35. Florian
Chapter 35
Florian
There was no ceremony for my father’s severing. At least, not in the way my family liked to handle such things.
Titania Gloombringer—or no, Titania Duskbringer—had arrived from Amalion City in the morning, having flown in with half a dozen members of the Duskbringer police force to take charge of her brother’s murderer. One of them was the detective who’d spent hours interviewing me for any information about my father’s plans.
I smiled at them all when Cove and I made our way downstairs, heading for breakfast on the terrace, to find them waiting in the foyer.
“I told you if I knew where he was, I would tell you,” I said to the man.
He bowed his head to me. “We’re quite grateful, Lord Dawnchaser. We won’t soon forget your help in this.”
I shrugged off the notion that I was doing anything special or important. I was only doing what was right—what I had promised I would do, for myself and everyone else. My father was a criminal, and the Duskbringer authorities both had the best claim for wanting to bring him to trial and for being able to keep him in custody. I doubted there was a single person in their lands who didn’t think he was the worst kind of monster.
I didn’t disagree.
“He’ll be severed this morning before you take him,” I informed them. “But you’re welcome to stay for breakfast while we wait for the severer to arrive.”
They seemed surprised by the notion, and I wasn’t sure whether the shock was for my father’s impending severing or for being invited to join us at the breakfast table, but they agreed to eat.
It was nice to see the impressive spread the kitchen put out being enjoyed by enough people to eat that much food.
The usual tray of pastries was laid out, and I stared at it a moment. Strawberry. What I’d for some reason chosen the day this whole situation had started. Not my usual choice. Not what I thought I wanted. Not what I was used to.
This time, I took two.
Returning to the table, I handed one to Cove, who gave me his perfect bright smile, warm and...everything I hadn’t realized my life was missing.
“So,” Titania said, leaning back in the chair she’d taken and taking a bite out of the lemon tart she’d chosen. “I’m guessing there’s a story about what’s going on here.”
The twinkle in her eye was...well, frankly, it was new. When I’d been at Gloombringer Castle only a month or so earlier, she’d seemed defeated and miserable, constantly slumped over, eyes glazed, and a drink in her hand. This morning, she’d turned down the mimosas the staff were offering around and asked for plain orange juice instead. And more than that, she seemed...happy? No, maybe not that. But...hopeful.
Cove smiled at her, leaning in and bumping his shoulder against mine. “I’m sure there are many stories about what’s going on here. But if you’re asking, I’m going to be stepping down as the Moonstriker. It’s time for Rain to take over anyway, and I’ve found that I have...other places to be.”
“Only one other place to be,” Fawn corrected, giving Titania a knowing look. “But it’s okay, because we want him to stay. He’s practically my brother now.”
Titania blinked in surprise, but Cove only smiled at her.
Fawn, meanwhile, leaped from her seat when Kit arrived, introducing him to the Duskbringer as “her nephew,” a title he’d taken on with an enormous smile, calling her Auntie Fawn without a drop of hesitation.
I liked him.
But also, I really hoped he wasn’t going to call me dad.
That was weird, right?
Titania, despite clearly recognizing him from his time at my father’s side, smiled gamely and let my sister introduce him. She didn’t even raise a brow when Cove explained Kit’s relationship to those present.
No, instead, she scrunched up her nose. “Fucking Dawnchasers,” she muttered, then glanced up at Fawn and me. “Sorry, present company excluded, of course.”
“No,” Fawn disagreed. “We’re Dawnchasers too. But it’s okay. We’re going to make them be better now. Aren’t we, Flor?”
“We are,” I agreed. “Someday when people say Dawnchaser, they’re not going to have an urge to cringe.”
For a moment, Titania glanced back and forth between Fawn and me, considering. “So...who’s the Dawnchaser now?”
“I am,” said the too familiar, chilling tone of my father.
My heart skipped a beat, and for just a second, I feared he’d escaped his captivity, managed to procure a new stone, and was out for blood. But when I spun to face him, he was wearing resonance-suppression cuffs, the guards leading him out onto the terrace.
One of them winced. “Sorry, Lord Dawnchaser, but the severer arrived, and we thought we’d make quick work of this, so the Gloomies—er, Duskbringers—could take him away.”
Titania gave a tinkling laugh, almost like a bell. The guard ducked slightly, blushing bright red, and she shook her head at him. “It’s okay. We’re a pretty gloomy lot. It’s allowed.” She looked past him, to my father, and her smile fell away.
The look that took over her face was...well, frankly, it looked like she was sadder about the situation than I was. But she was close to my father’s age. Maybe she’d known him when, as Aunt Ivy swore had been the case, he’d been less of a monster.
I couldn’t imagine it now, especially with the disgusted sneer on his face. He’d never been anything but a monster to me or Fawn, and now, he never could be anything but that.
The severer followed him out of the house, looking as somber as ever.
I inclined my head to him. “I’m sorry to impose on you again so soon. It isn’t my intention to have to do this often.”
He gave me a sad smile. “Not at all, Lord Dawnchaser. This is only the second time in my life I’ve been called upon to do my job when it seemed as necessary to me as it was to my lord. I only hope the Dawnchaser can put this chapter behind them now, with such a hopeful future laid out before us.”
Hopeful.
It was the word that kept popping up. For the first time in my memory, people, including me, had hope that the future would be better than the past.
Cove came up next to me, sliding our hands together. On my other side, Titania, the Duskbringer.
My father bared his teeth at her. “I suppose you’re proud of this.”
“No, Hux,” she told him, her husky voice even sadder than before. “I wish more than anything you hadn’t made this necessary. I hated Oberon more than maybe anyone else in the world, but no one had the right to kill him. Least of all you.”
“If you hated him so much, what difference does it make that he’s dead?” His eyes flared with defiance, drawing himself up to his full height, slightly taller than me or Titania. “I was going to do it. Once I was in charge, there wouldn’t have been any need for dueling anymore. I’d have outlawed it, just as we spoke of when we were children.”
She shook her head, lowering it. She almost looked as though she was attending a funeral, with the air of grief that surrounded her in that moment. “No, Hux. Not like that. I wanted to outlaw dueling because it’s wrong. Because violence doesn’t decide arguments. It only escalates them. You only want to outlaw it because you want to be the one in charge of all the violence.”
“Outlaw dueling?” I asked, interested. My father had never, not once in the years of my life, suggested he thought that was a good idea.
She turned to look at me, nodding. “We used to be friends, your father and me. We agreed that dueling should be outlawed. Or I thought we did. Until my little brother pissed off your grandfather.”
“You were being a child,” he snarled. “That little shit got what he deserved for disrespecting a family lord.”
She shook her head, and her mountain of shining red curls caught in the breeze. “Puck was a kid. Barely nineteen. What he deserved was patience. Frankly, it’s something we should all have a little more of.”
As ever, his anger turned like a summer storm, and suddenly the sun came out. “Doesn’t that include me? It was a simple mistake, after all. I assumed that because no one loved Oberon, no one would give a damn what happened to him.”
My mouth dropped open, stunned at the sheer nerve of him, suggesting he should get away with murder. Worse, for a fraction of a second, I worried that others would agree. It had been the pattern of my life up till now. Everyone had found my father charming and complained that I was being melodramatic whenever I suggested that he was anything other than an excellent father and family lord.
The security guards looked unimpressed, though, glancing at each other as though to ask “is this asshole for real?” Titania’s expression didn’t change at all, nor did the severer’s, and Cove’s arms tightened around me, his lips drawn into an angry frown.
Titania was the one who finally broke the silence. “It’s time to grow up and deal with real life instead of a future that isn’t coming, Hux.”
It was an odd thing to say, but I supposed it fit the circumstances well enough. He wasn’t going to be able to weasel his way out of this mess, however hard he tried.
Behind us, Fawn turned, mouth still full of food, and yelled, “Breakfast is getting cold. Can he leave now so we can all eat?”
The severer’s lips twitched, and he bowed his head in her direction. “I wouldn’t want to displease my lady.” He looked to me. “Unless there’s something else?”
I shook my head and motioned to my father.
A moment later, it was done. The Duskbringer police took custody of him even as he slumped forward in his bonds, and they led him out of the manor for the last time. He hadn’t even seemed as bothered as Adger after his own severing, which felt wrong somehow. He’d been bonded to Soz. Soz! The heart of the Dawnchaser family.
But he doesn’t have a heart , the voice I now knew to be Soz whispered in my mind. So why would he miss me?
As he’d done to me, to Fawn, and to everyone else so many times, I turned my back on my father.
“I’m starving,” I told Cove. I lifted my voice. “I hope no one stole my tart.” At the table, Fawn giggled and quickly shoved something into her mouth.
And that was it.
It was over.