33. Adair

Chapter 33

Adair

Oberon, forever missing the point, rolled his eyes. "Really, Dawnchaser, you've always been so fucking dramatic. What do you think you're going to do? Murder me in the middle of my own castle?"

"Precisely," Huxley agreed, setting his hand on the hilt of his sword. "Frankly, you're the easy one, Oberon. Always alienated everyone who could possibly have stayed long enough to give you children, and it's not like Titania's capable of taking your place. It's a wonder she can even stand up."

Oberon rolled his eyes, sighing. "On that, at least, we agree. She's probably off at a bar somewhere getting drunk. Says she's not coming back this time."

"Just as well," Huxley said conversationally, as though he hadn't come into the room saying he was going to kill someone. "I suppose I still have a weak spot for your useless sister. I'd rather not have to kill her."

"You really think you can beat me in a fight?" Oberon drew himself up, posturing as usual.

"Mmm," was all Huxley said in answer, pulling his jacket from his shoulders and laying it gently across the nearest chair.

A hysterical laugh bubbled up inside me, and I had to hold it back. He was threatening to kill a man, the threads were saying he wasn't lying, and he was worried about wrinkling his damned coat?

It was strange, all I could think in that moment was thank goodness that Aubrey had gone. Whatever else Huxley Dawnchaser could do here, however much damage he could wreak, he couldn't get at Aubrey.

"Once I kill you, I'll have the heart sapphire," Huxley explained to Oberon. "And between Soz and Verelle, I'll be able to control everyone who needs controlled. Your old friend the Sunrunner is a hopeless drug-addled nitwit these days, I understand, so it won't be hard to kill him."

Kill...Dane Sunrunner? Holy fucking hells, he planned to kill all the family heads.

"What about the Moonstrikers?" I asked, though it was a damned stupid thing to do, drawing attention back to myself. "There's no way you'll ever get into their tower."

His return smile was sharp, downright predatory. "Oh, but my dear moon tear, luck is on my side. And once I already have Soz, Verelle, and Nausa, no fortification in the entire Summerlands will be able to stop me."

"The stones won't bond with you. You have to...you have to share a song. You can't just pick up any stone and bond with it."

He waved me off, like I was speaking nonsense. "The family stones bond with who they have to. Do you really think a stone called the heart sapphire would have spent decades with this sad sack if it had a choice? "

It was an excellent point, really, even if I still thought he was wrong.

"Now you be a good boy and stay out of my way, so I won't have to kill you too." Huxley turned his back on me. He turned his actual fucking back on me, facing only Oberon, and laying his hand on his sword. "This isn't a joke old man. Draw your sword, or I'll just cut you down right where you stand, unarmed and all. Don't think for a moment that I'll take mercy on you because you're a coward who refuses to fight."

I watched as Oberon mimicked Huxley's earlier gesture, removing his jacket and laying it carefully over a nearby chair, then loosening his cuffs and rolling them up, slow and deliberate, as though this was a pleasant conversation and not a planned murder. "I suppose Adair's accepted a job from you, then, to be saying he's planning to leave?"

Dawnchaser grinned. "Not yet, but somehow, I think I'll manage to convince him. Lucky, you know. I always get what I want."

Oberon glanced over Huxley's shoulder at me, then toward the door. He was...he was telling me to leave. He knew I was planning to leave him, so likely presumed that I had a plan for that. Did he know he was going to lose this fight?

Of course he did. I'd been telling him for months that his threads were going white, and while he'd barely taken me seriously, he had gone to the doctor. And here, now, was a real explanation.

The threads had started going white, I realized, around the time he'd started planning the summit. I'd thought at first that it was related to the way Mount Slate had started shaking, but no one else had the same problem. Only Oberon .

Because only Oberon was going to die here today.

But in this moment, Oberon was telling me to run, because whether or not he was planning to go quietly, or die at all, he didn't want me to get killed. It was the kindest thing he'd ever done for me in the thirty years I'd known him.

Huxley sighed, annoyed. "No, by all means, take your time. It isn't as though I have any other plans for the day."

Oberon smiled at him, all white teeth. "You're right, of course, about luck being on your side. You have a functional stone, and Verelle has barely spoken to me in years. But I can tell you now, the bitch isn't going to resonate with you. She's looking for someone with heart, Huxley, and you don't have one."

With that, he drew his sword, and Huxley did the same. I stepped back and back until I reached the wall, sliding around the edge of it as they traded blows and parries, surprisingly well-matched as swordsmen.

If I hadn't known about Oberon's threads, I might have hoped...but I didn't have time for speculation just then. I had to get to the door and get the hells out of there, before the fight finished and the Dawnchaser could focus on me.

A hiss of pain dragged my attention from the door to the fight, and something hot and wet hit my face. Huxley had slashed Oberon's left arm wide open, and it was bleeding profusely. A spray of blood from it had hit the whole wall I was standing against, and Huxley was looking at me. "Now, now, little moon tear. No sneaking out. You stay right there and wait for me to finish. Then we discuss your future."

Like hells.

The man kept fucking calling me little moon tear . Not even Rhodri's name, just the stone type itself, and I'd be damned if I would ever work with a man who clearly didn't even think of other people as human.

I gave up trying to sneak and turned to lunge for the door. It only rattled, and the slick blood on my hand slipped over the knob, overbalancing me and sending me tumbling forward onto the carpet.

"I told you to stay there," Huxley said, his voice strangely singsongy, then he hissed in pain, and he had to leap back as Oberon scored a hit on him, opening a wound on his shoulder.

He could only focus his luck on one of us at a time, I realized. If he was beating Oberon, he couldn't keep me in, and vice versa.

He bared his teeth at Oberon, they circled each other like wild angry dogs, each looking for a place to bury his fangs.

I pushed myself up, my head starting to pound from all the abuse and now Oberon's terrifying mass of white threads, and almost overbalanced and fell against the door. When I looked up, Dawnchaser was looking at me again.

Damn it all.

Oberon took another swing at him, and he turned back to his fight.

From my spot leaning on the wall, I glanced back at the door and suddenly remembered that Dawnchaser had flipped the lock as he'd entered. So I turned to watch the fight, waiting for my moment to act. A moment the asshole wasn't watching me.

There.

There was another grunt of pain behind me as I managed to flip the lock, and I glanced back to find that Oberon had scored a hit because my attempted exodus had distracted Huxley .

"Maybe you should pay attention to the man you're trying to kill, hm?" Oberon taunted, smiling broadly.

Fuck me, for the first time since I'd known him, I thought the bastard was having fun.

At his own death.

"I wish I could be here to see how much it's going to piss you off when Verelle won't bond you," he continued when Huxley started to turn back toward me. "It's going to be fucking hilarious."

Their swords clashed again, but I turned away, grabbing the knob and yanking the door open.

Huxley growled in frustration, and I felt my whole body go lax as his power pressed against me. I had no idea what it was doing, but for a moment, I simply couldn't move.

Another clang, and then a groan of pain.

Oberon's pain.

I made the mistake of glancing back to find them silhouetted against the parlor window, Huxley's sword through Oberon's gut.

The threads, those thousands of white threads I'd spent the last six months worrying about, were breaking apart and floating away like the ashes of a house fire on a breeze. One last time, Oberon met my eye and looked past me, to the open door.

Somehow, his last thought was an unselfish one.

Even better, Huxley wasn't paying attention to me. He shoved his hand into Oberon's breast pocket and yanked Verelle out, a sapphire the size of a walnut, grinning like the madman I suddenly realized he was.

And then...she dripped through his fingers like she was made of water, dissipating on Oberon's chest.

I turned and ran .

I half expected to be immediately caught by Dawnchaser's assassin, but there was no one in the corridor at all.

Suddenly, packing a bag didn't seem at all necessary. I could access my bank account later, buy new clothes. I wasn't staying here, wasn't going to die for some fucking suits.

I had to find Rain and warn him, because no doubt Huxley planned to kill him as well. Or, well, he'd have to if he ever wanted control of Iri, since they were already bonded.

Warn him?

No, I had to find him and get us all out of here, while our throats were intact.

I almost ran right into him as I turned toward the stairs, and behind me, Huxley gave an angry wordless shout.

Fuck fuck fuck.

"We have to go. Now. We have to go right this minute." I grabbed both of his arms and tried to tug him toward the stairs.

He hesitated, looking toward the hallway I'd come from. "Dawnchaser and Gloombringer?"

"Dawnchaser killed him," I said. I wasn't even sure it came out in actual words, and not just a garbled mess. "If we stay he's going to kill you too. He's planning to kill you all."

Rain scowled, as though it was against every single part of him not to go right back there, to fight Huxley Dawnchaser right that moment.

"Emrys!" Huxley's yell traveled down the hall, and it almost made my heart stop. The assassin. Dawnchaser's assassin, who was Rain's brother. Had he been brought along to trick Rain? To make him think he'd be safe, and actually?—

The man in question came jogging down the hallway from the direction of the stairs, and I readied myself to leap between them when the assassin tried to hurt Rain. Instead, he merely slowed a moment and rolled his eyes at Rain, waving toward the front of the castle, his voice a low hiss. "You've got your boyfriend. Now fucking leave."

Stomping footsteps started toward us from the direction of the west wing, loud angry cursing, and I knew we weren't going to make it. Dawnchaser would catch sight of us, and one of us would immediately be trapped in the power of his stone, cursed with whatever was convenient for him.

Rain grabbed me, wrapping his arms around my waist, and pulled me against him.

The Dawnchaser came careening around the corner and almost ran into Emrys, who stopped in the hall, looking back to where we stood.

They both . . . just stared. Not at us, but through us.

"Where the fuck did he go?" Dawnchaser shouted. "The moon tear was right there."

"I didn't see him," Emrys lied, perfect and seamless, turning back to his employer. "Maybe he went the other way? Or into one of the rooms? It's a big castle."

Dawnchaser cursed some more, and Emrys motioned to the west wing hallway. "His room must be one of those. Maybe he thinks he can lock himself in. Seems stupid, but you can never account for how people react to panic."

What in the hells was happening? How were they not seeing us, standing still ten feet away?

When Dawnchaser, grumbling, headed back down the hall, Emrys gave a tiny shooing motion with his hand. Had he just hidden us?

I turned to look at Rain, shocked, but almost recoiled at what I found there. He was bleeding from the nose and eyes, panting for breath. As I stepped back, he leaned over, panting. " Sorry," he whispered. "Had to use Iri. It's...she's a lot."

Iri. He'd just used his family stone from hundreds, maybe a thousand miles away, to keep the Dawnchaser from seeing us. And somehow, it hadn't worked on his brother. Odd. We'd have to discuss that later.

For now, I wrapped an arm around him and led him downstairs, as fast as our legs could carry us.

In the circular drive in front of the castle, two cars were waiting. Caspian Sunrunner in a sleek black thing, and Tempest and Char in a big white SUV, the back door of which was hanging open.

I tugged Rain toward the open door, but he motioned for me to get in before him and then followed much more slowly. "What about the staff?" He asked as he got into the car.

Char, in the driver's seat, made a rude noise, but Tempest smiled back at him. "No worries boss. I told the housekeeper to raise the alarm and evacuate because the Dawnchaser was on a murder spree. She freaked the hells out, and?—"

The sound of police sirens blared in the distance, coming toward us, fast and furious. Lots of sirens.

Let Huxley Dawnchaser's fucking luck overcome that, the arrogant asshole.