10. Cove

Chapter 10

Cove

There were fifteen dwellings spread all over the world. Huxley even owned an estate in Sunrunner lands, and for some reason, that seemed odd to me. My family had only ever owned lands in our own corner of the world, never quite comfortable enough elsewhere to take up actual residence.

But when Rain had said something about a boat in the South Sea, the notion had taken root in my mind, something new and fascinating. I’d never even thought of a boat as a home before, but now it was there, bright and new in my head.

This trip to the Dawnchaser Estate was the first time since I was fifteen that I’d left Moonstriker lands, and...I loved my homeland, but it wasn’t my life. I wasn’t like Delta. I didn’t adore the snow and ice that covered Moonstriker Tower half the year. Warmth was one of the reasons I’d been initially enchanted by Dawnchaser lands.

Before the people had put me off.

“This is the primary residence,” Frost was saying to Olivier, frowning at the spreadsheet on the man’s computer as we all sat at chairs we’d dragged behind the desk. Chairs from other rooms, since the ones that faced the desk seemed to be deliberately uncomfortable. Only a fucking Dawnchaser would think of a thing like that. “So what does he do with all the others all year? From food expenditures, it looks like he hasn’t even visited this one in...years.”

“He has not,” Olivier agreed. “As far as I’m aware, they simply remain empty. We retain staff to keep them clean and handle it if Lord Dawnchaser”—he broke off, swallowing, and glanced at me, as though afraid I’d disapprove of him using the title for a wanted man—“if he visits unexpectedly. But he resides—resided—in this home the majority of the time.”

Frost sat back in his chair, nodding, but looking disturbed nonetheless. It truly was a bizarre waste. What did Huxley need with fifteen homes, when he spent almost all his time in a single one of them? Homeless people existed in Dawnchaser lands as much as anywhere in the Summerlands, and Huxley had fourteen empty, largely unused homes.

Maybe we could turn Huxley’s mass of extra homes into homeless shelters. I’d have to speak to...well, it wasn’t up to me or Delta here, was it? So...Florian? After I’d marched into his home and said I owned it? Yes, I was sure he’d be thrilled to discuss setting up the other buildings he would soon own as places to help complete strangers. The Dawnchaser family as a whole had a ridiculous amount of money, but was Huxley even leaving Florian enough to make a real difference?

You should probably kill the bastard before making assumptions about his estate , Iri pointed out, but she was wrong.

My conviction on her being incorrect, even unvoiced, seemed to pique her interest, and she made a curious noise in my head.

I will kill him, I informed her . If it’s the last thing I manage to do, I’ll end him. And on the chance it will be the last thing I do, I need to ready things now, so everyone will be better prepared if I’m not here to help .

She was quiet for a long time, and then her voice was soft, like she was in some distress. That’s...somehow morbid and sweet at the same time. But don’t die. You’re finally letting me get to know you. You can’t die first .

That was sweet of her. Rain always cared about people, and he’d wished me well and told me to be careful before I’d left, but other than him, no one had expressed real concern for my life in...hells, had anyone ever?

There was a clatter in the hallway followed by a shout, and Olivier sighed, long and deep. Frost stood, peering toward the hallway, but before he could go see what happened, Olivier spoke up.

“It’s the cousins,” he informed Frost, sounding like he was a hundred years old and not the fifty or so he actually was.

Frost turned back, scowling. “Uncle Cove told them to leave.”

“Most of them did.” Olivier sat back in his chair, reaching up and pulling his wire-rimmed reading glasses off, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “A few stayed back. One from a more powerful branch of the family, the other one his hanger-on, so to speak. They both...well, you should probably hear it from them. I’m biased, I’m sure.”

“Their reasoning is something hideously selfish?” I asked him, and the look he returned—lifted brows, rolled eyes, and another sigh—told me I’d hit the nail on its head. So I stood and marched toward where the noise had come from.

It wasn’t in the hall itself, but in a small study just off the hall that looked like an “old boys club” from some ridiculous movie or TV show. Brown leather furniture in a massive seating arrangement facing each other. Pool table on the other side of the room. Polished dark wood flooring. All that was missing was a hazy cloud of cigar smoke hanging in the air.

In the middle of the seating area, a maid was busily cleaning up glass shards, holding one hand against her torso as though in pain. The scent of alcohol permeated the room. Two of the men from the previous day were sitting on the sofa, one reading a literal newspaper, and the other watching the maid, a tiny disturbing smile on his face. He was the one who’d tried to pick a fight with me, who’d called himself Adger, so I wasn’t especially shocked at him staying or deciding to cause trouble.

“What, precisely, do you think you’re doing here?” I asked.

They both glanced at me, then back to what they’d been doing, nonchalance so practiced it was obviously an affectation. Pitiful.

“You mean this incompetent bitch who got me the wrong drink?” Adger asked.

I cleared my throat, and the maid looked up at me, her breath coming short and tears in her eyes. I motioned her over toward me. For a second she hesitated, blinking back the wetness so it wouldn’t spill over. Then she steeled herself, pushed up off the floor, and headed in my direction.

“I didn’t tell you to stop cleaning,” Adger said, holding out a hand in front of her.

“She doesn’t answer to you,” I informed him. “Now remove your hand from her path, before I remove it from your person.”

He snapped his arm against his side protectively and turned to glare at me, eyes so full of fury I was a little surprised he didn’t simply combust right then and there, leaving a charred empty spot on the sofa.

When the maid reached me, I held out my hand to her, motioning to her side. She stared blankly back for a moment, before pulling the hand away from herself and holding it out. It was the hand, not the side, that was injured, I realized. She’d been trying to stanch the bleeding by applying pressure but continuing to work with her other hand. The glass had left a wide gash across one side of her palm, almost three inches long, and it was rather deep. It needed stitches.

“Is there still a doctor working at the estate?” I asked her. “This needs stitches and bandaging.”

She nodded, swallowing hard, but didn’t meet my eye.

“And if you go to them, they’ll see to your injury?”

Again, a nod.

“Then I’d like for you to do that.”

“She’s supposed to be cleaning up her mess and then getting me a new drink,” Adger interrupted.

I ignored him, as much as I could when what I wanted to be doing was shouting at the two Dawnchaser asses. I kept my voice level and soft as I spoke to her. “Please have someone see to this, and then take the rest of the day for yourself. Tomorrow as well. This is a serious injury, and it deserves to be cared for.” Her gaze snapped up to mine, clearly trying to gauge my sincerity, so I tried to let her see it in my expression. A difficult prospect, since I’d spent a lifetime trying to make my face expressionless, but at least she didn’t seem repelled by whatever it was that I managed. “Also, inform the household staff that they don’t need to cater to these two. At all.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Adger demanded, leaping to his feet. Even the other lowered his newspaper, watching me with shrewd green eyes.

Time seemed to freeze as I glanced his way, and my stomach plummeted into my feet. I knew him. The elfin features, face and nose thinner than other Dawnchasers I’d met, chin coming to a point. This man was related to Afton. Yes, all the Dawnchasers were technically related to each other, but this one...just looking at him made me sick. He could have been her twin.

Stiffly, I turned back to Adger, weak as the gesture made me feel. It wasn’t weak.

I wasn’t weak .

I was answering Adger’s demand, not his friend’s. Even if I didn’t ever want to see the friend again as long as I lived. “It means that you’re here without invitation or permission. I see no reason the staff should be put out on your behalf. If you make a mess, you’ll clean it up yourself. If you don’t, I’ll have you put out. If you make trouble, I’ll put you out myself, and I see no reason to be gentle about it.”

“This is our land. You can’t just?—”

“This land currently belongs to a murderer. Are you taking responsibility for his actions, to be claiming it as yours?”

“Maybe Moonstrikers are just oversensitive about what constitutes a crime,” the other said, cool and casual, but at the same time, not.

So he knew.

I drew my aura of icy resolve around me like a mantle, turning to look at him, keeping any trace of expression from my eyes or posture. “Have the Dawnchasers truly fallen so far that they think murder is acceptable now? I’ve always known you were a criminal lot, but that’s quite low even for Dawnchasers. Perhaps I should be speaking to the Sunrunner and Duskbringer about ending your line altogether.”

He met my eye, trying to hold it, but it didn’t last long. Even if he thought that the things he knew gave him power over me, he was a boy, twenty-five at most. He had no practical experience to back up his bravado. And if he had half a brain in his arrogant little head, he knew full well I could end him and there would be few, if any, consequences. He was trespassing in the manor, so his claims would have been shaky to begin with. Besides that, even if it wasn’t fair, I was a family lord. My word was practically law in the Summerlands, so long as the person I was speaking against wasn’t one of the other three family lords.

Perhaps I wasn’t the kind of man who would kill someone on a whim, but his lord was, so it would be unwise of him to assume that I was not.

“I’ve seen no proof Lord Dawnchaser murdered anyone,” he mumbled after a moment, looking back down at the newspaper folded in his lap.

I snorted. “There is an eyewitness to the crime. Huxley then attempted to come after the Moonstriker heir as well. No one doubts this unless they want to. Unless they gain by pretending that the truth is a lie. Huxley has gone power mad, and he wanted to take all four stones and rule the Summerlands alone. His hubris told him Soz had enough power to force the others to resonate with him.”

I leaned forward, putting both my hands on the back of the chair between myself and the Dawnchaser asses, meeting the eye of first one, then the other.

“He was wrong.”

The way Adair had described it, Verelle turning into liquid and dripping through Huxley’s fingers, had been a single bright spot in a horror story. Verelle had been free, and she had chosen not to continue to be abused by another man who cared more about power than people.

“Now, explain to me why you two haven’t left. Quickly and well, or I’ll see you removed from this house before lunchtime regardless of your other poor behavior.”

“You...you’re planning to kill him, aren’t you?” Adger said, jutting his chin into the air, trying to seem unaffected. He seemed more like a petulant child than a strong, unaffected man.

Was he...trying to copy me? Had I ever seemed so like a child, when wrapping myself in chilly resolve? I hated to think?—

No , Iri said. Even when you were fifteen, you weren’t as much a child as these two .

Of course not. The Dawnchaser had taken my childhood away.

“I am going to kill Huxley,” I agreed. “It has been decided. What does that have to do with you?”

“Well, that weakling Florian isn’t strong enough to bond Soz. So a decent Dawnchaser has to be here to do it. If you succeed at killing Lord Dawnchaser, which I still question your ability to do,” Adger said, giving me a little smirk.

He truly believed this, then. It wasn’t just a facade of strength.

That, more than anything else, made me realize how much a child he was. “Soz will bond who they choose, regardless of whether you are here or not. I have never made their acquaintance, but I can’t say I think they would choose you.”

“Why the hell not?” Adger demanded, offended and angry once again.

“Stones, on the whole, tend to be wiser than humans,” I answered, simple and to the point. “But so long as you keep quiet and don’t make nuisances of yourselves, I couldn’t give a damn less what you do. The kitchen staff can choose to feed you or not, up to them, and I’ll be letting them know that, so be prepared to fend for yourselves if today is an indication of the way you’ve always treated the people who work here.”

The one who looked like Afton shoved to his feet and Adger let out an offended noise. Neither of them said a word, though, as I turned my back on them and walked away.

The look on the housekeeper’s face when I told her my ruling and that the staff didn’t need to cater to the spoiled jackasses? That smirk was utterly priceless.