4. Rain

Chapter 4

Rain

The Gloombringer servants brought lunch to the suite, as apparently it wasn't a "standard meal" at Gloombringer Castle anymore. Not that they implied we were putting them out in anyway. Oh no, the woman in charge of bringing our lunch seemed thrilled to do so.

They gave us three courses, explained them all, and beamed as though we were giving her a gift when we offered the most basic of compliments on the food and service. That, of course, turned it into a competition between Tempest, Char, and me to give the best, most perfectly worded compliments to the staff. Whoever made them happiest was the winner.

It was a fun afternoon, oddly enough.

But no, the reason for the private lunch was that apparently that Lord Gloombringer thought lunch was a frivolous thing and never made time for it. The clearly distressed woman who served the food informed us that he had taken to eating "protein bars" at noon instead of an actual meal. She said the words "protein bars" as though he was keeping them stored in the toilet between meals.

It sounded like the kind of thing my own family would get accused of doing, getting distracted by work and forgetting to eat—only doing the bare minimum to stay alive.

Mother would never have allowed that in our family, though. Protein bars rarely had the proper nutrition a person needed, and fresh fruits and vegetables were a requirement for anyone who expected to spend a meal in my mother's presence without being nagged for doing it wrong.

We were just picking at the last of the fruit and cheese tray they finished the meal with when my phone rang. The crashing waves of a symphony that announced for anyone who knew my ringtones that the person on the other end of the line was my mother.

Tempest and Char immediately leaped from their seats, helping the Gloombringer staff clear the table to spotless perfection in an instant and leaving me alone by the time the song in the ringtone had reached its zenith. That was the Moonstriker efficiency that people talked so much about.

I leaned back in my seat and pressed the button to accept the call. Video, of course, because my mother knew me too damned well. I might be able to lie to her in a voice call, but I could never do it while I was looking her in the eye.

Delta Moonstriker was, for lack of a better term, a striking woman. I'd inherited my light hair from her, but hers had gone stark white sometime during her thirties, a trait common in the family. It had actually happened to my eldest brother in his teens, much to his dismay at the time. Mother's eyes were a deeper, grayer blue than mine, but truly, I was the one of her children who most resembled her.

"Rain," she announced, as though she was informing me, in case I'd forgotten. "The Gloombringer is living up to his name, I see."

I blinked. I knew my mother could see right through me, but I hadn't even said a word. Did I look like some sort of tragic half-starved orphan? That wasn't true at all—in fact, I'd just eaten a better meal than I'd managed in the week before I'd left home. I'd been in a good mood, I had thought.

She rolled her eyes at me. "You're too happy. You smiled. You only do that without reason when you're making up for something. You used to smile and make jokes like a little stand-up comedian whenever the family argued."

That...was true. Especially when mother and Winter—I swallowed and didn't bother holding back the smile this time. "I'm sure you were expecting Gloombringer to be offended by my very existence. He was. But he didn't turn me away."

"Of course he didn't," she agreed. "Because whatever else he spends his time thinking about, his biggest worry is always how things look. He thinks you being there means he's not worth your uncle coming."

"He's not," I pointed out. "But this isn't about him, it's about the entire Summerlands. And he wasn't lying about Mount Slate. I felt it rumble this morning when we stopped for breakfast outside the city."

At that, she suddenly looked a decade older, leaning back in her chair and sighing, letting her eyes slip closed for a moment. "I've been afraid it would come for a while now. Our information says that it comes up like clockwork, every sixty years." Sitting forward, she started typing on the keyboard in front of her. "Let me bring your brother in. He'll tell us?—"

She hadn't even finished the sentence when my middle brother Frost's handsome brown face appeared across half the screen. "Mother. Rain."

"Is the Dawnchaser going to the summit?" she asked, not interested in pleasantries, but the point.

Fortunately, that fit with Frost's personality well. He never quite knew what to do with pleasantries. "Yes, I believe so. Huxley and his heir, Florian, left early this morning as I was arriving. He said something about being careful not to be eaten by the wolves while he was gone, and they drove away. My calculations say that if they remain within the speed limit on the quickest route to Amalion City and stop approximately an hour for each meal, they should arrive quite late tonight."

I couldn't hold back a smile. Of course Frost had actually calculated how long nearly a thousand miles worth of driving would take. But then he frowned, slightly unhappy, almost—nervous?

"Are there...wolves on Lord Dawnchaser's estate, Mother? I don't recall reading anything about that when I researched it."

Mother's answering smile was pained, so I jumped in to explain. "Lord Dawnchaser meant wolves in a metaphorical sense, I'm sure."

Frost blinked at me a moment, his enormous gray eyes and long white hair making him look like an exceptionally innocent television character, and I half expected to see a giant drawn-in drop of sweat next to his face. "Metaphorical wolves?"

"The Dawnchasers are known as being very savvy at politics," I explained.

"He means they're lying, scheming snakes," Mother amended .

I tried not to bury my head in my palms. Mother should know better than to mix metaphors while trying to explain things to Frost. For a second, Frost went pale and swallowed hard. Then he met my eye, and I gave a tiny shake of my head, and his shoulders slumped. "Snakes as another metaphor. For...lying schemers. Lord Dawnchaser was telling me to be careful of his family, because they're unpleasant."

I had to hold back a genuine laugh, because while I doubted that was exactly what the man had intended to say, well...it was what he'd actually said. Especially where Frost was concerned. My brother didn't deal well with people who refused to be forthright.

"They are," Mother told him. "To a man, woman, and probably even dog, the Dawnchasers are some of the worst the world has to offer. They won't stab you in the back literally. But they will do it metaphorically, love. Remember, I told you to be careful what you say to whom while you're there."

Frost once again swallowed hard and nodded. As always, he accepted the task Mother had assigned without question, even when it had him shaking in his boots.

With that, Mother returned her attention to me. "If I know Huxley Dawnchaser, and rather unfortunately I do, he's likely planning on stopping for the night when he gets into the city. That way he can show up first thing in the morning, fashionably late, but still inconvenient as all hells and fresh as a daisy. So you probably won't have to deal with him until tomorrow."

I worried for a moment that Frost would be annoyed Mother was helping me in a way she wouldn't have helped him—but she wasn't, really. It was just that when she offered her help, she expected people to comprehend things like wolf metaphors and the finer—and less fine—points of humanity that led them to make ridiculous decisions. It would never occur to Frost that Huxley Dawnchaser would deliberately act like an ass to inconvenience people, because why would anyone do that? It didn't make sense.

Sure enough, Frost wasn't looking on with annoyance, but the expression of someone trying to figure out the answer to a particularly complex math problem.

"I'll be ready for him in the morning, then," I told them both. "And ready for him to spend his time subtly insulting everyone present."

Mother nodded and rolled her eyes. "You can handle his type, of course. Like that fellow at your school who wanted to fail you at physics because he thought he had to defeat you instead of teach you."

I remembered it all too well, and bit back the sigh the memory of my college physics professor always summoned up in me. A grown man trying to compete with teenaged me had been one of the most frustrating experiences of my school life.

I wondered how Frost had dealt with him, since he'd gone to the same relatively small school, and realized that he'd avoided it by his very nature. Frost would have been entirely oblivious to the sense of competition and simply worked harder to answer the man's increasingly impossible demands. And being Frost, and one of the smartest people I knew, he'd have managed it.

"Be careful with Dawnchaser," Mother said, giving me a hard look. "He's the most dangerous of the lot. Sunrunner will rip your throat out given the chance and reason, but Dawnchaser will tear out your heart before you even know he's there, and he doesn't need a reason. He just likes to hurt people."

"Do you think the Sunrunner will go to the summit?" Frost asked, oddly enough looking to me instead of Mother, like I had any idea. He was probably trying to avoid any more discussion of his own assignment to spend a year at Dawnchaser Court and learn what he could from them.

Fortunately for all of us, Mother was the one who answered, after a moment's consideration. "I don't know. They were always the most unpredictable. Too close to the beasts, the Sunrunner. None of them ever made any damned sense."

Frost shuddered and glanced away from the screen. "Thank you for not sending me there."

She offered an indulgent smile and nodded to him, then to me. "The point of this isn't to give you more than you can handle, sweetheart. I sent each of you to a place I'm sure you can prevail. You're just going to have to learn new things to do it." She leaned back again, looking at only me, as though Frost were gone from the conversation. "Call your sister soon. She'll let you know what's going on in Sunrunner lands if she can. They're...volatile, so don't expect her to have too much, but she might be able to help you some. Good luck, boys."

A second later, she was gone. No I love you. No I'm proud of you. Just you can handle it and good luck. That was my mother.

Frost didn't immediately hang up, but slumped in his seat, sighing. "What does she want from me, Rain? I'm never going to assume they mean fake wolves when someone tells me to look out for wolves. Who even talks about fake wolves? "

"Huxley Dawnchaser, apparently. I'm looking forward to meeting him."

Frost shuddered. "Colder than Uncle Cove on his throne talking to criminals, that guy. Looks at you like you're the most inconvenient thing that's ever happened to him."

"See, you understand metaphors," I pointed out. "Dawnchaser isn't Uncle Cove. And you're not the most inconvenient thing that's ever happened to anyone. You just need to remember that other people take it a step further. Or ten steps further."

"Wolves," he lamented.

"Wolves," I agreed. Then I glanced around, like maybe there was some chance Mother was still there, on the line, watching. Or standing behind me, even though a moment before she'd been in her office hundreds of miles away. "But Frost. Seriously. If you're ever worried, and you think you've missed something important, or you need help...call me. Anytime. Middle of the night. I'm here to help, whenever you need me."

He ducked his head. "I know Rain. And thank you. I just...I just wish I knew how to stop disappointing her."

"You're not disappointing. You're?—"

"Disappointing her , Rain." The expression on his face was knowing, and I couldn't even meet his eye. I understood. Disappointing Mother was one of the most painful things I'd ever experienced, and Frost, with the way his mind worked, was constantly struggling with her expectations. I knew I'd never truly understand how it felt. "I know I don't disappoint you. Honestly, I can't even tell you how much I appreciate that. It's endlessly reassuring that you're going to be the next Moonstriker. "

My head snapped up. "We don't know that. Remember, we're?—"

"Yes, yes," he said, waving a hand, dismissive. "We're all performing these ridiculous tests to prove ourselves in the theory that Mother will choose ‘one of us' to be her heir." He actually used his fingers to put imaginary quotes around the ‘one of us' bit, and I had to push down a smile. "We all know it's you, Rain. I've always known. Ember's too much of a hothead. It's why Mother sent her to Sunrunner lands. So she'll see a whole family of hotheads, and what that sort of behavior results in. Me, I'm never going to really understand people. Not like you. I might learn how to strategize and deal with them at some point, but you make it seem effortless. Someone insults you and you smile. They talk about wolves, and you understand they mean dangerous people. You're good at people, Rain."

See? Iri asked in my head. He gets it. He's not right for leadership. Too inflexible. But he's one of the cleverest minds of his generation—maybe cleverer than you and your mother in some ways—and he sees it.

I took a deep breath and nodded, trying to answer them both without letting Frost know the family stone was a part of the conversation. "People are easier for me than you, that's true. And I'm sure it'll always be true. And frankly, you're right that neither of us has any control over who gets chosen to inherit Mother's position, so there's no reason to worry about it. But I promise you, Mother isn't disappointed in you. It's just"—was I really going to say it? Yes, yes I was—"she sucks at saying she's proud of us. A lot. But you know what? We're pretty great. I'm proud of us. Especially you, since you're smarter than me. "

He ducked his head, smiling. "I'm proud of us too. We work hard."

"We do," I agreed.

"Not that being smart is some great feat," he pointed out. "It was random chance and genetics that made me smart."

"And the same thing made me better than you with people, so suck it." I winced, worried for a moment that I'd have to explain that particular bit of slang, but apparently he was familiar with it, since he rolled his eyes instead of giving me his confused, deer-caught-in-headlights look.

"Go handle your Gloombringer, Rain. Good luck with that. I'm going to go look for wolves in the garden. Real or metaphorical, whichever I can find first." And like Mother, he hung up with no further commentary. I knew he loved me. It never occurred to him that I might want to hear it as a part of every conversation.

It was a little funny, thinking of it like that. The things Mother liked least about Frost were the things she had in common with him, on some level. It made me wonder what she disliked most about me. One of the reasons she had asked Uncle Cove to act the part of a sole ruler was because she didn't like dealing with people all that much. Everyone in the family knew that if it came down to a choice between them, Uncle Cove always deferred to her wisdom.

He was just more like me, able to navigate relationships with people more easily than Mother and Frost, who preferred their offices with their entirely predictable computers and whiteboards better than dealing with messy, chaotic humanity.

Speaking of messy, chaotic humanity, I supposed I had to prepare myself for a dinner with the Gloombringer household. My own wolves, I supposed.

Well, and Adair.