Page 31

Chapter 31

Caspian

I’d never planned to kill anyone, but oddly enough, I found that I didn’t have a lot of emotions about it. Wasn’t I supposed to be heartbroken or grief-stricken or something? Shouldn’t I feel guilty for taking a human life, even if she had been a reprehensible human being?

I’d felt her back snap under my last blow, as she’d hit the marble so hard I’d cracked it, and . . .

I felt worse about the marble slab than her life. How were we going to get that fixed? Was it even possible? The palace had been built by my great-great-great-grandmother, and I hated to think I’d begun my time as Sunrunner by breaking part of what she’d painstakingly created.

Even more than any of that, did it make me a terrible person, that I didn’t care about Rachel?

I looked on as some of the gardener’s men arrived, picking her up and putting her on a cart, then dragging her out of the palace for the last time. Mrs. Mira said something to them about an incinerator, so I didn’t think she was any more inclined than Kit to give her a state funeral.

And I simply didn’t care.

I was much more concerned about . . . I turned to face Kit, lips pursed. “Show me.”

His face, so expressive and mildly amused when dealing with the dying Aunt Rachel, shut down, going entirely serious. “Are you sure?”

“It won’t change anything if I avoid it and pretend facts aren’t real. I’ve already tried that, however unintentionally. It doesn’t work.” I motioned toward the writing desk he’d been going through early on in the fight, and he preceded me toward it.

Ember was already standing over it, holding a small box and looking confused, a little pucker between her eyebrows. She looked up at us as he approached. “I don’t get it. It’s just a couple stones and some dust.”

Gently, Kit took the box out of her hands, turned, and held it out to me. He handled it so much more reverently, so much more sadly, than he had the dying Rachel. Or hells, even discussions of my father’s death.

It was a small stone box, black and velvet-lined, and inside were two large pieces of tiger’s eye, and a bunch of tiny grains of the same substance.

“I thought . . .” He swallowed hard, shook his head, and started again. “I thought maybe I’d find her and get her to you, so she could help you with Rachel.”

“I thought that was what you were doing,” I agreed, looking at the broken pieces of what had once been Nausa, the great stone of the Sunrunner line. Tears prickled my eyes, and I could feel the same deep sorrow in Mella. Maybe she hadn’t thought Nausa as powerful as everyone else had, and maybe they hadn’t been friends, but Nausa was, for all intents and purposes, dead.

Killed by either my father’s incapacitated antics or Aunt Rachel’s ambition. I would never know if my father had hurt her or Aunt Rachel had, and in the end, it didn’t matter. A life had been taken, one just as important as the family members I’d lost in the last week. More important, really, since Nausa hadn’t been complicit in her own death. She’d never chosen to overdose on drugs or hurt the whole of Sunrunner.

She was a loyal hound to the end , Mella said. And she deserved better .

Her earlier pithy comments about Nausa were gone, because who could hold a grudge against a fallen comrade, even one you hadn’t particularly liked? It wasn’t as though she’d ever hated her. Probably just been a little jealous about the amount of attention the other stone had gotten, if we were all honest.

Frost’s arms came around me from behind, his chin on the top of my lowered head, and he held me as the tears fell.

“I don’t get it,” Ember said, and Kit tugged her away from us, whispering furiously in her ear. A second later she yelped, “What? What the fuck? Does that mean we’re all gonna die?”

And the truth was that I didn’t know. I knew the four families with their stones had always come together to stop Mount Slate before. I knew we needed to do so again. But without Nausa, was that even possible?

I couldn’t bring myself to look at what was left of her anymore, snapping the box closed and sliding it into my pocket.

I don’t know if we can calm him without Nausa , Mella told me, somber and serious. He always liked the puppy a lot. But we have to try .

At that, I nodded. I squeezed Frost’s hand and turned to the others. “We need to arrange a meeting at Mount Slate. I don’t know if we can fix things without Nausa, but the only other option is to give up and let Mount Slate blow up. So we’ll bring Mella and . . . what’s left of Nausa, and we’ll see what happens.”

A high whine made me pause, because that was . . . not right. We had no pets in the palace—my father had never had time for them, and Aunt Rachel didn’t approve of “freeloaders.” Mella didn’t whine. None of the people I was standing with were really the type either.

A thought occurred to me, and I pulled the box back out of my pocket, opening it up. Hesitantly, I touched one of the halves of Nausa. It was warm. The other was as well.

A swell of shock came from Mella as two minds brushed against my own. It was nothing like when I’d first met Mella as a child. It was . . . like being at a pet store, and having the puppies shoving themselves at your hands, happy and hopeful and desperate for affection.

Would you look at that , Mella whispered. Not every person gets to witness this, kiddo. The birth of a new stone. Of two new stones .

It wasn’t Nausa, of course. It was two different, completely new consciousnesses. They did, however, seem to be somewhat aware of what had come before. They didn’t communicate in words, but in pictures, shoved into my mind, and one pushed a picture into me of my father, collapsed on the bed in Janelle’s room, his heart slowing, along with two words. Empty wolf?

My father, the empty wolf.

Fuck, that hurt. For the first time in this whole disaster, the tears in my eyes were, in fact, for the man who had given me life. The empty wolf. Gone forever because he hadn’t been strong enough to deal with the disasters life had thrown at him.

He’s gone , I tried to tell them. Like the ancient wolf. Like Nausa . They’re both gone forever .

Everything tinged blue, and I could feel sorrow in them. There were no words, but they seemed to understand. Closing the box again, I held it close to my chest. I’d have to have them set in something so that they could see the sun. I wouldn’t be some bastard like Huxley Dawnchaser, hiding them in the dark.

When I turned my head to look up at Kit, I realized that everyone in the room was staring at me, so I tried to explain. “They’re alive. The pieces of Nausa. They’re . . . puppies. Maybe that will help with Mount Slate.”

Delta looked dubious, but Kit was interested, looking at where I’d slid the box into my pocket. “We’ll have to put them in a necklace to match your bracelet,” he suggested. “They are . . . bonded to you, yes?”

I thought back to the feeling of them, the warmth when I touched them, and nodded. “I think so, yeah. Is that . . . weird? That I’m bonded to three stones?”

Frost leaned down and stage-whispered in my ear. “I don’t know if you noticed, love, but you turned into a dragon a while back. We’re past weird at this point. If you want to have a whole menagerie of puppies and dragons and anything else you enjoy, I say we go for it.”