16. Rain

Chapter 16

Rain

The afternoon's discussion was canceled, apparently, because Huxley Dawnchaser had "important matters" to handle. I thought perhaps it was canceled because Huxley Dawnchaser was a spoiled brat who was angry with me, but I couldn't be pressed to care. Instead, I took another walk around the grounds of the castle and lamented that such lovely surroundings were wasted on someone like Oberon Gloombringer.

Ember had implied she might take drastic measures to make sure Caspian was empowered to make choices for the Sunrunner family, but all through my walk, I kept thinking Huxley Dawnchaser was the real problem. Maybe I was being hopelessly fixated and the truth was that they were all problems in their own ways, but I didn't think Huxley was going to willingly do anything that didn't serve him, and saving the world didn't do that.

Sure, he'd stay alive by saving the world, but somehow, strangely, I didn't think that was going to be enough for him. He had to both survive and get the upper hand in some way to make the thing worth his while.

I thought back to the scene between him and Titania, where he'd crushed her heart, and wished I had more context for it.

Sim obligingly ran the memory back and played it for me again, with more conversation, more information, more details than even the people present had noticed. It didn't help me, being able to smell the gardenias on the breeze in the Dawnchaser gardens from the vision, but...the name Puck. That meant something.

I whipped out my phone and did a quick search, which immediately turned up all the information I'd ever needed. Titania and Oberon had, in their youth, had a younger brother, Puck. He'd been a bit of a troublemaker, and somehow run afoul of the previous Lord Dawnchaser, Huxley's father Cavan, who had challenged him. They'd dueled. The Dawnchaser had killed him.

We were going to change it Hux, she'd begged him in the garden in my vision. End all this pointless death. We were going to fix the whole world.

She'd wanted to end the dueling system. Suddenly, I liked her even more. Anyone who wanted to end dueling was a person to be admired in my books, especially since she'd once had a reputation as quite a good duelist. She hadn't wanted rid of it because she couldn't do it, but because she recognized that it was a force of only destruction in the Summerlands.

No good came of dueling. It was a way for angry—mostly rich—people to turn their grievances into violence and get away with it. If I were in power, I'd abolish the practice altogether. My mother had done her best to end the practice in Moonstriker lands, but she couldn't control the other families and what they did or didn't allow.

Meanwhile, Huxley Dawnchaser was using his own personal hired duelist, so there was no question about his opinion on the subject.

Like everything else in his life, dueling was something to be used to his advantage.

I arrived back at the front of the castle to find a shiny black car in the drive and a young man standing at the door. The Gloombringer housekeeper had just answered the door, and she was looking at him in confusion.

It was understandable, since he didn't look like the kind of person she'd be expecting. The car looked expensive, yes, but it wasn't a family lord's limousine, carrying an entourage and luggage for weeks. It wasn't even the big white tank-like SUV Tempest, Char, and I had arrived in. It was a rich teenager's car, sleek and black and looking like it was primed to be wrapped around a tree because it was going two-hundred miles an hour.

The young man...well, I didn't like to make snap judgments, but he seemed a little the same. Night-black hair that had seen some effort, artfully ripped black jeans, a leather jacket with silver studs on the lapels...he looked like the teenage rebel in a movie rather than who I suspected he was.

"Caspian Sunrunner?" I asked, walking up beside them, hoping to make both their days a little easier.

He turned toward me, pulling off a set of mirrored sunglasses and looking at me, his eyes a warm sort of reddish purple I'd never seen on a person before. He smiled bright, nodding. "You must be Ember's brother. She described you perfectly."

I smiled and gave him a bow. "She's my favorite sister for a reason, after all. She told me you'd be here, so I've been looking forward to meeting you."

His laughter was bright and boisterous, filling the space around us like music.

When I turned back to the housekeeper, she seemed relieved, smiling. "Oh, of course, the Sunrunner"—she glanced back at the car, where there was clearly no entourage waiting—"delegation?"

Caspian waved dismissively. "No need for a delegation. Easier to travel light when you travel alone. Where should I put the car?"

She directed him to the garage, but offered to have someone else park it for him, which he seemed hesitant about. Apparently he had some attachment to the car, which I could hardly blame him for. It was a beautiful object and clearly well cared for. The make was decades out of date, but there wasn't a nick in the paint job or a dent in the fender.

He smiled boyishly at her, ducking his head. "It was my mother's, you know."

I watched her melt and knew from that second she'd do anything she could to help him. Ember, on the other hand, wasn't quite as easily swayed, so I assumed it wasn't just charisma, bad boyish good looks, and general charm he had going for him.

He pulled his car into the garage and rejoined me on the steps, so we headed into the foyer together, the housekeeper leaving us so she could rush up and check over "your rooms" one last time to make sure they were up to her standards. She promised she'd send someone down to bring him up as soon as they were prepared.

His ready smile continued throughout, and he sincerely thanked her for all her effort on his behalf, so I started to form a picture in my mind.

Caspian Sunrunner wasn't a man who took anyone or anything for granted.

Sim fed me images of a beautiful woman with onyx hair like Caspian's slowly wasting away. A purple-eyed man so lost at her death that nothing penetrated his haze of misery but booze and drugs and an endless parade of strangers through his bedroom—certainly not a preteen son who'd been an inconvenience at the best of times. A matronly woman who glared with those same red-purple eyes, and whom I knew despised me—despised Caspian—with every ounce of her soul.

"How are things going so far?" Caspian asked as he rejoined me after charming the hells out of the housekeeper.

I made a face and tried not to vomit up all the frustration and annoyance of Oberon and Huxley and their intractability in the face of impending disaster.

Caspian laughed again and something about the sound made everything feel lighter. If he weren't a Sunrunner, I'd have suspected his stone was a sapphire, and he was able to change the emotions of people around him. Sunrunners were very nearly all the same, though—shapeshifters with tigereyes. They'd called Caspian's grandfather the great wolf, and some people called his father that now. Unless they were trying to be insulting, like Oberon, calling the older man "the ancient wolf."

I rather thought it sounded impressive anyway.

I also knew damned well that the animosity between Oberon and Caspian's family wasn't limited to grandfathers and other long-dead people. No, there were vague stories about Oberon and one of Dane Sunrunner's lovers and possible love triangles that had caused a dramatic falling out. Whether there had been any such triangle, sometimes rumors themselves could damage relationships.

It wasn't unheard of for people to hold their grandparents' grudges, but I didn't think this was that.

"They're going to give you trouble for not being your father," I finally answered Caspian's question. "They were quite offended that Uncle Cove didn't come in person."

He frowned at me. "You're joking. This is the first time they've even sent letters to each other in decades. Did they think all the anger was just going to evaporate? Ha ha, all better now, no more glaring and cursing each other's names?"

I sighed in relief, because finally. Finally, someone truly understood.

I suspected that Adair did as well, but he also had to look after Gloombringer interests first and foremost. As a major house scion, Caspian also had the ability to comment on the families in a way Adair couldn't without getting in trouble with us, self-important blowhards that most of us were.

"I'm honestly not sure what he expected. Applause, certainly, for being the one to start the process. I'm not even sure why he did it, because he doesn't seem all that interested in peace." What I suspected, in fact, was that Adair had pressed him into starting the process, with dire warnings of what might happen, and what people would remember him for if it did.

Caspian rolled his eyes and let his head roll back on his shoulders. "Sounds like my father. He got the letter and couldn't even be bothered to specifically order someone else to come. Said I could go if I wanted, but we weren't at war, and that was more than ‘that fucking gloom lord' should be allowed to ask of him."

I winced, nodding. "Well, at least you got the go-ahead, even if it wasn't exactly what you were hoping for."

I turned back toward the garden, taking him for a walk among the exceptionally manicured hedges so that we could speak freely, and explained about Oberon's anger at Uncle Cove's perceived snub and his misogyny, which made Caspian roll his eyes.

"Olds, man. My dad is like that too. This whole idea that women are weak is like...did he not have to watch the birth video when he was in school? I'd fucking die if I had to push a watermelon sized screaming kid out through an opening the size of a couple damn fingers."

I blinked, because I had no idea what video he was talking about, but also...well, as he was talking about giving birth, it was apparent enough what he meant, and he wasn't wrong. It wasn't an experience I envied women at all. I had never been forced to watch a birth video in school, but it seemed like it had made an impression on Caspian.

When he looked at me, I shrugged. "My mother is a head of family. Moonstrikers don't question how strong women are unless they want to piss her off, and no one wants to do that."

"Fair enough," he agreed easily. "I've heard Delta Moonstriker is a badass. Dad used to say it was too bad the only other decent family in the Summerlands was the only one we didn't share a border with. That you guys were a little, uh, bloodless for his taste, but generally decent people."

He ducked his head like he was a little embarrassed about it, so I smiled at him. "It's not the first time I've been told my family was too intellectual for other people's tastes. Bloodless isn't even close to the meanest way I've heard it put." I turned back toward the path and shrugged. "I can't say it bothers me. I like the way we do things. Common sense first. Logic. Then instinct. It works for us. As long as what you do works as well for you, I don't see a problem."

"Yeah," he agreed after a moment, turning a million watt smile on me, looking handsome and perfect as that movie star he'd seemed when he was standing on the steps of Gloombringer Castle all by himself. "I like that. You're pretty okay, Rain Moonstriker. Just like Ember said you were, so I shouldn't be surprised. She's pretty great too."

"She is." I glanced over at him, gauging his reaction when I told him, "Mother sent her to Sunrunner lands because she thinks Ember has a lot in common with your family."

"Stupid, you mean? That's what Ember said."

I groaned and swiped a hand down my face. "Ember is not stupid. And no, I mean...she acts on instinct first rather than logic. It doesn't mean she's not intelligent."

"So your mom wanted to use us as an object lesson in how not to be?" He turned to look at me, and his expression was open, serious but not offended.

I smiled. "Mother? Yes. But I think it's going to backfire on her. I think the way Ember is now is good. Some people work well on instinct, and Ember's instincts are usually the best. I worry this is going to make her second-guess herself, if she takes the lesson from it that Mother wants her to."

"Might not be the worst idea," he hedged. "Things are...they're not great, back home. Maybe more logic and less instinct would serve us well."

Poor guy. Things had to be pretty awful for him to suggest that about his own family. Wasn't everyone supposed to assume the way they'd been taught was best? I certainly thought logic was the most sensible way out of any problem.

Instead of saying anything like that, though, I smiled. "Maybe what we all really need to do is learn about each other again. I think we all probably have something to offer the others. The Summerlands were a happier place when the families got along, I'm sure of it."

"That sounds nice, but I gotta say, Rain, I think your sister's right about one thing." I lifted a brow in question, so he went on. "You're an incurable optimist if you actually think there's a chance of that happening."