Page 20

Chapter 20

Frost

It was clear that Caspian had been expecting something entirely different from this meeting. His expression on hearing the man’s name— his uncle’s name —had been sheer dread, and it had been pasted across his face for anyone to see. Even I had been able to tell that meeting Victor Berents had been the last thing in the world he’d wanted.

But somehow the next hour was . . . well, the only word I could find in my vocabulary that fit was touching. They talked about Caspian’s mother, and her drug problem that had inspired Victor to alter the course of what had been their family business—preying on all manner of human vices—into trying to help people turn their lives around when the worst had already happened. Oh, he still ran more than his share of bars and brothels, and if Kit’s attitude was any indication, the man was definitely a criminal.

But they were talking about helping people, not crime, and Kit was a criminal as well.

Mother would have been scandalized, but I realized, sitting there listening to Victor Berents talk about helping people escape massive gambling debts by giving them false identities and moving them to Duskbringer lands, that I didn’t have a moment’s hesitation on the subject. Sometimes doing the right thing and doing the legal thing weren’t the same.

The realization made me lean back against the wall, eyes wide. Kit looked up at me. “Okay?”

I looked down at him, blinking, not sure how to put all that I suddenly understood into words. Almost certain I shouldn’t say any of it in front of a man who, whatever his intentions, was still a crime lord. So instead, I managed to rasp out, “First step.”

His beatific smile said he understood entirely, and his hand twitched, like he wanted to reach for me.

At the clearing of a throat, I looked back up to find Victor Berents staring at both of us. “You’re related,” he said. “Fuck me, the infamous Kit Emrys has a family?”

A muscle in Kit’s jaw twitched, and I could tell he wanted to lash out.

But that was silly. Men like Kit Emrys, dangerous assassins, didn’t have families in order to keep those people out of danger. If he had a child or a precious innocent sibling or someone incapable of caring for themselves, they would be in danger.

“He does,” I agreed, letting my shoulders relax against the wall and trying to look as calm as Kit always did. “He’s the best duelist in the family, but we’re all trained. You may have heard of the rest of us. Moonstriker.”

Berents blinked for a moment, staring at me.

Then he looked at Kit and back.

Kit was raising a brow at me.

I shrugged at him. “No one can use us against you, Kit. We’re all nearly as dangerous as you are. The easiest mark in the family is Rain’s new husband, and Adair sees the threads of fate and already has three bodyguards. Rain’s never going to let anyone touch him. What, are they going to come for the Moonstriker to get back at you for something?”

“Delta is going to throw a shitfit,” he pointed out.

I considered Mother’s reaction, my head falling to one side as I stared into the distance, picturing the meltdown she would have to discover that Kit was using the skills she’d insist we train in.

She would, it was true. But she’d been the one who insisted we learn to duel. She’d been the one who’d driven Kit away, treating him like an outsider in our own home. Sure, he hadn’t been forced to leave, but it wouldn’t have been healthy for him to stay. He had left in self-defense.

It had hurt me when he went, but he’d needed to do it, and he couldn’t live his life for me any more than I could live mine for . . .

I shook my head, bringing myself back to the conversation at hand. “Mother can do as she likes. She’s still not a viable target for anyone angry with you, and frankly, anyone who tries to kidnap her to get back at you . . . doesn’t know you at all.”

Kit snorted at that. “I’ll dance on the bitch’s grave someday. No offense.”

What could I do at that but shrug? “Just because I can’t stop loving her doesn’t mean you’re required to do any such thing. She never gave you a reason to love her.”

“Little brother,” Kit said, his voice gone stern. “She never gave you one either.”

And that was—well, that was a thought for another time. I shrugged it off and turned back to Mr. Berents. “Someone tried to murder Caspian on our way here. They pushed our car off a bridge and into a river.”

Berents previous shocked expression at Kit’s and my discussion of family went hard and cold. “Rachel. She’s been trying to kill him since he was a kid.”

“He’s what stands between her and family leadership,” Kit finished.

Berents nodded, then leaned his head one way and then the other. “It’s that, yeah, but it’s more too. She’s already been running the family for years. Since Lydia died. More than family leadership, once someone sober gets their hands on the family books, she knows the game’s gonna be up. People will find out she’s the one stealing drugs from the hospitals and then selling the stuff on the streets. She’s underfunded the state hospitals so much it’s a wonder they’re still functioning at all, and it’s not their fault they’re doing a piss-poor job. Almost every state-run utility is running on skeleton crews and shoestring budgets. She’s stripping the whole of Sunrunner bare to pad her bank accounts.”

Caspian looked ready to collapse, or maybe have a panic attack. His head was down, and he was breathing too hard, too fast. I rounded the couch and sat down next to him, running a hand up and down his back. “It’s okay. We’ll fix this. We can help you fix this.”

“He’s gonna need a lot of help,” Berents said, and I shot him an angry look. He needed to give Caspian a moment to calm down before heaping more problems on.

“Do try not to poke your nephew’s future husband, Victor,” Kit said, throwing his own feet up on the table. “And I understand you’re trying to offer your help without saying the actual words, because that way you can save face if you get turned down, but your nephew isn’t in the correct state of mind to process that kind of subtlety. He does better with Frost’s brand of complete abject honesty. I know it’ll be tough for you. I can’t even fucking do it, but you’re going to have to try.”

For a moment, Berents glanced between the three of us, expression confused, but not angry. “Seriously? Delta Moonstriker’s kid wants a piece of the Sunrunner?”

Kit considered for a moment, letting his head fall back on the headrest of the sofa, then rolling it forward to look at Berents again. “Think about everything you know about Delta Moonstriker.”

“Genius?” Berents asked. When Kit nodded, he went on. “Controlled. Shitty conversationalist. Cold fucking fish.”

“Right, now attribute all the intellectual traits to him,” he said, waving at me. “And none of the emotional ones. Frost is Delta’s son in the truest sense. He’s excellent with numbers and struggles with personal interaction. He’d rather sit in an office and do math all day than go to a bar and chat with humans. But he has a heart as big as your dead sister’s. As big as your nephew’s.” At that last, he shot Caspian a glare, like being big-hearted was a flaw.

I pursed my lips at him. “Stop being angry with Caspian because you misjudged him. Repeatedly. That isn’t his fault, and you’re no more Mother than I am. You don’t blame people for things they didn’t do wrong.”

Kit huffed, but he stopped glaring at Caspian. “So Rachel is the one responsible for the mess we discussed last time I was here.”

“She’s responsible for most of what’s wrong in Verisa. She’s spent the last fifteen years amassing a huge fortune at the expense of the people the Sunrunner were supposed to care for. She’s probably the richest person in the Summerlands, because she’s not just the de facto family lord, but Verisa’s biggest crime boss as well.”

“What about my father?” Caspian asked, his breathing finally under control, though he still sounded a little wheezy. “You said he hasn’t been seen anywhere in a week. You—you’ve been looking into it?”

Berents nodded, lifting his chin in a gesture I recognized from Kit as either stubborn or prideful. “I mostly try to steer clear of Dane, since he doesn’t want to see me and I don’t want to see him. He didn’t take care of my baby sister, and I remind him of it. Of her. Sometimes just by looking like her, and sometimes out loud, because he’s a sonofabitch and fuck him.”

Kit had to swallow a laugh, but Caspian didn’t look at all offended. He just swallowed hard and nodded. “I . . . sometimes I feel the same.” He ducked his head. “Sometimes about both of them.”

He stared at his knees for a moment, before Mr. Berents reached out and patted him on the knee. “Hey, kid, no. You don’t have to be ashamed of that. It’s . . . you’re not wrong. They both failed you, big time. Just because I love my sister doesn’t mean I think she was flawless. She fucked up. A lot.” He took a deep breath, then another, before going on. “I didn’t realize it right away, but like . . . three days ago, I realized he hadn’t been in in a while, and that’s not like him. So I checked to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. Then I started checking around with other people, and nobody’s seen him since last Sunday night.”

Almost exactly seven days, then.

Kit’s phone buzzed, and instead of ignoring it, he pulled it out and checked the screen, then frowned. “He’s not a John Doe in any of the morgues or ICUs in town.”

“Good thinking,” Mr. Berents said. “I’ve been looking into that periodically too. I also checked the clinics I run to make sure they hadn’t discovered him with an OD, but nothing. Nothing at all in a whole week.”

Kit sighed and sat there for a moment, eyes closed, then visibly shook it off. He looked to Mr. Berents again. “Okay, let’s start at the beginning. Where’s the last place he was seen?”

The man winced, glancing at Caspian then back to Kit, clearly hesitant to give an answer.

“Drug den?” Caspian asked, tone wry and dark, clearly expecting the worst.

Mr. Berents shook his head. “It’s, uh, a brothel. Crappy place in the old downtown, just across from a line of cheap, dirty casinos.”

Apparently “the old downtown” meant something to Caspian, because he nodded. “Okay. We’ll go check it out. See if we can learn more by going there in person.”

“Well, you’ll learn more than I did, period. It’s one of the places your aunt owns, so I’m not allowed there. She’s not a fan of me.” Once more, he touched the scars on his face, and I wondered . . . I didn’t know how she would have made them, but the Sunrunner had always been called “the old wolf” as long as I remembered, for a reason. Maybe Rachel had a wolf shift as well. Worse still, maybe she had control of Nausa the way Rain had before he’d been accepted as the next Moonstriker.

“Doubt she’s going to be a bigger fan of us than you,” Kit pointed out.

Mr. Berents snorted and waved dismissively. “She doesn’t know shit about Kit Emrys except your reputation in the city. That was why I was worried she’d hired you. She sure doesn’t know you’re a Moonstriker, or that you’re keeping company with Caspian.”

Kit made a face at that. “She didn’t know. We’ve been traveling together for days now. It’s possible she’s learned.”

“Fair enough. I haven’t heard anything from my mole in the palace, but that’s never an absolute. She tends to find my people after a while and at best, send them packing. Worst, like the time one of them stopped one of her attempts to kill him, they don’t make it home. There’s a reason I pay them a lot of money to infiltrate the place. Plus a promised payout for their family if the worst happens.”

Caspian seemed to retreat into himself at that, as though the information was physically painful, so I leaned against him, grabbing his shoulder and holding on tight. He leaned right back into me, looking more disheartened than at any previous time during this whole disaster. It seemed that he could deal with his father going missing, or attempts on his life, but to learn that someone had been killed for trying to protect him . . . well, I could understand the anguish. One of the tower guards had been injured in the line of duty once. I’d been horrified, and that attack hadn’t even been aimed at me, but Mother.

Kit gave a deep sigh, shaking his head. “This is going to be a fucking pain, isn’t it?”

I looked over at him, frowning. “A pain?”

“Sunrunner dueling rules are a little . . . stringent, about some things.” He trailed off and I just sat there, waiting for him to elaborate. It took a moment, but he did. “Only Caspian can challenge his aunt and force a duel over this, because of inheritance laws. Even if I wanted to be the Sunrunner, I’m not allowed to duel her in this context. Only family.”

“Me either,” Mr. Berents agreed, then motioned to his face. “Not that I can take her in a fight anyway. The one time we fought, she kicked my ass.”

I winced at that, leaning away. “She’s also a dire wolf?”

“Bear,” Caspian and Berents said at the same time, and then both shivered.

That, I thought, did not bode well.