Page 115 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
“Bigger eyes! Ha!” He looked at Steeler over his mountainous shoulder. “I like this girl already. God of Cosmos, I hope you don’t belong to traitor so I don’t have to kill you after this,” he told me cheerfully.
Steeler was between the two of us in nothing more than a breath of wind, all traces of his earlier humor swallowed by instant rage.
“Go ahead and see what happens if you try to touch her. I fucking dare you.”
Barberro blinked and took a half step backward.
“Well, this is new behavior, friend.”
Steeler ignored that. “I already told you, Barberro—Rayna might be good with her knife, but she won’t have to lift afingerif you start to attack her because I will have your mind scrambled in half a second, and you will only be able to unscramble it long after I toss your unconscious ass back onto the ship.”
“Ati, ati, ati, I get it.” Barberro raised his palms. “Try to kill girl with curly hair: maybe. Succeed at killing girl with curly hair:never.” I tried not to gape when he untucked an entire folded table and chair set that had been hiding beneath the rippling bulge of his arm, setting it up on the flattest surface of ground hecould find. “Now give me traitor’s hair. This might take a bit, so make yourselvesveriga.”
Bewildered, I passed the vial over to Steeler, who passed it over to Barberro, who uncorked it expertly and laid the strand against the table with the gentleness of a nursing mother, not a fanged faerie the size of two Gileons put together.
I cleared my throat in an attempt to normalize the conversation, since tension was still emanating from Steeler in waves.
“So I hear you’re close with Nara, the one who makes our pills?”
If Barberro had dissected anything from the strand of Dyonisia’s hair yet, he didn’t let on. He swiveled his head toward me, those unassuming hazel eyes widened with shock.
“Close?Close?” A gape at Steeler. “Have you told this girl nothing?” He shook his head with a sigh and returned his attention to the table. “Nara is myvigate.”
“Vigate?” I repeated.
“Yes. It means…” He snapped his fingers. “Help me out here.”
Steeler’s shoulders had lowered a notch. In a quieter voice than I’d ever heard him use, he said, “Soulmate.”
“Ahh, yes!” Barberro nodded. “Mate of the soul. Destined lovers for all eternity. Stitched together by Fate.”
“Oh.” I frowned at him, chewing on my lip. “Like a seagull?” When the other two blinked at me, I shook my head and directed a different question at Barberro. “Can your magic eyes detect true love at first sight, or something?”
Once again, silence shuddered from the faerie bent over the table.
Then he lifted his chin and sent a nearby flock of birds bursting from a crag with the boom of his laugh.
“Please, please, please, girl with curly hair, I am begging you with everything I have, don’t be traitor’s daughter. I need to have you over for dinner when this is all over. I make bestempinettesin Sorronia.”
Blowing out a sigh, Steeler said, “A soulmate is a very real—though rare and revered—thing for faeries. In Sorronia, there are temples where it is said the seamstress for the God of the Cosmos—Fate—makes it official: an eternal bond that is both more spiritual and carnal than ever before.”
“Very, very carnal,” added Barberro. “I can eat Nara’s pussy for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack time. Sorry, inappropriate, I know,” he said before Steeler could smack him over the back of the head. “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t know Nara is laughing her voluptuous ass off back at the ship right now.”
I startled.
“You can…?”
“Read her mind? Yes. Without that cloned mind magic you both have.” Barberro waved a hand in our direction without looking at us. “And unlikeyourmagic, I can read Nara’s mind no matter how far from her I am. No matter how much world is between us. I can sense where she is at all times. I know the moment her mood turns sour because she remembers how I make betterempinettesthan her. Ahhh!” He jolted upright. “She just threw shoe at my mind.”
Maybe I should have laughed at that, but something heavy had sunk deep into the pit of my stomach at those words.
“So you’re telling me that… that Fate decided to pair you up together, and you just accepted it? And made it official in a temple?”
The pit in my stomach was telling me it sounded like theoppositeof love to be bound to someone by forces outside of your control.
“Oh, no, no, no. You have it flipped around, girl with curly hair.” Barberro was still squinting at the strand of midnight-black hair on the table as he explained, “I met Nara through random chance. We fell in love of own free will.Thenwe went to temple to see if Fate would accept our choice and bind us together in stitches of… how do you say it?Divinemagic. Most couples are not so lucky, but we…”
His face smoothed out into a smile.
