36. Cove

Chapter 36

Cove

Things were calm for almost a week as Florian settled into family leadership.

Olivier’s gentle, guiding hand had actually been excellent for Dawnchaser lands, and while some things needed changing, a lot of the systems in place were just fine as they were.

Back in the newly renamed Duskbringer lands, they had put Huxley on trial. Even more surprising, they televised it.

Adair returned to Amalion City to testify against him, looking pale and tragic on camera, but with the same aura of unimpeachable integrity about him that had impressed me when we had met. When they captured his arrival at the courthouse on film, he was holding onto Rain’s hand so tight both their knuckles were white. They looked perfect together.

Both, I noted, were already wearing wedding bands.

“Delta must be beside herself,” Kit muttered, sitting splayed across the couch arm next to me, insouciant and sassy as ever. “Imagine Rain having the balls to care about something other than what she wants.”

He glanced at me from the corner of his eye. Frost was less subtle and turned to look straight at me.

They were both waiting for my reaction. I’d spent close to thirty years defending Delta’s behavior to both of them, as well as Ember and Rain, so their expectations were justified.

I squeezed Florian against my side, then shrugged. “She was certainly up in arms when he told her he was marrying Adair. I told him I think Adair is a great match for him. He’s...grounded, in a way Rain isn’t.”

“You . . . told him that in front of her?” Frost asked.

Ahh, Frost. Had to have all the facts, all the details. That insatiable need to know every single thing.

“I did,” I agreed. “Frankly, I should have said more. I’d rather not repeat the nasty things she said to me when I told her I would be staying here with Florian.”

“What did you say to that?” Kit asked, enraptured by the notion of someone telling Delta off.

I shook my head. “Not me. I didn’t manage a single word. I was still trying to process what she’d said to me when Iri cut the line and told her off.”

Frost and Kit both stared at me, stunned.

Damn right I did , Iri agreed with me. She’s still pouting about it too. I told her she can talk to me again when she decides to act like a grownup. Like her and your dad made you do when you were fifteen .

Florian, the only other person in the room bound to a family stone, nodded. “Sounds right to me. I think Soz will get to that kind of confidence soon enough, once they get comfortable with the fact that they’re never going to have to bond another person like Father or Grandfather. Not that Fawn and I are trying to give them a reason to be angry with us.”

“It’s hard for a stone,” I said, leaning against him. “They have less control over their placement than we do. They can’t generally do what Verelle did and just leave a situation they find untenable.”

Florian let himself melt into me. “Still, we’re having a lot of conversations about how it’s better to be alone than in an abusive relationship. I think...I think we’ve both learned it.”

Kit snorted, but before anyone could assume he was mocking, he looked down at Florian, caressing the hilt of his dueling sword. “If anyone tries to abuse any of you, ever again, Dad is going to hand them their own asses. And he’ll have lots of help.”

Before I had a chance to agree, or to just evaporate into the air from the simple joy of being called Dad, there was a commotion in the hallway.

A familiar brassy voice yelled, “Uncle Cove?”

Instantly, Frost and Kit were on their feet. By the time Florian and I had disentangled and gotten to our feet, I turned to find Ember standing in the doorway, her usually perfect self in complete disarray. Her hair floated around her head with an ethereal quality, almost like she was underwater, her clothing was rumpled and...was that a stain on the front of her shirt?

When she threw herself at me, I didn’t hesitate to wrap my arms around her.

A young man came into the doorway after her, followed by the housekeeper, who was whispering apologies to Florian, but, she said, it had seemed like an emergency. She’d thought we wouldn’t want to wait.

“It is an emergency,” Ember agreed, pulling away and looking up at me, swallowing repeatedly. “We got your message about scheduling the family heads for a meeting and tried to make sure Cas’s dad got it, because we knew how important it was.”

Cas, then, must have been Caspian Sunrunner, heir to the Sunrunner family. When I glanced up again, the handsome young man in the doorway gave me a nervous wave. “The, um, the problem is that Dad seems to have disappeared. And Nausa is always with him.”

Well fuck.