Page 7

Chapter 7

Caspian

Frost Moonstriker blushed. More than that, it was fucking adorable when he did it. His already dark skin flushed an even deeper, almost mahogany shade, and he ducked his head. Embarrassed. Like no one had ever told him he was gorgeous before.

That was a fucking wild thought.

What kind of weirdass place was Moonstriker lands, if no one there had told Frost how hot he was?

Still, that being the case, Kit’s watching me made even more sense. He and Mella had almost certainly been right. Frost was inexperienced with sex and romance, and there had to be kid gloves involved if I was going to do right by him.

I’d never before been in a situation where I felt like I should try to “do right” by someone—I’d have fully expected that if it happened, I’d have already been out the door and down the road. I was a hooking-up guy, not a forever and ever wedding bells and matching rocking chairs on the front porch kind of guy.

Still, no part of me wanted to escape the opportunity to get to know Frost better.

So I threw on a movie I knew well when we got to the room, ordered some junk food from room service, and chatted to him about the movie. Explaining what was happening whenever he seemed confused, pointing out my favorite jokes, and generally just . . . well, being myself.

Weirdly enough, he seemed to enjoy that.

Mella and I had been around enough people to know the difference between someone who was laughing at my jokes to get into my good graces and someone who was laughing because they were amused. Plus, Frost wasn’t any kind of actor. When he tried the fried okra I’d ordered, the look that crossed his face didn’t even need words to go with it. I just grabbed the plate from the tray and put it on the other side of me, since he seemed to prefer things he didn’t like to be far away from him.

It was a sensible way to live, really.

We fell asleep like that, still wearing our clothes, sitting up and watching some random movie. I woke and brushed my teeth and all that a few hours later, checking on Frost to make sure he wasn’t sleeping sitting up. He didn’t need any added pain in the morning, when we were going right back into the car to sit for another full day.

But he’d snuggled into the bed in what looked like a comfortable position, so I left him to it. No reason he needed to get up and change, when it’d just result in lost sleep.

I was sorry I hadn’t woken him in the morning, when I woke to find him sitting up in bed in his rumpled clothes, looking down at them with dismay.

“Y’okay?” was about all I managed to mumble.

He looked up at me, biting his lip. “I . . . I slept in my clothes.”

He seemed genuinely distressed about it, which woke me right up. I sat up, stretching and then rubbing at my eyes. “You know that’s no big deal, right?”

For a moment, he continued to bite his lip, and his look was assessing. “You changed.”

I shrugged. “Only because I woke up. I figured there was no reason to wake you up just to change into sleep clothes, and you looked comfortable enough. You took that huge jacket off, so it wasn’t gonna get messed up by sleeping in it.” Motioning to the heavy Moonstriker style coat he’d left hanging over the back of a chair when we’d arrived in the hotel, I shrugged, trying to emphasize that to my mind, at least, it was all no big deal.

It took a moment, but he finally nodded. “I should go brush my teeth, though. Maybe . . . maybe twice.”

And he proceeded to go do precisely that.

Maybe next time, we wake him , Mella suggested. Vex says he likes routine, and traveling must be messing up his routine already .

That made sense. I usually had a travel routine of my own, and things felt more secure when I followed it. Although . . .

Vex? I asked back.

His stone, she informed. He’s . . . he’s different, but good different. I like him. He’s like me. Doesn’t go in for the usual pecking order bullshit .

Interesting. Mella had never been one for socializing with the stones of random people I met. I couldn’t help but feel that her connecting with Vex meant something. Maybe . . . maybe something momentous.

When Frost came out of the bathroom smelling of mint, I looked up at him. “Hey, next time if something like that happens, do you want me to wake you, so you can change and all that?”

“If . . . if you don’t mind,” he agreed, and this time the look on his face was almost nervous. Like I was going to say that no, doing a simple thing he preferred was too much effort and I couldn’t be bothered.

“Consider it done,” I told him. “Now I’m gonna take my clothes and go grab a quick shower and change. I’ll try to leave plenty of hot water for you. You want to call Ember and see if we’re ordering breakfast in our rooms or what?”

Just like that, all his hesitation evaporated, and he was once again that hot confident guy who knew just what he was doing. “Of course,” he agreed, whipping out his phone before I even got into the bathroom.

An hour later, I was still shoving a piece of toast into my mouth as we walked out of the hotel, Frost looking some combination of surprised and intrigued that I had brought it with me when we’d left the hotel’s dining room. But hells, I hadn’t wanted to hold us up any more than driving already was, so I could eat and walk at the same time. Plus most of the time the three of them ate like it was a job rather than a pleasure, setting to their breakfasts in silence and eating faster than I could keep up with.

It was probably a Sunrunner thing. Back home we spent hours over meals, talking about our plans or our days, eating a bite at a time, just . . . meals were a social occasion, not only a necessity. We also drank at least as much as we ate, so it wasn’t all good, but overall, I thought it was a good habit.

The Moonstriker siblings all seemed to be in good spirits, though, and Kit didn’t make a point of threatening me, so that seemed like a step in the right direction.

Frost climbed into the front passenger seat without any hesitation, and when I met Kit’s eye in the rearview mirror, his expression was more speculative than murderous.

Yep, I was gonna win that assassin over.

I had always been good at winning people over, and since Mella and I had found each other, her instincts about people had only made that better. We were pretty good at people together, me and Mella.

I pulled onto the highway in high spirits.

Maybe we’d get home, find my father, and it’d all be nothing.

More than that, I liked the Moonstrikers a lot, and taking this trip with them was . . . it was nice. Whenever I tried to make friends back home, it somehow always turned out to be people who had agendas. They wanted a connection to my father or my aunt or my family’s money—which Aunt Rachel regularly reminded me was not my money. None of them had ever been much interested in who I was or what I wanted.

For a long time I’d blamed that on the fact that I had no idea who I was or what I wanted. I’d spent my whole life drifting, aimless and useless, so why would anyone care to ask about it?

Only recently had I realized that they hadn’t known that, because none of them had ever asked.

Even Kit, with his rather mean assessment of all Sunrunners as drunk and trouble, seemed to know me better than the people who’d positioned themselves as my friends over the years.

I was just getting onto the bridge between Dawnchaser and Sunrunner lands when movement caught my eye. Yes, sure, there was constant movement whenever you were on the road, but this was something different.

This was wrong.

The guy in the passing lane had slowed down to well under the speed limit, so I’d gotten into the right lane to pass him. I didn’t like to do it, but he was going incredibly slow.

Then the guy in front of him pulled into the right lane as well, slowing down as he did so.

My instinct that something was wrong made me take my foot off the gas. My brain was buzzing with hesitation, with no-no-wrong-bad-danger. I knew that feeling too damn well. I almost hit the brakes.

Then the guy on my left swerved hard toward me.

In an instant, my choices filtered through my head, then probable consequences for each. None of them looked good.

Instead of swerving to compensate or hitting someone else, I let the guy swerve into me. Tried to hold the wheel steady so that we wouldn’t go off the bridge.

In fact, since he swerved harder to try to force the issue, I turned toward him. I might die crashing my corner of the car into this asshole, but I was not going to take three of the Moonstriker’s children off a bridge with me. I wasn’t going to let him kill my friends.

What an odd thought that was to strike me in the middle of a disaster.

I had friends, maybe.

Real friends.

It happened fast, the way accidents always did.

He hit the front corner of my car so hard that he slammed us into the guardrail, my body smashing into the side of the car and head hitting the driver’s side window. Mom’s car spun to the right, wheels skidding out of control. For a second, even as pain screamed through my whole right side, I was afraid my overcompensation hadn’t been enough.

But the guardrail held.

Well, the guardrail held until his car, with the extra speed he’d put on, slammed all the way into it, shoving the railing right off the side, and his whole car followed right after.

And then so did we.

The last I saw of the road as we went over the edge was the car that had been in front of me, speeding off down the highway.

Time seemed to stutter for a moment, pausing with us in midair, and I wondered if this was what it was like to die, that whole “life flashing before your eyes” thing, but then, with the car still paused in the air, Frost yanked off his seatbelt and then reached for mine.

“You get him out,” Kit was shouting in the back, “I’ve got our stuff, and Ember will handle the water.”

Get him?

He meant me.

Kit was worried for me. And here I’d thought he wanted to stab me. Maybe that passing fancy about having friends hadn’t been so far off.

For some reason, my body wasn’t working quite right, my fingers numb as I tried to press the button on my seatbelt and they slid off the orange plastic, red and wet and angry. The world stutter-stopped again, and I could see from the corner of my eye that we were closer to the water.

My eyes wouldn’t focus on . . . what were they trying to focus on? Seatbelt?

Frost leaned in, and I could have counted the beads of sweat on his forehead as he forced the button down and yanked my seatbelt open. Then he lifted his hand between us, and it was red too. That wasn’t right.

Red wasn’t Frost’s color.

“This is going to hurt,” he whispered to me. “I’m so sorry.”

I didn’t even have a moment to ask what the heck he was talking about before he slid his arm behind me and pulled me toward him. I’d had a dream like it the night before. We’d been in my car, and he’d somehow managed to get all the way into my lap in the driver’s seat, despite the steering wheel being in the way, before?—

Suddenly, it seemed like time came rushing back like air into an unsealed vacuum, because pain ripped through me as he pulled me from my seat. My left arm—hells, my whole left side—felt like the car had exploded and I was on fire. His movements were perfect, though, smooth and calculated, as he pulled me out of the driver’s seat and onto him, opening his car door at the same time, then glancing down at the river beneath us.

“I need another one and two-thirds of a second, Vex,” he said aloud, almost shouted, the words ground out as though he were in pain.

Was he on fire too?

Except . . . I couldn’t see any fire.

Nothing was on fire except my nerve endings.

I blinked, and the world moved again. I could see the water outside the car door, right beneath us now. It was flat and gray-blue, like we could simply step out of the car and walk right across it.

And then we did.

Well, Frost pulled me out of the car, and we fell in a heap on top of the water, which didn’t give way beneath us. It felt almost like solid ground.

Ember landed next to us cursing, then Kit, somehow carrying a bunch of the bags that had been in the trunk. Had he climbed out of the car and opened the trunk while it was falling? How the hell was that possible?

Time.

The Moonstrikers controlled time.

Fuck me.

The sheer power of the moment was incomprehensible to my stuttering brain. Might have been just as incomprehensible even if I wasn’t in massive pain.

Kit passed two bags off to Ember and then pointed in a direction.

She nodded. “I can only give us about ten feet at a time, so stay close, but I can get us to shore.”

“Good,” Frost said, and now he was panting, his muscles taut with exertion. “Caspian shouldn’t be in the water. He’s bleeding, and it would be worse in the water. And I can’t hold the car much longer.”

“Let’s go, then,” Kit ordered, and like he was the boss of them, we all started moving.

Frost tipped me up and over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, taking one of the other bags Kit was holding and slinging the strap over the opposite shoulder, and the three of them started hurriedly walking across the water toward shore.

Being splayed over Frost’s shoulder as I was, I had the perfect view as a moment later, time seemed to reassert its control and Mom’s car crashed beneath the surface of the river behind us, disappearing in an enormous wave.

The only sign it had ever existed was the churning of the water where it had fallen.

A moment later, the world faded out of existence in a swarm of black spots, and I was grateful for it.