Page 112 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
Whatever’s brewing inside,he said finally, must be stronger than any of ours.
I went quiet for so long that my knuckles turned white around the drawer handle.
Rayna?
“It’s just that…”I straightened with the strand of hair still pinched between my fingers. “How do you stand it, not knowing what your magic will be? Isn’t there some kind of… I don’t know, seer faerie who could tell me?”
I didn’t want to be like the queen or Dyonisia, with an antipower that stole or suppressed other magic. I wanted my power to help or uplift or even create in some way. Wanted it to help the world, not harm it.
There are plenty of seers in Sorronia,Steeler mused,but you’d have to pay them. And cross the ocean, of course.
“Well, couldn’t you just Walk me there?”
His thoughts flashed through me: if I was Dyonisia’s daughter, he wouldn’t take me within a hundred miles of the faerie realm where the queen would have my head on a dinner plate.
“Right,”I grumbled. “I might be the exiled princess’s scary heir and all that. When can we get this hair test over with again?”
In nothing more than a stutter of shadow and light, Steeler appeared by the door with a little glass vial in his hand.
“Right now, if you’d like.”
“What are youdoing?” I tried to smooth the shock out of my features, glancing at the cracks beneath the door and between the windows. “You can’t just materialize in my actualroom, Steeler. What if someone walks right in?”
“Well, then, I supposed I’d just have to Walk right back out.”
His eyes traveled the length of my body—not to appreciate my skin, I realized with a sudden surge of embarrassment, but to assess the swollen, elongated leech marks peppering my arms and legs.
A crease of worry knotted between his brows, but he didn’t comment on the marks. He just uncorked the vial and held it out.
Trying to swallow that absurd sense of self-consciousness, I marched forward and dropped the midnight-black strand inside.
“Perfect. Now give me one of yours and I’ll take this to Barberro right away.” Steeler nodded at my mess of curls. I assumed Barberro was the faerie with the power of Magnification who would be testing the similarities between our hair strands, but something about the wording of that sentence made me pause.
“Wait a second.” I stepped back, out of Steeler’s reach. “I want to be there when he makes his assessment.”
I needed to hear the words come from this faerie’s lips. That Dyonisia was truly my mother, and that the entirety of Sorronia wanted me dead for my veins that ran with a rebel’s blood.
Steeler looked at me as if I’d spoken monkey gibberish.
“Rayna, I already told you I’m not taking you onto that ship.”
“Then Walk Barberro to the island just like you Walk the others,” I argued, stepping even further out of his reach until we were on opposite ends of the room: him with his back stillto the door and me with my back to my own bed. Not that the distance would matter in the end. If Steeler wanted to, he could materialize next to me, pluck one of my hairs off, and leave.
He tore his free hand through his hair in obvious frustration.
“Barberro is oath-bound to the queen like most of the others, Rayna. If you are Dyonisia’s daughter, he will still have to try to kill you… even if hewasthe gentlest, most peaceful male alive. Which he’s not.” Steeler dropped his hand. “So excuse me if—”
Before he could finish that sentence, I whipped out one of my throwing knives and sent it careening through the air—right over his head, missing his scalp by half an inch…
Where it lodged into the wood of the door behind him.
Guess all of Jagaros’s lessons had paid off, after all.
The smoky quartz of Steeler’s eyes widened at me for just a moment.
Unable to stifle the smirk I could feel rising to my lips, I stalked forward to stand on my tiptoes, reach over his shoulder, and wrench the blade out of the wood.
“I think I can handle myself against one little faerie man whose only power is that he has really good eyesight.”
