Page 26

Chapter 26

Frost

Of course Mother was there.

Where else would she be?

After all that had happened in the last week, I didn’t know why I hadn’t entirely expected that turn of events. I didn’t know how we’d avoided it for as long as we had. Kit’s secret hotel, probably. It would have made it a struggle to find where we had gone, since no one had been talking to her.

Wait.

I pulled out my phone and looked up Mother’s phone number in the contacts, only to find that it was blocked. I glanced up to the front seat, narrowing my eyes at Ember and Kit.

As if he could read my mind, he raised his hand. “Guilty. You were going to keep feeling bad as long as she kept calling and you kept not answering, so I blocked her for you.”

Ember gave a high pitched, nervous giggle. “Oh fuck, you did what?” Then she paused and considered. “Hey, why didn’t I think of that?”

“Because I got to it first, so she wasn’t calling, so you didn’t think about her. We’ve been kind of busy.” We reached the end of the very long drive from the guard post, and I couldn’t help but be impressed with the palace. It looked like something out of a vacation brochure, all long pale elegant lines and huge open windows and terraces with the vibrant blue ocean as a backdrop. It looked like a place people would travel thousands of miles to see.

Kit pulled up close to the front, ignoring what was almost certainly a line of parking spaces off to one side, cars filling half the area, and just parked and turned the car off right there in front of the main stairs.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about Kit blocking Mother on my phone, though it was too late to do anything about it now, regardless of my emotions. He’d taken my choice away, and I didn’t like that, but would I have been able to do it myself? Would I have been able to ignore her?

Someone was hurrying down the stairs by the time we opened the doors and started climbing out, a matronly dark-haired woman in a black dress, and she froze when she got a good look at us.

Better put, she froze when she saw Caspian. Something I could only classify as panic crossed her face, and she rushed down the rest of the stairs, impressively avoiding tripping and tumbling down them instead, at that speed.

“No, no, no, my prince, you need to leave. You can’t?—”

“This needs to end, Mrs. Mira. She’s killing people. Hurting even more people. I can’t just accept that and run away to hide.”

The woman’s expression was utter heartbreak. “But she’ll kill you. She . . . Your father. I think she?—”

“My father is dead,” he said, taking one of her hands between his and squeezing it tight. “I haven’t seen it, but I believe it’s true. Completely. I don’t know if she had a hand in his death, but she’s been trying to kill me, yes. I mean, apparently she’s been trying to kill me for a decade, and I was just too dumb to notice.”

She leaned in, reaching up and cupping his cheeks in her hands. “We tried so hard to protect you, my sweet prince. She’s a monster. A demon. And now the white lady is here, and she’s offered to help her, she said . . . get you in hand, whatever that means.”

“Control,” Kit explained. “Delta thinks Rachel wants to control Caspian, because he’s a troublemaker or some bullshit like that. She thinks she knows everything, and that everyone is just like her. She probably thinks Rachel is her long-lost twin by this point.”

“I don’t think Mother would help Rachel kill Caspian,” I hedged, wincing, because she might not intend to help kill him, but wasn’t she here for precisely the reason Kit said? Not to bring Caspian into control, but Ember and me?

“Of course not,” Kit said, shaking his head. Then he paused and reconsidered. “Well, not on purpose. She’d bring Caspian here and press him to stay, thinking Rachel had good intentions, and that would get Caspian killed. And because she thinks she always knows best, she’d be absolutely confused when it didn’t work.”

And that? That, I couldn’t deny.

It sounded precisely like what would happen if Mother were given her way. She’d drag Ember and me away as though we were still recalcitrant children, and leave Caspian in Rachel’s hands, which would certainly result in his death.

I shook my head, but mostly in defeat.

Kit sighed, clearly thinking I was still in denial, rolling his eyes and opening his mouth, but before he could start into an explanation of his thought process, I held up a hand. “You’re right. Mother has no idea what’s happening, and instead of fixing anything, she’d get us all killed. Because we’ve been ignoring that, haven’t we? Mount Slate is going to erupt. If we don’t fix it, we’ll all die. I hardly think Rachel is going to come help with that out of the goodness of her heart.”

The woman, Mrs. Mira, scoffed. “What goodness? What heart?”

I inclined my head toward her. “Precisely. So Mother would end up getting the whole of the Summerlands killed because she thinks she knows more than she does.”

Kit nodded, but he didn’t seem satisfied. He stepped in front of me and met my eyes steadily. “That’s true. You’re right. Mother is almost certainly wrong. But we’ve been here a hundred times, little brother. And every time, you’ve folded. You’ve hung your head and done what she ordered you to do. I’m not saying that’s on you—it’s what she fucking trained you to do. It’s automatic. But I am saying that this time?—”

“That isn’t an option,” I finished for him. “I know, Kit. I promise.”

He nodded, reaching out to give my shoulder a squeeze. “Okay, then. We’re ready to face the beast. As ready as we can be. Both of them.”

Mrs. Mira cocked her head, squinting at him in confusion, but turned to Caspian. “You’re sure? She’s . . . you know what she can do. You’re?—”

“I’m here to do whatever it takes to free Sunrunner from a monster,” I told her. “Frankly, Mrs. Mira, if that means breaking the law, then that’s what we’re going to do.”

I’d never heard it put so succinctly before, let alone said it myself, but . . . it was true. If I had to step in to keep the woman from killing Caspian, I would do it. Laws of inheritance and dueling or not. Screw everything else.

And Mother . . .

My stomach slowly started tying itself into a knot.

Mother had been the one to teach me that the law wasn’t to be broken, ever. She was the last person who would accept what we had to do. Worse, she was the only person present who controlled Iri, and even if it was true that Nausa wasn’t one of the most powerful stones in the world, Iri definitely was.

We could win, and using Iri, she could take it away. Turn back time and make it so we didn’t win. I wondered, in that moment, if something like that was why Vex despised Iri so much.

I shivered as we entered the palace, despite the arid desert summer.

Sure enough, Mrs. Mira led us to a room that held two women. There was Mother, obviously. And nearby with a drink in her hand was a middle-aged woman with graying brown hair, high cheekbones, and the coldest eyes I’d ever seen. It didn’t make sense, the look of them making something in my brain ping negative. Those eyes, those red-purple Sunrunner eyes, but with no mirth, no happiness, no kindness.

It was wrong. Those eyes should never be so awful.

“So,” Mother said, scowling at me. “This is where you’ve been for the last week.”

“Actually,” Kit drawled, smug asshole smile on his lips, “we just arrived here. Frost’s never been to Sunrunner Palace before in his life.”

“You,” she said, packing more of a snarl into her voice than I’d ever heard before, “be quiet. You have no place here. This discussion is for my family and Lady Sunrunner’s. Not people who’ve abandoned their families.”

Kit pressed a hand to his chest, feigning hurt, if poorly. “Oh, but auntie. I am your brother’s son. I’m definitely family whether you like it or not.”

Her eyes narrowed as she stared at him, lips pulling back from her teeth in a literal snarl.

Ember cleared her throat. “Just for the record, Mother, there is no Lady Sunrunner. There’s only Rachel Sunrunner. She’s the Great Wolf’s sister, not his wife or his heir.” She turned to meet Rachel’s eye. “Unless she’s ready to admit that her brother is dead, and she’s been covering it up for a week now. Though I suppose even then, she’s no one’s heir. Caspian has an heir, and it’s not her.”

“No one asked for your input, young lady,” Mother shot back. “Imagine my surprise when I contacted the palace looking for you and found out that contrary to my orders, you’d disappeared from Sunrunner lands entirely.”

Her hands were clenched at her side, and her jaw had a muscle ticking. I didn’t think I’d ever, in my twenty-eight years alive, seen her so angry.

It was . . . strange.

Why was she angry?

Her daughter was standing in front of her telling her that she’d been lied to, that the whole world was being lied to, and she wasn’t angry at the lie. She was angry at Ember. For what? For leaving the palace? She didn’t even know where Ember had been. For all she knew, there’d been an afternoon trip and Ember had never left the palace. Or Ember had been threatened and she had to leave. She didn’t know, because she hadn’t asked.

Unless Rachel had told her otherwise, and she had decided to believe someone other than her family.

“Dane Sunrunner is dead, Mother,” I reiterated, in case she’d somehow missed it.

“Sunrunner business is not ours,” she hissed. “And you . I expected this from them,” she hissed, motioning to Kit and Ember. “But from you? What were you thinking?”

Sunrunner business is not ours .

I stood there in silence, blinking at my mother.

She was my mother.

There could be no doubt that she was Delta Moonstriker.

She looked the same. Wore her usual Moonstriker suit—the full length coat embroidered with a thousand tiny snowflakes, even now, in the height of summer in Sunrunner lands. I’d foregone a coat at all, and had the sleeves on my button-down rolled up, so it was possible she suspected I’d been replaced by someone else. I was usually as strict as she was, wearing formal dress every day no matter the discomfort. It was proper.

“Proper” had just seemed so much less important for the last week.

Her white hair and gray eyes were unmistakable. The square jaw I’d inherited from her.

But she’d just said that Sunrunner business wasn’t ours.

Slowly, I shook my head. “No. You’re wrong. Mount Slate is going to erupt. We have to stop it or we’ll all die. That means a crisis in Sunrunner lands is a crisis in the whole of the Summerlands. They’re the same. So yes, Sunrunner business is our business. And Dane Sunrunner is dead. Nausa is missing. We couldn’t all sit around and wait for this to resolve itself.”

“If Dane Sunrunner is dead, it’s just what he’s done to himself,” Mother answered, waving the concern away. “And that would mean that Lady Sunrunner?—”

“There is no Lady Sunrunner,” Ember reiterated.

“Stop interrupting me,” Mother snapped back. I’d told her she was wrong, and she’d ignored me, but Ember corrected her and got snapped at. Sigh. “You truly think that child is ready to lead a family? He ran away the moment there was a problem. Lady Sunrunner will handle matters here.”

Kit’s jaw gave a little crack, he was clenching it so hard, and I worried maybe he had damaged a tooth. Ember turned her back on Mother and pulled out her phone, clearly giving up.

Caspian, though . . . Caspian looked up at me, smiling, and squeezed my hand, still held in his own. “You’ve got this,” he whispered, so quiet I doubted even Ember could have heard it from right in front of us.

I turned and stepped forward, between Mother and my friends. Rachel had sidled closer to Mother when my attention was averted, as though the head of our family would protect her from us. Except . . . did a woman who could change into a bear need protection?

For the moment, I ignored her, focusing on Mother. “No. You have no idea what’s happening here, so you can’t just arrive and decide how things will go. That woman, Mother, is not ‘Lady Sunrunner,’ and she never will be. She’s a criminal who’s been stealing from all of Sunrunner lands for decades. Is Caspian ready to be the Sunrunner? Maybe, maybe not. But coming to get help isn’t a failing on his part. He had a problem, and he decided to fix it in the best way he could—by looking for help from his allies. Us. It was a good choice.”

Rachel stepped closer to Mother, frowning at me, but I focused completely on the woman before me. Mother was short and slight, where Rachel was almost as tall as Caspian and built like someone who definitely turned into a bear, sturdy and broad-shouldered.

Mother’s cheeks had gone a bright, flaming red, and she opened her mouth to interrupt me, so I shook my head, taking another step forward.

“Legally, Caspian is the Sunrunner. His father is dead, and he was the heir. You have no right to declare otherwise. You don’t run things here. Caspian does. He’s only a little younger than you were when you took over Moonstriker. Are you saying it was a mistake to put you in charge?”

“This isn’t our problem, Fro?—”

“We can’t sit around and be smug in our superiority any longer, Mother. The entire world is under threat from Mount Slate.”

This time she didn’t let me continue. “So that excuses you leaving your post, a post I assigned you, disappearing and sending me insulting little gifts instead of doing your job?” Her voice was so tight, so strained, that it had gone up an octave, and it was getting a little shrieky.

The ridiculous glitter-flower sign. I’d known she would be livid about it, but was she really basing her whole opinion of the situation on that?

That was . . . ridiculous.

It was entirely illogical.

I cocked my head, watching her for a moment, then shrugged. “Yes.”

“How dare?—”

“I’m not sure if you remember this, Mother, but I’m a grown man. Ember is an adult too. And Kit, though I’m sure you’d like to forget he exists at all. But it means that we?—”

“What the hell is a Kit?”

Behind me, Kit snorted. Huh. I’d forgotten that just because I had accepted and started calling him by his new name, that didn’t mean everyone knew. I held my hand up to indicate him. “My brother, Kit. But the name Kit is going by now isn’t really relevant to this. The point is that we all decided that the future of the world was more important than your orders, and if you were thinking clearly, you would agree. But you’re allowing your opinion to be biased by this lying criminal and your pride.”

“ My pride ,” she said, her tone utterly outraged.

“Yes. Your pride. Because you haven’t heard a word I’ve said.” I took another step closer to her, close enough to touch her finally, and grabbed her arm, spinning her away from Rachel Sunrunner, who’d spent the entire conversation inching closer and closer to her. I’d never before in all my years laid a hand on my mother, let alone pushed or pulled her into a new position, so she was surprised enough that she simply moved along with me. “Because if you’d been listening to a single thing other than your wounded ego, you’d have heard me when I told you that woman is a criminal, Mother. She’s spent the last ten years trying to murder her nephew, and just now, she was trying to get into position to hold you hostage. Or possibly just kill you to get you out of the way.”

That, finally, seemed to break Mother’s concentration on how livid she was. She glanced over at Rachel, who was once again pretending wide-eyed innocence.

“You see what I deal with, with this boy?” she asked. “Making up stories about me trying to hurt him, to try to hurt me.”

“Actually, he was the last one defending you,” Kit said, shaking his head as he wrapped an arm around Caspian’s shoulder, ignoring the sling. “He really wanted to think the best of you. It’s everyone else who knows you’re a murderous monster. All of us, and also, every person who lives in this city, even the other criminals. Also, the cops by now, since they found the guys you hired to run us off the road. And Delta might not care that you tried to kill me or Caspian or even Ember too much, but even if she treats him like shit? Frost is her kid, and she loves him. If you manage to survive this afternoon, she’s going to make the rest of your life hell.”

That, finally, was what made Mother stop. She turned to look at Kit, hurt in her eyes. “I . . . of course I care. I mean, I don’t know your young friend, but even if you abandoned us, your family , I raised you. I?—”

Kit pursed his lips at her, lifting both brows, but kept his mouth shut.

It was Ember who spoke up. “I’ve got to admit, Mother, you’ve got a funny way of showing it. Showing up here, siding with a criminal and not listening to us. Assuming the worst. Yelling at us for doing the right thing. I did the right thing. Me. The smart thing. I didn’t just jump in with both feet and do what I wanted. I got help. And you’re still not listening .”

And with that, for the first time in my life, I got to witness my mother, speechless.