25. Adair

Chapter 25

Adair

I was lying on my bed, an ice pack on my forehead, daydreaming of Moonstriker Tower.

I'd seen pictures, of course. It was one of the most photographed buildings in the world. It and Sunrunner Palace were considered unrivaled architectural marvels. In my fantasies, it was cool and calm, soothing as Rain's presence.

Dinner had been...an ordeal. Aubrey was a wonderful person. Kind and thoughtful, a pleasant conversationalist. And sitting with him for an hour had given me the worst pounding headache I'd had in years.

Just as bad, Oberon had apparently known what the issue was, and it had irritated him more and more as I'd pressed my fingers to my temples with the pain. I couldn't imagine being jealous of my own son's grand future, but then, I couldn't truly imagine having a son at all.

Maybe that was the problem. Oberon couldn't emotionally connect with the idea of having a child. How could he, when he'd never known, and he was already an emotional incompetent ?

So he'd spent the whole evening getting shorter and pissier, while Aubrey and Titania had a lovely conversation, neither of them noticing my pain. Not that I expected them to. No, I did my best to hide it. I'd managed to take four of my painkillers over the course of the day, whenever I'd excused myself to the bathroom, swallowing them dry to avoid notice.

They just weren't helping that much.

So now, my head was pounding, and all I could do was lie motionless, praying for...for what? Death, maybe. Change. Anything but more of the same thing I'd spent the last week living with.

The last fifteen years.

My whole damned lifetime.

I needed a change. It was done, and I couldn't ever go back to how it had been last week, before the summit. Then, at least, I hadn't truly known I had options.

I'd never much considered the offers of employment I'd gotten, because they'd been distant, imagined things. An offer of employment that came with my own island felt like one of those emails from a Sunrunner Prince who swore he needed help claiming an inheritance and needed my bank account information to do it. I'd felt like if I accepted them, they would dry up as quickly as they'd come, leaving me with no job at all. Maybe worse, I could have ended up working for Huxley Dawnchaser, the man who got angry at people for nothing.

But now? Now, there truly were options.

Even if there were not, I couldn't survive Aubrey for the rest of my life. He was wonderful, and I absolutely could not be around him. If anything, today's headache was worse than yesterday's .

The knock on my bedroom door was sudden and violent, and it literally brought tears to my eyes. I whimpered and for a moment, forgot that door knocking had a purpose other than torture.

A soft voice followed. "Adair?"

Rain.

It was Rain at my door. Surely he wasn't the sort to smack a door so hard. No, it was the pain in my head making it worse than it was.

Had I left it unlocked?

I prayed I had, so I wouldn't be required to get up. After a second, or maybe forever, I managed a whispered, "Come in."

The door rattled, and for a second I feared I hadn't, in fact, left it unlocked, and I'd have to stand up and walk across the room. But then blissfully cool fingers were on my temples, running through my hair.

"Oh, Adair, this is too much. Maybe you shouldn't come to tomorrow's meeting. This is going to kill you."

I whimpered and leaned into him, refusing to open my eyes. Well, refusing to open my eyes until another voice invaded my space.

"Maybe, um, maybe I should go."

It was a woman, but not Titania. Not one of the castle servants, but I knew it.

Ivy Dawnchaser. It had to be.

I peeled the ice pack off my forehead and blinked my eyes open, trying not to wince at the added light.

Oddly enough, without a word, Ivy crossed to my window and drew the shade, her expression concerned. A Dawnchaser was worried about me? Rain made sense. Rain liked me. Ivy Dawnchaser didn't know me .

As Ivy closed the blinds, Rain gently pulled me around and into his lap, then worked his fucking magical fingers onto my scalp, the same way he had the night we'd met.

"Could I get you some painkillers?" Ivy asked.

The whole thing got stranger and stranger. "Have them," I said, my voice dry and raspy. I tucked my hand into my pocket and pulled them out, brandishing the bottle in front of myself, even though the rattle hurt my head.

"How many have you taken?" she asked me, and I held up four fingers. "All day?"

"All day," I agreed.

"Good." She took the bottle and shook out two, pressing them to my mouth and then holding the glass of water from my bedside table up to my lips to help wash them down. "You shouldn't do it all the time, but when it's especially bad, you can take a double dose. My doctor told me so."

How odd. A Dawnchaser helping me with my aching head.

"I'm sorry we bothered you," Rain said, voice even softer than usual as he wove his fingers through my hair, pressing just the right spots on my scalp to relieve tension. This time, I didn't bother to hold back my moans. Where the hells had he learned to do that? He was fucking magic. "I'm trying to figure out how to help Ivy, and Sim thought you might be able to do it. We didn't know you weren't feeling well. We wouldn't have bothered you, if?—"

"Help Ivy how?" I asked between moans. If Rain had thought it important enough to bring to me, had thought I could—and perhaps should—help Ivy Dawnchaser, there was a reason for it. Besides, the woman was clearly miserable, and I'd wished myself that I could do something for her the night before .

"I'm honestly not sure how Sim thinks you can help, but they were pretty adamant about asking you. They've never shown me pictures of theoreticals before, but they wanted me to come here. Showed me where it was." He focused on a knot of muscle at the base of my neck, and I leaned into him. Since he hadn't specified the problem yet, I waited. "Ivy wants to move on with her life, but her stone is tied to Oberon. It won't let her. Her family head is refusing to help, so I thought we could try."

Her stone was tied to Oberon. Even worse than the most important relationship in her life without that importance being reciprocated, her whole life seemed to revolve around Oberon, despite the fact that her strand with him was solid red-black and one of the ugliest I'd ever seen. Almost as bad as the one Oberon had with Dane Sunrunner, or the one he had with Verelle. The only reason it wasn't as bad almost made it worse: because Oberon himself hardly even noticed her. He didn't hate her back. He was indifferent.

There is something we could do , Rhodri said, and for one of the only times I'd ever heard, there was hesitation in her voice. A nervous energy I was entirely unfamiliar with in my sarcastic asshole of a best friend.

What's that? I asked her, not speaking aloud since I didn't want anyone in the room to get their hopes up, in case her solution was somehow worse than the problem. That was hard to imagine, though. Ivy's whole life revolved around a man she hated. What could be worse?

It's hard, but we can break bonds. We could break the thread between her and Oberon. Rhodri still sounded uncharacteristically serious, so I took a moment to consider the fallout of such a thing.

How could she have no bond with him? She despised him so utterly. There were years of built up resentment and anger—every time he'd looked her way and not seen her had been a pinprick of frustration, and she'd become an overused pincushion over the years.

That was when it hit me.

She would forget.

She would forget , Rhodri agreed. I don't do it very often, because it's...imagine it. He's been a part of every aspect of her life for so long. She'd lose...a lot. He's not someone she met last week. He's tied to every part of her life.

Just the thought made my stomach roll with unease. It didn't matter how much I hated a person, or hated my life, I couldn't imagine agreeing to such a thing. But I wasn't Ivy, and Rain had brought her to me for help.

That baby aquamarine of his is just like your Moonstriker , Rhodri said with a sigh. Too clever for anyone's own good. I wonder how they knew we could do that .

Somehow, it didn't surprise me. Rain was a surprise, and as yet, it had always been a good thing, or at least not a bad one.

I blinked my eyes open again, as they'd slid closed at Rain's continuing ministrations, and turned them to look at Ivy Dawnchaser. "I can break your bond to Oberon. But it's not that simple."

Her bitter smile was almost painful to look at. "Of course it's not. What's the catch? Pain? No more relationships for me ever again?"

I was pleased that she didn't just agree to it. She might be desperate, but not so much that she'd closed her mind and would agree to anything to get it to stop.

"You'll forget," I said, and held up a hand to keep her from saying that was a good thing. "Everything. You'll forget Oberon completely. Every time you saw him. Every time you thought about him. Every time something reminded you of him. Every. Single. Thing."

She blinked repeatedly, paling, and dropped into a chair near the window. "That's...that's most of my life. I'll forget...everything about him?"

"It'll be like you never met," I agreed. "It will help, yes, but it's a lot to give up."

For long moments, we sat there in silence, Rain massaging my aching head and Ivy considering her options. He leaned forward and kissed the back of my neck, and I could feel the smile on his lips as he did. "I knew you'd be able to help. You're amazing."

"I agree," Ivy said, looking up at us. "I...I'm glad you have the moon tear, and not someone like Huxley. You could hurt so many people with power like that, and instead, you have a reputation for keeping Gloombringer holdings together. Helping people."

I had no idea what to say to that. I was glad the Dawnchaser didn't have Rhodri's power too. I would never, ever let her fall into his hands if I could help it. But I didn't know much about my reputation outside of Gloombringer Castle. I was just Adair, and I did my job, aiding Oberon where I could and helping the people who lived in Gloombringer lands where I could. I hadn't thought I'd managed to make that much difference.

Finally, she drew herself up and looked me in the eye. "Do it. I want...it'll be like a fresh start. Maybe I'm a little old for that, but it'll be good. I think." She gave a wet little giggle, like she wasn't entirely sure if this was the right choice, but her expression said she was decided. I might not have made the same choice, but I couldn't blame her for it. I, too, wanted to escape Oberon.

That was it, I realized. I had to leave. I had to get away from the Gloombringer family, or one day I'd be her, miserable and ready to erase half my life to escape what I'd allowed myself to become.

I took a deep breath and focused on her threads. Letting my eyes slip shut, I reached out with my mind, touching them, in a way I rarely did. It was an unpleasant sensation, the feeling of threads over my mind, like a thousand spiders skittering across the surface of my brain, and I didn't much like spiders. This was why I usually tried to avoid touching the threads. I hadn't even realized before that I could affect them, just that they were unpleasant to touch.

I found the thread that tied her to Oberon easily, a bloated thing against my mind, red hot with the anger pulsing through her. How dare that selfish fuck do this to me? Force me to break my whole life apart just to escape him? But it was my fault, wasn't it? I'd gone and fallen in love with a man called the Gloombringer. I'd brought shame and misery on myself and my family and ? —

Physically, I didn't move; just continued to sit there in Rain's lap. Mentally, I grabbed the thread with all the strength I had, and tugged. For a moment, I worried I wasn't strong enough. It was anchored so firmly in Ivy's mind, the strongest thread she had by far, stronger than most threads that existed. I envisioned taking hold with both hands, using my feet to push for leverage, and yanking with all my might.

All at once, the thread came away in my hands. As it detached from Ivy's mind, it broke apart, unable to bear its own weight without her continually adding to it. It meant nothing to Oberon, so it was simply...gone.

My eyes snapped open, and I watched as a hundred other strands attached to Ivy disintegrated before my eyes, sloughing off and falling to pieces like burned leaves blowing away in the wind. She slumped back in the chair, unconscious.

Oddly enough, my headache was gone. Well, not so odd, with the painkillers and Rain's kind ministrations. Still, I didn't think it was only that.

It was a rush, snapping a thread. A horrible but real adrenaline high, taking someone's whole life in my hands that way. There was something freeing about it, yes, and I'd given her what she'd wanted. But it was terrible removing something so intrinsic to a person as I'd just done. My heart beat hard, my head spinning a little, and I had to brace myself upright with my hands.

We had permission , Rhodri reminded me. Not even just that, she asked for it. It will help her. This doesn't make you a monster. You're not doing it for fun or to ruin her life or help yourself. You're still Adair. You're still Adair.

There was something panicked in the words spilling out of her, and I realized this had happened to her before. Some previous person she'd resonated with had done this, and it had ended badly. Either they'd enjoyed it too much and changed, decided they liked the power, or?—

She killed herself , she said, and the crystalline tremble of it made it sound almost like she was crying. People came to her for it, and she did it, again and again, and eventually she just...couldn't live with it anymore. Please don't be sad.

I'm not , I promised. I don't like it. It makes me feel dirty. We won't make a habit of it, but...we did the right thing. We're okay.

The feeling of relief from her made every muscle in my body uncoil, and all the remaining pain in my head and neck fled. We were okay. Everything was okay.

Well, maybe everything but Ivy Dawnchaser.

That remained to be seen.