Page 113 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
Steeler didn’t even glance at the knife.
His free hand shot out to clamp around my closed fist, holding the weapon in place between us while shadows dropped like curtains over his pupils and heat rose in my chest.
“AndIthink you’re getting rather cocky with that thing, little hurricane.”
Wrapping his arm around my backside to lock me into place, he brought our joined hands closer to my neck until I felt the cold flat of the blade lifting my chin. Forcing me to look at him.
An unnecessary act. I wasalreadylooking at him. Dead-on.
And I huffed out a laugh right into his face.
“You’re trying to scare me into changing my mind, but guess what, Steeler?” I leaned into the knife, swelling with satisfactionwhen he immediately drew the blade away to avoid cutting me. “I’m not scared of you. I’m often infuriated by you, constantly frustrated with you, still angry at you, butI’m not scared of you. And I’m coming with you to give my own damn strand of hair to this Barberro guy because I know you won’t let him hurt me.”
Steeler’s lips parted in surprise, and my fingers twitched with the sudden desire to touch his fangs. To trace their sharp points and perhaps imagine what they would feel like against my neck.
“Pssst. Sorry to interrupt, but you might want to wrap up your… staring contest?”
I jumped as something furry and gray wiggled from a crack in the baseboards.
“Willa!” I turned to the mouse, a blush squirming down into my belly at the position she’d caught me in—pressed up against Steeler with only a knife between us. “It’s nice to—what did you say?”
“You might want to wrap up your staring contest with the wanted fugitive who’s definitely not supposed to be on the island, let alone this room.”If a mouse could smirk, Willa was doing a damn good job at it: one corner of her mouth pinched upward, revealing half a buck-toothed smile as she assessed us both from head to toe. “Because Cilia’s coming upstairs with Mitzi in five, four, three…”
I whipped my gaze back toward Steeler just as Cilia’s and Mitzi’s chattering voices did indeed reach us from the outside hallway.
“Don’t you eventhinkabout leaving without me.”
Something pained and strangled seem to overtake the exasperation in his expression.
“Two,”Willa urged. “One…”
Just as the doorknob began to turn, Steeler disappeared.
And I disappeared along with him.
CHAPTER
34
The darkness spit us out onto a narrow valley, sandwiched between bluffs that trickled steadily with thin sheets of water in every direction.
“Where are we?”
I untangled myself from Steeler, my knife still clutched in my hand.
For some reason, I’d assumed he’d be taking us to the lighthouse, not this…oasis of sorts. Mushrooms as fat as my palm burst from the small, crisscrossing ravines running along the sides of the bluffs, and a thick carpet of liverworts gave out steady, warbling drones from underfoot. A single, dark cloud hovered overhead among a pillow of lighter, fluffier ones.
Steeler shielded his eyes to squint upward, scouring the cliff-line for signs of life or intrusion.
“We’re as far from the ships as we can get without actually leaving the island—just west of Wyndrip, actually.” His jaw flexed. “I’ll go fetch Barberro if you wait h—”
“Steeler?”
He turned to me, that little glass vial still tight in his grip.
“Yes, Rayna?”
“Thank you. For bringing me.”
