Page 25 of Moonstriker (The Summertide Chronicles #4)

Chapter 25

Kit

Aubrey was as high as a kite.

I had vague memories of my own bonding, and thought I’d been similar for a few days afterward.

Ironically, it had also happened on this very mountainside. We’d been visiting the chalet because Delta had been trying to make a connection with Dane Sunrunner. He hadn’t shown up, and she’d never tried again, but that hadn’t mattered to me at the time.

What had mattered was going out to hike the mountainside and finding Nikka there, just a tiny unassuming piece of rock on the ground. She’d been clear and filthy, and I’d thought her a simple piece of quartz at first, a common stone that rarely had enough resonance to truly bond a person.

Still, the moment I’d picked her up, there had been a hum in the air. Something soft and sweet and somehow almost...kind. It had been odd for me at eleven, because until that moment, only Frost and my father had ever been kind to me, so having the feeling come over me like a blanket and a cup of cocoa had been a revelation.

I’d never known a feminine presence to be anything other than an authority figure, and I didn’t much like those.

Rain had been a precocious six-year-old at the time, and he’d frowned at her lying in my hand, cocking his head. “Is that a diamond? Mother says we shouldn’t touch diamonds, just in case.”

She did look a bit like a diamond. Too small to show her true blue shade, she’d almost looked like a broken piece of glass sitting in my palm, with her edges worn smooth by time and friction.

But it hadn’t mattered. The moment I’d heard her soft voice in my mind, I’d known that it didn’t matter if she was a diamond. She was a part of me. When she told me about what was coming, about Slate’s possible eruption, well...then I couldn’t tell everyone about her ability with time.

It had been my first instinct, to tell Delta and get her to fix everything that was going to go wrong. She’d been a terrible mother, sure, but fixing things was what mothers were supposed to do, wasn’t it? You were supposed to take your problems to them, and they’d fix them, because they were supposed to take care of you.

But when I’d suggested that route to Nikka, she’d panicked and painted the most vivid description I’d ever heard of all the ways that would go wrong. Delta would march straight to Slate and demand that he do as she commanded, Nikka told me. And while Slate was a reasonable fellow according to her, he didn’t deal well with that kind of know-it-all arrogance.

I couldn’t much blame him, because neither did I. As a frustrated eleven-year-old, though, I hadn’t been able to do much about being ordered around. As a fully grown volcano, no one controlled Slate.

In many ways, I’d admired the volcano. Not only was he annoyed, but people had to listen to him. We didn’t have a choice.

Looking back, I supposed it might have been a seminal moment, since I’d shaped myself into someone scary enough that people felt they had to listen to me. Was it a good thing, that I’d decided to model myself after a volcano?

Probably more a childish one, but it was a little too late to change that.

I didn’t have time to let my thoughts wander like that, though, because Aubrey wasn’t going to pay attention to his surroundings, so I had to do it for him. Case in point: he was staring up at the sky and almost ran smack into a tree.

I grabbed his elbow and steered him around the thing, and he looked down quickly, first at my guiding hand, and then at the tree, like its existence was confusing. “Sorry, I was...” and then his gaze drifted back up to the clouds and stayed there as we continued walking in silence.

Half an hour later, he started again, right where he’d left off. “. . . just thinking about how the clouds look like eddies of water in the sky.”

I glanced up at the low-hanging gray clouds and nodded. “I suppose they do. But they basically are that, so why not?”

“They—they are. I hadn’t thought about it that way.” He looked back up at them, and I started to worry he was going to end the day with a crick in his neck from staring up all afternoon. “They’re the same shade as your eyes,” he added after a while, and that was...

He’d noticed what color my eyes were? More than that, he was making such romantic comparisons as clouds?

I bit my lip, considering. It was...nice, I thought. Nice that he’d noticed my eyes. That he cared what color they were. He’d already said he thought I was a handsome asshole. Or maybe he’d said jerk, since he seemed terminally allergic to cursing.

No, I was pretty sure it had been asshole.

If I’d managed to inspire him to curse, what did that say about me?

“It’s an unusual color,” Aubrey said, again, continuing like there had been no pause in the conversation. “Like your stone. Not that—not that clear is an unusual color for a stone, but it’s an unusual color for an aquamarine. Isn’t it?”

“It is,” I agreed. “Delta decided she was a diamond, and I think she almost disowned me on the spot.”

He turned, head cocked, and looked like that was the strangest thing anyone had ever said to him. “Are Moonstrikers only allowed to bond aquamarines?”

“No, it’s not that; it’s...diamonds are simple. They’re not clever and impressive. For close to twenty years, Delta believed all Nikka did for me was boost my reflexes, and that wasn’t good enough for someone she called her child.”

He stared at me a while, apparently no longer aware that we were still walking, since he didn’t even look down when I had to steer him around another tree. It was odd, and almost unnerving.

“He thinks she’s an arrogant brat,” he said finally. “He’s...disappointed in her. It’s sort of like she’s his kid, and he’s disappointed.”

“Delta?” I was disappointed in her, for sure, but it seemed odd that the volcano even knew she existed,

He shook his head. “No, Iri.”

At that, there was a little sigh in my mind. I didn’t even need to ask—I knew why.

“Well, I kind of agree. She ignores Nikka. They all talk, you know, the stones. Except that Iri ignores Nikka as though she doesn’t hear her.”

He stopped walking, so I supposed he did remember, on some level, that he was doing it. Turning toward me, he reached out and lifted Nikka with the hand that I wasn’t gripping to keep him from running into a tree.

Normally, I’d have smacked away anyone who was so presumptuous as to touch Nikka, but...it didn’t feel presumptuous of him, for some reason.

His eyes didn’t seem to focus on her, but past her, and he gave a tiny smile. “She can’t hear her,” he told me. “She’s not ignoring her. Your Nikka is fractured little sister. They”—he finally looked up at me, some surprise on his face—“she used to be a part of Iri, but broke off. They resonate on the exact same frequency, so she can’t hear her.”

My hand immediately went to wrap around Nikka, and I was almost overwhelmed with her emotion. Relief. Tears stung my eyes.

Iri didn’t hate us. She just couldn’t hear us.

“It’s why Nikka has the time abilities that Iri doesn’t.” He cocked his head and his eyes widened a little, like he was saying the words, but they were a surprise to him at the same time. Because they were. Because they were from Slate himself. “Iri can stop time, turn it back, but she can’t speed up her bearer like Nikka does or you. And she can’t see the actual future. They’re things she used to be able to do, before the fracture. Now they’re for Nikka.”

He let her fall back to my chest, looking up into my eyes, and I could see the surprise in his cornflower blue ones.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to?—”

“It’s fine. We didn’t mind.” I squeezed his hand, and I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be a reassuring gesture or a reminder that we were also holding hands, and I didn’t mind that either.

It turned out that I didn’t mind a lot of things, these days.

But hells, why not? My whole life was changing, right this moment. If we survived, I had to find a whole new path. I’d been trying not to think too much about it, but my chosen career was literally illegal now, and frankly, I couldn’t be too sorry for that. Dueling had always been a means to an end, and I would be happy to move on.

I just had no idea what to move on to.

It wasn’t like I was good at a lot of things.

Aubrey was already back in his own head, though, his eyes gone distant again, and then, he turned once again to look at the sky. “So gray,” he mumbled, and I had to fight off laughter.

He was so freaking high.

I turned us back to the path and started walking again. And if I missed his company while his brain worked through its new connection, well, no one needed to know.

When the sun was high overhead—even though the cloud cover meant we couldn’t really see it—I reached into his pack and pulled out one of his damned granola bars, sliding it into his free hand. By rote, he unwrapped it and ate it. I took the wrapper before he could stuff it into the pocket on his sweatpants and put it with my own trash, so it’d be in one convenient spot when we got back to the chalet.

Even with him silent and thoughtful, it was a nice hike.

I’d always enjoyed it, all the way back to when I’d been a child on this mountainside, even if I hadn’t been on the exact same trail then.

It wasn’t far from here , Nikka pointed out. Where we met .

I remember , I agreed. How are you doing?

She...she doesn’t hate me. I spent so long thinking she hated me. She just doesn’t know I exist. It’s a strange thing to have to refocus. I wonder if the puppies that used to be Nausa will also be unable to hear each other .

It was a good question, and also a very Nikka thing to focus on. Not the emotions of how this affected her, but the logical parts of how this fact affected everyone.

I shrugged, not being especially careful to keep Aubrey from seeing me have a conversation in my head. No way to know yet, but it would make sense. Unless the breaking intrinsically changed them in a way it didn’t change you. Or the fracture, Slate called it .

He did , she agreed. I suppose we’ll find out soon enough. He...he missed me. I’m not sorry I went with you, but I’m sorry I’ve been a part of the problem, making him lonely .

Me too , I said, and oddly enough, I found that it was true.

“We have to go that way,” Aubrey said, startling me out of my own thoughts.

He was pointing off the trail. I pointed at the path before us. “The chalet is that way.”

He nodded, turning to meet my eye, and while there was still all that slightly wild, high emotion that came from the bonding, there was also something clear and rational there. He wasn’t saying this because he was high. There was a reason.

But...The Plan had always been to go toward the back of the chalet. Not off the path. And it was The Plan for a reason.

It was The Plan .

I hadn’t deviated from it in a decade, not once.

I swallowed hard, looking Aubrey in the eye. He was determined. Not angry and stubborn, like with his ankle the day before, but set.

Like the mountain.

I took a deep, admittedly slightly shaky, breath, and nodded. “Okay then. That way.”

And we left the path, and The Plan, behind us.

It looked just like the path, which wasn’t a shock—it was a mountain, mostly covered with pine trees. What was going to change? Still, my stomach wrapped itself up in knots, reminding me that this wasn’t The Plan, like a blaring fire alarm lighting up my whole body in warning.

Not The Plan. Not The Plan. Not The Plan.

We were starting to get to the rocky edge of the mountain, where there were fewer trees and more, well, rocks. It took more focus to climb there and not slide around on loose gravel or take a wrong step onto a spiky rock formation. That was good. I had to focus on something other than not The Plan.

Not The Plan.

We climbed that direction for almost half an hour, and came around a turn on the mountain to find a rocky outcropping that led into a small cave. Interesting. I’d never seen this before.

I’d never deviated from The Plan before.

We crawled up the side of the rocks and onto the lip of the bottom edge of the outcropping, a huge flat chunk of slate hanging over our heads.

Ha, slate on Slate.

I turned and grabbed his hand again, since we’d had to let go while climbing, and helped him up. The outcrop stuck out a bit from the rest of the mountain, and there was a panoramic view of the whole mountainside. It was stunningly beautiful.

As we stood there looking out at the mountain, the sky opened up, and rain started pouring down all around us.

I looked up at Aubrey, who was beaming like he’d just been given every solstice present he’d ever wanted, all at once. He looked down at me, eyes shining. “Slate said it was going to rain. And that we’d be safe here.”

He was breathless, and I didn’t think it was from the climbing.

I couldn’t stop myself.

I pushed up onto my toes and pressed my lips to his.