3. Florian

Chapter 3

Florian

“How come they have thorns?” Fawn asked, annoyed she couldn’t simply reach in and grab the roses she wanted, like they were daisies or some other soft-stemmed flower.

By the grace of some excellent luck, I’d arrived in time to keep her from taking hold of the first one and ending up with a bloody hand, but only just barely. After clipping that rose, I’d let her touch one of the thorns, lightly, to see just how sharp and dangerous they were. I wasn’t surprised this wasn’t good enough for her—she was always the kind of person who asked for the impossible. She wanted roses to stop having thorns. She didn’t just want to escape Father’s anger, she wanted him to stop being angry entirely, as ridiculous an idea as it was.

Father had never been anything but angry in his entire life, so far as I could tell.

“To protect themselves,” I explained. “To keep people like us from cutting them, so they’ll be safe.”

“Safe?”

Oh boy. This was going to be a tap dance. Or...I could be honest with her. I took a deep breath and prepared myself for tears. “When we cut the roses, they’ll eventually die. So the roses don’t want to be cut.”

Her green eyes went wide and watery, glancing from me to the bush and back again, repeatedly. “We’re...we’re hurting them?”

“They’re roses, sweet. They don’t feel pain.” At least, I didn’t think they did. “But in a way, yes, we’re...it’s like cutting off their hair and using it to decorate our rooms.”

It wasn’t quite right, but it was the only way I could make her understand without making her think that clipping the roses was something actually monstrous. Then she’d spend the rest of the afternoon crying, and no one wanted that.

She stood there for a long time, looking from me to the rose in my hand to the bush itself. “Maybe,” she finally said, her words slow and considered, “we should put a rosebush in my room. Then we don’t have to cut the roses.”

It was quintessential Fawn. She wanted what she wanted, yes, but she never wanted anyone or anything to suffer for it.

“We can do that if you want,” I agreed readily. I really wanted her away from the thorns. “I’ll talk to the gardener this afternoon and see what she can do.”

Maybe the gardener could find a variety that didn’t have thorns for her room.

She nodded, biting her lip. “Should we stop now? I don’t want—” her lower lip wobbled, and she glanced again at the bush.

She wanted the roses, but she didn’t want to hurt the bush.

“Why don’t we clip just a few? There are a lot of roses here. I think the gardener sometimes cuts some of them because it’s good for the bush. Because it’s hard for a rosebush to grow so many flowers at once.”

I wasn’t entirely certain of my logic, but I’d have said just about anything to make Fawn happy.

“Just a few,” she parroted, nodding seriously. “But I don’t want to hurt it. Or you.”

“I’ll be very careful.”

When I’d clipped about a dozen flowers of her choosing from the enormous bush, Fawn decided that was enough and gave a decisive nod—then tried to reach for them. “Thorns, remember?” I asked, tugging them out of her reach.

She scrunched up her nose. “Still?”

“Forever and ever. They don’t go away just because the rose is cut. Or in a vase in your room. They’ll keep being there as long as the rose exists.”

The crunch of gravel on the footpath behind us got both our attention. My stomach dropped in fear, mind instantly turning to Father, and I spun, placing myself between whoever it was and Fawn, trying to shield her from view.

But it was only Olivier, father’s right hand man, who had been abandoned along with us in the wake of the disaster Father had wrought. He paused ten feet away, inclining his head. “Master and Mistress Dawnchaser. We have...a guest.”

A guest? That didn’t make any sense. No one had visited since I’d gotten back from Gloombringer lands. Strangers had never come in my lifetime, and family didn’t want to be associated with Father’s actions any longer.

And why was Olivier telling me and not...Father, who wasn’t home.

For a moment I just stood there, blinking like a baby chick who’d just escaped the shell. “I should greet them,” I finally said, almost as much question as decision. Olivier would tell me if I was wrong, or if it was someone I shouldn’t speak to. Or worse, if there was danger. He’d always taken care of us, as much as anyone could.

Now he hesitated before finally saying, in a tone that seemed like the words pained him, “I don’t believe we have another choice.”

That boded exceptionally well.

I turned to Fawn, biting my lip. “Will you stay here? You and Winnie can have some tea, and I’ll be back as soon as I can. But no touching the roses.”

She gave a giggle, clutching the doll to her chest. “Silly Flor, babies can’t have tea. Only milk.”

I pressed a hand to my chest and lowered my head. “Of course. I’m not very good with babies, I’m afraid. I might feed them only cakes and tea.”

She giggled again, but agreeably went to sit at the table nearby, rocking the doll and singing softly. I turned back to Olivier, and he nodded to me.

He was getting older, the closest thing I’d ever had to a friend. A father? Someone who took care of me both physically and emotionally and also cared if I lived or died. His hair, once ink-black, was almost entirely gray these days, and he was thinner than he’d been when I was a child. He’d always been taller and broader than Father, seeming so much more substantial than any other man I knew. Dawnchasers tended to be on the slender side, with narrow shoulders and only rarely did we have much muscle, or even fat.

Olivier’s shoulders were still broad and sturdy, and I didn’t know what I’d do without him there to support me and help me take care of Fawn. I’d have probably returned home after what happened at Gloombringer Castle and collapsed into bed, never to rise again. I still had no idea how to handle it.

My father was a murderer. Oberon Gloombringer was dead, Father a wanted man. At least, I assumed he was a wanted man. I’d spent the last few weeks with my head in the sand as much as possible.

“I’m sorry,” Olivier said, head hanging as we headed around the building. “I wish I could help, but...”

That was unusual. Oh, not him wanting to protect me. He’d always been incredible about that. He’d never done it where Father could see or might find out—we’d learned that lesson early when he’d told some of my bullying cousins off, and in return, Father had punished me for not handling it myself. But his expressing the notion that he wished he could help but couldn’t? Most things in our household, particularly those regarding people’s softer feelings, had always gone unsaid in the past.

“Is it the authorities? From...from Gloombringer lands?” I had no doubt the local ones wouldn’t so much as try to tell Father killing people was bad and he should keep it to a minimum. They were entirely under Father’s thumb, and if he’d killed Oberon Gloombringer, then they would decide that the man had deserved it.

I couldn’t even say they were entirely wrong. I’d met Gloombringer a scant handful of times, and he’d seemed like a bombastic ass. But to kill him? Insanity. The police in Gloombringer lands, as respectful as they’d been of my station, had been clear that they considered my father a cold-blooded murderer.

I’d known for years that my father was as cold-blooded as any lizard.

Murder was new, but also, somehow unsurprising.

Olivier walked next to me around the side of the house, his head down, jaw set, like he was preparing for battle. It was a little odd, since he didn’t even carry a dueling sword, so I wasn’t sure what he expected to be able to do if there was danger. Sure, he was bigger than me, but just being six feet tall with wide shoulders didn’t mean he was a fighter.

I didn’t have my sword either, because it felt awkward to wear it around. I wasn’t that tall, and the damn thing was so long that if I ducked, the tip of the scabbard hit the floor.

My cousins had made fun of it when I was young, poor little incompetent Florian who couldn’t carry a sword. Then I’d challenged and beaten Adger, the oldest and worst of them, with ease. I’d left a tiny cut on his cheek as a reminder, and unsurprisingly, he hated me even more ever since.

My lovely Navia, the stone whose song I heard, made me almost as much dancer as duelist. So if there was a single good thing I could say about myself, it was that I was quite graceful. While my cousins still hated and envied me, at least they didn’t usually push me too hard anymore. Not now that they knew I could humiliate them in a duel.

My father, unsurprisingly, had found it hilarious. It was good, he’d told me afterward, that my cousins feared me. It was necessary to keep a firm hold on the Dawnchaser family, to have them understand that you could kill them on a whim.

I should have known then that killing someone on a whim wasn’t just a distant concept for him.

We came around to the front of the house, where a glimmering cloud-white SUV sat, with...I almost swallowed my tongue.

I’d thought Frost Moonstriker beautiful when he’d arrived at our home a few weeks earlier. Tall and dark, with that stark white Moonstriker hair and a loose-limbed grace that said he was surprisingly comfortable inside his six-and-a-half-foot frame.

The man he was standing in the drive talking to, though? He was...breathtaking.

Like one of those epic panoramic photos of a glacier at the south pole, it felt like he couldn’t possibly fit inside a frame, even if the “frame” in this case was the entire drive of the Dawnchaser Estate. He was as pale as the overcast sky in that same picture, almost inhumanly so, like a ghost. His hair was as white as Frost’s, and he was the same towering height.

But there was something in his expression that was...I’d never seen anything like it before.

Utter perfect calm.

Not a single micro expression to give away what he was thinking. No laugh lines or crow’s feet on him, even though I knew who this had to be, and I thought he was at least forty. Maybe even Father’s age. But with the deferential way Frost was speaking to him as we approached, and the way he stood like an icy pillar in the drive, this could only be Cove Moonstriker.

The Moonstriker.

This, then, was why Father had always despised the Moonstriker, as a family and an idea. This man was what he’d aspired to be—this icy, smooth perfection—and never quite been able to reach. And Father? He did not deal well with wanting something he couldn’t have.

Father was jealous of this icy composure and . . . sheer fucking perfection.

Hells, I was too, even if I wanted to touch it more than be it. Maybe lick it, again the same as I felt about those photos of the perfect blue-white glaciers.

As we approached, he turned just his eyes to take us in. It left me feeling like I was on my back foot. Like it was I approaching him in his home, and not the other way around.

He scanned me from head to toe, then back up. Then Olivier, who was not only older, but half a head taller than me and considerably broader. He also held himself with a confidence I’d never been able to mimic. With no small measure of disappointment, I realized that between the two of us, Olivier was doubtless the one anyone would think was in charge.

It was fine. Olivier was Father’s right hand, after all. He ran the house and did a lot of the family’s administration tasks. Given Father’s disdain for real work, he probably did half the work of running Dawnchaser lands altogether. I was sure he knew more about our finances than Father did.

But even as it terrified me, I also wanted to be the sole focus of that ice-gray gaze.

And then, inexplicably, Cove Moonstriker turned back to me.

“Florian Dawnchaser.”

Of course. He knew who I was. Still, anyone who knew as much as he must had to know that my father wouldn’t have put me in charge of a fucking carnival ride, let alone the whole family, so looking to me for anything was a mistake.

As much as I wanted to freeze in place, terrified of the enormous glacier of a man who stood before me, I didn’t have that luxury. Ridiculous as the very idea was, I had to represent my family. I inclined my head, ever so slightly. He hadn’t done the same at all, which was disrespectful as fuck, but given the circumstances, I couldn’t expect anything else. My father was a murderer. I was completely untrained. Why would anyone respect my family? “Cove Moonstriker.”

At that, he nodded. Like perhaps he’d been uncertain that I would know who he was.

“Uncle Cove—” Frost started, but he paused when the man held up a hand.

“Huxley Dawnchaser has murdered Oberon Gloombringer,” Cove Moonstriker announced.

Like I wasn’t fucking aware at this point. Like there was anyone in the goddamned world who didn’t know.

But this wasn’t just for me. He wasn’t informing. This was a proclamation. A wave of icy wind blew down my spine, and I braced myself where I stood, waiting for the gale that was no doubt next, coming to blow me away.

“The remaining family heads have discussed this crime, and we declare Dawnchaser lands forfeit.”

Forfeit.

I blinked, staring at him, unable to even open my mouth, let alone deny the words. How could I deny them? What did I know? I didn’t have a say in what the families did. My father was still ostensibly head of the Dawnchaser family. He was the only one who could tell someone like Cove Moonstriker to fuck off, and looking at the statuesque frozen god of a man, I doubted Father could manage it, even with that assassin of his at his side.

Finally, the Moonstriker moved from his spot, turning and taking two enormous strides to stand in front of me. “Do you understand?”

“Uncle Cove,” Frost said, tone slightly disapproving. “Florian isn’t?—”

“Your family has gone too far this time. I’m here to end this.”

That was when a shriek cut the air, and a frothy-white lace-covered missile came hurtling past me, barreling right into Cove Moonstriker. “You leave Florian alone! You can’t hurt my brother, I won’t let you!”

Fawn.

My breath caught in my throat, and it was all I could do not to leap forward and snatch her away from him. Still, my hands curled into impotent claws, trying to keep from reacting. That only would have made Father angrier, my intercession, and this? This was the kind of thing that would get either of us backhanded to the ground and then calmly disinvited to meals until we could figure out how to control ourselves. The odd occasion I couldn’t keep myself from reacting, trying to interject myself, Fawn’s punishments were always worse. Once, he’d nearly broken her wrist, dragging her all the way upstairs and throwing her bodily into her room, locking her inside.

She landed with all her admittedly tiny weight against Cove Moonstriker’s chest, and for the first time, a real expression crossed his chiseled features: surprise. It was still subtle, just the slightest widening of his eyes, one brow cocked the tiniest bit. She lifted her balled fists, pounding them into the solid wall of muscle that was the head of the Moonstriker family. One of the four most important people in the world. Someone who didn’t have half as much reason to love her as Father did, and Father would unquestionably have already slapped her so hard her ears would ring for hours.

Stiffly, slowly, I stepped forward, watching him, waiting for him to reach up and strike. I wrapped my arms around Fawn’s waist and tugged her away from him, even as she continued trying to beat her fists on his chest. Tears were streaming down her face as she finally gave up, turning to me, her cheeks and eyes red, and threw her arms around me. “I won’t let him hurt you, Flor. I won’t. No more hurting. No more. Winnie said no more.”

“Shh,” I whispered. “It’s okay, kitten. I need you to go with Olivier to your room right now, okay? You can—you can go back to the garden first, and he’ll get your flowers.”

“No,” she insisted, turning stubborn. “I won’t let him.”

I turned to look at Olivier, who was clearly as horrified and nervous as I was. I didn’t know why I’d expected anything else. None of us were used to having any say in situations like this, and now? Well, I’d never imagined I would wish Father were around to take charge, but there we were.

It was Cove Moonstriker who broke the tense silence. “I am not here to injure your brother, young lady.” He turned his gaze from the back of her head to meet my eye. “I’m here to kill your father.”