Page 96 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
Steeler slid his hold on my wrists down to my elbows, as if to steady me during what he had to say next.
“Under Sorronian law, it would if she was your mother.”
CHAPTER
30
“No.”
I tugged myself out of Steeler’s mind to find that we were pressed together in real life, too. The sound of distant crashing waves beyond the lighthouse glass filled my ears once more as I took a few hasty steps back.
“No.” I shook my head. “There’s no way.”
And because my mind had just done so much running without my body, it was like the excess energy exploded beneath my skin.
I took off down the spiral staircase until I hit the beach, sprinting along the pebbled shore while a low-pitched wind came rattling in from the ocean. It was nearing nighttime now, the sky darkening to a bruised purple, the water streaked with the setting sun.
I didn’t know where I was going. I knew it was stupid to run. But my limbs were screaming to move as fast as my brain was,so I didn’t stop until the lighthouse was the size of an upright thumb behind me.
Only when my lungs burned with the smell of salt and seaweed did I slow to a walk and think about what Steeler had just claimed.
If she was your mother…
Well, Dyonisia Reevecouldn’tbe my mother. I’d found my memory of Lord Arad, so I knew the bats’ description matched fairly well—hair dark as shadows but skin that glowed like honey—but they’d called her a lady from thesea, and Dyonisia Reeve wasn’t a lady from the sea. She was from the top of Bascite Mountain, the cold center of it all. She wouldn’t have hidden in an abandoned Object Summoning classroom nearly five hundred years into her reign, and she definitelywouldn’thave fallen in love with Fabian. Somebody would have noticed her pregnancy. Fabian himself would have told me.
Why, then, would Steeler think there was a chance?
My eyes absentmindedly fell upon a nearby seagull, who was hopping toward me with something clamped in its beak. When it was close enough for me to see the yellow rings around its pupils, it dropped its prey at my feet with a shy bow of its head.
“Will you be my mate?”
“Oh.” I glanced at the crushed snail on the rocks, ripping myself out of the flurry of thoughts in my head. “I’m sorry, but no thank you.” I pointed at another seagull picking through the rocks closer to the water. “That one looks like a nice option, though.”
The seagull didn’t even sound surprised to hear that I had talked back. It gave a sad, cawing laugh.
“I’ve already asked her. She said my wingspan isn’t big enough.”
I chewed on my lip, eyeing the seagull’s feathers. “Well, I think your wingspan is just fine.”
“That may be one of the strangest compliments I’ve ever heard,” drawled a familiar voice as Steeler materialized in front of me. The seagull squawked in shock, its wings bursting open on impulse. “But I’ll take whatever I can get from you.”
I glared at him. “I was talking to the bird… which you’ve scared away,” I added as the seagull grabbed the snail with its beak and took off with a flap of gray wings.
Steeler surveyed me, his arms folded, a shadow falling over him as a storm cloud drifted overhead. “Did you blow off enough steam? Or do you need to punch something, too?”
“I don’t know, your facedoeslook pretty appealing right about now.”
In more ways than one, but I wasn’t going to clarify that. Not as Steeler gave me the smallest of smiles and dug into his pants pocket, bringing out a folded piece of parchment that he handed out to me.
“What is this?”
He waited until I’d grabbed it between my fingers before saying, “You know how I told you that Mr. Gleekle has an office filled with the files of all his students? After I heard that bat’s description of your mother, I… became curious andmayor may not have commanded an Object Summoner to lockpick his office door, conjure your file for me, and forget about the entire ordeal immediately afterward.”
I didn’t even have it in me to glare at him again. My fingers had gone numb against the paper in my hands as I realized what it was.
My file.
“Go ahead,” Steeler said gently. “It’s your right to know.”
