Page 2

Chapter 2

Frost Moonstriker

Kit was being odd.

Yes, he’d been gone for a decade, and Uncle Cove had reminded me more than once that he’d probably changed more than just his name in that time, but the truth was that he hadn’t. He’d left home because he and Mother didn’t get along, and he refused to change for anyone, even her. Time and distance hadn’t changed him any more than she had.

He was still the irreverent, sometimes downright rude brother I’d grown up with, and I’d missed him terribly.

Ember was wonderful, but she had never understood me at all. She was artistic and flighty and as Mother sometimes said, “Her feet didn’t touch the ground as often as they should.” I didn’t think that was entirely true, because I wouldn’t have changed her for anything, not the way Mother wanted to. There was also a metaphor in it that I didn’t quite understand, but still wholeheartedly agreed with, because sometimes, even though I knew it wasn’t possible, it felt like Ember should be able to fly.

Rain was . . . well, frankly, even though he was years younger than me, Rain was more like the father I’d never had than a brother. He was always looking out for me. Helping me fix things when I screwed up. Explaining where things had gone wrong and helping me learn how to get it right. He wasn’t my father, and he never tried to tell me what I had to do, but he was like a father.

A metaphor for a father, maybe.

Kit? Kit had always been willing to help me too, sure. But more than that, he’d always been willing to get into trouble right there alongside me. He would always pause, look around, then give me that wicked smile that I just knew meant we were going to be grounded for weeks, and finally nod.

Like that was all it ever took. It was decided before it ever came up in conversation.

We were in everything together.

The grounding afterward had always been annoying, but the mischief? Well, I’d only rarely regretted that.

But now, Kit was glaring at Caspian Sunrunner when he’d been nothing but kind to us.

Actually, he’d been one of the kindest people I had ever met, despite my usual awkwardness.

He’d listened when I’d been so overwhelmed by his movie-star good looks that I’d started nervously rambling about flowers. He’d actually asked questions instead of turning away and ignoring me. It had felt like he cared that I knew things. Actually, he’d seemed to appreciate it, like it was good that I was filled with millions of useless facts.

When I’d picked and handed him the yellow blossom, he hadn’t asked me what the hell he was supposed to do with it, like almost anyone else would have. No, he’d just smiled, thanked me, and tucked it behind his ear, where it still sat as we finished packing the car to leave.

Uncle Cove was hovering over us, worried, but there was little enough he could do. He had to stay with Florian, since his love was trying to take proper control of Dawnchaser lands, and that was an enormous undertaking. But it was easy to see he didn’t want to be parted from Kit again.

This, too, was something that had changed, and I didn’t like it.

But I couldn’t say that, because I disliked it for the wrong reasons. Most of the family had established who I was and that I was uncomfortable with change, so they would accept that Uncle Cove now being Kit’s father would bother me. Actually, they would probably think that Kit being Kit and not Winter anymore would bother me too.

And those things had niggled in my mind for a moment, it was true. They were wrong according to the facts I’d had, and I didn’t like when things weren’t what I had thought. Facts were supposed to be facts, unchanging and incontrovertible. But it turned out that names weren’t facts. They were fluid and changeable, and once I’d realized that, Winter being Kit was easy enough.

The real problem wasn’t the changes.

It was that I was jealous.

I was jealous of Kit, because he had Uncle Cove for a father, and I had never known my own father. My biological father had died when I was just starting grade school, but even before that, he’d never been a father to me. He had been Mother’s friend who donated genetic material to help her create me. He’d never spoken to me when he had visited her, his eyes skimming over me like I wasn’t even there. Back then, Kit had been jealous of me for having a father at all, but in the end, he had gotten the better situation. He had a father who loved and cared about him, who wanted to help him in any way he could.

And I had a long-dead man who might not have even known my name. Ember remembered him, if only barely, with fondness, but I did not. I only remembered his brown eyes looking past me as though I weren’t there.

My first metaphor, I supposed. I had been invisible to him, even though I hadn’t realized it, because I have never truly been invisible to anyone.

“Is there anything else you need?” Uncle Cove asked, biting his lip and looking worried. “We could get the kitchen to pack a lunch.”

“We’ll stop on the road,” Kit said, smiling at him. He walked to Uncle Cove’s side and patted his shoulder. “You don’t need to worry. We’ll be fine, Father.”

There it was again, that stab of jealousy. I smiled at them and turned to belt the last bag into the small middle seat in the back of the car. No reason to focus on what I would never have. It could only remind me more of my own lack.

Besides, I should be considering poor Caspian, whose father was literally missing, maybe even dead. I hated to imagine what he was going through. He’d seemed calm enough, but people always thought I was calm even when I was halfway to collapse, so perhaps Caspian was simply good at covering his feelings like I was.

People are annoying , Vex piped up in my mind.

I cocked my head, considering. Not all people are annoying .

He scoffed and shivered against the hollow of my throat. You’re not annoying. That makes one. But you didn’t need a father. Like you said, you’ve got Rain. And now we’ve got Kit back too. Even better. That ought to annoy Delta .

I stifled a smile at that. Vex, while my perfect match, sometimes talked himself in circles. All people were annoying but thank goodness we had Rain. As though Rain weren’t a person. I sometimes wondered if Vex struggled with certain concepts, like me, and thought of all the people he liked as stones.

It made sense enough. Stones often seemed more rational than people to me as well, so why not?

Not that Iri , he grumbled. She makes no sense at all .

Iri. The family stone. For some reason, Vex seemed to think that he and she were archenemies. I doubted Iri even knew he existed, but it was funny anyway.

Oh she knows. She remembers what she did .

And with that, I couldn’t help but smile. I had no idea what ancient argument lay between Vex and Iri, but I was sure someday he would tell me the story.

When I came back out of the car, Uncle Cove was looking at me with concern. I looked around, wondering if there was someone or something else nearby to have put that look on his face. “Are you going to call your mother before you go?”

Oh, that.

I stopped and considered.

Uncle Cove wasn’t currently speaking to Mother, since they had fought and she’d been rude enough that Iri was angry with her. It was definitely for the best that he didn’t call her. He’d had a difficult enough week without telling Mother something she didn’t want to hear, and then worse, having to deal with the resulting anger.

Ember shouldn’t contact Mother. As far as Mother knew, she was in Sunrunner lands, where she’d been sent, and since we were headed right back there, it seemed counterintuitive for her to contact Mother to tell her she had left but she was going back right now.

Kit . . . well, I doubted Kit was ever willingly going to speak to Mother again, and I couldn’t blame him. Starting when I was too young to even remember the earliest of it, she’d been a nightmare to him.

It hadn’t been a surprise to learn that he wasn’t her son at all. In fact, it answered some questions I’d always had about their relationship, because as much as Mother considered herself a creature of logic alone, the way she had treated Kit had never been logical. She’d held him to an impossible standard and then acted surprised when he hadn’t met it. She was inclined to creating impossible standards, but she hadn’t been so awful about it with me or Rain. Ember? Maybe. And Ember also wasn’t her biological child.

But all of that only meant that since there was no logical reason for either Dawnchaser sibling or Caspian Sunrunner to tell Mother what was happening, I was the only one who might do it.

She’d say no , Vex pointed out, his tone as sullen as if she’d already forbidden us to go.

He was right.

If I picked up my phone that moment, called Mother, and told her that I was planning to go to Sunrunner lands and help find the missing Dane Sunrunner and their family stone, she would tell me I was doing no such thing. She had sent me to Dawnchaser lands in order to make what I could of the Dawnchaser family, and I was to stay there.

The problem with that was . . . I had already done that. Not that I no longer wanted to stay. The Dawnchaser Estate was beautiful, and I was already looking forward to visiting again. I wanted to see how Fawn bloomed without her father’s awfulness looming over them. I wanted to see if Florian was able to get his family to be less horrible, the way he was—so soft and kind. I wanted to see more of Uncle Cove, smiling and happy. So much more of that.

But I wasn’t needed in Dawnchaser lands. I was there only to learn, and while learning was my favorite thing to do, the world was in danger, and sitting in the Dawnchaser gardens learning the scientific names of plants didn’t help that.

In Sunrunner lands, I could perhaps do some real good. I could try to help Caspian locate his father, which was not only important, but vital to the whole of the Summerlands. To all of us, if we wanted to keep living.

I would take any excuse to sit around learning things, but this was no choice at all. I was needed in Sunrunner lands. Right now.

And Mother would forbid it.

Being the pitiful creature I was in the face of her will, I would fold if she said the words. I would send Ember and Kit off with Caspian Sunrunner and let them face danger alone. Ignoring the fact that we were all in danger if they failed to find Nausa, the Sunrunner family stone.

So I drew myself up to my full height, something I rarely did because it was so ungainly, and shook my head. “No. There’s no reason to call Mother about this.”

“And every reason not to,” Kit hissed, half under his breath but loud enough for everyone present to hear. Most of them had already known his opinion of Mother, though, so no one but Caspian paid much heed.

“We’re doing what we need to do,” I went on, reaching over to wrap a hand around Kit’s wrist, reassuring him that I was there, and even more, reassuring myself that I had him with me. “No one else needs to give input on our course of action. We know what’s happening better than anyone. We can tell Mother about this when it’s done. When we all meet at Mount Slate.”

Kit smirked at that. “If Iri’s talking to her again by then. She might not be able to help all that much.”

Of course Kit would find that amusing. Mother had always looked down on him for the fact that he’d bonded a diamond.

Except . . .well, Kit’s bond was Kit’s business, but I had never been convinced that his bond with his stone was as simple as Mother seemed to think. He spoke to his stone, and what diamond in the history of bonding had ever been sentient? Kit wasn’t the romantic sort of person who pretended a thing spoke to him when it didn’t.

He only held conversations where he was likely to get a rational answer in return. That was precisely what he’d said when I had asked him why he had stopped speaking to Mother.

So if his stone was a diamond, she was the cleverest diamond I’d ever heard of.

Not all clear stones were diamonds, though.

Everyone knew that.

Didn’t they?

Not that Mother had ever listened to me when I had tried to correct her when she was mistaken.

I shook my head. “So that’s it. We’re all packed. No one left to call.”

“Time to hit the road,” Caspian said, smiling, and his shoulders seemed looser at the very idea of getting a move on. Poor guy. We’d been dallying with packing and talking about who to call when his father was missing.

I only hoped that we would find Dane Sunrunner, safe and sound, and before the situation with Mount Slate went critical.