8. Cove

Chapter 8

Cove

Huxley Dawnchaser’s office was a monument to a man who did nothing.

It was all near-black wood and deep green leather, a wall of bookshelves that had books about Summertide laws—the laws that had governed the entire Summerlands for almost a millennium. The agreements between the four families that had created the Summerlands and held us in peace and relative prosperity for so many years.

I took a book off the shelf and opened it. The little cracking sound from the spine told me it hadn’t been opened in many years, if ever before.

The enormous walnut desk was imposing, with an antique green desk set including a blotter and inkwell, as though the man was still using a fountain pen. That might have charmed me, since I rather liked the old technology and had a collection of fountain pens myself, but when I looked in his desk drawer, there were only a few ballpoint pens. Not even good ones, but the kind that came twenty in a box at an office store.

All for show, like everything about Huxley Dawnchaser.

That, though, was when I realized that nothing happened in the office. There were no papers, not even blank ones, on top of the desk or in any of the drawers. No computer. Nothing to indicate anything had ever happened in the room. It was like a movie set or an office someone had just moved into and never yet worked inside.

The high-backed leather executive chair had been used extensively, as it was worn-in and soft, the arms slightly discolored from regular rubbing of jacket sleeves.

But what the hell had Huxley done in this place? Not read, certainly, since all the books were in the same pristine shape as the first one I’d looked at, not a single worn volume among them.

The vassal, Olivier, arrived with Frost, but before he could rush off, I leaned forward toward him. “What does Huxley do in this office?”

He blinked at me, looking around, perhaps thinking I meant to ask someone next to him rather than the man himself.

I motioned to the shelf. “The books are untouched. There’s no paperwork, no computer, no printer. Nothing. What does he do in here?”

Inexplicably nervous, he dropped his head until his eyes were focused on the thick green carpet. “He, um, holds meetings, sir. I do the accounts in my room, since I didn’t want to encroach on his space. I don’t think Lord Dawnchaser had any...any paperwork.”

Meetings.

“The household accounts or the family ones?”

“Family, sir. The housekeeper does the household accounts, arranges for all necessary home expenditures, and gives me her finished budget every month. I work with the family accountants to deal with the investments and holdings and report to Lord Dawnchaser occasionally.”

Occasionally.

Not even once a month, apparently, since he’d specified that interval with the housekeeper, and would clearly use it if it were correct.

Frost came over and sat in one of the smaller chairs that faced the desk. Then he squirmed, frowning. “This is...incredibly uncomfortable.”

I tapped the arm of the executive chair behind the desk. “And this is softer than some beds I’ve had the misfortune of sleeping in.”

Frost winced. “It’s like he’s a mustache-twirling children’s movie villain. Every single thing he ever did is monstrous. No one in the whole estate has had a single nice thing to say about him, even his children.”

Unconsciously, we both turned to look at Olivier, who shifted uncomfortably under the scrutiny. Poor man.

“We don’t expect you to speak out,” I assured him, holding up a hand. “You have no reason to confide in us or expect that this won’t end with you right back under his thumb, so I don’t expect you to do anything that would land you with his ire.”

He inclined his head. “I appreciate that, Lord Moonstriker. You understand this is...entirely unprecedented. No lord of the Summerlands has ever been executed for their behavior, however poor it might have been.”

“None of them ever murdered a man,” Frost answered automatically, so I assumed that to be true. Frost would never have said it otherwise. The bluntness of his tone made Olivier wince and draw in on himself, as though somehow the crime was his responsibility.

“At least, none of them ever did it quite so publicly,” I hedged Frost’s comment, trying to blunt the blow. “Leaving the entire country aware of what they’d done, with incontrovertible proof and witnesses. Adair Courtwright saw the murder with his own eyes.” That...actually hadn’t been terribly helpful of me, I realized as I finished saying it. Maybe I’d been spending too much time with Frost.

Frost cocked his head, then finally nodded after a moment. “There was a rumor to do with Verity Gloombringer two hundred years ago, and a lover who spurned her and wasn’t ever seen again. But it’s also possible he just ran off with one of her housemaids and didn’t want to come back. Certainly there were no witnesses to a crime, let alone ones of Lord Courtwright’s veracity.”

I waved the subject away. It wasn’t going to help Olivier to discuss Huxley’s crimes to death. “Regardless. Dawnchaser lands have been under the thumb of a monster for multiple generations. I don’t expect you to act as though you have expectations of improvement when you have no reason to trust in that. You may feel free at any point to tell me you aren’t comfortable disclosing information or aiding me. I do not promise I won’t find the information another way, but I have no intention of punishing you for any uncertainty you have.”

He bowed, which seemed excessive to me, since I’d only said I wasn’t going to be a complete fucking asshole. I was already imposing by being here at all and telling everyone I owned the place.

But Frost was right. Huxley was a monster, almost to a ridiculous degree.

He’d been an ass when I’d met him thirty years ago, but not quite as bad as now. At the time, his cousin Ivy—the only member of their family I’d had any soft feelings for before this visit—had said he’d changed for the worse. That he’d been a sweet kid and grown up to be an unfeeling ass, just like his father.

My mind drifted to Florian. All day he’d seemed so...sad. Vulnerable and weak, no doubt, to the mind of a Dawnchaser.

I tried to imagine him being more like his father and failed completely. He simply wasn’t that. But could he be? If he was treated poorly enough for long enough, could he become the same kind of ridiculous, over-the-top sort of monster his father was? It was what Ivy had implied had happened to Huxley, so why not?

But that wasn’t going to happen. I couldn’t fix the whole fucking Dawnchaser family—they were set in their ways, awful and backstabbing and hateful. But for Florian and Fawn? For them, I could try to make a difference. I could help.

Even if in the end, it meant getting them out of this cesspool of the worst traits humanity had to offer.

On the other hand, I wasn’t sure Delta would be much kinder to Fawn than her own father had been. Intelligence was the only thing my sister respected, and not just any intelligence. Only very specific kinds of intelligence. Scientific and mathematical, and perhaps in a few cases, business-related. But Fawn’s disability, even combined with her clear, sharp understanding of people? No, Delta would be awful to her.

So what the fuck could I offer to Fawn and Florian?

Yes, Moonstriker Tower was my home as much as it was my sister’s, but I couldn’t control her, and she was in charge as much as I was there.

Rain would love Fawn, certainly, as Frost did. I suspected Ember would as well, but as Huxley had proven, it only took one person with bad intentions to destroy everything.

While I didn’t think my sister had bad intentions, I also didn’t think she had good ones. Delta did what she thought was right, humanity and feelings be damned.

You could actually take over here , Iri suggested. The Dawnchasers are in a shambles. They need a real leader, and Huxley was clearly never that—just the biggest bully .

She wasn’t wrong. Huxley had never been a leader. He was just scary enough to his underlings that they hadn’t questioned him when he’d given orders.

“If you’d like to see the books, I can bring them,” Olivier said, interrupting my train of thought. “The courts largely handle themselves, and most Dawnchaser rulings are done on the city level. It’s a rather democratic system, mostly because the Dawnchaser lords have rarely been interested in the minutiae of ruling a people.”

He was biting his lip, nervous, hands clenched together.

In the chair, Frost was trying not to look amused at my flabbergasted, awkward reaction, his head down and hair falling forward to cover his expression. No doubt he didn’t want to make poor Olivier even more uncomfortable, even as he took amusement at my mild discomfort.

I shook my head. “I don’t need to see the books just now, thank you. Whenever you have time tomorrow, perhaps?”

“After breakfast,” Olivier offered instantly, and since he seemed to want to show me what he had, I nodded.

“That sounds excellent. Thank you for being so generous with your time. If there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to speak to either myself or Frost. I would also appreciate it if you had time this week to explain how the ruling tasks have been split and attributed.” He bowed again and backed out of the room, assuring me that he would make whatever time I required.

Backed out of the room.

Like I was a king, and he wasn’t allowed to turn his back to me.

“They all do that,” Frost whispered to me after he was gone. “They all step lightly and speak softly and back out of rooms and peek into new ones they’re about to enter. It reminds me of when I volunteered at the women’s shelter during college, and they hid me in the kitchen because I scared people just by existing and being tall.”

Poor Frost had been devastated by the notion that anyone would be frightened of him, but I also thought he’d learned an important lesson from the experience. Sometimes what controlled a situation wasn’t anything to do with your intentions, but the previous experiences of the other people in the room.

I nodded, leaning back in the chair and letting out a sigh. “Nearly everyone here is reacting like a victim of abuse. It surprised me, but only because I hadn’t thought about it before. Because I put all the Dawnchasers into the same single box, as not to be trusted.”

Frost pushed out of the hard chair and sat instead on the edge of the desk, frowning. “I know you don’t trust the Dawnchaser family. I know you...you argued with Mother when she decided to send me here.”

I blinked, staring at him. I had argued with Delta over her choice to send Frost here, but I hadn’t realized he knew about it. How did he know? The discussion had been in our private sitting area, which was soundproofed and locked.

Unless . . .

He ducked his head, his cheeks flushing. “She told me. She said you didn’t think I could handle it. At first I worried you didn’t respect me anymore, but then I realized that Mother...isn’t always right. You didn’t argue with her because you didn’t think I could handle this. You argued with her because you were worried about me. Because this place is...awful. It’s awful. And Fawn and Florian grew up like this.” He looked away, shivering and squeezing his eyes shut.

“Did she tell you that I was sent here for the same reason? Father sent Delta to Gloombringer Castle and me here. She was nineteen and I was fifteen.”

Frost swallowed hard, his eyes gone wide, and shook his head.

“It didn’t go well,” I added, but stopped myself there. Frost didn’t need to hear my pathetic childhood sob story, and as much as I could feel Iri buzzing against the back of my mind, insatiably curious as ever, I didn’t much want to talk to anyone about it.

I’d avoided even thinking about it for the better part of thirty years, and I didn’t want to start now.

I shook my head and stood. “Let’s have a drink and go to bed. It’s bound to be a long day tomorrow. If nothing else, we have to look for fucking Huxley Dawnchaser.”

Frost scrunched up his nose, standing once more and shaking his head. “I almost don’t want to find him. I’ll be glad when it’s over, but...I’ve spoken to the man for two minutes, seen him for that long in my entire life. But I...I think I hate him for how he’s treated Fawn and Florian.”

I wrapped an arm around his shoulders, squeezing him tight against me as we headed upstairs. “You’re a good man, Frost. Have I told you that recently? I’m very proud of how you’ve come up.”

He ducked his head. “Thank you, Uncle Cove. But caring about people isn’t?—”

“It is. It’s the most important thing. I know you know this leadership test nonsense is...well, it’s fucking nonsense, but I also think you’d be an excellent family leader. Knowing finances or how to command is all well and good, but the first step in being a decent leader is caring about the people you’re supposed to lead.”

He sighed and leaned against me. “Then it’s lucky for us we have you and Rain.”

I swallowed down my instinctive defense of Delta. Maybe it was time Delta defended herself.

Maybe...maybe I was done paying her back for help I hadn’t ever been sure I wanted.

I woke to a rapid knock on my bedroom door, light but insistent, like hummingbird wings. “Uncle Cove,” Frost’s voice followed, high and almost panicked. “Please wake up, Uncle Cove.”

I mumbled something that was intended to be a “come in” as I sat up, and the door opened so fast I almost missed it, Frost tumbling through and almost landing on his ass.

Lifting a brow at him as I ran a hand through my hair, trying to untangle it, I waited for him to explain what was going on. Frost wasn’t that easily worried, and something clearly had him frightened, so he’d get there if I gave him a moment to compose himself.

“Here,” he panted out, leaning on the door, a death grip on the knob, as though it was the only thing holding him up.

“Here?”

“All here.” He continued to look something very near terrified, breathing hard.

All . . .

Fuck. “The Dawnchaser cousins have come?”

He nodded, his gray eyes round.

Of course they had. They were going to offer the tantrums I’d expected from Florian, because all they owned was in jeopardy with a Moonstriker in charge of their family lands.

I dragged myself out of bed, rolling my shoulders and heading for the closet. I wasn’t going to face the petty, bitchy masses without proper preparation. Dawnchasers were the type to see that you’d left a single button undone and suggest this meant you were a failure as a human being. And then browbeat you about it until you broke down in tears and agreed.

Needless to say, that was not the day I planned to have.

I wore my starkest white suit, a jacket with tails that extended all the way to my knees, the embroidery pale gray and depicting a snow-covered landscape, snowflakes still in the air, each one a tiny diamond sewn into the jacket.

It was a ridiculous luxury, in my opinion, a jacket worth more than a family home, but it would make my point to the Dawnchasers quite clear. I was the one with the power here. The money. The influence. They were an inconvenience that I could and would deal with, if they forced me to.

Sure enough, as I reached the top of the grand staircase that led down to the foyer, I found that front room filled with a sea of pale gold hair, a nest of agitated snakes, pacing and snapping at their brethren while lying in wait for their actual prey: me.

As one, they turned to look at me.

Thirty years earlier, I’d have shit myself in terror. Today, I’d had just about enough of the Dawnchaser family to last me a lifetime.

“I don’t recall inviting the lot of you here.”

“This is our family home,” one young woman insisted, belligerent and annoyed with my very existence.

I pinned her with a gaze. “This estate belongs to Huxley Dawnchaser. Are any of you him?” When they went silent, I continued. “Are any of you his heir?”

“If Florian isn’t willing to fight for his birthright, one of us will.” This time, it was a man—a boy, really. He looked about Florian’s age, but with none of his composed consideration. He was what I’d expected of Florian.

I lifted a brow at him, coming to rest on a stair halfway down the staircase. “You want to duel me?”

He took an involuntary step back. After a moment, he stammered, “A-all of us will fight you for it.”

“Aah,” I said, nodding. “You’re too much of a coward, but you think the others will drag you along and give you part of their winnings when they manage to overwhelm me. Tell me, how much of the estate do you get for standing back and doing nothing? How much do the ones in the back get, if the first lout manages to cut me down?”

The crowd, united and ready to rush me only a moment before, was suddenly uneasy.

So I did something I almost never did and pulled on Haim, my first bonded stone, freezing them all in place for a moment as I continued down the stairs. He was an aquamarine like Iri, and the freezing both was and wasn’t an effect of stopping time. They were all conscious and aware, and time was passing, but they were no longer able to move their bodies.

Haim was one of the only stones I knew of who identified with male pronouns, and even early in our acquaintance he’d been...quiet. We shared a song, yes, but it was more like a hummed melody you could only just hear than a symphony, and he almost never spoke to me.

He was...well, I supposed that he was who I’d modeled my adult self on, since I hadn’t particularly wanted to be like my cold, distant father. I’d become quiet and serious, yes, but I’d also always wanted to be there for my loved ones when needed. Just like he’d been there for me after the Dawnchaser disaster. For months afterward, he’d taken it upon himself to freeze every single person who came into my rooms without forewarning me that they were coming. It had driven Delta batty, but eventually she’d learned to knock.

Now, it was time for the Dawnchasers to learn a lesson.

“Perhaps I’ll simply pause time and cut you all down, one by one. Leave a river of blood behind for Huxley when he returns, to show him what a disaster he’s made of his entire family.” I tapped one on the forehead, the only one who’d had the guts to take the first stair toward me. “First you. Then you.” I pointed to each of them in turn as they stood there, feet motionless, twisting in place and desperate to do something.

When I released Haim and let them move again, no less than five literally fell down where they’d been standing, including the one who’d suggested the whole family would fight me.

“You came here thinking Florian was weak for not killing me,” I told them, meeting the eye of the angry fellow on the stairs once more. “But you didn’t think this through. I’d be no easier a target than that fuckwit Huxley, and you lived under his thumb for years.”

“You can’t just take Dawnchaser lands,” the angry one spat.

“Little boy,” I started, as condescending as I could manage.

“Adger,” he interrupted me.

“Little boy,” I reiterated, then paused and stared at him for a moment before continuing. “I already have. If you’d like to fight me for them, I’d be happy to take your lands as well.”

That , Iri said in my head, positively giddy, was the most fun I’ve had in years. And I didn’t even have to do the work.

Haim gave a little hum, concerned for me, so I offered him a soothing mental hum in return.

It took every bit of self-control to hide my smile at both interactions as the Dawnchasers began to leave. The first few tried to slip out before being seen, both toward the front and back of the house, but it quickly turned into a flood of humanity aimed at the door, most of them muttering angrily. A few glared backward in my direction, but oddly enough, deprived of me as an easy target, they’d already started jostling each other, muttering insults and shooting glares at their own.

I heard cars start in the drive, so I assumed—hoped—that they were actually leaving, not just waiting till later to try again.

Once the room had emptied, I headed down to the dining room and made it to my seat before the exhaustion overwhelmed me, and I almost fell into the chair. Neither Frost nor Florian said a word, while Fawn, sweet Fawn, leaned forward. “Are you okay?”

I smiled at her. “I’m fine, thank you.”

And once I ate everything at the table and then took a nap, I definitely would be.