28. Cove

Chapter 28

Cove

It took me some time to bring Florian back around to eating his breakfast, and even then, the previous mood was lost. No surprise there, since I wasn’t in the mood to be playful anymore either, but I felt the loss of his happiness like the edge of a blade against my heart.

Florian should never be sad.

Or more appropriate to the moment, he should never be angry.

Particularly when we were about to walk into a dangerous situation, anger was not going to help.

I couldn’t tell him not to be angry about his father’s behavior—Huxley had always been an infuriating ass, and the way he’d spoken to Florian on the phone had been horrific. I was still angry with Delta for her treatment of the children—and maybe a little for her treatment of me—but she never would have said to any of us the things Huxley had just said to his own son.

I spread jam onto a piece of toast—strawberry, delightfully enough—then held it out to Florian, and he took a distracted bite, staring at the wall opposite us. When I urged the toast into his hand, he nibbled on the end, but still didn’t so much as look at it.

He couldn’t let the impending confrontation lie and think about the present. He wasn’t going to be truly with me again until this was done.

It was hard to blame him, since this confrontation was going to decide his whole damned future. He had bet his life, and his sister’s life, on me, so I had to succeed. Not that I’d ever intended to fail.

“When it rang, you recognized the number he called from,” I said, spreading more jam on another slice of toast for myself. It was an impressive sourdough, something I’d love to have back in Moonstriker lands, where food was often rather uninspired. I focused on it, so I wasn’t staring at him when his head snapped around to look at me. I saw him from the corner of my eye, heard his deep sigh. When I looked up at him, he was hanging his head.

“He called before from that number.”

He went to set the toast down, but I nudged it back up toward him. “You need to eat. I know it’s not your first priority right now, but being hungry isn’t going to help us later.”

He bit his lip, but finally nodded and took another bite. After chewing and swallowing, he took a deep breath and started again. “It was a few days ago. Right after we kissed for the first time. He told me to seduce you. That I could betray you later and...I don’t know. I don’t know if he really cared about what I did, or what I think. I didn’t tell you about it because it wasn’t helpful for your plans. He didn’t tell me where he was or offer to meet, and the only thing that would come of it was to make us both question what was happening between us.”

I raised a brow at him and took another bite of toast.

“Oh no you don’t, Cove Moonstriker. Don’t you go quiet and expect me to fill the silence. We were just getting started when he first called, and it was tentative between us. Me showing up and saying my father told me to seduce you would have cast a shadow on everything. Like he fucking always does.” His voice broke on the last sentence, and he looked like he wanted to throw his toast across the room, so I leaned in and wrapped an arm around him.

“I don’t expect you to fill the silence, Florian,” I told him, and found that it was true. Yes, I often stayed silent to get others to talk, but that had never worked with Florian anyway. Florian only spoke when he felt as though he wouldn’t be rebuked for it. “It sounded like you wanted to vent about what happened, so I was letting you. I don’t think you’re secretly on your father’s side. I didn’t think you were seducing me on his behalf.”

“You . . . you didn’t?” His voice was small, and I hated that.

I looked up and met his eye again, then leaned in to kiss him. “No. You’re not a liar. Your emotions are all over your face every time you talk about him. When you’re talking to him it’s even worse. I think you hate him more than anyone else I’ve ever met, including Titania, and he murdered her brother.”

“I...I do. I hate him so much. He’s hurt everyone I love. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself. He’s selfish and horrible and—” He broke off, turning and burying his face in my shoulder, trembling with emotion. With sheer, utter hatred for his worthless father.

I remembered the feeling, despising my father before he died. It was harder to care now that he wasn’t a part of my everyday reality, making my life miserable. My own father hadn’t even committed any murders, and I’d hated him for his selfish emotionless bullshit. Florian had more right than anyone to hate the man who had given him half his DNA.

I held him like that for a while, food forgotten, and let him get it all out. Or rather, all for now. I knew from difficult experience that this wasn’t the kind of thing you had a single cry over and then left behind. Huxley had hurt Florian in so many ways, for so long, that we would be dealing with it for years to come, sometimes entirely unexpectedly. He’d see a strawberry one day and remember this conversation and be hurt all over again. That was how trauma worked.

But it would be okay. We would find him a therapist, and I would be there to support him, as would Fawn and Ivy and who knew how many others. Things were changing for Florian right now, and for the better.

And for me too.

So I coaxed him out of bed and into the shower, then into fresh clothes, and then took him down to my room wearing nothing but my pants from the previous night, and chose my own clothing.

I was careful this time, picking a coat with shorter tails so nothing would get in the way in a fight. The shortest coat I had brought with me was a white thing with black and gray embroidery, depicting a snow tiger lounging on a rocky outcropping. It felt just right for the moment. Both Huxley and I thought ourselves the tiger, relaxed, lying in wait. Ready to leap and disembowel his prey.

I knew things Huxley didn’t, convinced I understood Kit’s true heart. I was certain that even if he hated me, he would never help kill me. Huxley surely knew things I didn’t. Perhaps he’d spent the weeks since murdering Oberon poisoning Kit against the family as a whole. Perhaps Kit had changed more than I believed possible in the years since he’d left.

The problem, in the end, was that we were headed for a battle of wills more than an actual battle. Huxley with Soz, determined to trip me up—possibly literally—and kill me. Me with Iri, trying to freeze him in time for long enough to end his crime spree once and for all. A physical fight would have been easier, particularly with how Iri and I had often struggled to mesh properly.

Not that I couldn’t use her power, but Delta had always had a better grasp on it than me.

I’m not going to let that little shit kill you , she promised, her voice as hard as her crystalline form. Whatever happens, Huxley Dawnchaser is not going to get what he wants .

I shivered. I’d never been afraid of Iri, not once in my whole life, but that was...a bit terrifying.

Dressed and as ready as we would ever be, I finished buckling my sword and led Florian downstairs.

He leaned into me, hesitant and nervous, and I couldn’t blame him. As we reached the bottom of the stairs, he sighed. “Should I wear my sword?”

I wanted to recoil from the thought, but that was ridiculous of me. I was wearing a sword. I was planning to fight. Why the hell would he be any different? Hells, his stone gave him grace that probably meant he was damned good in a fight.

I turned to him, taking his hands in mine and lifting each to my lips, kissing the knuckles of both. “If you want to, then yes. If you don’t, then no. It’s entirely up to you, Florian. Your whole life is up to you now.”

Quicker than a blink, he rushed forward and threw his arms around me, squeezing me with strength I hadn’t realized he had, because it almost took the breath right out of me. “It’s not up to me. Because I’d choose to leave. To take you and Fawn and Frost and Ivy and Coral and Olivier and just go. I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to risk losing you. I just...can’t live with him anymore.”

Gently, I put my own arms around his waist and held him there. “I’m sorry we can’t do that. I wish I could give you every single thing you want. But I’ve given my word.”

He gulped in a shallow breath, then another, not speaking, but nodding into my chest.

“Uncle Cove?” Frost came into the foyer, arms entwined with Ivy on one side and Fawn on the other, the three of them looking like they’d been on the way out to the garden for something fun. “Is everything all right?”

I sighed, meeting his eye. “It is, Frost. But I’m afraid plans for the day have to wait. It’s time, and I need you with me.”

His face dropped, shoulders slumping, but then he drew himself up, suddenly every bit the dutiful Moonstriker scion. “Of course. My place is at your side in this. Let me go get my sword.”

I hated that I was dragging my sweet, gentle nephew into a fight, but at the same time, it was good to have him with me. I always felt safer with Frost at my side.

“We’re not leaving just yet. The meeting is at two. For now, we plan.” I motioned toward the office, and he nodded. Then I turned to Ivy and Fawn. “I’m sorry for imposing on you, but I’d appreciate it if the two of you stayed together in the house with Coral when we go. Not because I think any of you incapable, but because it would be very like Huxley to attack from behind.”

It would be difficult to talk Coral into staying behind when I told her where we were going and why, but I was more than a little concerned that the entire plan with the gazebo was a smokescreen for Huxley sneaking in the back. The jewel room was in the estate, so maybe he wanted access to all those emeralds for some reason.

I didn’t know why, since it was exceptionally difficult to use more than one stone’s power at a time, but Huxley wasn’t a well man. Who knew what he was thinking?

Ivy’s lip curled in disgust, but Fawn nodded. “If Father comes here after you leave, he’ll be sorry he did. Me and Winnie will kick him out for good.”

I’d never seen the young woman so determined, and I almost hoped for Huxley’s sake that he didn’t have to face her. His daughter quite deservedly despised him, and it wouldn’t end well for him if she ever saw him again.

“I didn’t know babies could kick people out of houses,” Florian joked, tense as he was.

Fawn rolled her eyes. “Winnie’s not really a baby, silly. You know that. It’s just pretend.”

“I do,” he agreed. Then he surged forward and wrapped his arms around his sister. “Whatever happens, I’m never letting him near us again after today. We’ll leave Dawnchaser lands completely if we have to, but it’s over. We’re finished with him.”

She smiled up at him, patting him softly on the cheek. “It’ll be okay Flor. You’ll protect us, like always.”

Ivy met my eye behind them, lowering her voice to something quiet and dangerous, a tone I’d never before heard from her. “Give me a moment to go get my sword. If Huxley shows up here, he’ll wish he’d never been born.”

I did not envy Huxley Dawnchaser. Not that I ever had envied him, but in that moment, I thought he might be the most hated man in the whole of the Summerlands, and he was hated most of all by those who should be closest to him.