29. Adair

Chapter 29

Adair

Gone.

Aubrey was gone.

Titania took me to the room he'd been assigned, a pitiful fucking room for the man who should have been the next Gloombringer, but all his things were gone.

She stepped in behind me and slowly surveyed the room, frowning.

"That's it, then, isn't it?"

I spun to face her. "It?"

"He's gone, Adair. The Gloombringer line is over. He doesn't want any part of us, and I don't blame him." She scoffed, shaking her head. "Fuck me, I don't want any part of us. Does anyone?"

I started to protest, by rote really. But...she was right. I didn't want to be there anymore. Aubrey didn't. Even Titania, who'd weathered every storm with surprising grace, even if she'd been sauced to the gills for most of them, seemed to be done.

"I'm gonna go," she said to me, a bitter little smile on her face, like she could read my mind. "I...I might need some help, if I'm not going to go drink some more."

She held up a hand between us, and it shook like a leaf. I winced in sympathy.

"So I guess I pack and go to...is rehab a thing for people like me? But there's nothing either of us can do here. Oberon isn't even trying."

That was when it caught my attention. The thread that linked her to her brother. It had gone from brown to spiderweb thin, and black as coal.

She wasn't kidding or exaggerating. She was done with him, entirely. She wasn't coming back whether she went to rehab or somewhere else entirely.

"Where will you go after?" I asked her, suddenly wanting...hells, I didn't know. More? To know her better, because I felt as though I'd squandered the chance when I'd had it?

"I've got a pretty badass bank account, sweetie, you don't need to worry about me. Oberon might have implied I live on the family's sufferance, but I really don't need to. I might have more than him. I just stayed because...well hells, you know better than anyone, don't you? Loyalty. Family. And he just said as loud as he could that he doesn't give two shits about that."

"You have my number," I told her, though obviously she knew that.

"I do," she agreed. "Are you going with the Moonstriker?"

"I don't...he hasn't asked." Suddenly my throat was raspy and dry, cracking with emotion I hadn't even realized I was feeling until it was threatening to drown me. My whole head was hot and heavy, my eyes stinging. What was happening to me? What was going to happen to me? Damn the fucking Gloombringer for making emotions a bad thing, so I'd never learned how to fucking have them properly. "What do I do if he doesn't ask?"

She stepped in close, looking up at me without breaking eye contact. "Then you tell him, sweetie. He's a smart guy. He's a Moonstriker—they have to be, or they get shoved out of the nest. He'll catch up quick."

"I have to...I have to tell Oberon. I owe him that."

"You don't owe him shit, but if you need to do it for you, then you should. He talks big, but he won't hurt you. Not on purpose, anyway." She reached up and touched my swollen cheek, frowning. "He's got to expect you to go, after what he did this morning. Why in the hells would you stay?"

"He'll be surprised," I promised her, shaking my head. "He'll be downright stunned that anything could ever make me go. He'll call me weak and say if I'm so determined to go, then I just should, because I'm not worth his time."

She shook her head, breathing out in an irritated scoff. "It's scary, how well you know him. You're probably right on. He couldn't possibly give a damn about it. That would require him to do a crazy thing like have an emotion."

She leaned in, wrapping her arms around me and leaning in for a hug. A hug. From a Gloombringer. "For whatever it's worth, I'm sorry I didn't stop him. He could have seriously hurt you, and that would have been a real tragedy."

Me.

She cared about me.

Not her brother, who had imploded his whole life in a grand fashion, to be abandoned by his son, and now in quick succession, his sister and me as well.

I was sorry for the servants. They'd have to put up with him after this. Completely alone, and likely still loudly decrying emotions as being silly, frivolous things, only for women.

I leaned in, hugging her back. "It wasn't on you. You're not the one who started swinging fists. No part of that was your fault. Promise you'll keep in touch?"

"Write my number down," she insisted. "He's a bitter asshole, he'll have your phone turned off and refuse to let you keep the number. Mine's already in my own name, and I pay for it."

I wondered how much of that was true across the board. How much Titania had always been in charge of her own life and just staying for him, in a bedroom built for a child in a castle she hated. More than that, I wondered if he would ever realize that all this was his own fault. That Aubrey had been right. He was going to die, bitter and alone, and it was going to be entirely his own fault.

"Now," she said, affecting false cheer, smiling at me as she pulled back, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "I'm going to go pack a bag and call a friend of mine who's a doctor. She'll at least tell me where I need to go for help, if she can't do the job herself. Maybe she'll let me crash on her couch and I can do this the easy way, without the creepy group therapy bullshit. Like I don't know exactly why I drink."

I smiled back, nodding. "If she makes you go, you'll at least be the most fun person in group therapy."

"Damn right. Now you go find your Moonstriker and get laid, huh? One of us should be getting sexed up, and I'm afraid it's not gonna be me for a while. Even if she agrees to treat me, she's not gonna fuck me at the same time, more's the pity."

I couldn't help it, I laughed. She was—"We need to spend more time together. I didn't realize what I was missing out on, not knowing you better."

Her return grin was huge, and she nodded. "No one ever does. I sneak up on you like that. Now go. I'll leave my number on your bed. If I don't see you before you leave...I'll see you soon, Adair. We'll see each other, and we'll both be free of this horrible place."

It sounded perfect.

She marched off down the hallway in the direction of her room, and I turned toward the main part of the castle. The only question left was where I would find Rain.

Well, that and what the hells was going to happen to the summit when I told Oberon I was leaving.