Page 81 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
But the memories almost always cut short as the mist formed a gaping hole.
A very distinctly Steeler-sized hole.
I couldn’t find the first time he’d given me that pill. Couldn’t find a single exchange between the two of us, a single touch or midnight swim in the Element Wielder lake. It was as if I trulyhadsomehow ripped my recollection of him away from everything else—and perhaps destroyed it.
“We’ve just got to keep looking,” Garvis said three weeks into it, both of us once again sitting cross-legged on the beach. Firelight flickered from inside the lighthouse, where I could hear the rumble of faerie, monkey, and human voices alike.
Although we made a point to never speak in public at the Esholian Institute, Dazmine had been sneaking into the jungle with me every Sunday so that Steeler could take her to the lighthouse, too. There, she and Terrin sat hunched over the kitchen table, scribbling out various break-in plans that they always crumpled up and threw in the fire by the end of the night.
I wasn’t surprised they hadn’t come up with anything solid yet. The faerie fleet had been loitering outside the dome for five hundred years, unable to figure out how to break into that prison to get their Good Council back. I doubted a nineteen-year-old human and twenty-year-old faerie would be able to make much of a difference.
But Dazmine was determined, and I wasn’t about to break over the fervor that had twined around her over the last few weeks.
My Mind Manipulating power, on the other hand, needed a break.
“Maybe my mind doesn’twantme to keep looking,” I finally sighed at Garvis as a nearby seagull squawked at its mate about a slug that it had just found in the rocks.
This last week, Mr. Conine had been teaching my Wild Whispering class about the birds of the island and their mating habits, so I knew by now that gulls were monogamous creatures with low rates of divorce. If only my own not-love life could be just as straightforward.
“Do you…” I resumed hesitantly. “Are you really so sure my past relationship with Steeler was a good one?”
I couldn’t deny we’d hadsomekind of relationship last year. The way he looked at me and the way I felt around him must have had something to do with the history there. Whatever it was.
Garvis’s eyes landed on the pair of seagulls hopping over to us. He didn’t say anything for a long time, so I let him mull it over, watching as the male seagull began preening his female counterpart with gentle pecks.
Finally, Garvis craned his neck up to look at the sky.
“For my entire life, I’ve always been…desperateto find that one spark that lights up my whole world. I knew it existed, the spark. I saw it in some older faerie couples on the ship where I was raised. I saw it in my adoptive parents in Hallow’s Perch. But I was beginning to lose faith in its existence, much as you might begin to lose faith in the sun if it were to fail to rise for several years… until you and Coen.”
I sucked in a breath, letting the salted air swell inside my lungs.
This wasn’t what I had been expecting from Garvis at all. I didn’t know much about him or his mind, despite the fact that he had to besickof my mind and its frostbitten chill by now.
“Whether your relationship with Coen was a good one or not isn’t for me to decide,” Garvis continued, still examining the sky.“But I could see the spark between you even from a mile away—it lit up both your minds like lightning whenever you were around each other.”
I considered that. The cold, reserved thing that was my mind… could it have once been as bright and wild as my Whispering magic? Could it ever return to that?
“A spark doesn’t necessarily mean what Steeler and I had was good,” I started, even though I knew Iwantedit to mean that.
Garvis moved his gaze to mine until I saw the sadness loitering within his kohl-lined eyes.
“No, it doesn’t, Rayna. What determines whether it was good or not is your choice to keepfeedingthe spark. To give and take fuel when needed. To blow on the embers when they’re dying. To never give up on the light, no matter how distracted or numb or cold you become. It is your choice that matters. And you have one now… whether you find your missing pieces or not.”
Garvis lifted his eyes, then, to a spot just over my head. As if a certain someone had just materialized right behind me.
I twirled to a stand, already reaching for my knife instinctually.
Merely five paces away, bathed in the shadows of a raincloud that had rolled in from the ocean, Steeler tracked that movement of my hand with a raised eyebrow.
“Were you eavesdropping on us?” I hissed, already removing my hand from the slit in my dress—and maybe feeling a little smug at the way he stared at the visible part of my thigh beneath.
“I wish Ihadbeen, judging by the look on your face, Drey. Were you talking about me or something?”
“Unfortunately.”
I had to admit, I’d been a little sour since he’d stomped off all those weeks ago. Ever since then, it seemed he’d been keeping his distance, sending frustration pounding through my veins whenever I thought of him… which was often, dammit. Way toooften. But since I couldn’t quite grasp him in my memoriesorreality, it left my fingertips itching for something they always failed to reach.
Steeler scrutinized my stance, a trace of curiosity following my crossed arms. “As much as I would love to ask you what kind of compliments you were showering me with behind my back, I came to ask you a question.”
