SUN ESTATE

I woke up before Addam again, which rarely happened. I was so surprised I almost woke him up to talk about it.

But because it was rare, I kept my thoughts bottled up, and just enjoyed the way that the sunlight fell on his turned face. And half of his chest. And one leg. I’d pulled most of the bedsheets over me again, it seemed.

I may have appreciated his beauty for all of two minutes before realizing his ass cheek had a dimple too. Weren’t the two on his face enough? Did nature really feel he needed an encore? It seemed unfair.

“Hero,” he sighed. “You appear to have claimed ownership of my sheet again.”

I started laughing as he rolled around, grabbed the top sheet, and fluffed it in the air. As it began to settle like a parachute, he moved on top of me and kissed my neck good morning.

When he was done, he pushed up with his elbow so that he could look at me. I got lost in his burgundy eyes for a moment—they really were lovely—until he said, “You are awake.”

“It happens.”

I felt the coolness of his metal hand against one cheek. “Are you still upset about yesterday?”

Yes, I was still a little frustrated about yesterday. Most of the time Brand and I went into the field, we followed the job to its messy end. It felt odd to be sidelined. But the investigation of the rejuvenation center aside, there had been related fallout to handle. A family once associated with my court, as well as the Dawncreeks, had lost a member; as had Addam’s court. Many families across the city had spent yesterday in the sorts of discussions that follow a murder: grief, shock, planning, plotting.

“No,” I said, and touched one of his few tan lines, tracing it around a V of chest. “Just a busy day ahead.”

“But since you woke up early, it’s as if it’s still yesterday,” he argued. “We have so much time until today becomes today.”

“Do you have any specific ideas for using that time?”

“There are several ideas in my locked nightstand drawer.”

“You’re a freakish and beautiful car crash, Saint Nicholas,” I said. “But Brand knows I’m awake and I can feel him approaching like a homing missile.” That wasn’t a lie, either. Through my bond, I could feel the he’s-finally-fucking-awake energy of my Companion as he headed toward my suite.

Addam sighed, but nodded against me. “I need to run to my condo this morning anyway. Perhaps we can have lunch?”

If I had an immediate reply, I fumbled it, because he mentioned his condo. My brain decided to freeze time and dissect the statement for any possible meaning. He didn’t say I need to run home. But he also called it my condo.

Months ago, he’d hit me with a truth bomb. I know I will never be the love of your life. At the time, I’d been lost in the wonder of his vulnerability. But as the weeks went by, I became more and more ill at ease with the way he saw his role in my life and court.

Addam saw something on my face. He settled back on his haunches, pulling the sheet into his lap. “Is everything well, Rune?”

Addam put a lot of energy into trying to understand me. This, I knew. He excavated for clues like an archeologist—a painstakingly slow and precise process. And what’s stranger is that he actually enjoyed that. The problem was that I didn’t necessarily understand him as well as I needed, because I had no clear idea what we were becoming to each other. How would I even ask? Hey, Addam, just checking: have you given up your entire life to join my court forever, even though you think I can’t love you as much as I do?

There were three quick bangs on the door before it swung open. Brand poked his head in. He saw Addam half-naked, scrunched his eyes shut, then slammed the door so loud that a picture frame on the nearby wall tilted crazily.

Almost immediately, the door reopened. Brand leaned back in sheepishly. “That really makes a sound when the doors aren’t cheap hollow cores. Fucking mansions. And sorry, it didn’t sound like you were doing any cozy shit through the bond. My bad.”

The door shut more quietly.

Addam turned to look at me, which made his abdomen do all sorts of interesting things. His serious look lightened into a faint smile. “You are unaccustomed to long conversations. I have a sense, though, that there is a long conversation before us. Are you ready to have it?”

“I was until you said it would be a long conversation. I thought I’d just shout some bullet points and run.”

“If not now, then soon. I will bathe now.” He leaned in and kissed me on the lips. “Good morning, Rune.” Then he kissed the top of my head. “Good morning, Rune’s-mysterious-behavior. We’ll all talk later.”

He didn’t seem to be eating the acorns.

I threw the last one from my pocket. It bounced off a rock inside the elasmotherium’s enclosure and hit him in the horn. He made a lowing sound and shuffled around so that his ass was facing me.

I’d stopped by to visit Flynn during my morning patrol. I’d been in the habit of doing that every day, just to make sure nothing nasty from the haunted era had decided to move back in after our latest round of evictions.

Lady Death, in administering the division of the Gallows estate, had given me the prehistoric rhinoceros as a gift. Corbie was in love with the creature, which was partly why all of the wardstones penning Flynn into a half acre were designed to also withstand a nosy six-year-old boy.

“What are we going to do with you?” I sighed. “You have arthritis, you know.”

The creature’s tail swished.

“Fine. I’ll store some healing sigils tomorrow and visit with the vet. Corbie thinks your back leg is hurting you. I don’t know why.”

The creature shuffled back around to look at me, as if I’d said something to interest him.

It wouldn’t be the first strange thing about the Siberian unicorn. Something about Flynn’s tenure as an ifrit’s familiar had given him an . . . aura? I didn’t know how to explain it, which was saying something, because I was generally smart about this sort of thing.

On the plus side, undead and ghosts gave Flynn a wide berth. That was a help—though I’d also paid heavily to relocate undead and haunts rather than kill them outright. It wasn’t their fault the prodigal son had returned.

Across the entire estate, only two troubling areas remained. My father’s old tower, which was separate from the main house, was untouched. He’d used it as his residence, study, laboratory, vault . . . Insanely powerful wards had surrounded the tower at the moment of his death, and I hadn’t yet worked up the guts to break them. One day, I’d work with Lord Tower on it.

And then there was the carriage house. I’d surrounded the entire thing in wards and was, for now, content to let it rot within its fortified oasis. That was where I’d spent the night, the day that Sun Estate fell. That was where I’d been held and tortured.

I brushed my hands on my pants, turned, and headed in the direction of the beach.

Sun Estate had been one of the first translocations to Nantucket, back when Nantucket was still Nantucket. My father had always been good at hiding his acquisitions from public eyes—such as stealing a nearly bulldozed mansion from Long Island’s gold coast and dropping it onto his private island property. I waffled between whether the mansion was technically beautiful or not, with its flat surfaces and sudden angles—but it was breathtaking, which sometimes felt like beautiful.

Our chief contractor—the woman responsible for the complete rehabilitation of the estate until our money ran out—told me I was lucky the mansion had rotted in place. All of the pieces lay where they’d fallen, protected from looting by the dangerous haunts. That meant that magical restoration was possible. Renew a rotted railing? You’d have to do it the hard way if you didn’t have all the original debris sitting right below it.

Not that it made much difference in the price. We’d begun the renovation with a four million-dollar check and now, nine months later, we’d lost a zero in our bank account balance. Every single square foot of recovered ground came with a steep cost: a mix of physical labor, magic, and raw materials.

The grass under me got sparser and sandier until it was all beach dune. I heard the pound of little footsteps behind me, and a tiny hand tugged on my sleeve. I looked down to see Corbie. The moment he knew I was looking, his face transformed into an expression of poorly acted discomfort. He made a show of tenderly shifting from one foot to the other while staring at the sandy slope in front of us.

“You just crossed an entire lawn in point-two seconds,” I said. “But hot sand is too much?”

He pretended he didn’t understand what I was saying, and took a wincing step. “Really hot,” he whispered, but soldiered forward another step in his bare feet.

I picked him up and headed to the beach.

Thirty minutes later, Anna painted my last fingernail with a clear layer of polish. We were in a set of beach chairs near the tide line, where the sand was damp and cooler. She’d asked to practice on me, which was odd, but sure.

“Blow on them,” she said.

I waved my hand in the air. “I didn’t think you wore makeup.”

“I don’t,” she said.

“Then why practice?”

“I’m not,” she said. “I lied. Brand paid me.”

My gaze snapped to Brand, who was throwing a football around with Max and Quinn. Well, really, he was throwing a football, and Max and Quinn were running and picking it up. Then I looked down at the bottle of nail polish in Anna’s hands. I snatched it and saw it said, Apple Bitter.

“I told you to blow on them first,” she complained, and snatched the bottle back.

“Why did Brand pay you to put this on my nails?” I demanded.

“Because you bite them, and it looks stupid when you’re sitting on a throne.”

“I do not—” I breathed through my nose. “I do not have a throne.”

“Magic is metaphor,” she intoned, a clear mimic of me. “And it’s a big chair you sit in while deciding who to punish or help. What would you call it? I’m going to play football. I can throw better than Max.”

She ran off. I pulled my phone out and texted Brand a quick fuck you. He made a show of checking his phone lazily, then ambling toward me without urgency.

“Any problems on patrol?” he asked.

I held my middle nail up for him to see.

“Leaders don’t have hangnails,” he said. “Get over it.”

I got over it. It was still early enough to be hot as opposed to baking hot, so I tilted my face into the heat and enjoyed it. “Patrol was fine,” I said. “I think the only problems we have left have to do with construction, not hauntings.”

“Our funds are running low.”

“We have almost a million dollars in the account.”

“And we blew through three million dollars in nine months,” he said. “Half of that was in marble slabs. We need to prioritize the rest of the repairs, Rune.”

If it was just a matter of infrastructure, I wouldn’t be getting wrinkles around my eyes. But infrastructure meant safety. It meant a solid line of defense. It was the difference between a compound and a fortified compound. I opened my eyes and let my head roll left, staring down the stretch of rocky, natural shore. “I really hoped we’d be able to renovate the beach,” I said unhappily. “All the other Arcana with beachside compounds have pretty beaches, with bathhouses and piers and floating docks. But that’s the last thing we need to spend money on.”

“Then maybe we don’t spend money on it. Ever. Maybe we’ll leave it exactly like it is. Do Anna and the boys look like they’re missing out on anything?” He gestured to where the kids were sprawled on the wet sand to see who got nibbled by the tide first.

“Maybe not,” I breathed, and relaxed a little. I was tenser than normal, which lasted for three whole seconds before I got even more tense because I remembered that I was sort-of having a weird moment.

“Fucking hell,” Brand said. “What is going on in your brain today? You’re making me nervous.”

“It’s nothing,” I said. I nodded toward the kids and changed the subject. “Do you ever think what it would be like to rejuvenate to that age? Look how much energy they have.”

There was a moment of deep, suspicious silence. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Brand glaring at me. He said, “You told me we wouldn’t go further back than twenty-five.”

“I know. No one does. I was just asking.”

“Rune, hear me now. If you ever rejuvenate me to a skinny teenager with acne, and undo everything I’ve put my body through to get in this shape—”

“I didn’t say—”

“No, I need to finish the threat, because you need to understand I would make your life a living hell.”

“You can’t rejuvenate that young, they won’t let you,” Corinne said, coming up behind us. She’d brought her own chair with her, and snapped it open with a twist of her wrists.

It was still a revelation: her young, unlined face. We’d met during a period when she was rapidly aging following the death of her Atlantean scion, Kevan, whom she’d been bonded to as a Companion. Now she was younger than both Brand and I. She looked like Anna’s older sister, not foster mother.

Since the two were bonded as new Companions, Corinne would age naturally until Anna turned twenty-five, at which point Corinne would rejuvenate again to bring their ages in line.

“Are you doing okay?” I asked, seeing the bags under her eyes.

“I’m still furious with you.”

“I know. We should have woken you up and brought you with us yesterday. But that’s not what I mean.”

Corinne had known the Amberson family—the family who’d lost a member in the rejuvenation center attack. Lord Amberson had made Kevan Dawncreek a peer and involved him in their magical studies work. The last I knew of the Ambersons had come from Corinne—she’d said that they’d lost their status as a greater house when Sun Court fell. Apparently, the last few years had seen them recover somewhat, at least financially.

“I never really knew Elicia. The woman who—died. She was Lord Amberson’s maiden sister. After he died, I lost touch with them.”

“Are you still okay with making contact?” I asked. “If it’s too much, I can—”

“No. No, I’ll invite them to your gala, if they’re interested in attending. It’s a nice gesture, and will allow us to pay respects.”

In the back of my head, I also had to admit to myself that it was tactical. In much the same way that I’d brought the Dawncreeks back into the Sun Court, maybe there were other old Sun Court families who’d be interested in an alliance? I needed people. I needed funding. I needed spell-casters and fighters.

Corinne added, “Shouldn’t you be getting changed, by the way? Don’t you hold court hours after lunch?”

“Yes,” I grumbled.

“We’ve got interviews after that. I’ll find you then—I just want to go catch Layne before he runs off for the day.”

I didn’t say anything, just held my breath and waited.

She closed her eyes and grimaced. “Fuck me. They. Before they run off for the day.”

“Tell them I said hello, and if they have a hospital shift, to bring me back some of the passion fruit Jello. We can—FUCKER!” I made a face and wiped my lips on the back on my hand.

“You weren’t even aware you were biting your nail, were you?” Brand said. “See? I’m brilliant.”

I got ready for office hours.

I was doing my best to subvert the image of what “office hours” meant, unbitten nails aside. I picked jeans and sneakers for court, thinking my black leather jacket added enough gravity to keep me from seeming sloppy. Plus, it was covered with handmade wards that made it passably useful as body armor.

I walked from the room I shared with Addam to the first floor—well, trekked, really. Everything was a trek in Sun Estate. Something as simple as moving from bed to bathroom to coffee maker to back veranda edged into the territory of a commute.

When the virus had been at its height and every house was quarantined, Lord Tower had helped my new, larger family relocate to Sun Estate, where at least we could be together. There was more than enough space for Brand, myself, Queenie, and Max; along with Addam and Quinn; and then the Dawncreeks, complete once Corinne finished her rejuvenation treatments. The kids were back on a school schedule: four days a week on campus, three days a week at home.

Even thinking about all of these people exploded into a list of domestic tasks.

Had we found money to hire more kitchen staff for Queenie yet? She was resisting the idea of sharing her kitchen, but her kitchen was no longer nine-feet wide. What was Corinne’s role going to be, now that she was Anna’s Companion, and strong enough to be counted on in field actions? Was everything okay between her and Layne—who’d been spending a lot of time with the principality known as Ciaran, which was its own unique domino chain.

Max and Brand were waiting for me outside a doorway. I’d turned the old glass-walled solarium into my meeting space. My father had held concerts there, once, taking advantage of the northwestern sunsets.

Max picked a piece of sunburned skin off his nose. He still had his slender fae build, but was also growing tall and broad-shouldered. His button-down shirt had scorch marks from our nearly busted dryer.

The three of us entered the solarium and passed a small contingent of Arcanum guards who were double-checking the room for . . . I don’t know. Bombs? Protester signs? Rotten fruit? All Arcana received a dozen highly trained protectors, which was good, because we couldn’t afford hiring our own security force yet, though we were in negotiations to contract one of Addam’s former security teams from his mother’s court.

Putting together a security force was one aspect of ruling. Another was listening to your people when they had problems. And I did have people now, beyond those I called my family. We’d hired custodial staff and groundskeepers. And they all had issues that were important to them—like direct deposit, and healthcare, and visiting sick aunts, and on and on and on.

That would be the first half of my afternoon. The second would be interviewing potential seneschals: someone who could handle the day-today operations of the court. Brand had absorbed that role while the repairs were in progress, but we needed to start specializing. He had enough on his hands with security and grounds reconstruction; handling the politics wasn’t a fair use of his time.

I took a slow, deep breath, and said, “Good afternoon, everyone.” I went straight to the chair at the end of a massive cherrywood table with matching chairs. It seated thirty and had been donated by Addam, who said he’d found it unused in a storage room of the Crusader Throne. He’d forgotten to pull off the outrageously expensive price tag that had been dangling from one of the struts.

I sat at the head of the table, with Max at my left hand, and Brand retreating to a defensible corner.

The solarium was ringed with folding chairs that Queenie had found at a flea market. They were nice, and matched, which was enough for now. In the chairs, I spotted a young woman, a red-faced older man, and a man with a cane. More people were starting to shuffle into the room.

I asked the young woman to go first—she was house staff, and handled the residences on the upper floors. I saw that she cradled her arm as she came toward me, and when she was close enough, I spotted the reddened skin of an injury.

“Oh, no, no,” I said, and immediately shot out of my chair. “Here, take that seat right there.” As she settled into the chair, I took the one next to her. “Burn?”

“Chemicals, my lord. Some got under my rubber gloves. It’s not that bad.”

I touched my emerald ring and released a Healing spell. I’d have to start thinking about storing more than one a day at this rate, at least until we could afford a healer. “The thing is?” I told her. I gently applied pressure to her wound and sent the magic into the injury. “It kills me to know that people wouldn’t find me immediately when they’re hurt. That makes me think I’m not approachable.”

“Oh, but you are, my lord.”

“Then next time, as soon as you’re hurt, or as soon as you see anyone hurt, you’ll find me or the Lords Saint Nicholas immediately. The three of us always have a healing spell available. Deal?”

“Yes, my lord. That feels much better, thank you.”

When I was done, I headed back to my chair. Brand was flashing a hand signal at Max, and Max was hiding a page in the little notebook he carried with him everywhere.

“Okay, that wasn’t so bad,” I said, and decided I didn’t want to waste time being suspicious of them. “What’s next?”

I saw six more people over the next half hour.

Someone needed to work second shift instead of first shift, but their supervisor was telling them no. (I approved it. Having more custodial support in the evening would be good.) Two of the groundskeepers were fighting over the one riding lawn mower we had. (I assigned them to different parts of the estate, and gave them each two days a week to use the lawn mower as they pleased, while making a note to check our budget for more equipment.) One by one I whittled the room down until the last supplicant was shuffling out.

I turned around in my chair just as Brand flashed Max a V. That stopped whatever I was going to say. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing. Security stuff.”

I turned around in the other direction and peered at Max, who had his finger place-held in his notebook. I snatched up the notebook, quicker than his startled reflexes. On one of the middle pages he’d written, in big black letters, “9,” “7,” “8,” “8,” “7,” “8,” and then he was halfway through a “4.”

“Are you . . . Are you judging me?” I asked. I stabbed a finger at a nine. “Was that the first one? I healed her!”

“I got the sense that you didn’t remember her name,” Max admitted. “Brand gave you a ten though.”

“Do you have no sympathy for me at all? Do you know what I’ve been doing? This? My entire morning? Leading a court?” I ticked the items off on my fingers. “Workers comp, workplace grievance, a request for reasonable accommodation . . . I am HR. I am our human resources department, Brand. I am an HR manager.”

“Then decide on a goddamn seneschal,” he said. “You’ve been through fifteen applicants. Pick one. There’s a whole bunch waiting in the library.”

“It needs to be someone we both trust, so don’t act like I’m being unreasonable. Are you telling me you have a best candidate so far? Was it the one who picked his nose and wiped it under the table? Or the person who spelled Temperance wrong while describing the job they lied about? Or, hey, what about the person who is part of a movement to free Companions and send them back to the country of their birth. That didn’t stir up horrifying episodes of guilt and anger at all, right?”

I stopped, picked up my water glass, and breathed loudly into it. Eventually I opened my eyes and saw that Brand and Max were waiting quietly for me to recover.

“Am I doing okay?” I asked them quietly.

“Yes,” Brand said.

“Yes,” Max said, only he smiled.

“All right then. Let’s go interview those seneschals.”

To get to the library on the upper floor, we needed to go through the main hall. Corinne was there, waiting.

“Are you going to join us for the seneschal interview?” I asked her.

“Actually,” she said. “I was coming to find you about that. I was told to send you and Brand in alone.”

“Excuse me?” Brand demanded.

“It’s fine. The room is cleared, and there are two guards outside.”

“Who told you to send us in alone?” I asked.

“The . . . candidate,” Corinne said.

“There are supposed to be half a dozen candidates in there,” I said.

“Not any longer.”

Now that was interesting and foreboding. I gave Max a look, shrugged, and finished the trek to the study with just Brand at my side.

The library wasn’t quite repaired yet, but we’d put more attention into it than other parts of the house, mainly because cleaning it was one of the easiest slices on the chore wheel, and there were comfy sofas to be lazy on. People were known to trade the privilege for cash.

All of the random strangers I’d expected to see had been dismissed. Only one person remained, and that person was Diana Saint Nicholas, Addam’s severe aunt, the sister of the sitting Lady Justice.

She was a woman who appeared to be in her late forties or early fifties, with long dark hair and burgundy eyes. She sat in a chair facing the door.

While I stood there and stared, surprised, she raked her eyes from my head to my feet.

“No,” she said. “First lesson. You should wear slacks and formal footwear for our interview. I must insist.”

“I’m interviewing you?” I said.

“No,” she replied, and left it at that. She folded her arms and waited until I realized she was serious. I exchanged a look with Brand, so she added, “He can stay. I’ll speak with him first.”

Interested in seeing this play out—and seeing no advantage to throwing a fit—I left, went back to my room, and rooted through the dirty laundry for slacks. My boots would have to be formal enough. I lost myself in the mechanics of changing, because I wasn’t sure how the larger situation was sitting in my brain.

By the time I got back to the library, Brand was in a big puffy chair opposite Diana. His hands were folded in his lap, and he was nodding seriously. When he saw me, he looked almost guilty, and sagged into a fake, insolent slouch.

“Okay, let me get my arms around this,” I said, and took a seat on a sofa. “You’re interested in being my seneschal?”

“Are my reasons important?” she asked.

“Well . . . yes? Isn’t that one of the usual interview questions?”

“Tell me, Lord Sun. How many centennials serve you?”

“I don’t call my people servants. They’re my staff, friends, and family. And . . . we have . . . some.” One? Maybe? Corinne was a centennial—she and Kevan had come from old Atlantis. And the dinosaur was technically over forty thousand years old, though it had spent most of that time in stasis as a summoned familiar.

“The fact that your pupils are darting back and forth suggests you don’t know the answer,” she said. “Do you have any idea what a disadvantage you’ll be at, negotiating with courts with millennia of combined experience? You need my knowledge, and I miss my nephews.”

“Lady Justice is irked enough I’ve co-opted her sons. She’s not going to be happy if I steal you, too.”

Diana crossed her legs and leaned back in the chair. The lines on her face were hard and faint, and they didn’t fold seamlessly into her smiles so much as her frowns. “My sister never made me her seneschal. She made me the caretaker of her children. This is where I find the greatest need—with these children, here. And I would also point out that you’re being overly generous in her concern for her sons.”

She hit the S on sons, and I felt my own frown settle into place. Lady Justice’s dismissiveness of Quinn had always rankled Addam, and didn’t impress me either. Quinn had been a sickly child, raised by Addam. The rare prophetic gifts he’d developed later in life had been overshadowed by his infirmity—a mark of shame for traditional Atlantean houses.

“So you think I need you because of your experience,” I said.

She made a frustrated sound. “Lord Sun. That is only the start of what you need. I’ve spent the last hour walking the estate with your Cook. Your oldest ward, Matthias, is having a growth spurt. His ankles are showing. The girl with the burn mark has brambles in her hair—Annawan. You appear to have a giant rhinoceros living behind wardstones with a singular flaw—they’re vulnerable to physical movement. You’ve devoted resources to repairing your kitchen and living areas—but you are Arcana. Your first priority should have been on the public-facing spaces.”

“If you think I’m going to be the type of Arcana to care about the impression he leaves on others, I’m going to disappoint you,” I said.

“I don’t think that at all. I think you need people around you who care about the impression you leave on others. You? You I expect to be something new. Something we need on this island, at this time, at this point in our history. I am very interested to see what you become, Rune Sun.”

“I still think Lady Justice would kill me.”

“I thought you didn’t care about the impression you left on others?” she asked. Her hands were knitted together so tightly that the tips were white. “Lord Sun—”

“This won’t work if you can’t call me Rune.”

“Rune,” she said. “I . . . miss Quinn. I’ve become very fond of him. This situation would benefit us both.”

I caught Brand rubbing his thumb across his index finger knuckle. When he rubbed it over the nail, it meant he was playing a violin for me. When he rubbed his knuckle, it meant someone was playing me like a fiddle. He smirked and shrugged when he saw I noticed him.

“I’m not going to change clothes every time you ask,” I sighed.

“I would hope you never do it again. That was a bit of a test. Though . . . perhaps you’ll take my advice on courtwear.”

I buried my eyes in my hands and itched my eyelids.

I heard movement, and Lady Diana settled into the sofa next to me. “Rune, listen to me. These first few months are critical. Your coronation approaches. As soon as that happens, it will be the firing of a starter pistol. Some of the old Sun Court houses will immediately approach you, as will other unaffiliated houses. Turn them all down. Anyone who comes forward so quickly will be curious, needy, or greedy. You will want to wait for the second wave—the people with something big enough to offer that they’re slow to make a decision; or so much to lose that their trust must be secured.”

I lowered my hands and looked at her. It was good advice.

“I’d like a room with a view of the elasmotherium,” she said. “It is rather . . . marvelous. And Lord—Brandon. Brandon, I know that you’ve been serving much the same role as Rune’s seneschal. I would imagine it may be difficult for you to share some of those responsibilities. I understand that.”

Brand pulled out his phone. Two seconds later, Lady Diana’s phone began to ping. And ping. And then it was like electric popcorn.

“Those are all the emails I’ve been ignoring,” he said. “Have at it.”

There was a knock at the door. On the other side, Quinn said, rather loudly, “Is my aunt here? Or are you in school—though I’m not sure what that means? It’s one or the other, this close to it actually happening.”

Lady Diana was the first person to smile, and it was genuine, which made me feel better about the decision I hadn’t quite made.

“Brand,” I said. “Would you excuse us? I’d like to talk with Lady Diana.”

“Sure thing.” He went to the door, cracked it open just enough so he could put his arm through and shove Quinn back, and slipped out.

I looked at Diana and said, “I have enemies.”

“You do.”

“And they’re only getting stronger.”

“Your point?”

“Diana,” I said. “I am not always a safe person to be around.”

She said absolutely nothing. She just watched me.

So I said, “I don’t need a seneschal who will protect me. I need one who is strong enough to protect the people around me, from dangers without and within. Against my will, I seem to be getting drawn into matters I’m not sure I’m ready to face. I need people who can be just as scary as I can be when it really counts.”

Slowly, the edge of her mouth turned upwards.

Another day of this weird new life I now led was over. The kids were sleeping in the ballroom, which is where a lot of us tended to wind up for some reason. We actually kept a trunk of blankets and yoga mats in the corner of the room because of it. I was thinking I might join them because Addam was spending the evening at the Crusader Throne, helping his Aunt Diana speak to his mother about becoming seneschal.

Brand and I meandered there after doing a final perimeter walk, which may have been the only reason we caught Anna in the hallway with a bag of weed.

“Annawan Fucking Dawncreek,” Brand nearly shouted.

She jumped and spun around.

“Explain yourself,” I said.

“I—”

“Because there is no way you think I’m okay with this. You are twelve—”

“Thirteen,” she said.

“—thirteen years old,” I finished. “Do you know what that’ll do to your development? At this age?”

She glared at me. “Will it kill my brain cells?”

“Yes,” Brand said. “And it’ll slow your reaction time, dull your reflexes, and undermine your training.”

“So I might wind up stupid? And unable to care for myself and make responsible decisions when I grow older?” she said.

“I’m wondering if you’ll be so flippant once your aunt finds out,” I said.

“She’ll make me tell her where I got it.”

“So will I.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “Did you know that the room that Aunt Corinne and I share used to belong to Brand? And that there’s a loose floorboard in the closet?”

Brand’s eyes went wide. I saw this through my own widened eyes as I exchanged looks with him. Brand snatched the bag out of Anna’s hands and shook it. An old freshness ward had preserved it, but the buds inside were still so ancient they nearly made a clacking sound.

“Twenty bucks,” I said. “And you never mention this again.”

“Fifty,” she said. “Snacks are expensive at school.”

“I’ve got two twenties in my pocket,” I said, and pulled out all the cash I had on me.

“Deal,” she said, and plucked the American bills from my hand. She went into the ballroom without a second look at the pot.

Brand and I stared at the old Ziploc bag. There was even a pack of rolling papers inside it. “I think I remember this,” Brand mumbled. “Didn’t we used to get it through the guy who tended the orchard?”

“It . . . I mean, it can’t be good anymore. Can it?”

“Probably not,” Brand said, which wasn’t a no.

“We could make sure it’s inert. Then we could dispose of it properly.”

“That would be very responsible of us,” he agreed.

“Roof,” I said.

Sun Estate had a lot of random towers and balconies. The northwest wing, in particular, had a steep ladder-like stairway to a turret roof that faced the ocean, invisible to all nearby windows. We made sure Layne and Corinne were keeping an eye on things, and made an escape.

While Brand rolled a joint, I kicked at the leaves, dirt, and branches that had blown across the round space, which was as wide as ten big footsteps.

I took the first hit. It was as abrasive as a sandstorm. I didn’t cough, though. After a second, smaller hit, I passed it back to Brand. “You remembered how to roll those,” I said on a dragon-plume exhale.

“Only because you lick the paper shut like you’re giving it a messy French kiss.” He took a hit and immediately started hacking.

“So much for those nice pink lungs,” I said. “Maybe we should have baked your share into a little brownie.”

“Fuck off,” he coughed, and tried again. He managed to keep the second inhale inside for a full two seconds.

While he got his lungs sorted, I went over to the crenellated roofline, which was as tall as a normal railing.

I was already getting high, because the world was just there. Huge and beautiful and full of loud, dark waves. The black ocean was topped by a sparse starscape, smelling like salt and seafood. I forgot how powerful it was, to face a nighttime ocean from such a height. It made me feel small and grateful.

“This is ours,” I said, turning in a slow circle. My eyes began to sting. “Again. It’s ours again, Brand. We’re back.”

He came over and handed me the joint. He didn’t pull back after; I felt a line of warmth remain along the side of my body.

My eyes blurred. I always got a little weepy when I was high. But how couldn’t I? We were back. This was Sun Estate. And while I’d been playing Arcana, Brand had rebuilt it. Torn it from the grasp of entropy, reversed its slow slide into ruin.

“What a gift you gave me,” I murmured. “Taking over the renovations. Thank you, Brand. You took on so much. Thanks for holding out until we got more help.”

“Dolphins,” he said, and shrugged.

He meant the time we’d smoked pot and drank beer and caught sight of a pod of dolphins playing offshore. A pretty memory, and I think he was just saying that he was happy to be home, too. “You’re already high,” I said.

“No,” Brand said quickly. Then he said, “No.” And then he decided to say it one more time. “No.”

I burst into laughter. Then Brand started laughing. And then we both ended up sagging against the parapet.

“Oh, gods, that wasn’t funny at all,” I said, giggling. “I’m worried we may not be able to safely throw this pot away. It might, you know, contaminate the groundwater.”

Brand made vague motions with his hands, like he was trying to sketch out actual word bubbles. He managed two. “Half House.”

“Yeah. We’ve come a long way in a pretty quick time, haven’t we?” Another wave of intoxication hit, a massive, flannel-covered wave. I laughed and took another hit.

“I like being a Companion,” Brand said. “It always made so much sense to me. Like, when we were kids? And Nanny Patience used to tell us that please was the magic word? Even then, I remember thinking, I can’t wait to be a Companion, because having a lot of knives on you would make conversations go so much quicker than using a weak-ass magic word. Breathe. Breathe!” He pounded me on the back.

I wasn’t sure what he meant until black dots danced in my vision. Oh, yeah. I exhaled smoke and coughed.

“Remember when the Hanged Man made me stop breathing?” I said. “That sucked.”

“You want to get high and talk about the Hanged Man?”

“You’re right. Bad choice. Why didn’t we bring food?”

“What if we flip a coin to see who does a kitchen run?” he said.

“Can I toss the coin?” I asked.

He grumbled about it but said yes. We had a single Canadian quarter between us. I flipped it in the air, and it vanished over the edge of the tower.

“Just what, exactly, were you unclear about?” he said.

We looked over the edge of the tower and only saw a giant black spot where an ocean was. Then we got lost in that for a long, long time, because the world was right there. Sun Estate was right there.

Brand started poking his lips after what felt like hours and hours. “Are these moving? They don’t feel like they’re moving. Am I making a sound right now?”

“I’m not sure. Try barking. Or mooing.”

“You fuck,” he said. He closed his eyes. “I mean fuck you.”

“If this pot robs you of your ability to swear . . . I mean, the possibilities,” I marveled. “It’s like kryptonite.”

“It’s not robbing me of any of my abilities,” he said angrily.

“Did you hear the trapdoor opening?” Addam asked.

“Of course I did,” Brand said, then just about jumped out of his skin.

“Addam’s here!” I shouted happily. And he had a wrinkled plastic bag from the kitchen dangling from one finger, which was so unexpected that it felt like a hallucination. “Addam are you really here?”

“I am,” he said, and brushed his lips against my head. “Did you just say the words this pot?”

“Anna found our old stash. It’s making Brand cough a lot and forget how to swear. Do you want some?”

Addam’s lips curled into a small smile. “I shall observe, for now.”

We all decided to sit down on the ground. Addam had somehow decided to bring snacks, beer, and a blanket with him. He got between me and Brand, and flapped the blanket out so that it covered all three of us. We each got an arm around our shoulders, though I got the cool metal hand.

Brand said, “Remember that time we both got high? And your father came in?”

“I do,” I said.

“So tell the story,” he said.

“You already know it.”

“But Addam doesn’t,” Brand said. He made an exasperated sound. “I’m giving you permission to blather. Seize the fucking day.”

“Your swear function is returning. So. Okay. We were watching this TV show. And my father walks in. We’re both incredibly stoned and freaked out. So we just sat there watching the TV, really quiet and intently, like it was some school project and not a supremely weird reaction to an authority figure coming into your room. And droplets of Lysol are still literally floating through the air. So I get nervous and start saying, wow, look at this actress. Her gaze is so intense. I can’t believe she can hold that look so long, it’s a really good show, Dad, want to watch? And after another long moment, my father says, The video is on pause, Rune.”

Laughter was startled out of Addam.

“And he turned around and walked out,” I said.

Addam kissed the top of my head, kissed the top of Brand’s head, and said, “My guys.”

And we got silent after that again.

Because the world was right there.