Page 16

Chapter 16

Frost

“The first thing to remember is this,” Kit said, coming into our room that evening with two garment bags slung over his shoulder. He held up a pair of sunglasses in Caspian’s direction. “You wear these. No taking them off, ever. Those Sunrunner purple eyes of yours are the biggest giveaway we’ve got going.”

I raised a brow at my brother, then glanced up at his hair, then at my own. “The biggest giveaway?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, well, your hair can’t be dyed. We’ve tried that and we both know the dye just washes right the hell out. Fucking Moonstriker hair. So unless we’re both going to shave our heads, eyebrows included, there’s not much we can do about that. Besides, there’s no reason to believe anyone is trying to kill us. Logic says he’s the one the bad guys are looking for, and frankly, why would two Moonstrikers be traveling with a Sunrunner, when the families haven’t been in contact for years?”

It was hard to disagree and an excellent point. I wanted to point out that Ember had become friendly with Caspian in a public way, but while she was one of us, she hadn’t been saddled with the family hair, so her Moonstriker-ness was a little more subtle than ours.

Inside the garment bag he handed me was . . . “I will look ridiculous in this,” I informed him when I only had it halfway unzipped. “I understand that you seem to enjoy this style, but?—”

“It’s what duelists wear, Frost.” He marched over next to me and practically flung the zipper the rest of the way down, then lifted the pale gray outfit out of the bag. “I know you’re not particularly familiar since we’re not allowed in Moonstriker lands, but this is a duelist costume. Unless you think I especially enjoy showing off my ass to all and sundry?”

I lifted a brow, but didn’t comment, and he huffed in frustration.

“Fine, so I love showing my ass off. Especially when I’m around someone who gets annoyed at the quiet comments from strangers about my fine ass, like Huxley Dawnchaser. Arrogant little twat hated when anyone wasn’t paying attention to him.” He waved at the outfit. “But that’s not relevant here. We need to look like we belong here, and with you going around looking like the next Moonstriker, people are going to have questions. If we make it look like you’re a duelist, then people will mostly avoid you, and also, your style being eye-catching will end up doing exactly the opposite.”

“The opposite of what?” Caspian asked, coming over and running a finger down the soft gray cloth. “Are you actually suggesting people aren’t going to look at him if he wears this? Because that’s bullshit. Everyone will look at him if he wears this.”

“Yes,” Kit agreed. “Quietly, and when they think he’s not looking at them. And not as a good target, that innocent Moonstriker boy. As a potential threat to be avoided.” He poked at a line of five silver studs running down one sleeve of the jacket. “I gave you less of a checkered past than I have, but five kills should be enough to make people think twice before trying anything with you.”

Five kills.

Less of a checkered past than Kit.

The crimson jacket he’d been wearing when I’d seen him again for the first time had had a row of little studs shaped like flowers running in a diagonal line on each of his cuffs. I ran the scene back in my head and counted them. Twelve on one side, thirteen on the other.

Very deliberately, I put it out of my head, refusing to process what that meant.

“I can’t duel, though,” Cas pointed out.

“I presumed,” Kit agreed, motioning toward the as yet unopened bag. “And since you’re wearing a cast and sling, I could hardly pass you off as a working duelist anyway. You’re my assistant. And if you don’t know how to use a gun, tell me now, because you need to know before I send you out in public with one.”

I whipped around to stare at my brother in shock. “A gun ? Where did you get a gun? They’re?—”

“Perfectly legal to carry here in Sunrunner lands, provided you pay enough for the licensing.” Before I could express any more horror, he threw up his hands. “I know, that’s terrible, and people shouldn’t just be allowed to pay to carry a gun, they should be required to know what the hells they’re doing and be tested and—we’re not in Moonstriker lands, little brother. The laws here are different, and we need to not only know them, but look like we belong here. Not like we’re kids cosplaying as dangerous criminals who fit into the Verisa underground.”

Caspian used his uninjured hand to unzip the second garment bag to show a swathe of uninterrupted black. “Why the underground?”

“How little do you know about the places your father frequents?” Kit asked, sounding almost like he didn’t want to know the answer.

Cas’s lips twisted in a little moue that . . . well, it seemed almost like shame. “I mean, I’ve only been allowed in the dens and bars since I was eighteen. Less than five years.”

“I assure you,” Kit offered back, dry and unimpressed, “an entire downward spiral from start to finish can be enacted in far less than five years. I’m starting to think I actually entirely misjudged you, even more than I previously realized. You couldn’t possibly understand how disconcerting that is for me.”

Caspian just returned a helpless little shrug, and Kit sighed.

It was true, I realized suddenly. Kit had entirely misjudged Caspian. Kit had never misjudged people in all our years together, and I doubted that had changed in our years apart, so this must be deeply unpleasant for him, not to mention confusing.

“I do know how to use a gun, though,” Caspian said, reaching into the garment bag to pull out a small case that did, indeed, contain a gun and ammunition. He proceeded to prove himself right by expertly inspecting the firearm, loading it, and tucking it into a holster that had also been in the garment bag. “That one should be fine. It’s similar to the model I learned on.”

Kit nodded. “I assumed if you knew anything, a Sunrunner make would be the way to go. Not that we make guns for civilians in Moonstriker lands, but still.”

It was Caspian’s turn to be confused. “What, like, at all?”

“Civilians in Moonstriker lands can’t buy guns. It’s illegal. Only military personnel usually have them, and it’s completely illegal to carry one around on your person.” I took a sidelong step slightly farther away from the thing.

It was uncomfortable, just being in its presence. Swords were bad enough, but they didn’t accidentally kill people all that often. Children didn’t find them and unintentionally cut their own throats. The law back home had changed when I was five, and a boy about my age had found his father’s handgun and shot himself in the head while playing with it. The public outcry had been enormous, the laws about carrying them had changed, and there had been a drive for people returning their firearms, handing them over to the government in exchange for money. Some older people still owned guns, but it was no longer legal to buy or sell or inherit them, so at some point, that would no longer be the case.

Caspian cocked his head in what looked like confusion. “Huh. People here would never accept that. There’d be riots in the streets if we tried.”

Sounds like humans , Vex said, sounding mortally offended. Always so determined to kill each other .

And yet . . .

I mean, I don’t like guns, but it kind of makes sense , I pointed out. I mean, if I’ve always had a computer and suddenly they’re illegal, then I’d be angry about it. I wouldn’t just agree to turn it in .

Vex, of course, was having none of that. False equivalence. People don’t use computers to murder each other .

Which was a fair point, mostly. Computers certainly never accidentally killed anyone, except in fiction. I didn’t have an argument one way or another, because guns had no place in my daily life. So I shrugged it off and hoped I would never see another gun after this one.

“Okay, you two get dressed, and then we’ll get going. I sent Ember out to check into some things, and we’ll see how that goes when we all get back in tonight. It made sense to split up, since we’re trying to avoid recognition, and someone particularly observant might remember her hanging out with Caspian before.”

I couldn’t help the flush on my face as I grabbed the garment bag up, turning toward the bathroom. “Right then. I’ll just . . . in there.”

And I went in and changed.

The costume was indecent. It clung to every single inch of me, from my shoulders to my toes. Even the boots looked ridiculous, made of something stretchy and sculpted around my ankles and calves. Fortunately, they were flat, so I didn’t have to worry about falling over—or being even more ungainly and tall than I already was.

For a moment, I just stood there staring at myself in the mirror. Surely, I couldn’t leave the bathroom in this, let alone the entire hotel suite? Go out in public, like this? I was practically naked.

My cock was literally outlined in cloth, practically out there on display for every stranger I passed on the street. Great stones forbid I get an erection while wearing the outfit, everyone in the same postal code as me would be aware of it.

I almost shielded my crotch with my hands like a teenager when I came sliding back out of the bathroom, head down and eyes firmly on the carpet.

I’d have—very deliberately—missed Caspian’s reaction entirely if he hadn’t nearly tripped over his own feet as he’d turned toward me. I had to leap forward and catch him to keep him from falling over, since he didn’t have both arms for balance.

When I looked up to meet his eye and make sure he was okay, his cheeks were bright pink and his eyes weren’t on me. Well, they were on me, just not my face. After a moment, with some effort, he jerked his gaze away from my body, his cheeks darkening even more. He was barely breathing.

“So fucking lucky I’m not wearing that,” he muttered.

I cleared my throat and rolled my shoulders back, trying not to look as uncomfortable as I definitely was. “Offhand, I’d say anyone not wearing this is pretty lucky.”

He glanced back at me, this time meeting my eye, and then his expression turned bemused. “No, not like that. Like—Do you honestly have no idea what you look like?”

“Like a telephone pole that’s been knit-bombed?”

He blinked at me, apparently having no idea what the hells I was talking about, then shook his head. “I—I’m lucky I’m not in the same outfit, because if I were wearing that, it’d be really fucking obvious what I think about how you look, Frost.” Then, very deliberately, he reached down and, um, adjusted himself. “Sorry for making it awkward. Just . . . fuck me, you’re hot like burning. And you don’t even know. I’m not sure how, but somehow that makes you even hotter.”

And that? Was not at all what I’d expected. Me? I wasn’t the one all the boys and girls panted after. That was Kit. Or Rain, more recently. Sometimes Ember, though she was usually good about telling more than half her admirers to get lost.

There was a sharp knock on the door, and when neither of us answered, Kit came in without further knocking. He had a tablet in his hands, but he was looking at the two of us. At first assessing, then rolling his eyes. “Yes yes, you’re both very hot. And whatever. No drooling. As of now, Frost is my bodyguard and you’re my personal assistant.” He handed Caspian the tablet. “This is the list of where we’re going. For the record, it cost me five hundred dollars, and it’s a complete list of the seedy ass places your father goes regularly, along with a loose schedule of when people usually see him there. That’s what your father’s life is worth to his people. Not even a grand.”

Caspian winced and finally, with some difficulty, turned his attention to first Kit, then the list. Something about the almost physical way he had to wrench his eyes away from me . . . was nice. I bit my lip, trying to hold back a smile.

I was hot. Caspian thought I was hot. Me, the smart one. Mathboy. The boring wonder. And those were among the nicer things my frustrated classmates had called me over the years.

Then, I frowned. Caspian wasn’t supposed to be looking at screens, was he? Was it my place to remind him and Kit? Surely he already remembered, even if Kit had forgotten.

Caspian, in the middle of reading the list on the tablet, frowning, looked up at Kit. “I mean, with your contacts, they’d probably sell out anyone if you asked.”

Kit snorted, shaking his head. “They offered me a list on your Aunt Rachel for free, clearly hoping I was planning an assassination.” Caspian winced, but didn’t say anything. Then a nearly evil grin curled my brother’s lips. “Want to know what they said when I asked about you?”

Caspian blanched. “Um . . . probably not?”

“Oh, I think you do. My contact? He’s this fifty-something scarred bastard of a former duelist. Quit the scene because he said his sleeves got too heavy, and now he runs a trashy bar for other criminals.” Given what I’d learned about the studs on a duelist’s sleeves that very day, I cringed at the thought of someone’s sleeves being “too heavy.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what a killer like that had to say about Caspian. I knew my brother, though, and Kit wasn’t going to drop it. “This hardened criminal? He said I should leave you the fuck alone, because you’d been through enough.”

Caspian blinked in shock, staring at him, and Kit grinned, smug and obnoxious as only Kit could be. And yet, it was also so very Kit, to be smug about something so . . . strangely sweet.

I decided, in a split second, to interject myself. “Of course he did. Because anyone who knows anything about Caspian knows he’s a good guy. He deserves to be happy.”

Kit turned and looked at me, head cocked, considering. “I suppose that’s just possible.” Then he gave me a smirk. “I mean, if you really want to make him happy, just keep that outfit even when we’re done with this little fiasco.”

Caspian flushed as red as Kit’s usual suit, and something in me positively lit up at the realization that my brother was absolutely right.