Page 5 of Moonstriker (The Summertide Chronicles #4)

Chapter 5

Kit

Aubrey was expecting me to eat some babies or something, I realized as we headed down the stairs. The way he’d been so concerned about not putting out the household staff in the chalet, that meant something.

To be honest, I’d never paid much attention to the Gloombringer—or Duskbringer—family. Nikka had told me early on that Adair would handle that aspect of The Plan, so I’d been grateful and entirely ignored that quarter of the Summerlands. Adair had been true to her word, perhaps the most perfect piece of The Plan that I hadn’t had any control over, so again, I had ignored Oberon and Titania and their drama.

Meeting Oberon had made me grateful I hadn’t had to deal with him—he’d been almost as bad as the fucking Dawnchaser. Sure, he hadn’t been trying to kill people and take over like Huxley had, but he’d been so puffed up with his own self-importance that I was sure I’d have ruined the whole damned plan by socking him right in the face if I’d been forced to spend more than a meal or two in his company.

Adair Courtwright was clearly a saint, and as such, the perfect match for my baby brother.

I led the Duskbringers down to the dining room, which wasn’t at all hard to find—most of the main floor was open-concept, with the main sitting room separated from the dining room only by an enormous fireplace that was roaring away.

Caspian, I noted, had taken the seat at the table closest to the fire in question. Poor little desert-dweller that he was, he was struggling with the temperature this far up Mount Slate. Frost sat beside him, though he’d taken off a sweater he’d been wearing on the trip, and rolled his sleeves up as well.

That was my brother. No complaints about how hot he was that close to the fire. Always, he thought of other people before himself. That was doubly true with Caspian, since he loved the guy.

For once, I left well enough alone. I’d given Caspian enough shit when he and Frost had been busy falling in love, and repeatedly misjudged the man, so I owed him at least keeping my mouth shut when he was struggling now and then. I’d been gone from Moonstriker lands long enough that honestly, it was a little colder than I was comfortable with as well.

It wasn’t like the ridiculous tight duelist costumes I wore held a lot of heat in. They weren’t made for that sort of comfort. They were made to stand out. Like those little neon frogs in the jungle whose bright colors were like a sign that said, “only come over here if you want to get your ass killed.”

That was me, a neon frog.

But it seemed to work for me, so I wouldn’t complain.

Lunch was very Moonstriker, a hearty autumn squash soup with other vegetables, served with a side of crusty whole-grain bread. It was odd, how when I’d first left home I’d eaten meat at every meal—reveled in it, like that little bit of rebellion was the most important thing in the world. And now? Well, this was nice. A little taste of one of the good parts of my childhood, eating soup and bread with Frost.

I smiled at the bowl and looked up at him. “Roasted vegetables. You said those are healthier than boiled ones, didn’t you?”

He smiled over at me, nodding. “They are. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with boiling, but some of the nutrients leech out into the water, which is often then thrown away instead of being used. So you lose a lot of the things that make the food healthy by boiling them.”

And with that, we were off into Frost’s head, with an in-depth discussion of the relative nutritional values of vegetables, what was lost in cooking water, and what the nutrients were good for.

It was just perfect.

It helped that I had Caspian on my side now. Rain and Ember had always been fine with Frost’s rambles about science facts, but Caspian was more like me—he liked them. He actively encouraged Frost to talk about things, interested to learn more. Or maybe we just both wanted to hear Frost talk about something he was passionate about.

And my little brother was passionate about so many things. It was great.

Lady Duskbringer listened with polite interest, which was all I ever expected from strangers with my brother. As long as they weren’t rude, they were fine.

Aubrey, on the other hand, kept looking at me as though I was a dog performing a new trick, and one he hadn’t expected at that. He didn’t pay much attention to Frost, but that didn’t matter. Caspian and I asked enough questions for everyone.

We were halfway through lunch, and we’d moved into how healthy fiber was, when Zana showed Dad and Florian in. I stood from my chair, beaming at him, before I realized I had no idea what we did now. The limits of our relationship were in the middle of a huge redefining, and whatever I did next was likely to have far-reaching consequences.

What if I did something weird or wrong?

Dad had no such concerns. He strode forward and drew me into a hug, squeezing me tight. “I’m so glad you’re all safe.” He turned to look at Caspian, who’d also stood, and oddly enough, pulled him into a hug too. “Thank you for protecting my boys. They’re everything to me.”

Caspian ducked his head as Dad turned to pull a slightly confused Frost into a hug as well. “They’re kinda everything to me too. I mean, well?—”

“Frost is,” I clarified for him, throwing him a wink. It didn’t especially hurt not to be the center of Caspian Sunrunner’s world. It would be nice to have someone feel that way about me, but it was more important that Frost did.

It struck me, then, that it might be nice to have anyone feel that much about me. I couldn’t complain about what I had now. Having my father was more than I’d ever expected out of life, and I’d long had nothing at all, living with Huxley fucking Dawnchaser, who didn’t love anyone but himself.

But it’d be nice to have someone who looked at me the way Caspian Sunrunner was looking at my brother.

You know... Nikka started, in the tone that said she was about to start in about fucking Aubrey again, and I sighed at her.

Please don’t. He’s still glaring at me for no apparent reason. I don’t need to deal with that.

But he’s hot , she pointed out. You noticed that yourself, the way you were looking at him earlier .

She wasn’t wrong. When he wasn’t trying to disappear into his own shoulders, Aubrey was hot as the hells. Hot as Mount Slate, I supposed. He had broad shoulders and thick arms, curly chestnut hair and piercing, almost violently blue eyes. But whenever he wasn’t trying to disappear, he seemed to be glaring at me.

Funny, how much Nikka had built him up, only for him to seem to dislike me as much as I already disliked him on principle.

He doesn’t , she disagreed. He can’t dislike you, it doesn’t make any sense. He doesn’t even know you. Usually everyone likes you right away, and then they get to know you and realize you’re not nice .

I sighed and slid down into my chair. I rarely had an outward reaction to anything Nikka said anymore. In my line of work, it had been important to cover up all emotions, even ones aimed internally—but this, it was tempting to groan at.

Regularly, I thought to myself how much Nikka had in common with Frost, and this was one of those things. Neither of them were the kind of asshole who called themselves “brutally honest” as an excuse to say douchey things. They were just inclined to state facts as they saw them, and then be confused that the facts were “brutal.”

Like telling me people liked me because I was pretty, then they got to know me and realized they didn’t like me after all. It wasn’t wrong at all. It wasn’t even something I tried to avoid. It just also kind of sucked sometimes, knowing that to most people I was pretty, but not much else.

That, of course, was when the universe decided to prove me wrong.

“Kit!” cried an excited voice nearby.

I already knew who it would be, a smile forming on my lips before I’d even completed the thought, let alone spoken. I stood again and opened my arms, only for them to be instantly filled with Florian Dawnchaser’s younger sister, Fawn. I hadn’t realized they were planning to bring her, but it sort of made sense. She was bonded to Soz as much as Florian, and frankly, anyone who met her and didn’t love her was a cold-hearted monster.

Like her father.

“Winnie said you’d be here,” she gushed as she pulled back, looking up at me with sparkling bright green eyes. “She said that you and Nikka had to be here, because we were all going to die without the two of you. She said I should thank you for giving up everything in your whole life to try to save us all.” She leaned in and lowered her voice to a stage-whisper. “Just like one of the characters in the stories! She said you left home with nothing, like the miller’s son in the fox story.”

I blinked at that for a moment, trying to process it all.

Winnie, of course, was Fawn’s stone. And apparently her stone was aware of what was going on, in a much deeper way than any of the humans present. Not for the first time in my life, I wondered how much stones communicated with each other.

Also funny, the fact that I’d named myself for the fox in the story she was referencing, not the hapless miller’s son who was left to fend for himself after his father died. The fox had found him, saved him, and managed to see him married to a princess by the time all was said and done. Frankly, I preferred to see myself as the fox, benevolently helping the people who couldn’t manage for themselves, rather than the bumbling hapless miller’s-son-turned-prince.

Still, I was never going to tell Fawn that she was wrong. Fawn was one of the few utterly perfect creatures that I knew of, and hurting her in any way was monstrous.

Instead, I motioned to the table. “Why don’t you all sit down, and I’ll go find Zana and see if the kitchen has enough lunch for the three of you as well?”

“You didn’t need to—” Florian started, but he was cut off by his sister.

“Thank you, Kit. It smells yummy. Is it tomato?”

That set Frost off, who was also an enormous fan of Fawn, and he began to explain to her about the squash soup, and how it was quite popular in Moonstriker lands. I took the opportunity to go find Zana, who it turned out, had enough remaining soup to feed an entire sportsball team.

“That’s a lot of soup,” I said, lifting myself onto my toes to peer into the industrial sized pot.

She smiled at me and shrugged. “We usually end up with more guests than we’re warned about ahead of time, so we like to be prepared. At worst, we eat soup for a few days. No one minds. It’s good soup.”

That figured.

“It’s very good,” I agreed. “Can I help carrying a tray back to the dining room?”

She laughed, waving me off. “I get paid to do a job, and you lot rarely ever let me do it, since you almost never visit. Let me do my job this once.”

So I headed back out to find that they were all still sitting in the dining room, but had turned the enormous wall-sized television in the sitting room on. Since there was no divider, it was easy to see from the table.

They’d tuned in to the news, of all things.

“—report says that he choked to death on his dinner last night,” a woman was saying, and wasn’t that a fucking appetizing thing to be listening to while eating our own lunch?

The shot pulled away from the face of the woman who’d given the report, to her and a man sitting across from her at a news anchor desk. He looked oddly bemused for someone who had just heard a thing like that, and shook his head, slowly. “Gee, Carrie, that seems like such bad luck. Oddest thing I’ve ever heard of, for a Dawnchaser.”

I blinked, staring at them, but no longer seeing them.

Fawn, sitting next to where I was standing beside the table, tugged on my jacket cuff. “You should sit down and finish your soup. Our father being dead doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat.”

Her father being dead.

Huxley Dawnchaser was dead. Choked on his own dinner.

I let my body fall into my seat once more, staring into the middle of nothing. Was I bothered? I did, in fact, seem to be. But...why?

I’d hated Huxley Dawnchaser with every part of my being. It was incomprehensible that I was bothered by his death. Huxley’s last act as a free man in my presence had been an attempt to kill me, as ridiculous and ill-planned as it’d been.

So why did him dying bother me at all?

He’d been a monster, and the world was better off without him. Not having to put him on trial saved Florian and Titania a whole lot of trouble.

But I had also spent five years at Huxley’s side. I’d killed people at his behest. And now I would never see him again, and part of me hurt, because it was like I’d lost a piece of myself, even if it had been a horrid, diseased piece.

I was never, ever going to tell anyone else that. Not when his own children were sitting there listening to the news story, seeming unaffected, eating their soup when Zana delivered it, and commenting only on how good the food was.

I couldn’t even explain it to myself properly, I wasn’t going to try to explain it to anyone else.