8. Rain

Chapter 8

Rain

Things had settled with Adair more easily than expected, and while I felt guilty about that, I hadn't lied to him.

I hadn't wanted to encourage him to lie to the Gloombringer, but, well, I'd had to. Adair had said it himself, if Oberon knew Kit was actually Winter Moonstriker, he'd quite rightfully assume we were all up to something, and I didn't think we were.

Okay, no, I knew I wasn't up to something.

The Dawnchaser almost certainly was, but it didn't have anything to do with my family. Knowing what I did about them so far, I thought Oberon was likely best served by knowing what he already knew: Huxley had brought a duelist to his home. At best, it was a threat.

Still, I'd put Adair in a bad situation. I had to find a way to make it up to him.

Also, I had to find an excuse to touch him again. His skin was electric and his hands were so soft. Like he'd never touched a sword in his entire life.

Helpfully, Sim fed me a vision of a sickly woman extracting a promise from a young Adair to that exact effect: that he would never learn to duel. So apparently he hadn't. That was fine. I could defend his honor if it ever came up.

I'm sure your mother would be thrilled, Iri pointed out.

I shrugged in return. Mother controls the family, but she doesn't control me. Not about things like that.

Iri seemed thoughtful and Sim interested, but in the end, she just shrugged back. Well, mentally shrugged. It wasn't like stones could actually shrug, let alone stones that were speaking in my mind from hundreds of miles away.

Fine, you're a big boy now and your mother doesn't get a say in things , Iri finally said. But what now? You're still walking with purpose, and this isn't the way back to the north wing of the castle .

The answer to that was simple.

I'd seen the practice yard when we'd arrived at the house.

You're going to practice dueling? Do you really think your brother is here to kill you? Iri seemed to be considering the possibility.

She didn't understand Winter any better than Mother had, I supposed. Not that I thought it was impossible for him to do something unexpected, and I'd certainly considered the option that he was going to kill me. I wasn't a naive child who thought the brother I hadn't seen in ten years was going to tuck me in and read me a bedtime story.

But I wasn't going to the practice yard assuming I needed practice. I was going because?—

"Knew you'd come here looking for me," that too familiar voice said from behind me.

I spun to face him. He was still wearing his sword, but he wasn't ready for a fight. He was leaning on the fence, waiting. Either he'd wanted to talk to me, or he'd known I would want to talk and had decided to get it over with.

"What the hells are you doing, Winter?"

"Kit," he corrected.

I absolutely hated that, but...if Kit was what he wanted, then Kit was what he got. "Okay, Kit. You don't think changing your name makes you anything other than my brother, do you?"

"For both our sakes, it needs to. And what I think I'm doing, little Moonstriker, is my job. My job for which I get paid, which in turn allows me to pay rent and eat food."

What the hells did he mean, for both our sakes?

He works for the Dawnchaser , Iri pointed out. At best, his boss is a snake in the grass. If he knew you were related to his duelist, he might order your brother to kill you, just for funsies. Just to see if he'd do it.

That was . . .

I sighed and leaned against the fence some feet away. "Why are you doing this?"

"A man's got to eat, Rain." He held up a hand when I opened my mouth. "This is what I'm good at. Yes, I know, I could have gone to college or all those hoops the rest of you jumped through at Mother's command. I'm not a mathematician, Rain. I'm not a scientist. I was never going to be the head of the family. And Mother was never going to stop pressuring me to act like I was, even though she didn't give a damn about what I did anymore."

I wanted to deny it. Wanted to insist that he was wrong. But he wasn't. From the moment he'd heard the song of a diamond and accepted it, our mother had never truly seen him again. Oh, he'd been there in front of her. She'd continued to demand that he better himself. But in some ways, she'd dismissed him from her mind.

He was no longer enough.

She'd done the same to Frost, a bit, because of his struggle to understand people.

I looked away from him instead of denying it the way I wished I could, and a moment later, I heard him sigh.

"Look at you, little rainstorm. You grew up."

"I missed you."

"I missed you too. But I couldn't"—he swallowed hard and shook his head—"I didn't belong there anymore. Everyone was better off not listening to us yell at each other every day. Including her and me. No one wanted me there."

" I wanted you there. I'll always want you there."

He lifted a brow, pushing off the fence and slinking over toward me. The way his suit clung to his skin, moving with him easily, was—well hells, everything about him was disconcerting.

This wasn't the brother who'd read me bedtime stories. This was Kit Emrys, duelist. Every movement was calculated, smooth, perfect. I'd gotten better at dueling than I was when he'd left home, but I'd already been sure I couldn't beat him. Now I knew—I'd never be able to beat him, no matter how much I practiced.

If I was ever in a position where I had to fight him, I should run. Better to face the shame of running from a duel than die at my brother's sword point. I'd be dead, and frankly, I didn't think Kit—or Winter—would ever get over it.

Even if part of him wanted to deny it, he was still my brother.

He motioned to a row of silver studs down the arm of his jacket. "This is what I am now, little brother. I kill people on command. For money. Do you really want that in Moonstriker palace? There's a reason Mother banned professional duelists from Moonstriker lands altogether."

Suddenly, I couldn't take my eyes off the studs. Were they...some kind of macabre kill count? It was considered in poor taste to kill someone in a duel if it was at all avoidable. Most people who did it once were looked at in question thereafter. Twice was almost unheard of. The row of studs on his jacket was considerably longer than that.

I knew that it would be different in this situation. That being a professional duelist meant killing people in duels deliberately. But if he'd truly killed that many people in duels?—

He leaned in, meeting my eye. "Stay out of my way. Stay out of the Dawnchaser's way. I don't want this to end badly, but he doesn't give a fuck. He's killed people for annoying him before, and he isn't going to hold back just because he knows damned well you're Mother's favorite."

I gasped, taking half a step back. "Did you tell him?—"

"Of course I didn't fucking tell him. He has no idea who I am, Rain. But you? Half of the Summerlands know that Mother's youngest is her favorite. Is the likeliest heir to the family name. I don't know how that great oaf Gloombringer avoided learning it, except that all of Gloombringer lands seem to be an unmitigated disaster. Did you look at the city when you came through it?"

I had, and he wasn't wrong. The city was crowded and filthy, and everywhere I'd looked, the stories Sim had seen were tragic and depressing and just generally...awful. Poverty and sadness pervaded the city.

"We were sheltered, Rain. We had no idea in our great alabaster tower, but the Summerlands need more than this summit to heal. Mother needs to climb down off her pedestal and see how the people are suffering, and it doesn't matter if they're geniuses or furthering the future of the world, they're still worthy of happy lives. More than just Moonstrikers matter."

He reached in and patted my face, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to lean into the touch or smack it away. I'd missed him so damned much. But also, he was an asshole.

Worse yet, he wasn't wrong.

His grip tightened, his fingers curling around the back of my neck, and he pulled me in until our foreheads were touching, staring into my eyes with his own pale gray ones. They were too close, distorted, but I could see the seriousness in his gaze.

"I have no idea what Dawnchaser is up to, Rain, but it's something. And you might know some things about him. You might even think you understand him, if you've gotten as arrogant as Mother since I left." I opened my mouth to protest but wasn't even sure if I wanted to deny that Mother was arrogant, or that I was, before he brought a finger up to cover my lips. "I don't care what you think you know. I need you to understand that you're wrong. Whatever you think you understand about him, I promise you, it's a thousand times worse and more complicated than you think. He's not just a monster. He's the worst monster. He's the thing you thought was hiding under your bed when you were three."

I scowled at the memory, pulling away and shaking my head. "Ember told me there was a black slime monster from the garbage hiding under my bed who would eat me when I went to sleep. That wasn't my fault." Ember had never let go of that either, even now in our twenties thinking it was hilarious that she'd scared me when she was six and I was three.

"I remember," he agreed. Unlike Ember when she brought it up, he wasn't smiling. He wasn't making light. "Watch your back, Rain. Don't sleep without someone you trust watching it. This place isn't safe, and the Dawnchaser is the nastiest monster in the dark you could possibly dream up. If you doubt me, ask Florian about his sister sometime. Better yet, do it in front of Huxley and see how that turns out."

I swallowed hard and nodded, though given the expression on his face, I was absolutely certain I would never, ever be doing that. I hadn't even known Huxley Dawnchaser had a daughter.

The longer I was away from home, the more I realized just how little I knew.

Mother really had been sheltering us from the whole world, and looking at it now, I wasn't sure she'd been doing anyone any favors by it.

With a sharp nod, my brother turned and headed out of the practice yard, his gait as smooth and confident as ever, somehow even more graceful than the last time I'd seen him. I didn't doubt what he'd said for a second, that Huxley Dawnchaser was the worst monster I could imagine.

But somehow, I suspected that if there were an award for most efficient killer, that one would be going to Winter.

No, to Kit Emrys.

Why the hells had he taken that name? That sweet, innocent character from my childhood, and I'd never be able to think of it the same way. The immortal fox was a killer now.

My brother, the killer.