Page 84 of By the Moonbeam and the Mist
It wasn’t just me who brandished my knives now, though. The jungle itself, vines and branches I’d hummed out to, hoisted up each of my blades that I’d asked them to pluck from my sheath within the span of a few seconds.
The leopard took one look at all those shiny claws pointed in its direction and scrambled up and away, yowling as it went.
“Thank you,” I muttered to the trees, sending out another hum.
As quickly as they’d snatched my knives, the vines and branches deposited them back, and soon I was staring at Steeler as he finally opened his eyes and turned to face me.
“So.” A smug smile twisted his mouth. “I’m your prey, huh?”
I couldn’t believe he was just standing there, completely at ease, after what had just happened. He’dheardme talk to that cat, even if he couldn’t hear the cat’s responses, and he hadn’t twitched a single sculpted muscle.
“So what if you are?” I dared ask.
“Well, does that mean you want to pounce on me, too?”
Yes.“Only to wipe that smirk off your face.”
The way he cocked his head at me, a single lock of deepest brown hair falling over his forehead, made me suddenly want to squirm… as if I weren’t the predator, after all.
“And how are you planning on doing that? Because trust me, Drey—if you laid a single hand on me, I think I’d only be smirking harder.”
My blood pulsed in my ears. “Maybe I’d take your whole head.”
“Hopefully you’re on your knees when you do.”
I almostdidfall to my knees at those words, purely from shock. But I managed to keep most of my face impassive and leaned in to whisper back, “I’m surprised you’d let my teeth near anything so precious.”
The breath of his sudden laugh tickled against my face, mellow and sweet. “Now you’re calling me precious, Drey? I don’t know what to do with all this flattery.”
Fortunately for the flush that had ridden up my entire body, a light flickered off down below, and both of our heads swung toward the village that had once been my home. I needed to getmy imagination away from images of me on my knees, gripping Steeler’s thighs, before I melted into a puddle on the jungle floor.
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
To my surprise, that furrow between his eyebrows returned. When Steeler glanced back at me, all the mischief and light in his eyes had faded away.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t find anything at all.”
After my lesson with Garvis the next Sunday, I still hadn’t found anything either—no mist in my mind that could fill the gaps in any of my unearthed memories.
Dazmine and Terrin were doing just as abysmally. As Felicity clattered about in the kitchen, I watched Dazmine pace around the living room, spouting off her frustrations regarding all those crumpled plans of theirs turned to ash in the fireplace.
“So Steeler can’t Walk us straight into the prison, because there’s some kind of power suppressor infusing the whole place. An Object Summoner wouldn’t be able to lockpick the front door for the same reason. And even if we got a Shifter to turn one of us into an elite so that we could gain entry that way, there’s no guaranteeing they’d be able to maintain our altered appearance once we made it through.”
Felicity paused in the middle of kneading some type of dough on the counter, each of her long fingers clumped with goo.
“Monkeys wouldn’t bother with such subtlety, you know. We’d just storm the prison with sticks and stones. Sharpened, by the way.”
“What’s she saying?” Terrin asked Dazmine.
“Basically, that we should just get a whole army of your faerie pirate friends to help us outright attack Bascite Mountain until they hand the prisoners over.”
Terrin coughed out a humorless laugh.
“And we could do that, ifsomeonewould just decide to lead the attack…”
Steeler’s gaze shot up to land on me, as if sensing the way all of this strategy talk made my brain buzz with exhaustion. After another week of nonstop Wild Whispering lessons followed by a Mind Manipulating one, I felt like I needed a break from my own magic. From my own mind. Even for five minutes.
“Hey, Drey,” he called, hoisting himself up, “have you ever been inside a lighthouse?”
