Page 13 of Moonstriker (The Summertide Chronicles #4)

Chapter 13

Kit

“So, should we take it that you didn’t find anything we need to worry about?” I asked, while Aubrey sat there staring at the doctor.

It looked like the poor guy was broken. Did he not want a stone? That was hard to imagine, when it was something that would set him so far apart from every other person in the Summerlands. Sure, some people liked to be different, but no one wanted to be that different, did they?

The doctor opened the folder in her hands and scanned it again. “No, we found no sign of infection or other illnesses that might be causing the seizures. No bleeding in his brain, no tumors, just strain and exhaustion.”

“I’m not—” Aubrey started, then cut off, shook his head, and went silent again.

I grinned at the doctor and shot her my best finger-guns. “All right then, doc, I think we’ve got all the info we need, and Aubrey here just needs some time to process that. We pay up front?”

The doctor seemed troubled by the idea of us leaving, like she really wanted to get to the bottom of Aubrey’s problem, but she was out of ideas if he didn’t have a handy dandy stone in his pocket that it turned out he was bonding.

I had news for her.

Mount Slate wasn’t gonna fit in anyone’s pocket anytime soon.

Half an hour later, we were back in the car, heading back toward the chalet at a much slower pace than I’d set on the way to the doctor’s office. Five miles an hour below the speed limit, precisely.

Aubrey was still and silent in the passenger seat, stewing on whatever it was that had him bothered. Maybe people with stones had just been such assholes to him that he’d decided he wanted no part of us, let alone to become one of us. Maybe he treasured being a unique butterfly or?—

“I was getting used to being a freak, you know?” he asked me suddenly. “Yep, only guy in the whole world with no stone. The pitying looks when people found out, and the way no one seemed to need your help anymore, like not having a stone made you a child to them.”

Honestly, I didn’t understand. I’d bonded Nikka at a pretty average age, unlike Frost, who’d bonded so young that people hadn’t believed him when he said he could hear Vex. It hadn’t helped when the song he’d described hadn’t sounded to them like what they knew of stones. Because Vex, like my brother, was a unique creature.

Like Aubrey. One too young, the other too old.

I imagined both had been treated like shit over it.

I’d watched Fawn Dawnchaser, too, treated like a child by assholes around her despite being nearly twenty, so it wasn’t a new concept to me. People liked “us versus them” categories, and as long as they had a “them” to revile or pity, sometimes both, they were happier about their own lots in life.

Given my experience with both Frost and Fawn, I doubted what Aubrey wanted was sympathy. Problem was, I didn’t know what the hells else to give him.

“Sounds shitty,” I finally said, as simply as possible. “I didn’t like being treated like a kid when I was one. If someone did it now, I’d probably slug them.”

He snorted at that, which seemed like a good thing to me. He wasn’t glaring or scowling, so that helped as well.

We drove in silence again for a while, the only noise the road beneath our tires.

“You really think there’s a stone up there at the chalet that I’m bonding?” He stopped and shook his head. “That doesn’t even make sense. Why would they keep random unbonded stones up there with almost no people around? At best, that’s sort of mean to the stone, making them spend all that time alone.”

It is , Nikka said, her voice low and words coming slower than usual, and I could feel shame radiating from it. He’s very lonely .

Jesus, Nikka, that’s terrible .

I couldn’t think of anything else to say, because I couldn’t properly imagine it. I’d thought I had left Frost to fend for himself when I’d left home, but he’d still had Ember and Rain and Dad to take care of him. He’d always had Vex. He hadn’t been literally alone.

But Slate was. Yomi was the closest town on any side, and it was miles from the base of the mountain proper.

Except, I knew that sometimes distance didn’t matter to stones.

But Iri can talk to Delta and Rain from here, even though they leave her in Moonstriker lands, can’t they?

They can , she agreed. That kind of travel and distance is possible after bonding. But it’s not possible to bond from that far away. Bonding requires proximity .

I sighed and considered pulling over to the side of the road. But no, we hadn’t gotten to the right spot yet, and I wasn’t taking any chances. Not now. Not after all those years of careful planning.

“It would be cruel to take an unbonded stone out here to the middle of nowhere and not let it around people,” I said, trying to keep an eye on both his reaction and the road at the same time. “There’s a reason stones are kept in public places, even the enormous, rare priceless ones. To give them the opportunity to bond. Society decided that monetary value matters less than the will of a sentient stone. Less than bonding. But there are things that do still matter.”

“More than the self-governance of a sentient being? I thought the Summerlands were built on a foundation that says otherwise.”

As much as politicians and rich assholes both in and out of the four families had disagreed with that over the years, he was right. It was the foundation on which we’d built our country. Rugged individualism required individual free will, and that included stones.

“That’s true. There’s just one problem with that idea, in this case.”

He scowled at me. “What, one stone is special and doesn’t get a say? What, is it a murderer, and the chalet is a prison?” He paled at the notion, rubbing his chest and swallowing hard. “Is it? Do you keep stones up there that shouldn’t bond people? Fuck, am I bonding a monster?”

“No, Aubrey.” He kept staring off into space, so I nudged him with my elbow. “Hey, look at me. It’s not a bad stone. Nikka’s called him grumpy before, and lonely, but she’s never implied he’s anything but basically decent.”

He’s more than that , Nikka whispered, so low I wondered if she was afraid someone would overhear her. He’s...he’s Father, in a way. We all come from the mountain .

I blinked at the notion for a moment, but...well, hells, it made perfect sense. Technically, geologically, I knew stones were formed inside the crust of the earth as a whole, and not only under Mount Slate, but in more recent years? Since they’d become the smaller, separate, sentient beings that they were? It only made sense that they thought of Slate as a home, of sorts.

A parent.

“If he’s so great, then why is he alone up here?” Aubrey demanded, twisting around in his seat to stare at me. He was starting to sound a little hysterical, which made sense, because I was being too damned cagey.

We passed mile marker eighteen.

How many times had Nikka mentioned that number to me?

This was it.

I waved my hand at the mountain looming over us. “Because we can’t take the whole damned mountain into Amalion City to meet people!”