7. Florian

Chapter 7

Florian

It had to be a trick.

There was no other possibility. No one was ever nice to Fawn unless they had ulterior motives. Well, no one but me, Aunt Ivy, and Olivier. The staff was mostly nice to her too, but they were being paid to be nice. A few of the other cousins were pleasant enough, if not outright kind, but I always assumed they wanted something. Probably something from me, since as Father liked to say, the whole family knew she was one of my many weaknesses.

But Cove Moonstriker? What could his game possibly be? He didn’t need anything from me, and he certainly didn’t need anything from Fawn.

Maybe he was just hoping that if he was kind, we would behave and not throw a fit that the Moonstriker family was taking our lands.

The truth was, I didn’t give a single fuck what happened to the estate. The house I was born in, that I’d lived my entire life in...if he wanted, Cove could bring in a wrecking ball and knock it down to the concrete foundations with everything still inside it, and I didn’t think it would matter to me, other than that it would be inconvenient that I would no longer have clothes to wear.

I wasn’t so sure it was going to work, the Moonstriker taking all our lands, but I also wasn’t convinced that his intentions were so simple. The Gloombringer and Sunrunner families would be none too pleased about the Moonstriker’s encroachment, suddenly controlling half the Summerlands. It wouldn’t be allowed to stand, and he had to know that already. He was far more politically savvy than me, and I thought it wouldn’t work, so he must know it too.

No, I didn’t doubt that Cove Moonstriker could take our lands. I only doubted he’d be allowed to keep them. The peace between the four families had lasted hundreds of years because of the relative equality of each family and each portion of the land or wealth. If the Moonstriker suddenly held half the Summerlands, the others would have to try to stop them, even if the rest weren’t as prone to purposeless fighting as my own family was.

They all had such small, centralized families. Two Gloombringers in the whole world (until my father had killed one.) A few dozen Sunrunners. The same number of Moonstrikers.

There were hundreds of Dawnchaser cousins, and our immediate families set us against each other as though inheritance was an enormous battle royale and only one person should survive, stabbing as many others as possible along the way. I suspected it had something to do with the strange way that once a person became the Dawnchaser, no one managed to have more than one heir. If that heir happened to meet an untimely end, then anyone else in the family might be able to take power, if they were lucky enough.

We were wealthier than the other families overall, but that was simply because there were so many of us. It would take the fortunes of a few dozen Dawnchaser cousins to add up to the wealth of a single Gloombringer, and since none of them were ever willing to work together, it made no difference that all combined, we had more money and resources.

We would never work together.

“You should eat,” Fawn told me, her tone admonishing and maternal, reminding me of where I was and what I was supposed to be doing. “You need to keep up your strength.”

My strength, such as it was, wasn’t going to fail after a single ignored meal, but...well, I’d forgotten breakfast as well, hadn’t I? How many meals had I bothered with after I’d gotten back from Gloombringer lands?

My arm felt as though it weighed a hundred pounds as I lifted a spoonful of my soup.

I glanced up at the Moonstrikers, still trying to figure out what the hell was happening. What they were planning.

Frost, as ever, looked hopeful and earnest.

Cove...he was like one of the alabaster statues in the garden, perfect and blank. He was stunningly beautiful, certainly. Like an image of what the perfect man should look like, all square jaw and straight nose, not a single blemish or scar anywhere to be seen. His thick white hair was held back at the base of his neck in a tail that went all the way down his back. He wore the usual Moonstriker garb, one of those long coats with the high collars, beautifully embroidered with stunning scenes all the way around their bodies, like they were tapestries and not human beings. The one he wore was abstract, covered with stark flowing lines, bringing to mind a frozen gale of wind.

Unlike Rain or Frost, who’d worn greens and blues and such, his was the stark colors of that glacier photo he kept bringing to mind. White and pale gray and the lightest teal-blue, and even with the tomato-based soup for a starter that the kitchen had served, he was still pristine.

I’d have ended up with a red splash down the front of my coat after the first bite. Hells, I avoided looking down at the front of my own Wedgwood blue coat, convinced I’d find soup smeared over myself like I was a toddler who still ate with his pudgy little fingers.

What did the Moonstriker want from us? From me? Surely, that was it. He wanted something from me in exchange for how kind he was being to Fawn. For our continued existence there in the manor.

Technically, I owned another place Fawn and I could go. The single thing I’d inherited from my mother: a huge, sprawling estate on the other side of Dawnchaser lands.

The problem was that it was only that—land. An enormous mass of empty land. There had been a house on it once, nearly a hundred years ago. I had a picture of my great-grandparents and their children in front of it, and in the photo, it looked like it had once been a lovely home but was on the verge of falling down. It had done just that in one of the great storms that blew up from the ocean in the late summer, and my great-grandmother and two of their children had died in the disaster.

My mother had been from one of the poorer branches of the family. They had land, the family name, and a reputation for beauty, but that was about all.

Everyone agreed that my mother had been lucky to catch Father’s eye, and it had only been because he’d decided she was the most beautiful woman in their generation.

It was kind of weird to me, maybe even gross, to marry a distant cousin who looked just like you. They’d had the same gold hair and green eyes, if in different shades, but I didn’t understand the appeal. Maybe I just hated my whole family so much that I couldn’t imagine wanting to marry one of them.

Either way, I thought, staring at the perfect lines of Cove Moonstriker’s face as he took a sip from his wineglass—a rich red that he also hadn’t spilled on his pale clothing—not a single member of the Dawnchaser family could hope to hold a candle to the Moonstrikers.

Funny, since Father had always called them “mutts” and complained about how they ruined their bloodlines by having children with nameless non-aristocratic strangers. Frost, with his dark skin and gray eyes, was one of the most beautiful men I’d ever met, and while the family resemblance was clear between he and Cove, what with the same gray eyes and long white hair, they were also clearly different. Not like my family at all, who seemed to me as poorly struck copies of the same exact coin. Same coloring and same features across the board, with only superficial differences.

Boring. Bland. Fucking evil, almost all of them.

But that was something different again.

It was the reason Cove was sitting there across from Fawn—though gods only knew why he hadn’t seated himself at the end of the table—because Dawnchasers were monsters who weren’t to be trusted, and my father was the worst of the lot.

I blinked, then let my eyes fall closed, cursing myself for being an ignorant child for a moment, then sighing. That was why he was here. What he wanted. Of course. Even as a wanted man, a criminal and a murderer, my father continued to eclipse me. “I can’t help you.”

Cove didn’t say a word. He didn’t make a face, didn’t seem angry, didn’t yell or demand. He just quirked a single eyebrow as he took another spoonful of soup.

Part of me, the fucking insane part, wanted to reach all the way across the table and tip the bowl into his lap. To muss up his pristine perfection somehow. Unbidden, a picture of him with his hair disarrayed, lips kiss-swollen and open, eyes dark with want, came to mind.

That was...a dangerous thought. Even if he hadn’t come to kill my father, I’d learned early that lust was something likely to end badly for at least one party, and that party was always going to be me. Wanting put you in a position of weakness, and I didn’t need any more weaknesses than I already had.

“I don’t know where Father is. You...you said you’re here to kill him, so I assume you want to know where he is. But he and his assassin abandoned me at Gloombringer Castle, and I haven’t heard from him since.” I sat forward in my chair, finally looking him right in the eye, needing him to understand that I was telling the truth.

If I could have handed Father over to him, I would have done it.

I didn’t...I didn’t want to kill him myself. At least, I didn’t think I did.

No, that wasn’t quite right. I didn’t think I could kill Father, either physically or emotionally. But if I’d known what hole he was hiding in, I’d have told Cove Moonstriker where to find him in a second, without a single regret.

“And the assassin?”

For a moment I just stared at the Moonstriker, confused. “The assassin?”

“You said Huxley and his assassin abandoned you, and you haven’t heard from Huxley. It implies you’ve perhaps heard from the assassin.” Again, Cove didn’t seem especially emotional. He didn’t seem anything, least of all angry in the tense, cobra-like way Father always was. No, he was the picture of calm, in the implacable way of an enormous, unmoving sheet of ice.

I blinked, then again, and finally got my shit together and shook my head. “No. I mean, yes, you’re right that it does imply that, but not because I intended to imply that. Because I worded things poorly. I haven’t heard from either of them.”

It was his turn to stare at me. He didn’t gape like an especially unintelligent fish—like I would have. No, he seemed to peer right into my soul. Probably wondering if I was lying, which was reasonable of him.

Oddly, it was Frost who broke the silence. “Do you think he’s still with him? Do you”—he swallowed hard—“do you think he’s here on the estate?”

Was Frost frightened of the assassin? It was reasonable. Father had used the man to kill no less than three of my cousins who’d annoyed him, and it had been...astounding might be the right word. Incredible.

The absolute casual perfection of Kit Emrys was breathtaking on every level, even when he was in the process of murdering a person on my father’s orders. He moved like water flowed, and I wasn’t ashamed at all to say that I’d had more than one fantastic sex dream about him.

I wouldn’t have said I actually wanted him. He was too fucking scary for that and a killer employed by my father to boot, but I’d have had to be entirely unobservant not to see the appeal of the man. And despite how Father found me a constant disappointment, no one as unobservant as that would have survived my childhood and my cousins.

Cove considered, turning toward the door of the dining room. “He’s still with Huxley, wherever he is. He’ll see this through to the end, no matter what happens.”

“Do you think he’ll really attack us?” Frost looked almost sick at the idea, and that was when I realized something here wasn’t what I thought. He wasn’t frightened of Kit Emrys in the way everyone else was. He didn’t want to fight him not because he was afraid, but because of something else.

Cove turned back to Frost, then, like it cost him nothing, reached a hand over and took his, squeezing it. My breath caught, and it was all I could see, hands intertwined in the small act of comfort. “He would never hurt you, Frost.”

Frost, far from pleased, narrowed his eyes. “You think he’ll hurt you instead.”

Cove considered for a moment, then he shrugged. “Perhaps. I wouldn’t blame him. Particularly not with the poisoned tongue of a Dawnchaser whispering in his ear.”

“Of Huxley Dawnchaser,” Frost corrected, frowning at his uncle.

“Oh no,” Fawn said, through a mouthful of dinner roll, shaking her head vehemently. “They’re all awful, not just him.” Like she didn’t understand that she was part of the “them” she was talking about.

Cove gave her a tiny smile, and for a moment, I was jealous of my own sister. First reassuring Frost, now smiling at Fawn. Somehow, as always, I was the odd man out. But also, more than I ever had with anyone else, I wanted that reassurance. That smile.

Maybe because unlike with most of the people I’d known in my life, Cove’s expressions and actions seemed to fucking mean something. His whole being wasn’t a lie.

“There are reasons Kit Emrys might be angry with me, if Huxley knows certain things,” Cove finally said, inclining his head back to Frost. “And I’ve no doubt Huxley would use my problems to get his way.”

“He’d use anything to get his way,” I agreed. “He’d throw me in front of a train if he thought it’d buy him a minute to escape. Literally.” I’d learned to add that little addendum to the end of things for Frost since I’d returned to the estate and gotten to know him. He liked to know whether a thing was a metaphor or not, and this definitely was not.

Frost was clearly repulsed, leaning back from the table with a horrified expression. “You’re his son .”

I nodded and looked to my sister, then back to Frost. “And Fawn is his daughter.”

Fawn, who was at that very moment in the dining room for the first time in almost ten years. She looked between the lot of us, blissfully unaware of the subtleties of the conversation, smiling when one of the servers put down another basket of dinner rolls. She snatched one up and dunked it straight into her soup, leaving a splash of red on the cream tablecloth that Father would have had an aneurysm over.

After a moment, Frost sighed, long and deep, and then nodded. “If he comes with Huxley, I’ll speak to him.”

“No,” Cove denied. “If he comes, I’ll speak to him. I owe him that and more, and it’s long overdue. If he wants to fight me after that, it’s probably no less than I’ve earned.”

I didn’t know what Cove Moonstriker could possibly owe my father’s assassin, but his white hair stuck in my mind suddenly. I’d thought it like the gray hair so many of my cousins had adopted these last few years—some kind of strange trend he was following. But what they were saying meant something entirely different. His white hair was natural, not some odd style choice, and Cove thought perhaps Kit would be angry with him for something Father had told him.

My father’s assassin, Kit Emrys, was a Moonstriker.

“Father doesn’t know you’re related,” I blurted out.

Fawn turned and looked at me, squinting. “Of course they’re related. He calls him Uncle Cove. Even Father would understand that.”

I ducked my head, hiding a smile, and across the table, Frost was doing the same.

“Your brother means that a man who works for your father is related to me,” Cove said, his voice soft, soothing. Again, he smiled at her. “He goes by Kit Emrys.”

“Oh, I know Kit,” she grinned, drawing her arms around herself in a hug and biting her lip. “He tells me stories about the immortal fox. He tricked a mean old rich man into giving all his gold to a cobbler’s son so he could marry the princess. So I told him he should trick Father into giving all his gold to a cobbler’s son too. Only I didn’t know what a cobbler was. I thought maybe it was dessert, but Kit said they’re people who make shoes.”

The...the assassin had told my sister stories? That made no sense at all. Except that Cove and Frost were saying he was a Moonstriker, making him more like them than like any part of my family. I didn’t have a moment’s doubt that either Cove or Frost would sit with my sister and tell her stories.

“He looks just like you,” she added to Cove, and she was right. All three of them had the same white hair and gray eyes, but Cove and Kit...well, the resemblance was uncanny, now that I was looking for it. Same jaw. Same nose. Same expressionless facade. It was just that Kit was usually barely holding back amusement, and Cove was...well, he was better at holding back whatever it was he felt. Assuming he had feelings.

“Moonstriker hair,” Frost lamented, tugging on a strand of his that had fallen loose. “It started turning white the minute I turned twenty, and four years later, it was all over.”

Cove snorted at him, his whole face transforming into something else, something friendly and casual and amused, as he knocked his shoulder into his nephew’s. “Lucky bastard. You got almost a whole extra decade with a real hair color. Mine was already completely white by the time I was fifteen.”

Frost laughed and leaned against his uncle. Just like that, again, touching each other. Neither of them even seemed to think about it, let alone hesitate.

A moment later, though, they both paused and looked at us, an awkward silence descending upon the table. It took me a moment to realize the awkwardness wasn’t coming from them. It was Fawn and me. We were staring at them in astonishment and envy at the casual friendliness. The touching. She let herself fall against me, leaning her head on my shoulder, looking up at me. “It can stay like this, right? They can stay, and I don’t have to eat in my room, and Father won’t come back?”

And that was the moment my heart broke. I clapped a hand over my mouth and tried to blink back sudden tears.

I’d failed her so completely over the years that it had taken Father’s murder of Oberon Gloombringer to change things for us. “Father won’t come back,” I agreed when I got myself under control. “I can’t speak for Cove and Frost and what they’ll do in the future, but...but things are never going back to how they were.”

Not if I had to take my sister and leave. I could sell our mother’s land and move us to...to...hells, I didn’t know where we’d be welcome, but I realized for the first time, that it wouldn’t hurt my feelings at all if we had to leave Dawnchaser lands and never return. If we had to do that, we would. Somewhere, somehow, Fawn and I would be happy.