Page 24

Chapter 24

Frost

Ember and Kit were sitting at the table when we came out, him on a tablet looking nonchalant, her tense and irritated.

“So what do we do now?” she demanded as soon as we were both in the room.

I’d been rather wondering the same thing, and shamefully enough, my instinct had been a childish one. My first thought had been to take my siblings and Caspian and run home. After all, Mother could protect everyone.

Regardless of the relative power of Nausa—and wasn’t it a bit of an ego boost that Caspian’s stone thought Vex and I were more powerful than a family stone?—she was the Sunrunner family stone. And if Rachel had her, had bonded her, then in some ways, she was already in charge of the Sunrunner family.

It was like that old saying, “possession is nine tenths of the law.” The phrase had always annoyed me, because no, it wasn’t. Being in possession of something that didn’t belong to you just made you a criminal, but the problem was that if she did have the stone, it would be difficult to get it away from her.

Severing was an option, but it was rarely used in most places. I’d seen two of them in Dawnchaser lands, yes, but literally never before in my life. I rather hoped to never see another.

On the other hand, if Rachel had managed to bond Nausa, what else were we to do? It wasn’t even so much that Caspian was the rightful heir and she was trying to steal it from him, but she was a literal monster.

The things Victor Berents had said she was involved in . . .

Rachel Sunrunner didn’t give a damn about the people who lived in Sunrunner lands, and she’d kill them all to grow her fortune. To get her way and have all the things she thought herself entitled to. She absolutely couldn’t be left in charge of Sunrunner lands, even if she had all the—all the—dammit, what was the right metaphor? All the balls in her court? All the cards in her hand? All the aces in her . . . no, probably not that one.

The point was, Rachel had every advantage, and all Caspian had was himself. The fact that technically, with his father dead, he was supposed to be the Sunrunner.

“We should go home,” Ember said, apparently deciding she was done waiting for us to come up with an answer. “If it’s true, if—I’m sorry Cas, if Dane is dead, we should go home. We’re in danger here. Exposed. If Rachel already has Nausa and gets her hands on Caspian, she can kill him, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Game over. Then we’re all screwed.”

Kit watched her as she spoke, head tilted inquisitively to one side, but he didn’t look convinced. That alone made me think that while my instinct had been similar to Ember’s, it was wrong.

We had spent our entire lives in Moonstriker Tower. Convinced, at least a little bit because we were force-fed the notion, that Mother was the most clever, powerful creature in the world. That she alone could solve all problems that would ever arise.

But I knew that wasn’t true.

I’d been the one to solve the Peerinal Conjecture, not her.

Rain had been the one to decide who was the next Moonstriker and when he would announce it, to say nothing of getting married without her permission.

Uncle Cove had decided to leave Moonstriker lands to be with Florian and to tell the world that Kit was his son.

Not everything was up to Mother. Not everything should be up to Mother. She wasn’t a monster—she was quite clearly nothing like Rachel Sunrunner—but neither was she always right.

So why was I pushing thirty and still letting her run my life? Going to her whenever I had a crisis, as though I were five and needed her to chase the imaginary monsters from under my bed? She hadn’t even wanted to do that when I’d been five, informing me that there were no monsters under my bed, and I was being silly and bothering her when she had better things to do.

Now the monster was far from imaginary, but I could easily see Mother reacting the same way to my crisis. That she had better things to do, so I should leave her alone. I wasn’t even supposed to be in Sunrunner lands, after all, so why would I expect her to come running to help me?

And going back to Moonstriker Tower was no better, even if we didn’t ask for Mother’s help. Rain could help, surely, but that was halfway across the world from where we needed to be. Sunrunner was in dire straits. Their people were being hurt, used, and thrown away by the very people who should have been working to protect them.

Running to Moonstriker lands was abandoning them, and what was the point of the four families if they weren’t there to protect the people?

If we weren’t there to protect the people?

I sat down at one of the empty chairs, not letting go of Caspian’s hand, and looked at Kit. “Do you know what we should do?”

He turned to look at me, lifting a brow. “Who says I don’t want to run to Moonstriker lands?”

Caspian was the one who snorted at that and dropped himself into the chair next to mine, though he kept a firm grip on my hand the whole time. “I get the feeling you’ve never run from anything in your life, and given your feelings about Delta, running to her is the last thing you’d have ever done.”

Kit smirked at that but inclined his head to Caspian. “I . . . you know what, no, let’s start with this. I owe you an apology. A complete, serious apology, rather than just a half-assed one. I have misjudged you, a lot, based on ugly stereotypes of your people. Yes, your father and aunt are giant neon signs flashing precisely those stereotypes, but that doesn’t change the fact that I shouldn’t have presumed that you’d follow suit. Fuck knows I saw the same damned thing in Dawnchaser lands.”

Caspian blinked repeatedly, staring at him for a second in what looked like shock, then he shook his head. “That’s, um, okay? I kind of judged you by appearances when we met too. We all do that. I just appreciate that you changed your opinion when I proved I wasn’t like that.” He glanced around, then sighed and ducked his head. “And I won’t lie. The first time I remember getting drunk, I was in the single digits. I’ve never been perfect. I’ve done all the stuff. I just realized it didn’t do for me what it does for other people. It doesn’t feel like an escape. Every minute I’m high it feels like I’m forgetting something important, and it bugs me.”

Ember scowled at all this, shaking her head. “But Cas, you have a reason to want to escape. Like, what was your dad escaping from? His sister wasn’t trying to kill him. He knew how to do his job. He had all the power in the world. He was just selfish.”

“He let my mother basically kill herself with her addictions. He failed us. I haven’t seen him sober since she died.” Ember looked like she was going to interrupt again, so Caspian put up a hand. “I know, you don’t think that’s good enough. He was the adult, and he was supposed to be responsible. You’re not wrong. But everyone has their own demons, and I don’t think we can judge how hard they ride them.”

“Besides which,” I pointed out, “we believe he’s dead.” Then I winced at my own bluntness. Damn it. This was why I was terrible in conversation. No finesse. No ability to be gentle with people’s feelings. “Sorry, I?—”

“No, that’s true,” Caspian said, squeezing my hand again. “We do. He is. Right now if it turned out he’s alive, I’d be shocked.”

“So that’s an excuse for the shitty things he did when he was alive?” Ember was now frowning at me, not at Caspian, so at least there was that. I didn’t quite know how to explain my meaning to her, but that was my relationship with my sister. We were never quite in the same place, never quite talking about the same thing.

“That’s not what he means,” Caspian interrupted. “He’s saying there’s no point in being mad at my father. He’s dead. He can’t change his behavior, and he can’t be sorry for what he’s done. It’s over. Was he a selfish asshole? Sure. But sitting here stewing about it isn’t going to help us. We need to worry about Aunt Rachel now. And the fact that she can become a grizzly bear and possibly a dire wolf and I can’t shift at all.”

Ember shrugged. “So like I said, we go home. It’s not like she’s going to invade Moonstriker lands just to kill you. And if she does, Delta will stop her, and it’ll be over.”

Kit snorted at that. “Using Delta as an unwilling shield. Funny. But”—he glanced over at Caspian, searching, seemed to find whatever it was he was looking for, and turned back to our sister—“that doesn’t do shit for the people of Sunrunner lands. That’s what matters here, isn’t it? The people here are suffering, and it’s because of Rachel. We have to stop her.”

Ember’s bitchface was rather impressive, and I thought that was uncalled for. Kit was right. The people were what mattered most, to us and to Caspian.

She was determined, though. She shook her head and slapped her hand down on the table to punctuate the words. “Cas said it himself, he can’t stop her. Literally, she can turn into a giant fucking bear. She’s probably got Nausa too. We’re screwed, and we can’t beat her.”

“I could beat her,” Kit said, shrugging. I had to stifle a smile at my brother, because that wasn’t helpful. I didn’t doubt it was true—I’d seen Kit beat bullies twice his size when we were eight. I didn’t doubt he could do even better now, with years of practice and a sword.

Unfortunately, that didn’t help us all that much. They’d already implied that it would have to be Caspian. What I didn’t understand was why. Why did anyone have to fight at all?