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“We have a plan. Want to see it?” Cye shoved his tablet at me.
This modern, spartan flat somehow decorated for Solstice? We didn’t even have a fern. We also didn’t have anything to celebrate except things hadn’t gone to hell yet. Just a matter of time on that.
On the other hand, it’d be a sourpuss convention with our stripped-down spartan modern flat without so much as a damn wreath. And what was it my matrix said? Pragmatic? Maybe needed to dial down the pragmatism a bit before I stripped all the patina off everything so the whole world became as unvarnished as I was. “Okay. Just no artificial plants and no cut trees. We don’t need more bad luck.”
Jun threw up both of his fists. “Yes! Whoo-hoo!”
Cye offered me his tablet again. I gently pushed it away. “No, I’m sure it’s fine. Oh, and don’t set anything on fire, no elves, and no excessively jolly fat men.”
“What about excessively buff men?” Jun flexed a massive bicep and kissed it.
“In that case, pour me a drink and bring on the excess.” It felt flat even as I said it.
“We don’t have to decorate,” Cye said kindly.
“Bring on the evergreen garlands and ribbons if you want, I’ll just observe, if you don’t mind.”
“The SilverPaw didn’t do the holiday?” Cye asked.
“Oh, they did,” I said, dodging the sudden sore spot that his words invoked.
All the big holiday festivities had been at SilverPaw’s heart. Decorating had been de rigueur. The pack hadn’t needed to know how joyless and mechanical it’d become after Mom had died. It’d simply stopped mattering, and it’d never started again.
I waited for the warm fuzzy feelings to kick in. Nope. Not working. No warm fuzzy feelings.
“Come with us to buy supplies,” Jun said. “It’s still early.”
“We’re going up to Connecticut,” Cye added like it was a tempting piece of steak dangling in front of me.
“I’ve got to study,” I said. They were just remote classes that didn’t count for anything, but I still had to take the exams and I wanted to do well because I had every damn intention of actually applying for the next fall semester and needed all the bonus points I could get. “Go have fun.”
They didn’t ask Sterling, but did go rattle Burian’s still-broken door to ask him if he wanted to come along.
Sterling watched them go. “Solstice is a difficult time of year for you.”
“It became difficult,” I said.
“This business of you as a Solstice Hound?”
“Not just that,” I muttered. “It’s complicated. Can we not talk about it? It’s really not a big deal and I promise it won’t bite us.”
He smiled slightly. “It can wait. I’m going to finish up some work, then run while I think. I get the impression you want to be by yourself a bit.”
“I just need to process it,” I said.
“Same. I’m relieved we can largely dismiss this as simple. It’s malicious and dangerous, but it’s straightforward. What was that you told me when we were at AmberHowl? About the white queen? How I needed to stop Jerron before he sacrificed the queen?”
Ah, classic Sterling on to the next to do list item. “I saw something on the table top. A chess board.”
“A chess board. You had a vision, you mean. The Moon’s Gift.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said. “It was just this thing I saw for a moment. Part of a board with the black rook, white queen, white king, white bishop, and black bishop. The hand moving the pieces was going to sacrifice the queen.”
Sterling’s eyes turned stormy. “Yes, and I’m looking for every possible clue to explain what’s going on around us. We’re the black rook, then. That’s what I said to you before we went into AmberHowl—time to find out if we are the rook or the pawn.”
My mouth went dry. “Yes.”
“But you didn’t see the black king.”
