Page 152 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
I stared at the planes of Steeler’s face lit up by the fire and candlelight as if seeing him for the first time. To think that Fate had already whispered his name to the most powerful faerie in the world…
“So you didn’t actually grow up on the ship?” I asked. “You grew up in the palace?”
He snorted. “Oh, no. As soon as I found out about my so-calledfate, I started acting out. Knocking over suits of armor in the Grand Hall, refusing to wear the clothes they laid out for me, making friends with the servants’ children instead of the pompous little nobles they tried to force me to play with.” He grimaced. “And so when I was five, the queen sent me and those same friends to the ships that she had posted outside the island of Eshol to await the day her treacherous sister’s dome of magic finally collapsed from overexertion—to help me learn the ways of my new position, she claimed.” He shook his head. “Really, it was just a punishment. Both for me, and for the servants who had let their children run around with me.”
“Terrin, Garvis, Sasha, and Sylvie were the children of the servants,” I whispered.
“Yes. And Mattheus.” Pain cracked in his voice at that last name. “They were all forced to join me later, too, when the queen thought planting meinsidethe dome would help… speed up my maturing process. She had no fear that the experience would actually kill me, you see. Being named by Fate means I will not die anytime soon. But as for the others…”
A knot in his throat tightened as he swallowed a lungful of air.
As for the others, one of them was already dead.
Outside the window, rain was pelting the lighthouse in droves now, and that deep rumble of familiar thunder was rolling in with the tide. Lightning flashed in forks through the gloom.
I sat in silence, my hand still on his knee as if it had been melded there.
“You’rethe Fated General,” I said at last.
He looked up, but there was only resignation in the gesture.
“Yes. Once I officially accept my oath, that is—on the day you explode into power, you will serve the queen of Sorronia as her General of War and conquer her enemies forevermore,”he whispered. “She spoke that oath into being long ago, and it has been hovering over me since the first moment the darkness claimed me and I landed here at the lighthouse. But…” He turned to me with an expression I’d never seen him wear before—almostpleading. “I didn’t want to conquer her enemies when that would have taken me away fromyou. So I’ve been procrastinating. Biding my time for as long as I can, telling the captain that my powers aren’t fully formed yet, that I’m still working on perfecting them.”
Again, something animalistic inside me bristled at the implication that he was thinking about the queen—and that it was scaring him.
“If you don’t want the position, then don’t accept it.”
“I can’t refuse.” His voice had fallen flat, dead, and cold. “As soon as Lexington gives Dyonisia those pills and I know you’re safe from her, I’m going to have to accept it. I can’t delay any longer.”
Another roll of thunder crashed into the lighthouse. The lightning outside seemed to flicker in my own veins, filling me with electricity.
“Steeler, you have the power—literally—to go anywhere in the world you want to go.”
Just like that, I’d removed my hand from his knee, set my now-empty wineglass on the coffee table, and bent to rummage in my bag again.
“I have a map, look.” I brought out the tome and flipped to page nine hundred and ninety-nine. “We can find someplace where you could lie low.”
“I can’t,” he said again without looking at the map.
I stood on legs that quivered just as much as the windowpanes.
“You can. Because you know what I just saw when you talked about this queen and Fate and your title as General of War?” I pointed a finger at him. “I saw that damn light in your eyes—every hint of your smirk and your smugness and your confidence that I wish I could hate so much—I saw that alldisappear. You cannot accept this role, Steeler. You—”
“I have to.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I HAVE TO,” he said, finally standing up to tower over me. “I can feel that oath thickening every day, ready to explode. Ifit goes unanswered, the queen of Sorronia will kill everyone I’ve ever loved—and that includes you.”
I didn’t realize that my hand was a furious fist clutching at his shirt against his chest until I looked down in bewilderment.
Steeler dropped his voice again, but his shoulders heaved up and down as he said, “I am going to stay and help you through everything until Dyonisia Reeve is dead, and then I am going to accept my role as the Fated General of the Sorronian Army, and I am going to leave you alone. I will not stalk you, I will not leave you little black pearls, I will not kidnap you, whisk you away and hold you against your will forever. I will not enter your mind again, I will not look at you again. You will be free of me and all the torment I have caused you.”
“Steeler.”
Just one more night,he’d told me, and now the desperation that had gripped his tone made sense.Just one more nightbecause he wasn’t planning on any more nights with me after this one.
No matter my true parentage, I was just a girl who’d grown up in a small village on a relatively small island, raised by two wonderful but very normal fathers. He…hewas destined to be in charge of whole armies, to win wars around a world I would never travel.
