Page 30

Chapter 30

Frost

Caspian was a dragon.

No, I don’t think you could possibly understand what I mean when I say that, because . . .

Caspian.

Was.

A.

Dragon .

There’d been none of the horror of Rachel’s shift, with bones breaking and reforming or expanding skin or pained roaring. It had been more like a CGI effect in a movie I’d watched once—smooth and seamless and utterly impossible.

One moment he’d been Caspian, confident and movie-star beautiful standing against his aunt the giant grizzly bear, and the next, there had been an enormous, majestic, crimson-scaled dragon with swirling fiery eyes in his place. He’d been forced to hunch over to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling, a feeling I knew all too well, and he suddenly dwarfed the room as a whole, crushing one chair beneath his bulk and shoving another aside to fit into the space. Then he’d sent the sofa and coffee table careening into the wall, shattering the glass panels on the table.

More incredible still, he could speak in this form. Just like a human, as though dragons had the same vocal cords and teeth and tongue as a human. His voice was low and smoky, like he gargled glass for fun, but it was still recognizably Caspian.

Mother was . . . well, she was Mother, insisting that Caspian had to finish the duel and actually defeat Rachel, but suddenly, it had gone from being terrifying, something I wasn’t sure he could do, to . . . well, I realized I was smiling. I was smiling so wide that my whole face hurt.

“My boyfriend is a dragon,” I announced to no one in particular.

Ember let out another hysterical giggle, slapping her hand over her mouth as she leaned hard into the wall. I wasn’t sure if she was terrified of Caspian as a dragon, or relieved by how the situation had turned.

“Kill her, Caspian,” Kit ordered, and his voice was . . . strange. Almost strangled. “We don’t have time for her anymore. We have to deal with the fallout of what she’s fucking done.”

He spun around, and his eyes were blazing with anger. Never, not during the worst of the fights he’d had with Mother, had I seen Kit look as angry as he did in that moment.

I was almost afraid he would interrupt the duel to kill Rachel himself.

Rachel roared again and lunged at—oh, that was unexpected.

She lunged at me.

For a second, I didn’t know how to react to that. It was rather an important second, because she was a bear, not just an angry woman. She had giant sharp claws and teeth, and I was a soft squishy person who was susceptible to those claws.

Halfway across the room, Kit drew his sword again, but he was too far away to do much about me being in danger.

He needn’t have worried, though. In an instant, Caspian lashed out with his own arms, snatching Rachel up and throwing her against the same wall the couch and table had flown into. She crumpled into the stray furniture, breaking it further, but came up roaring and this time threw herself at him instead of me. Right at his neck, gnashing her teeth.

This time, I jumped forward, ready to act, to stop her, but Mother slapped a hand down on my shoulder. “You can’t interfere in a duel,” she insisted.

I spun on her, ready to attack her as well. “She attacked me first. I’m allowed to defend myself.”

“No,” she answered, like it was all so simple, so unquestionable. “You’re not. Not here, not like that. She’s fighting him now. You don’t want to invalidate his win by interfering.”

I met her eye. “You understand that if she wins this duel, I’m going to kill her myself, in cold blood? No duel. No mercy. I don’t give a damn about the rules. Caspian is mine, and she can’t hurt him. It isn’t allowed.”

She made a sour face, and I wondered just how much she wanted to give me the same speech she’d given Rain when he’d fallen in love, about how there would be another boy, on another day, and she didn’t approve of this one. More than that, I wondered how much Kit would die inside at having been of the same opinion as Mother at first.

Instead, she huffed and turned back to look at the fight, crossing her arms over her chest and muttering, “I’m never going to get grandchildren, am I?”

Behind us, Ember slid to the floor, laughing even harder.

I looked to check on her, but she actually looked amused now, rather than just terrified and hysterical. Probably thinking about how she wasn’t interested in men, and even less interested in children.

Mother’s best chance at grandchildren had come and gone with Kit, the only one of us who was interested in the opposite sex at all. Ember only liked women, Rain only liked men, and I’d never been interested in anyone all that much before Caspian. Never enough for more than a few stolen kisses that had later fizzled out in the light of day.

A roar sounded from the fight, and I spun back to face Rachel and Caspian. He’d knocked her to the floor, and she’d turned and launched herself at his face once again. He kept knocking her down over and over, and she kept coming at him. She was bleeding from claw wounds all over her torso, but it didn’t seem to be slowing her down at all. Adrenaline at work, of course, but . . . wasn’t it apparent to her by now that she couldn’t beat him?

He was a dragon .

But no, it wasn’t that she didn’t know.

Mother had been right, I realized. Rachel was going to force Caspian to kill her rather than face the consequences of her actions. It was the most cowardly thing I could think of, but the worst people in history had largely done the same thing. Mass murderers and cult leaders the world over, when they realized their days of power were over, caused their own deaths by whatever means necessary.

Caspian was trying to simply fight her off—beat her back and not outright kill her. It was noble, and I didn’t want to be the one to tell him Rachel wasn’t going to allow it, but he was a clever person. He’d figure it out for himself.

More importantly, he wasn’t going to let her hurt him before he did.

The woman from earlier, Mrs. Mira, appeared in the huge arched doorway, looking more than a little terrified, and when she caught sight of a bear fighting a dragon, her eyes went even wider, and she froze in place.

Since she was the one nearest to the door, Rachel lunged for the woman, and that was it. That was the moment I saw Caspian give up on not killing his aunt, his swirling draconic eyes going as cold as Moonstriker Tower in January.

He lunged forward as well, landing one enormous, clawed leg on top of Rachel just a few feet before she reached Mrs. Mira, pushing her flat against the marble floor with a resounding thud and crack.

There was no answering roar this time, and when Caspian pulled back, Rachel didn’t stand up.

The entire slab of marble there in the entryway had a crack down the middle, diagonally right beneath Rachel.

She didn’t move, and neither did Mrs. Mira. The older woman just stood there, staring at the broken bear.

Rachel let out a wheezing breath and started to shrink into herself. Miraculously, she was still wearing the clothing she’d been in as a human, but they were in tatters, as though she’d been wearing them during the fight. They were full of claw holes and covered with blood.

Mrs. Mira—in fact, everyone—stared at her for a moment as she became human again, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Caspian.

My boyfriend, the dragon.

And just as easily as he’d become a dragon, he put it away. As though it was no more effort than breathing out, he did precisely that, and slowly came back down to himself. His hair was mussed, and his lip split, but those were the only signs he’d done anything more strenuous than taking a long walk. Even his cast was entirely intact, somehow, though the sling was gone. He was breathing a little harder than when we had started, but . . . he was almost untouched by the fight.

Almost untouchable, because he was a fucking dragon.

I sped across the room to his side, wrapping both arms around his middle. “Are you okay?”

He turned to look at me, and there was that million-dollar smile I’d fallen in love with. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

“Thank . . . me? For what? I didn’t do anything.”

“Except almost get yourself killed by freezing up when that psycho went after you,” Kit said, coming up next to us. His gaze was trained on Rachel still, because he was Kit. He’d always been the cautious one.

Caspian shook his head and waved a hand at Kit. “For coming at all. For believing in me.” Finally, he tore his eyes off my face and looked at his aunt. “No one’s ever believed in me before.”

Mrs. Mira was not having that, looking up from the floor and giving him a scowl. “Don’t you say that. Every member of the staff has loved you since you were born.”

“No doubt,” Kit agreed. “But what you could do about that without crossing boundaries and being fired was limited. My brother gets to make out with him. I have no doubt Caspian appreciates you all, since you being in danger was what finally made him end this mess, but it’s a little more tangible when they get naked together.”

“Winter,” Mother gasped, coming up beside us, hand pressed to her chest. “That is entirely?—”

“It’s Kit, Aunt Delta. Fair warning—only warning—I no longer answer to Winter. Only the name my father gave me.” They stared at each other, like a couple of animals establishing a new pecking order, and it absolutely stunned me that Mother was the first to look away.

“Kit, then,” she mumbled, barely loud enough to hear. But she did it, and Kit looked as stunned as I felt, blinking in shock. Then she cleared her throat and looked back up at him. “And it is inappropriate to talk about your brother’s bedroom activities in front of company. Or at all.”

Kit shrugged. “What can I say, inappropriate might as well be my middle name.” Then he turned to look at Rachel.

We all did, because she gave a high, wheezy groan and turned her head.

She couldn’t turn onto her back, that much was apparent because the only part of her body she moved was her head. A trickle of blood was leaking from her lips, but she still had the strength to glare at Caspian. “Should have killed your bitch mother before she had you,” she managed to force out, though it was clear that every syllable was painful for her. “The Sunrunner line ended the minute you were born.”

Bizarrely enough, Mother was the one to respond to that. “I was willing to accept that he might not be ready to take over the family. He’s a boy, and you said he ran off and has a tendency to run off. But you only have to glance at that boy’s eyes to know he’s as much a Sunrunner as you are. The line survives without you. And given your behavior here today, I think it will be better off that way.”

Kit turned to look at her, grudging respect on his face as he nodded.

“I’m going to break up your criminal empire and give it all back to the people, so you know,” Caspian told her. “The hospitals will be so well-funded they won’t know what to do with all that money. We’ll build those houses I wanted for the homeless. Fill the parks with fruit trees and build a mental health network that will help all the people hurt with the drugs you’ve put on the streets.” Caspian winced and leaned into me. “The ones that have survived, unlike my father.”

She bared her teeth at him, and they were covered in blood. Oddly enough, it looked like a smile. “You can try. But first you have to figure out how to stop Mount Slate, don’t you?” Her breath was short now, each word coming slow and painful. “I’d say good luck. But fuck you.” She tried to spit on the floor, but it came out as a dribble of blood and saliva.

Caspian winced, and Mother, being Mother, took charge. She stepped between Cas and Rachel and looked at Mrs. Mira. “Are you the housekeeper?”

Caspian made a face, but Mrs. Mira didn’t seem offended. “I manage the household, but the housekeeper does fall under my purview.” She leaned around Mother to meet Caspian’s eye. “Would you like this garbage cleaned up, Lord Sunrunner?”

“If you would handle it, Mrs. Mira, please.” He looked down toward the floor, even though Mother was standing in the way and he could no longer see Rachel without moving. “I don’t think we need to hold a funeral. And she isn’t going in the family yard. There must be a place where they bury people who don’t have families.”

“You could cremate her and throw her in the trash,” Kit offered. “It’s where she belongs anyway.”

Caspian looked at Kit for a moment, considering, but he didn’t look especially pained or conflicted. Then he turned back to Mrs. Mira, face determined. “Do whatever you want.”

A few feet away from us, eyes glazing over, Rachel Sunrunner breathed her last as Mrs. Mira summoned staff members to get rid of her remains.