Page 25

Chapter 25

Caspian

“I could beat her,” Kit said, and it was . . . odd. It wasn’t a boast. It didn’t sound flippant or arrogant, just as though he were stating a simple fact. The sky was blue, we were in a hotel in Verisa, it was summer, and he could beat a grizzly bear in a duel. If it had been anyone but him—or maybe Frost—I’d have laughed at the ridiculousness of the idea.

Who could beat a bear? More than that, who didn’t even have to consider it, didn’t spend a moment to think about how that would work, before claiming they could do it?

Kit, apparently.

“But I’m the one who’s going to have to do it.” They all turned back to me, and Frost started to open his mouth, but I already knew what he was thinking. “I know, technically I don’t have to fight her at all. I’m already the heir, and I don’t have to challenge her to a duel for that. Technically, if she tries to stop me from taking over, I could just have her declared a traitor to the nation and have her thrown in prison. That all makes sense, except for one thing.”

Ember and Frost just looked at me, waiting for the answer, and after a second, Kit sighed. “She can challenge you. I can’t even preemptively challenge her, because in response she’d issue her challenge to you, and as an inheritance duel, that would take precedence over anything to do with me. And because once again, it’ll be a Sunrunner inheritance duel, you have to be the one to fight in it. No stand-ins, no proxy duelists. This is why Sunrunner inheritances have almost always gone to the person who could shift into the biggest predator.”

Well, except for your Great-Aunt Gwen , Mella pointed out.

And that? That was something entirely new. So instead of responding to Kit or trying to allay Frost and Ember’s concerns, I cocked my head and asked aloud, “My Great-Aunt Gwen?”

I didn’t remember a Great-Aunt Gwen, but I supposed that wasn’t a shock. The family didn’t get together all that much, and we never socialized outside family reunion situations like Blair’s birth, at least not in my lifetime.

Blair’s grandmother , Mella explained. She was mine. We eventually decided on a cat, because she liked them. Even though she was the family heir, her younger sister thought she could take advantage, because she had a panther shift. So she challenged her to a duel on some trumped up nonsense. Gwen had gone on vacation once, so she wasn’t suited to lead her branch of the family or something like that.

No doubt it was precisely the kind of thing Aunt Rachel would use to challenge me. I’d once forgotten a homework assignment in the fifth grade, so I wasn’t suited to a position of responsibility, and she had to take it from me for the good of the family. I shook off the rising dread at the thought of being mauled to death by a bear and relayed the story to the others as Mella told it to me.

Inheritance duels, it seemed, had a time limit. If the challenger couldn’t find and defeat the challenged in twenty-four hours, then the default was for the challenger to lose. And Aunt Gwen had simply found a tiny spot in her home that her sister couldn’t reach and stayed there for the entire day, running out the time limit and winning by default. When her sister had complained that she hadn’t kept with the spirit of the duel, her family had sided with Gwen, because the “spirit of the duel” had been ugly from the start.

Could I take advantage of that? Find a way to hide from a rampaging grizzly bear for an entire day? Sunrunner Palace wasn’t really a place with a lot of good nooks to hide in. It was open and airy, all high ceilings and wide open arched doorways rather than closed doors.

Besides which, Aunt Gwen’s sister had only wanted control of the family. She hadn’t been an outright monster, just a selfish ass. If I wasn’t available as a target, no doubt Aunt Rachel would start mauling random servants at the palace to force my attention. Worse, people on the nearest city street, since at least the palace servants could evacuate.

She knew me. She knew my weaknesses. She knew I’d never let her hurt my people. Except that by default, allowing her to beat me and take over ruling Sunrunner was going to hurt my people.

The Moonstrikers were interested in Aunt Gwen’s story, discussing the details of it, and Kit started combing through the more obscure rules of dueling, trying to find other loopholes we might use to keep Aunt Rachel from tearing me limb from limb.

That’s a great story, but I don’t know how we can win this, Mella , I told my oldest friend. I do know that if Aunt Rachel kills me, Frost and Kit will probably kill her right after that. That’ll leave Blair as the Sunrunner. That’s . . . not the worst outcome, is it?

Not the worst , she agreed. But still not good. Don’t lose heart yet, kiddo. We’ll get through this. We can handle one obnoxious bear .

“Wait,” I said, aloud and to Mella at the same time, cocking my head. “ You said that Great-Aunt Gwen was bonded to you, and she had a shift.”

Wondered how long it was going to take you to figure that out. Ever thought about what they call me sometimes? What people call crimson tiger’s eyes?

I had not, actually, and apparently, that was all Mella had to say on the matter. For some reason, it did make me feel better about what was to come. Maybe I didn’t have an ace in the hole, but maybe . . . maybe Mella did.

They came with me.

It was obvious, but somehow after so many years on my own, part of me simply hadn’t believed that they would come, or even that they should.

Even Frost, and underestimating him like that gave me a pang of shame. He’d done nothing but support me since the moment we had met, in every way he could. Sometimes that had been downright hard for him, like defying what he knew his mother’s wishes would be.

Still, when Kit shrugged and said that there was no point in waiting so we should head to the palace, and they all stood, ready to march into the hells with me, I almost balked.

I didn’t want them to get hurt.

Yes, yes, I knew Kit could handle Aunt Rachel even if she managed to kill me, but still, something about it was—people weren’t supposed to be in danger because of me. I didn’t want my friends to be in danger, and for the first time in my entire life, I didn’t have any doubt that these people were, in fact, my friends.

I was willingly going into the palace, into Aunt Rachel’s orbit, into danger, partially because of them.

And they were going solely because of me.

There was no doubt in me, the Moonstrikers were the most loyal people I’d met in my entire life. Given the stories they’d told of Delta, I wasn’t sure how they’d turned out like that.

We piled the bags into the back of the SUV as Kit checked out, and as he finished with the hotel employee, he returned and climbed right into the driver’s seat.

“I almost feel like we should bring a news crew along,” he said, musing rather than in earnest. “You know, so no one has any doubt what’s going on in the future.”

“I’ll take video,” Ember offered, holding up her phone. “Not quite the same as a news camera, but probably close enough, right? I don’t know if we want some journalist actually coming along. Fuck, Rachel would probably attack them first. She’s clearly nuts. Evil and nuts.”

Kit shrugged but nodded to her. “No harm, I suppose. Worse things to have than video proof that Rachel is willing to kill her nephew. Maybe we’ll get lucky and she’ll admit on video that she’s been trying to kill him for years, and she’s a criminal who’s been stealing everything she could from Sunrunner lands for even longer.”

“Not to mention the actual murders,” Ember added, ever helpful.

I sighed, climbing into the back seat next to Frost. “Your siblings are a little crazy, you know that?”

“Sure,” he agreed, “but it’s usually the good kind. We like it most of the time.”

“I provided condoms last night,” Kit reminded us from the driver’s seat, and Frost ducked his head, cheeks flushing dark.

Ember, apparently surprised by this news, craned around in the seat and stared at the two of us. It had a distinctly bug- under-a-microscope feel to it, so I waved her off. “Not here to be entertainment, you know. I’m about to die, remember?”

Ember scoffed, turning back to the front and waving me away like the very annoying bug I’d felt like a moment before. “You’re not about to die. If she even comes close to taking you down, Kit will step in. Fucking inheritance laws be damned.”

I couldn’t lie, hearing that people were willing to break the law to protect me was nice. It was also awful and they shouldn’t do it, because in the end it would cause more problems than it would alleviate, but still . . .

It was nice to have people around me who cared enough to consider breaking the law to keep me alive. For the last decade, most people hadn’t even wanted to keep me alive enough to stick around in my life. The closest thing I’d had to friends and family had been the palace staff, and there had only been so much they could do.

Frost pulled me against him, so I used the seatbelt in the middle to buckle in as Kit headed out of the garage. He didn’t seem to need instructions to get to the public gate of the palace, so I just sat there in the middle, leaning hard against Frost.

Whatever was about to happen, I knew it was going to be awful. I was going to have to face what had happened to my father, whatever it had been. Then there was the fact that Aunt Rachel was trying to kill me, and Father’s death wasn’t going to stop her.

Worst of all, I was going to have to deal with what she’d spent her life doing. Reappropriate the funds she’d amassed at the expense of the people and start to see them put to use trying to fix the problems she’d caused.

It was going to be so much work, and the people were going to be rightfully bitter toward my whole damned family, me and my father included. Why wouldn’t they be? It wasn’t as though I’d been helping them since I’d reached the age of majority, and it had been nearly five years since then.

The car was silent for the whole trip, everyone lost in their own thoughts. Well, everyone but Frost, who just held me, stroking his hand down my arm like I was a lap cat and he was petting me.

Nice thought.

I wanted to go back to that. To last night, when all we had to worry about was not distracting ourselves from sex with more conversation, because I never stopped wanting to talk to him.

Kit pulled up to the gate, and the guard didn’t look especially shocked to see him. He did frown, looking across the front seat at Ember. “Surprised you weren’t here earlier. I guess she’s been demanding to see you, putting up a big stink.”

Ember’s brows drew together in confusion, but Kit didn’t seem to struggle at all.

He sighed. “When did she get here?”

“This morning,” the man answered. “Don’t know how you lot put up with . . . um, sorry, I?—”

“With great difficulty,” Kit answered. “You don’t have to pretend she’s not a bitch on our accounts. Rachel there, too?”

Wait, weren’t we already talking about Aunt Rachel? Except that didn’t quite make sense, given the rest of the conversation.

The guard nodded and looked at Ember again. “Prince Caspian safe?”

Ember cocked her head and her eyes immediately strayed back to me. The guard looked into the backseat and immediately paled. “Sir. You should leave. You shouldn’t . . . you have to know what she’s going to do.”

“I do,” I agreed. “But I also know I’m the only person in Sunrunner lands who can stop her from continuing to destroy us. Someone’s got to do it.”

He took a slow step back, his eyes wide, then he gave a solemn nod. “If you . . . If you think you can, sir. I know we’d all be grateful to have a Sunrunner who remembers we exist again. But no one wants you to die trying.”

“No one but Rachel,” Kit threw in, and his smile was more angry predator than pleased. “But don’t worry. By the end of the day, she’s going to be dead or in prison, and which one depends entirely on her.”

“And on how much she pisses you off?” Ember asked him.

He scoffed. “She doesn’t need to be worried about me. She needs to be worried about Caspian first. And after that, if she manages to hurt him in this little play for even more power? Frost will skin her alive.”

“That sounds unpleasant,” Frost countered. “I don’t think I would skin her, Kit. I’ll just freeze her and stab her in the heart.”

Kit cocked his head and waggled his brows at the guard. “So yeah. I wouldn’t worry too much. At least one bitch is done, after today.”

It was strange that the guard—a man whose literal job it was to protect the Sunrunner family—smiled and waved us in, opening the gate without another word. Hells, he threw another salute after us. We had just threatened Aunt Rachel, repeatedly, and he didn’t care at all. Did everyone already know what kind of monster she was? Or maybe he was one of Victor Berents’s moles.

“What was he talking about?” Ember asked as Kit started up the drive. “Rachel is demanding to see me? Why would she?—”

“Not Rachel,” Kit answered, looking over at Ember, one brow raised. “Wasn’t it obvious from the way he reacted to me, and the white car, and then you?”

She shook her head, but I was starting to suspect that I did understand.

Frost bore that out a moment later when he sighed and said, “Mother is here.”