21. Adair

Chapter 21

Adair

What was I doing?

What the fuck was I thinking?

No good could come of this. At best, it would cause an irreparable schism between the Moonstriker and the Gloombringer. At worst? Millions of lives, I reminded myself.

Oh please, he can't be that grumpy , Rhodri muttered in my head. Letting millions of people die just because you go get laid? With that connection between the two of you, you have to do it. You barely even have a choice .

After the way Oberon had been in the last two days, it wouldn't have surprised me at all if he let millions die because he was being stubborn and intractable.

On the other hand— Have to? I asked Rhodri. You don't believe in determinism any more than I do. We always have a choice about our behavior .

She gave a little sound like a humph and pointed out my connection to Rain. Bright hot pink, and somehow, it seemed to have grown thicker in the last day. I hadn't even known that was possible. I'd never seen a bond like it .

I don't see the like very often , Rhodri told me. And sure, you get to decide what you do about it. But you don't get to decide how big it is. How important it is in your life. Rain Moonstriker is your Match. Just like Dane Sunrunner was Oberon's. It doesn't have to be a romance. It's just the most important relationship you'll ever have in your life, and how it goes determines a lot about how the rest of your life goes .

Dane Sunrunner and Oberon. That...well, given the thick, rope-like deep red connection I'd always wondered about, and the fact that the first emotion I'd ever seen Oberon have had been regarding Dane, it made sense.

Match? I asked, needing more information. You said something about that before, but it's not...we've never discussed it. Not in fifteen years together .

Match , she agreed, and I felt like it was one of those capital letter words she used sometimes to indicate importance. They're relatively rare. Most people don't ever have one, but you definitely do, and it's him. They always happen like this. Not always romance or sex or even love, but it's a relationship your whole life is going to turn around. No matter how self-important he is, Oberon couldn't keep you apart unless he killed one of you .

My Match.

I was still mulling that concept over when I turned down the west wing of the castle and found something unexpected there: the Dawnchaser cousin. Ivy, Huxley had called her.

She was wandering down the hall, looking at the doors, like she wanted something specific.

Like that , Rhodri told me. That's a disaster .

I was behind Ivy, so she hadn't caught sight of me yet, when she paused at a door, staring at it for a moment, then stepping up to it. She took a deep breath, like she was girding herself for what was to come, and set her hand on the knob.

It was a terrible idea, because the door led to Oberon's bedroom. I didn't think the thing would even open, after years of disuse—Oberon only entered it through the adjacent parlor, and I was almost certain he kept it locked.

Still, she started to turn the knob, and it seemed to move under her hand. What the hell?

Before I could leap forward, another door between us snapped open, and Titania lurched into the hallway.

We both turned to stare at her, and for a moment I was afraid she was so drunk she'd fall down. But no, she wasn't drunk. Well, not more than usual. She was clumsy because she was in a hurry.

She rushed over to the woman, grabbing her hands and staring into her eyes. If I hadn't known better, I'd have thought it a romantic rendezvous between them. But the woman made a sour face at Titania after a second, turning her head away without yanking her hands from Titania's grip.

"I don't have time for this."

"Ivy," Titania said, and it reminded me of my mother when she'd caught me doing something we both knew I shouldn't be. "Don't do this to yourself. Not again."

"What the hells do you know?" the older woman hissed through her teeth, glaring at Titania through red, puffy eyes. She'd been crying. Yes, she was almost certainly the one I'd heard with Huxley earlier. Even the voice was right, though it sounded different hissing at Titania than it had sounded begging her family head. She gave a weak tug on her hands. "Let go of me. I have to—I need?— "

"Sleep," Titania said. "You need to sleep. Things will be clearer in the morning."

She stepped in and wrapped an arm around the woman, and for some reason, it made Ivy crumple. She almost fell into Titania, and despite the fact that she was a head taller and more solid, less willowy than Titania, Titania didn't budge under the added weight. "It's a wonder he can even tie his shoelaces without breaking his neck, with me here."

"I know," Titania agreed. "But you can't change that, and it's not your fault."

"It is," Ivy denied. "I'm the one who did a damn fool thing like falling in love with a man who calls himself the Gloombringer."

Titania turned them toward the end of the hall, which incidentally turned them toward me. She wasn't the least bit surprised by my presence, just nodded to me as she led Ivy past. "Anyone who thinks that was a choice is the damned fool in this story. If we all got to choose who we loved and hated, the world would be an easier place to live."

Ivy didn't say anything, just turned and cried into Titania's hair as they headed toward the Dawnchaser quarters in the east wing.

A few moments later, when Titania came back, I was still standing there, in the same place. She looked at me, sighed, and nodded. "Fine, fine. Come on." She went back to her own door and went right in but motioned for me to follow. "It's always the ones who already know too much who seem to want to know more."

I'd never even seen inside her room before, not in all the years I'd lived in the castle. As Oberon's right hand, I'd spent all too much time in his room, since he treated me as a literal right hand, an extension of himself. Never had I imagined in my youth that I'd be exposed to so much unwanted cock.

Titania's room was...bizarre. It was the room of a teenage girl, all gauzy and pastel and covered with ruffles, and not at all how I thought of her. Was this her preference?

She collapsed onto the bed, looking up at me and grinning. "Awful, isn't it? I haven't changed a thing since I was fifteen. My father wanted it like this back then because he thought I was five instead of a teenager, and after he died, Oberon tightwad took over, and I had to answer for every penny I wanted to spend and every delivery that came to the castle."

"Why not move to a different room?" She blinked at me for a moment, just staring, as though she'd never even considered the option, so I went on. "The castle has dozens of bedrooms. Maybe a hundred. There must be one better than this."

"That's..." She let her head fall back against her pillow with a sigh. "I wish I'd gotten to know you better while we had you, Adair."

"I'm still here."

"Are you, though?" She rolled onto her side, like she was curling up for sleep, and swept a knowing look down my body, pausing on my grass-stained knees.

"I can't leave," I told her, the same desperate way I'd been telling myself for the last half hour. "Oberon would never forgive the Moonstriker. We need peace between the families."

Her gaze went distant as she considered. "Father hated them all," she whispered after a while. "He thought we were better than everyone, except the Moonstriker, and he hated them because he wanted to be them and couldn't. We pretend we're emotionless and staid, but we're not."

"You stink at pretending it, too."

At that, she giggled. "We do. But Oberon...he took Father's hate, not even knowing why it existed, and copied it. After he and Dane fell out, he wanted it. He wanted to be as emotionless as everyone said we were."

It explained a lot about the man and didn't make me feel any better about our chances of convincing him to see reason, let alone letting me go, if I decided I did want to leave.

I went and sat in the bedside chair, which looked almost like it had been positioned there to read a child bedtime stories or care for a sick one. The whole room was built around Titania being five, and she was...hells, I knew she was younger than Oberon by a lot, but I thought she was at least forty.

"And Ivy?"

She shuddered, and the feeling was oddly mimicked by Rhodri in my head.

He's her Match, but she's not his , Rhodri told me, and hells, I shivered too.

That sounded like a nightmare. It was bad enough to be suddenly attached to someone without warning or a way to handle it, but if I felt about Rain, and he didn't feel anything about me? I couldn't even imagine.

"She used to love him," she told me finally. "More than any of the others. She'd have left her money and her family and her status—she's Huxley's oldest first cousin. Technically, after Huxley's children, she should be heir to the Dawnchaser. But she fell in love with Oberon, and it ruined her life. "

I thought of the duel and Imri's lost eye and wondered how many lives had been ruined by loving Oberon.

"It sounds like the Gloombringer and Dawnchaser wronged each other in many ways," I said softly, half wanting to leave her alone, let her sleep. Not because I thought she was drunk, but because of the haunted look in her eye as she stared into the past.

She gave a wry twist of her lips. "You know about Puck, I suppose?"

I did know the story of her younger brother, killed in a duel with the previous Dawnchaser. Still, if she wanted to talk about it, I wasn't going to stop her. "A bit," I agreed, leaving the words open, inviting her to speak.

"He was such an ass. An accident baby, even younger than me. Both of us were born when Mother was older than I am now. We told him, me and Oberon, that one day the pranks were going to end badly, but he never listened."

"Back when Oberon cared about things."

She snorted. "Quite the tragic soap opera, my generation. The Dawnchaser killing Puck. Dane flirting with me, and Oberon retaliating by flirting with his lover, and then they almost killed each other. There was a duel, you know. Father forbade it, but they did it anyway. Dane gave Oberon a scar on his chest and left. Never came back. Never talked to any of us again. And Hux..."

Huh? She called Huxley Dawnchaser "Hux"?

She giggled at me, so I must have been making a face.

"He didn't used to be that starched suit with no one inside, you know. He was...he was something special when we were young. I guess one too many beatings can break anyone's spirit. His father was...well, we can say cruel things about the lot of them. Oberon, my father, Hux, everyone. But Cavan Dawnchaser was a monster, and he worked hard to reshape his son in that image." She sat up suddenly, staring at me. "Hux will be doing the same to Florian, you know. Probably beats that boy all the time. He doesn't stand a chance at coming out any different than the others."

And just like that, she answered the questions Caspian, Rain, and I had had about Florian Dawnchaser. He'd seemed a spoiled brat to me, but that fit, didn't it? It was the only way he could excise the anger his father took out on him.

"We'll have to see if we can't help him, then," I promised her, and she slumped back down, this time letting her eyes slip shut. I pretended not to see the tears the action squeezed out. "I'll do what I can for him."

"I hope you succeed better than I did, Adair."

"Maybe if both of us work on it, it'll help."

She blinked her bright blue eyes back open and stared at me. "As badly as I failed Hux, you'd trust me to have any say in it?"

I reached out and grabbed her hand, squeezing it. "Titania, you didn't fail Huxley Dawnchaser. You didn't have the power in that situation. His father did. You can't be held responsible for someone else's actions."

She squeezed my hand back, and I hoped she believed me. I hoped I did. More than that, though, I hoped I was right, and we could keep the new generation from failing the way the last had.