Page 28

Chapter 28

Frost

Rachel stood across from Caspian, tall and confident and frankly, the most terrifying thing I’d ever seen in my life. She was still human, but she was threatening to take him away from me.

Caspian, the first person I had ever . . . no, it wasn’t the sex, it was more than that. It was the chats about nothing. The way he didn’t mind at all when I went off on a tangent and explained something no one actually cared about, like with the flowers back in Dawnchaser lands, or the license plate story. The way he smiled at me, and his eyes crinkled at the corners.

He was my friend as much as my lover.

My love.

I was in love with Caspian Sunrunner, and he was in love with me.

I couldn’t lose him.

Not if I had to break every law in the whole of the Summerlands.

If my mother thought I wouldn’t interfere with the duel, she had another think coming.

I turned to meet Kit’s eye, to try to communicate to him that he had to distract Mother in case I needed to act, but he wasn’t looking at me.

He was looking at a writing desk across the room, one that Rachel had been standing in front of since we’d arrived, but that she’d had to move away from in order to challenge Caspian.

Rather unsubtly for him, he sidled around the room, behind Ember and Mother and me, toward it, kicking up a surprising amount of noise. Usually he stepped lightly on the balls of his feet, but for some reason in this case, his boots slapped loudly against the marble slab floors.

Rachel was droning on, some formal challenge to a duel for control of the family. Normally I’d have paid more attention, but everyone present knew what was happening, and it wasn’t anything to do with the formal challenge. It was Rachel wanting Caspian dead and having found this as her last possible way to get the job done.

It was funny, because the words of the challenge specifically said the duel didn’t have to end in death, but she’d already said she intended to kill him. He was too inconvenient for her to leave alive. He knew what she was doing, how she was hurting her own people. She couldn’t take the chance that he’d go public with the information.

I knew him well enough to know that he would. I would. Kit would. Ember would. Whatever happened here in this moment, every person who lived in the Summerlands was going to know what kind of person Rachel was.

As Kit reached the desk, she turned toward him, eyes narrowed.

He smiled nonchalantly, and when she looked back to Caspian, he turned and started rifling through the drawers. Again, loudly.

That got her attention in an instant. She spun and charged him, her features taking on ursine qualities—sharp teeth and deep brown mutton chops that looked out of place on her otherwise feminine face. She let out a roar as she charged, but Kit turned to face her, smooth and practiced, drawing his sword as he spun as though it were an extension of his arm.

“I’m sorry, Miss, were you mistaken in your challenge? Was it me you wanted to fight? I’d be happy to accept any challenge issued. I do love to put a bully in their place.” He stopped moving, leaning in toward her as though waiting for an answer, and then in a stage whisper, added, “On their asses, for the record. On the floor. That’s a bully’s place. Or in prison. Again, that’s your call whether you want to go to prison or into a cardboard box in an unmarked grave. I can’t really see Caspian giving you a state funeral at this point.”

She stepped back, and her voice was deep and gravelly as she demanded, “Stay out of my things.”

Kit grinned back. “Make me.”

Fuck, I loved my brother. I almost laughed. I had no idea what he was up to, but seeing how angry it made her, it was clearly the correct choice.

“I’ll kill you when I’m done with him,” she growled out.

He shrugged, a faux apologetic look on his face. “Well if you’re going back to harassing your nephew, then I’m sorry, but I’m going to go ahead and rifle your desk right now. Again, your call. I’d apologize, but we both know I’m not the least bit sorry. I’m just not a patient man. On the plus side, you’re almost certainly justified in challenging me if you want. What kind of guest arrives and starts rifling through his host’s aunt’s belongings? You’d think my mother would have taught me better, right? Sorry, it turns out my mother is a rapist, and possibly the only person in the world worse than you.”

Next to me, Mother gasped and covered her mouth. Was that . . . were there tears in her eyes? I didn’t think for a second that she believed he was talking about her. So maybe she actually hadn’t wanted him to know about Afton Dawnchaser and what she’d done to Uncle Cove. That was . . . a little gratifying, actually. Mother was an imperfect person, but she wasn’t as bad as her selfish actions sometimes implied.

I wasn’t going to ask her about it, though, for fear she’d say something terrible about Uncle Cove’s manhood being sullied by being assaulted as a child, or something equally ignorant.

I was allowed my illusions, I decided, and I was keeping this one if at all possible.

Rachel roared at Kit again, I supposed probably trying to frighten him, then spun on Caspian. “You will never rule this family.”

Caspian, looking oddly calm—placid, even—smiled at her. “I already do. You’re the one who will never be the Sunrunner, Aunt Rachel. You’re not a leader. Leaders stand in front not because they’re the most important person in the country, but because they’re ready to defend their people from anything that comes at them. They’re not there to get fat off their people’s labor and amass a fortune like a bear getting ready for hibernation. They’re not there to hoard their people’s wealth. They’re there to help. To protect. To nurture. And if they can’t do those things, or won’t do them, then they have no place leading anyone.”

“You self-righteous little shit!” She shrieked, and then the shift . . . well, it was fucking gruesome.

Her bones snapped and reformed, fused and bent, her whole body swelling as though it might burst from the pressure, and then instead, hair started growing out of every pore, and slowly, the shriek—a pained one now, to be sure—turned into a real bear’s roar.

I hoped all shifts weren’t so horrible and violent. On television shows they were always sort of . . . quick and painless-looking. This looked like torture.

The end result was the biggest bear I’d seen in my life. A grizzly bear, as that shaggy dark brown coat was unmistakable, but it was the size of a polar bear. Or a horse, maybe. If the palace hadn’t been so enormous and airy, its head might have hit the ceiling when it stood to its full height and let the roar out, holding its arms to its sides, making itself as big as it could possibly get.

Fuck. That was . . . Vex and I could stop her. Maybe. If we had to. It’d give me an enormous migraine the next day, though it would be worth it to continue to be alive.

For Caspian to continue to be alive.

He’d refused to take my sword when I’d offered it to him as we were leaving the hotel.

He didn’t know how to sword fight, he’d pointed out, which was an excellent point. Having a sword you didn’t know how to use was probably a bigger liability than help. There was a reason everyone started sword training with an unsharpened blade—the potential to do yourself or innocent bystanders harm by swinging a sword around when you didn’t know what you were doing was high.

But that meant Caspian had nothing. I’d never specifically asked what it was Mella did for him, but I was pretty sure it was only about communication, or something like that. It meant that he was great with every random person we met, able to give everyone what they needed, but . . . all Rachel wanted was to see him dead.

How was he supposed to fight an enraged bear with that?

He’d been calm about the whole thing, though. He was still calm, even as Rachel stood on her back legs and roared at us all, so loud it was almost deafening. For the first time, I could understand her sheer arrogance. It must feel invincible, to be that big, with those giant clawed paws that could probably swipe a human’s head off.

Across the room at the desk, Kit sucked in a breath, shocked or . . . something, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the fight. From Caspian.

Maybe I should intervene now. I could freeze her in place and . . . and what? Tell him to run because he was unarmed, and she was a bear ? He wouldn’t, and I knew it.

But he had a plan. He had to have a plan.

Didn’t he?