32. Rain

Chapter 32

Rain

The meeting room was nearly empty.

Tempest and Char sat at the main table with Caspian Sunrunner, and they were playing cards.

I blinked, staring at the three of them. "Did Huxley and Oberon leave?"

"Never came at all," Caspian said, shaking his head and dropping his cards on the table. "I wondered if maybe I'd done something wrong, but Tempest and Char here said you had a very good reason for being late."

He stressed the words, but his tone was knowing and expression amused, and Char blushed, so I suspected he'd told Caspian the truth. That was...fine. Caspian didn't seem offended, and he'd been nothing but kind to me.

Still, I cleared my throat and ducked my head. "Yes, well, I'm sorry about that. But it turns out I'm...getting married, I think."

Char blinked in shock, but Tempest rolled her eyes. "Duh. Like you'd go shirking your duties for anything less than forever." She waved an arm around the room, dropping her own cards on the table in front of her and looking unimpressed. "Somehow, though, I don't think Gloombringer and Dawnchaser have such a good excuse for not showing up for an important meeting. They didn't send word or anything, either. Just didn't show."

That seemed odd.

No, more than odd.

The night Huxley had arrived, they'd made a show about how they were on time and the Gloombringer was "late." Two days earlier when Huxley had blown off the afternoon, he'd sent word, saying he was busy for the rest of the day. He wasn't one to simply not show up.

And Oberon, while not as maliciously so, had seemed of a similar mind—as though timeliness was more important than being a decent person.

Caspian sighed and stood from the table. "I guess Dad was kinda right, that this whole thing isn't going to work. I'd love to help build a peace between us all, but I'm not sure either of them even want it."

"Plus you don't actually have the power to make a deal," a familiar voice said from the doorway. "No offense, but it's pretty obvious. Does your father really know you're here?"

Kit, lounging casually against the door frame, one foot braced against it, the knee drawn up. It looked like a harmless position—like there was no way he could attack anyone, and this was just a pleasant conversation.

He'd always been good at seeming harmless, especially when he was most dangerous of all.

"He does know I'm here," Caspian insisted. "I asked him if I could go, and he said it was fine."

Kit leaned his head against the doorjamb, almost lolling, he was so fucking boneless. He was the only person in the room who was even slightly relaxed, both Char and Tempest ready to spring into defending me, and Caspian looking like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "But you're not empowered. Not like the Moonstriker here. You're not even bound to Nausa."

Nausa, the Sunrunner stone, that had allowed Caspian's father and grandfather to turn into an enormous dire wolf as big as a car. But it would have already spoken to Caspian by now, wouldn't it?

Wait, but Caspian shouldn't be telling Kit that?—

Caspian flinched but drew himself up. "Of course I'm not. My father is alive. He's the Sunrunner. Why would I be bound to Nausa?"

Kit smiled, nodding. "Good. You should still go, but that's good. Maybe try to keep it that way for now, just to be safe."

Safe?

"What the hells are you talking about?" I demanded. "And why are you squeezing Caspian for information?"

"Because I don't need to ask if you're bound to Iri, baby brother. I already know it."

"Baby brother," Char whispered behind me, at the same time as Caspian asked, "What the fuck?"

Kit pressed up out of the doorway and stalked over to me, grabbing me by the arm and tugging me toward him. Tempest put her hand to her sword, ready to jump in and throw her life away to defend me from my own brother. I held up a hand to forestall her.

"What about it, Winter?"

If he was going to call me baby brother, then I was going to use his goddamned name.

"About it, is the fact that you need to get the hells out of here. Don't pack a bag, don't go back to your rooms, just go get in the car and leave. Run, and don't stop running until you get back to Moonstriker lands." He motioned to Caspian. "He's safe, sort of, because he's not bound. Dawnchaser is going to kill you."

The whole room seemed to slow around me, and it was just me and my brother, staring at each other. "Kill me," I said flatly. "Why is he going to kill me?"

But I didn't even need to know. All the pieces tumbled together like a vase shattering in reverse, a million disparate bits coming together to form one perfect whole.

All the family heads. It was supposed to be all the family heads here together for the first time in decades. Huxley had complained repeatedly that Dane Sunrunner and Uncle Cove hadn't come, because he wanted all the family heads together at Oberon's summit.

All the people bound to a major stone conveniently in one place, where he could make good use of his luck stone and pick us off, one by one. Kill every person bound to a major stone, and...

"He thinks all the stones will bind him? Doesn't he know it doesn't work like that?"

Winter snapped a hand over his shoulder, like he could dismiss a fucking plot to murder three people out of hand. Three? No, with Mother, me, and Uncle Cove it was at least five, and probably Titania Gloombringer as well. To say nothing of the people who would undoubtedly protest, whom he'd also have to murder. What kind of wholesale slaughter was he plotting?

And there was my brother, right at the heart of it.

"He's an arrogant ass with a stone that makes him the luckiest man alive. People trip when he needs them to, they forget what he wants forgotten. He's spent every minute since he murdered his father getting exactly what he wants, and he doesn't understand that there's any other possibility." He leaned in, blue eyes sparkling with mirth. "Only problem is that he has to actually ask for what he wants. Demand he be lucky in a thing. If he doesn't know someone is working against him, he can't know to wish them ill luck."

"Holy fucking shit," Caspian breathed, having come up beside us while I was so focused on my brother that I hadn't noticed. "So the assassin is the good guy?"

Winter snorted. "Hardly. No one in their right mind would call me good. I'm just not insane, and the Dawnchaser is."

I glanced back at Caspian and found that he had a knife in his hand. He'd been coming up on Winter with a knife, to...to protect me? I hadn't been surprised at Char or Tempest being willing to leap into a fight with him to protect me—it was their job. Caspian was something else.

"So we've gotta get Rain out of here," he said to Winter, then turned back to me. "We could trade cars. It'd make it harder for him to find you. You just have to promise not to scratch my mom's baby."

I blinked, staring at him in shock, not sure what to say to such an offer.

"It doesn't matter how you get out of here, you just have to go," Winter repeated. "And he'll probably leave you be since you're not bonded to Nausa yet, but if he can't find little rainstorm here, he might get pissed and decide to kill you for good measure. He's a fucking psycho. So go. All of you. Go."

Caspian turned toward the door, but then paused, considering. "What about the Gloombringer? "

Winter hissed in irritation. "His life is currently buying you time to escape, dammit, so go fucking escape."

His life . . . but Adair was with Oberon.

I gasped in a breath and without another word, shoved past my brother and back toward the foyer, toward the grand front staircase. Escaping with our lives was fine, but what good did my life do me if Huxley fucking Dawnchaser killed Adair?

Behind me, I could hear Caspian demanding further answers from Winter, about why he was working for Dawnchaser if he was such a monster. Tempest called my name. Winter sighed with frustration. But none of that mattered.

I had to get to Adair.