Page 114 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
My heart was still crawling up my throat from that breathless moment I’d feared he would leave me behind again.
Steeler’s mouth instantly softened.
“You deserve to hear it with your own ears, Rayna—you’re right about that. I just have a hard time sharing you.”
I blinked. Surely, he didn’t think this Barberro fellow would be interested in me… romantically?
“Sharing me? With who?”
“The world,” Steeler whispered. “It’s a harsh, unforgiving place full of greedy, manipulative people, and I don’t trust it not to hurt someone like you.”
Just like that, I felt that heat in my stomach rise up my throat in anger this time.
“Someone like me? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know.” He threw his head back. “Someone…”
“Someonewhat?” Deep in the center of my mind, I felt a creak of ice, a stirring of my subconscious. “Do you think I’m weak? Or fragile? Or breaka—”
“Kind!” Steeler burst out. “Soft-hearted.Compassionate.” He took a step forward, pressing the vial into my free hand, closing my fingers around the glass. “But I’m learning how to trust the other parts of you thataren’tas soft, Rayna—your powers and your bravery and that devious little mind of yours.”
A brush of dark, fathomless energy against my gate of ice had my knees turning hollow with the trail of hungry promises it seemed to leave in its wake.
“And I trust you to still be here when I get back,” Steeler finished.
Then he was gone.
Knees wobbling, I finally let myself collapse onto a nearby slab of mossy stone, clutching my knife in one hand and the glass vial of Dyonisia’s hair in the other while the liverworts droned around me.
Kind. Soft-hearted. Compassionate.
I’d been terrified that I’d lost all those things along with my memories. Terrified that I’d never actually been kind or compassionate at all, that it had all been a ruse, a trick my mind had played on itself to hide all those darker, wilder parts within.
But maybe… maybe even if IwasDyonisia’s daughter, it didn’t mean I was destined to turn out like her: as harsh and unforgiving as the world Steeler couldn’t trust. Maybe I could still be good because…
Because I was Fabian’s daughter, too. And despite the fact that I hadn’t seen him in a year and a half now, he was the kindest, most compassionate man I knew.
I exhaled into the space between my knees. No matter how this coupling between him and Dyonisia had happened, I could choose which parts of my parents to keep alive in my own blood.
I couldchooseto be a force of good in a world that needed so much more of that.
For the next two minutes, I sat with my eyes closed, face turned up against the warmth of soft sunlight, listening to the tinkle of water all around me. It was only when a sudden scuffle and a sharp string of foreign curses echoed through the valley that I popped them open again.
Steeler was back, this time with…
I scrambled to my feet. My mouth dropped open at the figure that had doubled over next to him, a massive fist to his gut as he retched.
“Rayna, meet Barberro,” Steeler said through a smirk. “Your… what did you call him? ‘Little faerie man’?”
The seven-foot male with swirling ink patterns on his bald head and glittering hoops in his pointed ears paused his retching long enough to squint at me with small, unassuming hazel eyes.
“Little, you say? Is that why you are staring at me like that, girl with curly hair? Because you thought I’d belittle?”
“N-no,” I said, unsure of the temperament behind those words. “I just…thought you’d have bigger eyes, given your power and all.”
“Bigger eyes?” the faerie named Barberro mouthed.
Then, after a too-long beat of silence, the valley echoed with the sudden hawing boom of his laughter.
