Page 20 of Moonstriker (The Summertide Chronicles #4)

Chapter 20

Aubrey

Kit Moonstriker was too darn pretty for anyone’s own good. Not in that way where I was trying to feminize him or anything, oh no. He had slightly androgynous features, sure, but it wasn’t about gender. It was about an overall effect that made me keep looking at him even when I shouldn’t.

Staring at people was uncomfortable and rude, that was what my grandmother had taught me.

We talked some, mostly about food, since it seemed to be a relatively harmless subject. It was still a little overwhelming, the notion that he’d gone out and spent so much money on granola bars, just for me.

Why hadn’t he just gotten food he would like?

That would have better fit the initial impression I’d had of him.

Or no...it would have better fit the assumptions I’d made about him when we’d met.

He built a small fire, but I was already nodding off by the time he got it going. It had been a long damn day, and I just didn’t have the energy for?—

“ Where’s the puppy? ” the voice demanded.

I frowned at that, and at the angry buzzing in my guts, like a ball of bees in my stomach. “I don’t have a puppy.”

It made a weird sound, almost like a growl, and I wondered if the voice was a dog. Except dogs didn’t talk. Right? “ I want the puppy. ”

“I always wanted a puppy too,” I answered. “But it’s like my grandma always said, we don’t always get what we want. Sometimes we have to settle for reality.”

The bees got louder, and beneath me, the ground started to shake.

That was what woke me up—the ground shaking.

Because that part wasn’t a dream. Maybe there weren’t bees in my stomach or a deafening voice demanding puppies, but the ground was definitely shaking.

Except . . . the voice was also real.

Puppy! it shouted over the noise of the quake, tone like a petulant toddler, and my ears rang with it.

Across from me, Kit was frantically smothering the fire in dirt and pine needles. He looked up at me, eyes concerned.

Concerned for me, or just the fact that we were having another darned earthquake?

I shook my head, sitting up, trying to push away the dream.

Where is my puppy? the voice demanded again.

Fuck.

That was . . . it was real. The voice was real.

Kit pulled a hand back, hissing in pain when it came in contact with one of the hot rocks he’d placed around the edge of the fire to keep it contained. Still, when he opened his mouth, it wasn’t to curse or complain. “Are you okay? You’re not...no seizure?”

He was right, I realized. The last few times there had been an earthquake, I’d also had a seizure.

Slowly, I shook my head. My gut was still buzzing, not from bees, but...well, I didn’t know what it was from. I had no idea what the heck was going on, other than?—

Puppy!

There was a cracking sound, and five feet away from us, one of the enormous pine trees tipped over, making the long, slow fall to the ground, then lying on its side with its roots exposed.

And that was more than enough. As my grandmother had told me as a child, tantrums would not be countenanced.

“Stop that!” I shouted, at the top of my lungs.

Puppy ...The voice was talking about Nausa. He wanted—Slate wanted Nausa. But surely an ancient mountain understood death. Trees and small animals must die around him every single day. Why would he act as though death was a new and incomprehensible thing?

Maybe because stones didn’t die, so this was new and unfamiliar territory.

There was a pause in the shaking, and Kit froze as well, stopping his work to make sure the fire was out.

So I...I kept shouting. “I’m sorry Nausa is dead. It’s sad. We’re all sad about it, but you can’t destroy the whole world because you’re sad. It’s not allowed!”

The shaking didn’t start again, at least I didn’t think it did. But suddenly I was shaking. It wasn’t a seizure, for which I was grateful, but I didn’t have a better explanation for it, either. My whole body was just trembling, almost like I’d worked so hard that my muscles had turned to jelly and simply holding myself up was too much work.

I curled myself into a ball, knees pulled up tight to my chest and arms wrapped around them, and stared into Kit’s gray eyes, which were shining with worry in the moonlight.

We sat there for long moments in the silence before Kit checked his work with the fire, then stood, circled its charred remains, and sat next to me on top of my sleeping bag.

“That was good,” he said, his voice subdued like I’d never heard it before. “You did a good job.”

I blinked, turning my head and laying it on top of my knees, staring at him. “You’re kidding, right? I...I shouted at a mountain. It didn’t—I didn’t do anything.”

“But you did do something. The quake stopped, didn’t it?”

I hadn’t really thought it through that far, but I supposed it had. Had the mountain really stopped because of me? If so, was he chastened because I’d yelled, or angry with the tiny, obnoxious ant who’d had the temerity to yell at him?

Kit leaned in, pressing his arm into my side, his whole body a long, warm line against me. I was freezing, I realized, startled. Sure, I was sitting up, most of my body outside the surprisingly warm sleeping bag Kit had given me, but it seemed I was colder than that warranted.

“Nikka and I were talking about it today,” he said, keeping his voice quiet and soothing, almost like he thought I was a wild lion who might bite him if he misspoke. Almost so quiet I struggled to hear him and had to lean in. “She said that you shouldn’t be afraid of your bonded stone. That if I were afraid of her, she couldn’t respect me.”

It made sense. It was hard to imagine not being frightened of a mountain, except...was it? I was only afraid of Slate in an abstract sense. I was afraid of the possibility he would kill everyone and everything I loved by exploding.

I wasn’t afraid of the mountain specifically. I didn’t know the mountain personally, and all I knew so far was that he was apparently devastated by Nausa’s death, which didn’t speak ill of him. If anything, being devastated by loss made him more...human, in an odd way. At least that helped me understand him better. Slate didn’t sound like a monster at all, just someone who was sad they’d lost a friend.

Puppy , came the tiny, almost quiet grumble.

I glanced over at Kit, and he didn’t react at all.

Because, I realized, he couldn’t hear the voice. The mountain was speaking, and I could hear him. I was the only one who could hear him.

Kit had been right, as much as my mind had been shying away from the very possibility.

I was bonding the mountain.

Holy crap.