freckle dotted his right cheekbone.
He might be the most perfect-looking male specimen from a distance, but up close, Coen Steeler had all these crooked little flaws that made me yearn to dive beneath his skin and discover more.
I made sure my voice rang loud and clear.
“I want to see everything.”