33. Florian

Chapter 33

Florian

My father rushed at Kit Emrys—at Cove’s son —and I could almost feel the world trying to break apart around me. Cove would never forgive himself if Kit was hurt—or worse, if he was killed. Fawn would be heartbroken too, because she thought Kit a friend.

Fuck, I barely knew him, but I knew for a fact that Kit deserved better than that.

Once again, my father was trying to destroy lives.

This time, it was because there was nothing else left to him. He wasn’t trying to gain or consolidate power. He was beaten. It was over.

Soz had abandoned him, as had Kit. Hells, even I had left his side, after standing with him my whole life. Everyone was finished with my father, except for tiny people like Courtney, who still thought they might be able to use him for their own petty wants.

He’d overplayed his hand, thinking his cards were more impressive than they were. Or maybe he’d been thinking he could bluff his way out of the mess he’d started when he had murdered Oberon Gloombringer.

Now, he was simply trying to do damage on his way out, like a toddler throwing a tantrum. Trying to take Cove’s son from him.

But as I’d often regretted over the years, Navia could only help me, not Kit. I thought perhaps Soz would help me now, but I’d made a promise, and I would not try to break it mere moments after I’d made it. I’d said no more bad luck, and I’d damned well meant it.

I didn’t even want to ask them to give someone bad luck again.

So grasping onto only Navia, I dropped my own sword at my feet and leaped forward, into my father’s path. Maybe I would be able to stop him, hold him still for long enough to let someone else disarm him...or maybe he would stab me in the gut.

Either way, this was over.

He wasn’t killing Cove, or Kit, or anyone else I cared about. His reign as Dawnchaser was over. The misery he had inflicted upon everyone around him for so many years, finished.

No one would ever have to put up with his hateful self again, except maybe prison guards.

He didn’t even hesitate when I slid between him and Kit, just drove forward, teeth bared in a snarl of rage, pushing his sword toward me with his whole body.

Behind me, Cove called my name.

Cove was going to be so angry with me if I got myself killed. I wanted to be a Moonstriker in that moment. To have a bonded aquamarine. To stop time for long enough to tell him that I was sorry. That I loved him. That I knew this was a terrible idea, and I knew I could have kept my sword and killed my father, but also, I couldn’t. It wasn’t who I was, and wasn’t the man I wanted to be.

I didn’t want to live the rest of my life knowing I was the kind of man who murdered his own father, even if my father deserved no better.

I did deserve better.

For the first time in my relationship with my father, this wasn’t about him or what he wanted. It was about me and the man I chose to be. I would rather be stabbed than kill someone.

I braced myself, ready to die by my own foolish choices, and time seemed to slow. Was it truly slowing by Cove’s hand? Perhaps he would save me yet.

But in that extended moment, I watched my father take a step, shoving all his weight into it, lunging forward to slam his sword into me...but we were in the Dawnchaser gardens.

Maybe my father had forgotten.

Maybe he was just too used to getting his own way, having nothing go wrong for him.

But it had rained the night before, as it so often did. And the earth between the paving stones was soft and muddy. When he shoved all his weight into that single stride, the mud pushed down and back beneath his foot, and instead of flying forward into me, he fell face first into the paving stones and mud.

The garden was silent for a moment, even the sound of the birds having gone quiet, before time seemed to start moving forward again.

A sword was sheathed behind me, and a moment later arms came around me, wrenching me back against Cove’s trembling body. “What were you thinking? You could have died!”

Even his voice was shaking. I’d never heard so much emotion in Cove’s voice before, not even in the bedroom when he’d been inside me. I wanted to turn and face him, but I also didn’t want to take my eyes off my father where he lay prone in the mud.

Next to me, Frost was staring at him, open-mouthed, clearly at least as stunned as I was.

Kit, though, had no such issue.

He turned and marched over to Father, casually kneeing his scabbard out of the way as he stepped over father’s back and knelt down, straddling his lower back. He reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out a couple of plain plastic zip ties and proceeded to wrench father’s arms behind his back and secure his hands there.

“I know you came to kill him,” he said to Cove, casual as you please while practically hogtying a literal family lord, “but since it seems his luck has entirely abandoned him, that feels like an unnecessary step to me. You could do a severing to be sure he’s got no stone left, but if the intelligence I’ve gathered is right—and it usually is—he destroyed his own childhood stone. So without Soz, he’s got nothing.”

I jerked back against Cove, staring at Kit in horror. “He what?”

My father made a face, pulling his head out of the dirt, and started to speak, but then gagged, because somehow he’d ended up with a mouthful of mud when he’d fallen.

Kit shrugged, patting my father on the back as though reassuring a nervous calf he’d roped. “I guess it defied him and refused to do something he wanted, and by then he was bonded to Soz, so he didn’t give a fuck about it anymore.”

It explained so much. Everything, in fact. It explained why Soz had given in to his demands for so long, if he’d...he had murdered a stone. His own bonded stone.

I shivered and turned to face Cove, burying my face in his coat. He didn’t hesitate, just wrapped his arms around me, holding me close against him.

“Frost, could you truss up Courtney as Kit has done with Huxley? I don’t know what stone he has, but?—”

“It won’t help him get free,” I mumbled into Cove’s chest. When he looked down at me in question, clearly not having understood, or at least wanting more information, I finally pulled away. “His luck is about finding information he needs.”

“Ah,” Cove said, nodding. “That would explain why he also knew the circumstances of Kit’s birth. Or at least he knew about what his mother did.” When I looked up at him in question, he rolled his eyes. “He made a snide comment about Moonstrikers being sensitive about what constitutes a crime.”

Frost scowled, taking the zip ties Kit handed him and striding back toward Courtney. “If he doesn’t think rape is a crime, I’m not sure much can be done for his sense of morality.”

Given the way Courtney winced as Frost pulled the ties tight around his wrists, I thought maybe Frost had cut off his circulation a little. He’d survive a while like that. He’d showed up with a steak knife and tried to stab me, after all. He could live with some pins and needles when we handed him over to...to...

“Shit.”

Everyone turned to look at me, and it was uncanny, having three pairs of the same gray eyes turned on me at once. The same curious, interested expression. The same strong, Moonstriker jawline.

Cove was the one who spoke up. “Something amiss, love?”

“The local authorities won’t handle them. Well, they might handle Courtney. They won’t take Father. Or if they did, they wouldn’t keep him. They think he’s in charge of them.”

“I am,” Father snarled. “I pay them their?—”

“Taxes pay for the authorities,” I interjected. “The people who live in Dawnchaser lands pay them, and those people deserve to be safe, even from us. From you .”

To say nothing of stones. I stared at him, trying to imagine what kind of monster destroyed a stone. His own bonded stone. Navia gave a little shiver against my neck, and that reminded me of something rather important.

I pulled out of Cove’s arms and walked over to where Kit was still sitting atop my father. It was almost funny, thinking of it that way, but I tried to dismiss it. This was a serious moment, and it wouldn’t do to laugh at Kit riding my father like he was a bucking bronco, in an entirely unsexy way.

“Can you stand him up, please?” I asked.

Kit chuckled at me, shaking his head, though I wasn’t sure what I’d done that was funny. “Sure thing.” He pushed lightly to his feet, then tugged my father up next to him, directing his next words to my father. “You see how he is? So polite, even when he’s asking for something irrelevant. You could have learned a thing or two from your son. Frankly, I wonder how he grew up so well with you as an example.”

My father’s only response was to try to spit the remaining mud in his mouth at me. I neatly sidestepped it and smiled at Kit. “Thank you, that’s very kind. And the answer is Fawn. She and I raised each other, really. He didn’t help much.”

“Now that I believe,” Kit answered. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a kinder person than your sister.”

Cove came up behind me and Frost rounded the other side, shoving Courtney along in front of himself. Courtney had tied his fate to Father’s, so now I supposed they would go to prison together. Just not a prison in Dawnchaser lands. I wasn’t going to have my father set himself up as some sort of king of the jailhouse, or however that worked.

Instead of worrying about that just yet, I started patting my father down. His neck. His breast pockets. His inside pockets. His jacket pockets. His wrists.

Everyone watched as I systematically worked my way down, checking every pocket on the man.

Nothing.

My father’s superior smirk made me want to slap him, and the feeling was exacerbated when he asked, innocent and sweet as the strawberries I’d eaten for breakfast, “Looking for something?”

Behind him, Kit cocked his head. I looked up to meet his eye, but he was staring off into space. Or rather, his eyes were darting back and forth at nothing in the middle distance. After a moment, he perked up. “Left leg. Hem of the pants.”

Father tried to twist around, snarling at him, but I immediately dropped one knee onto the paving stone in front of me, grabbing his left leg. Sure enough, there was a little zipped pocket sewn into the hem there. I opened it, and out tumbled a beautiful square cut emerald almost the size of a cherry.

I held them up, and they glittered in the light.

Sun , came the whispered, ragged voice from before, this time almost in a relieved sigh. It’s been so long. I’ve only seen the inside of the closet for so many years .

Yet another thing to add onto the list of my father’s crimes.

“Well that’s not going to be a problem in the future,” I told Soz, aloud so that everyone could hear it. “I won’t be keeping you hidden away from the sun. Just like I won’t ask you to give anyone bad luck.”

“Only this one time?” Father demanded. “That’s how I did it too, you know. Lied about how things would change once I was in charge, and then once I was, I did whatever the hells I wanted.”

I stepped back into Cove’s arms, and he obligingly wrapped them around me, almost like it was a reflex for him to hold me. I smiled at my father, shaking my head. “No. I mean, yes, I’m sure you did that. But that’s not how we’re going to be anymore. Soz deserves better. Dawnchaser deserves better. I deserve better.” I looked up at Cove, hoping he could understand. “That’s why I couldn’t...I couldn’t ask Soz to hurt him, and it’s not who I am either. I couldn’t stab him. Only good luck from now on.”

Cove cupped my face in one hand and smiled. “Only good luck,” he agreed. “If I were inclined to be angry with you for being the person you are, I never would have fallen in love with you. I may not like you putting yourself in danger, but I understand what you did. Just...next time, let me handle it instead of jumping into the line of fire?”

I cocked my head, frowning, but finally nodded. It made sense. If I wasn’t willing to do actual violence and Cove was, then letting him handle violent situations was for the best. After all, next time my father wouldn’t be the perpetrator and Cove’s son was unlikely to be the intended victim.

“So,” Kit said, casual and smiling as he started prodding my father in the back to force him to move in the general direction of the estate house. “Should I be calling you dad now?”

When I turned to look at him, he wasn’t looking at Cove, but at me. Behind me, Cove was vibrating with repressed laughter. Frost didn’t even hold it in, just laughed out loud as he pressed Courtney into step beside Father. “Oh, I want to see that. He’s what, five years younger than you? I want to see Mother’s face when you do it.”

“Seven years,” Kit corrected, grinning at us all. “We should definitely let my biological mother know Father replaced her with a better model Dawnchaser, too.”

At that, finally, Cove laughed aloud. He didn’t stop for a long time, and part of me hoped this—less my murderous father and cousin—was how the rest of our lives would be.