Chapter 29 #3
The sound of Mattheus’s scream from so long ago seemed to fill his ears…
and suddenly he was sprinting toward me, ripping open the tent flaps, finding me surrounded by my new friends on their backs.
He recognized me as the girl with the beautiful mind—the one he had wanted to sink into and lose himself within upon my arrival at the Esholian Institute earlier that day.
This was where my own memory cut off. I had no recollection of looking up to find the prince of the Mind Manipulators gaping at me.
In Steeler’s memory, though, I watched him throw me over his shoulder and haul me to that alleyway between our sectors’ houses.
I heard everything he said to me, felt his confusion about the possibility of me, his desperation to save me from the same fate as Mattheus, the savage possessiveness that slammed into him from the moment I lifted my chin and repeated my name, loud and clear.
“Rayna Drey.”
“I see. Rainy Days doesn’t make much sense anyway, does it?
You’re not a soft little drizzle.” His lips tilted up, although now, from this angle, I saw it for what it was: a frantic attempt to hide the snarling rage he already felt at the thought of a whip striking against any part of my body. “You’re more like a raging hurricane.”
She has to be, he thought. She has to be, or she will not survive this.
The mist changed.
Steeler was seated at the front row of the Mind Manipulator section in the stadiums during the Branding, looking bored out of his mind.
Until my name was called.
Then, every fiber of his body perked up as my figure made its way onto the stage where Mr. Gleekle stood with his poker and brand.
Now I knew that particular brand had always been infused with Wild Whispering, but at the time, I’d had no idea which magic would erupt from me when it pressed its scorching kiss against my skin.
I hadn’t even known if any magic would erupt, considering I’d just dry-swallowed Steeler’s pill moments earlier.
Neither, it seemed, did Steeler. Despite everything Nara had told him about the nature of the pills and the dome, he seemed to be caught in an inhale as he watched Mr. Gleekle stamp that brand to my shoulder…
Only for nothing to happen.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Steeler’s hands curled into fists. He was already half-rising, his eyes on the back of Kitterfol Lexington’s neck, preparing to fight him mind-to-mind if Lexington so much as sniffed at my thoughts.
But then Jagaros came.
Jagaros came, and everyone’s heads twisted amid shocked gasps to watch his sleek, stealthy trek to the stage, and Steeler’s face broke into a beam as he finally ripped his eyes from Lexington and found me again.
The mist changed.
Now he was stomping down the staircase in the Mind Manipulator house with the twins trailing behind him.
“Wait!” Sylvie reached out with a hand that barely managed to scrape against his shoulder. “You broke up?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” When Steeler reached his room, he closed the door behind him without looking back.
The twins just used their Summoning powers to unlock it.
“What are you going to do at the end of the year, then?” Sasha hissed as she trudged through his doorway, and I heard her throw her thoughts out for Steeler to catch. Kidnap her? What if she doesn’t want to leave the island with us now that you’re not together anymore?
Steeler replied by shooting his own thoughts into her head.
We’re not taking Rayna with us.
Excuse me? Sasha stared at him, livid. You said she wouldn’t be safe on the island without us. And while her innate power is still shapeless, the dome won’t hurt her. Now’s her chance to leave.
“Some new information has come to light,” Steeler said out loud, in a tone edged with enough authority that it made the hairs on the back of my neck bristle. “We’re not taking Rayna with us.”
The mist changed.
Now a memory-version of me was watching Steeler pack up his things with burning intensity. As soon as he stilled, this Rayna said “I’m coming with you.”
“Rayna.” Steeler’s voice was hoarse, but his face… his face filled with enough self-loathing to shatter it. “You can’t. Dyonisia doesn’t know what you are, so your safest bet is to stay here and—”
“If this is about the shield, then I’m willing to test it,” memory-Rayna said. “Maybe I’m immune, too.”
And now I knew I was immune. Not because of any special reason, but simply because my own power hadn’t developed yet, and the dome wouldn’t touch my Wild Whispering magic.
But Steeler laughed dryly, finally turning toward me.
“I’ve seen faeries disintegrate on the spot just from grazing the shield. It’s not a physical barrier, Rayna. It’s an anti-power that targets the magic in your blood and strikes.”
Not a lie. Not a lie, and yet…
Not the whole truth. He was one breath away from telling me that anti-power wouldn’t target the magic in my blood as of now.
But he didn’t.
He didn’t.
And the mist changed.
Now I watched, horror-struck, as my past self writhed and flailed in Steeler’s grip, screaming at him to let me keep my memories.
“Let me go! Don’t touch me! Don’t you dare!”
Steeler only bowed over me, his body like its own dome shielding mine from Dyonisia’s spitting, venomous anti-power overhead, and commanded me to breathe.
But I wouldn’t. Couldn’t. It was so obvious in this memory that I might never be able to breathe properly again. And despite all that, Steeler was saying, “I will come back for you. I will make you pick up my pieces. And I will pick up yours.”
Instead of replaying itself from the beginning, the mist faded as soon as he lowered his mouth to mine and muffled my sobs with a trembling kiss.
Then silence.
Such endless, echoing silence.
A single exhale behind me made me whip around.
Steeler—the real one, the one who had chased me all throughout his own maze—straightened from where he’d been leaning against the nearest curving marble wall, watching me watch it all.
He’d been watching me take in these memories the whole time.
Memories he’d woven together like braids of steam. Memories he’d herded me toward so that I would stumble across this darkest truth.
He took a half step toward me, his foot falling into a sliver of moonlight pouring down into this pathway, his mouth opening to say something.
“You bastard,” I said before he could.
Steeler stopped.
Every part of my body had gone still besides my fingers—those were itching to grab a knife that didn’t exist in this mental space.
“I could have gone with you,” I whispered. “But you left me anyway.”
“I know, Rayna.”
No sooner had my name left his lips than I hissed, “Don’t you dare call me that. The girl you knew by that name was in love with you, but you left her anyway.”
It felt like an anchor falling off from the center of my chest, admitting that. I couldn’t deny it anymore. My past self had been hopelessly, ridiculously in love with the male who stood before me. And maybe we’d had a good time together. Maybe we’d made each other happy for a finite space of time.
But in the end, it hadn’t mattered. In the end, he’d hacked right through that love until I’d had to freeze everything within me to preserve it. To keep it from further mutilation.
Steeler opened his mouth again, every shade of pain imaginable swimming through his eyes. “There was—”
“No reason!” I shouted, and now I was the one taking steps forward despite my better judgment, filling the sliver of moonlight with the darkest, most quivering part of me.
“You left me!” I shoved against his chest. “You abandoned me.” I shoved again, hating that he wouldn’t budge, also hating that he didn’t try to defend himself.
“You kissed my lips and turned your back on me.” I pummeled the heel of my palms against his chest again and again, wanting so viciously to shove him to the ground the way he’d shoved me to the ground and left me there to rot.
“You told me you loved me and then walked away. You—”
“It was to keep you safe!” he cut in, finally grabbing my wrists. Holding them back. “Everything I do is to keep you safe, Rayna!”
A shriek snapped out of me. “Stop CALLING me that!”
“No! I will not stop! I will not call you by your surname anymore as if you mean nothing to me when you mean everything to me!” Steeler tightened his grip on my wrists.
“I don’t care if you hate me for the rest of your life, Rayna, I don’t care if you never forgive me, I don’t care if my heart wants to fucking die whenever I look into your eyes and see the reflection of the monster I’ve become. ”
I stopped struggling for just a moment as his own eyes shimmered with a reflection of its own: my face, looking up at him. Me, and only me, like a pale imitation in dark water.
“I don’t care,” Steeler continued, “because I cared with Mattheus. I cared what he thought of me. I cared that he’d be mad at me for not passing him the damn bottle, so you know what I did, Rayna?
I passed him the damn bottle. I did that.
I gave him what he wanted, and he is dead because of me. And I will never get him back.”
He stood there, panting so raggedly I wanted to patch up the holes that had obviously punctured him in every place that mattered.
Instead, I simply dragged in a deep breath of my own.
“How were you keeping me safe by leaving me here? The dome—”
“—might not have killed you, no,” he said on a shuttering exhale. “But every tattooed faerie on that ship is oath-bound to kill Dyonisia Reeve upon sight—or anyone who belongs to her by blood.”
I shook my head. “I don’t belong to Dyonisia, Steeler.
” And maybe that made him flinch, to hear his surname still coming from my mouth, but I ignored the twinge of guilt beneath all the layers of rage and sorrow I’d become.
“Just because she gave me orders and a sheath doesn’t mean I belong to her. ”
Steeler slid his hold on my wrists down to my elbows, as if to steady me during what he had to say next.
“Under Sorronian law, it would if she was your mother.”