23. Florian

Chapter 23

Florian

Lunch was a quieter affair than breakfast had been, but I did manage to invite Aeryn and Poppy and their families to stay a while. It would be good to have someone around whom I wasn’t expecting to stab me in the back. Even better for Fawn, to have family in the house who not only acknowledged her, but clearly liked her.

Cove wasn’t distant, exactly. He was there, a firm presence at my side, like the glacier I kept likening him to in my mind. He didn’t say much, but no one could doubt his support for me, least of all me.

But at the same time, there was something going on in his head. He was distracted. Maybe he was worried about Father’s next move? Or just as likely, he was worried about the fact that my poisonous cousins were probably plotting against me en masse now.

Fawn insisted on showing Poppy’s teenaged kids the garden after lunch, so we all went along. I was admittedly there to watch for Father more than because I cared about the garden, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Fawn was perfectly capable of showing someone the garden without me standing at her shoulder, guiding her every move. She wasn’t an independent woman with a career and a college degree, and sure, sometimes she forgot roses had thorns, but it didn’t change that she was going to be twenty in a few weeks and perfectly capable of saying “these are the roses and those are the orchids.”

That was information she’d absorbed over the long years she’d lived on the estate, just as I had.

We were walking through the sculpted boxwood menagerie when she handed Winnie off to Poppy’s younger daughter and slunk back through the group toward me. She was biting her lip, clearly bothered, but I hadn’t noticed anything happening that might have set that off.

“Everything all right?” I asked, trying to keep the query light, in case it was just my imagination.

She huffed, sighing, and stamped her foot, clearly struggling to make the concept she wanted to talk about coherent enough to bring up. We had all too much in common, my sister and me, so I knew the feeling. “It won’t go away. Usually it goes away. I just want to show Brinley and Merin the garden, and it won’t leave me alone.”

“It?”

She sighed, frowning, looking from side to side, like she was hoping maybe someone would leap out and help her explain. Unfortunately, no one ever did. “There’s a person in my brain,” she finally said, drilling two fingers into her temple. “And they won’t go away.”

For a moment, I blinked at her. Had she...had she just resonated and didn’t know what it meant? “Not Winnie?”

She waved that thought away like an annoying mosquito. “No, not like Winnie. Winnie talks to me. This one is just quiet. Watching. Like a...a...” She scanned the ground in front of her, searching for the word, before a delighted smile crossed her lips. “Like a creeper! Like you call people when they stare and don’t say anything and won’t go away.”

It was a good call. But before I could let myself be impressed with Fawn’s grasp on slang, it hit me. A person in her brain that wouldn’t go away. Like my own occasional ride-along who kept watch over what I was doing but never spoke up.

“Is this the first time this has happened?” I asked her, oddly breathless.

She shook her head. “No. It happens sometimes, but they go away. Winnie tells them to stop it, and they go away.”

That certainly settled any doubts I’d ever had about whether Winnie was my sister’s own stone. For the briefest of moments, I wondered what power it might have given her, but then I realized I didn’t care. It didn’t matter at all. What Winnie gave her, over and above any ability she might have offered, was companionship.

Like humans, stones didn’t have to give magic to be worthwhile.

Sometimes they could just be .

I almost gasped when the sensation of the watcher fell on me, stronger than usual and almost oppressive in my mind, like a spotlight on my thoughts.

Fawn stopped and cocked her head. “Oh. Well that’s it then. They went away.” She turned and went back to the teenagers and her tour.

Aunt Ivy, meanwhile, came back to stand with me. “Everything okay?”

“I...I’m not sure.” Looking down into her hazel-green eyes, I decided to lay it all out. To tell her and take the chance with someone else knowing I might be fucking losing it. Except, if it was happening to Fawn too, it couldn’t just be me losing my marbles, right? “Have you ever had the feeling of being...being watched? Like there’s another presence in your mind?”

“Of course,” she agreed, reaching up to finger her stone, hanging in a pendant around her neck. “When Lili and I first met. And...and I think, when Soz was deciding. I don’t remember a lot of that time, but I think Soz used to be there too, sometimes.”

When Soz was deciding.

I wanted to ask deciding what, but I knew, didn’t I? Rain Moonstriker had said it to me once, that a stone first had to resonate with a person, but then it could decide. It didn’t have to speak to someone if it didn’t want to.

Fawn is better than me , I told the heavy presence in my head. She’s kinder. Sweeter. Better in every way .

It didn’t answer, but I supposed that was no surprise, since it hadn’t yet said a word to me. At least, I didn’t think it had.

“I should...” I looked over at Fawn, then back to Ivy. “I need to go speak to Cove. I think he went to the office. Could you...?”

“Of course, don’t worry. We’re enjoying Fawn’s company. I think Merin might be a little in love with her. You know how it is, being thirteen and not yet having figured out where you belong in the world. And Fawn is just...perfect.”

Impulsively, I leaned in and hugged her. “I know. And so are you, Aunt Ivy. Just...be careful. Father is about, remember.”

“We will,” she promised. “Don’t worry about us. You just take care of you. It’s been a stressful morning. Don’t push too hard.”

Somehow, I smothered my hysterical laugh at the notion and nodded back before hurrying out of the garden toward Father’s office.