Kin (3 page)

By the time the others converged on the spot, drawn by that low un-noise of violence and dominance, she had managed to untangle herself and had hauled Thorne back, keeping Hunter down with a stare and a snarl, her lip lifted and teeth tingling. The moon rose higher, a bleached bone dish; for the rest of the evening's run every cousin took turns keeping the two boys apart, and Ruby right in the middle of the pack.

So much for running alone.

“U
NACCEPTAB
LE
,”
G
RAN
SAID
SOFTLY
. “
Y
OU
'
VE
GIVEN
both of them false hope.”

Way to slut-shame, Gran
. Ruby's lower lip jutted; the Moon was high overhead but the run was done, the shift receding into the place it lived except on special nights. Potential sparked and fizzed between them, describing the arcs of their personal space. Gran's was the glow of an active, powerful charmer.

Ruby's was vivid, sharp-edged, not-yet-settled charm energy pushing against her grandmother's. High emotion disturbed the sea of Potential everyone was swimming in, and it fueled some types of charm, but those were dangerous.

Those were dark, even if not-quite-black charming, and you messed around like that at your peril.

Deep breath, Ruby filling her lungs so she didn't yell in response. When she could talk without screaming, she did. “I have
not
. They're
cousins
, Gran. We grew up together. You
wanted
me to spend time with—”

“I had thought you would settle with one of them, yes. Obviously that is not going to happen.”

So what, if it had, what then?
“So I have to get married and start squeezing out cublings right this second? What about getting an education? Am I just going to school so I can be a better barefoot pregnant—”

As usual, Gran took refuge in propriety. “You have a duty to your clan!”

“Why don't you just collar me and chain me in the basement? You could have the boykin take turns and get me knocked up! Then you'd have everything you wanted, right?”

The words bounced around the living room. The tapestry shifted, shifted. Gran had gone white, to match her parchment hair, but the incandescent outrage filling Ruby to the brim didn't permit a step back.

They faced each other, young woman and old, and Gran's shoulders dropped. “I've only ever tried to do what's best.” Quietly, as if defensive. But that was ridiculous, wasn't it?

Gran never needed to be
defensive
. She made the decisions, and everyone fell into line.

Ruby's jaw ached with denying the shift. “Oh, I know. For the clan. The clan this, the clan that. It's all about the clan!” A blockage in her throat, a reek of sour salt. Her skin was too sensitive, every edge scraped hard, even invisible air. “Fine! Okay!
Fuck the clan!
”

She didn't mean to scream it, but she did. The buzzing all through her was the shift trying to burst free. Her bones crackled, zinging electricity popping and sparking from her fingertips, her scalp tingling as her hair tried to stand straight up.

Gran actually blinked.

Fury evaporated, leaving only a thin ringing hopelessness.
Uh-oh
.
Really gone and done it now
.

“I certainly hope you do not mean that.” Edalie de Varre drew herself up. “The clan birthed you, has raised you, protected you, given you every advantage.”

You raised me. I don't know who birthed me. I don't even know if you're my real grandmother, but we all know I'm root and not branch, I've got to be. Right?
The hollow place inside her gave no answer.
“So squeezing out babies as soon as I get out of college is a small price to pay for all that, right?” Her hands were fists, to disguise the bulging along her wrists. To shift in front of the Clanmother during an argument, well, you just
didn't
. “Got it, thanks.”

“Ruby—”

“I'll be up in my room, preparing to meet my future impregnator. I shouldn't even go to school at all, you know? It'll only give me ideas.” She turned on her heel—her trainers were still full of leaf mold and black Woodsdowne dirt—and stamped for the stairs.

“Ruby!” Score one point, at least—she'd managed to make Gran raise her voice.

If it was a victory, it was an empty one. Dirt clumped and scattered from her trainers, all over the hardwood of the stairs on her way up. She'd charmsweep later.

Did I really say that to her? Mithrus.

Her room closed around her with its usual comforting mess, clothes scattered strategically to hide the books underneath, papers stacked to confuse any searcher. Nobody ever noticed the textbooks
or
the fact that she kept all her school notes and reference papers. She should clean the whole thing up and reorganize it now, since she wasn't supposed to be herself anymore. Or even the self she'd made for everyone else.

A bright, careless, exacting child was what Gran had wanted, and Ruby had done her best. Except now they wanted to flip a switch and have a docile breeder. Doing that sort of 180 was enough to make a stomach rebel and a head spin. Even if you were used to flipping around and spinning at a moment's notice for everyone else.

Just thinking about the whole mess made her want to slide the window open and slip out, climb down the plane tree outside her window—an old childhood friend—and then . . . what? She could call one of the boytoys, hit a club, or even just walk aimlessly.

On any other night, maybe. Not fullmoon. Even Thorne wouldn't dare to sneak out and wait around in the Park to see if she was in a mood to run. And if Thorne wasn't coming out, Hunter wouldn't be either.

She flipped the lock on her doorknob, as if Gran couldn't break whatever small pin held the thing in place with a simple flex of her wrist. She was much, much stronger than she looked.

Ruby, although she was kin, was . . . not.

That was the biggest secret of all. Oh sure, physically she was fine, a true daughter of the moon: she could run faster than pretty much anyone, she didn't get sick, and she bounced back after any injury with little trouble.

Gran's strength had a completely different dimension. One Ruby, no matter how hard she tried, couldn't make herself own, too.

She flopped down on her bed. The shaking in her arms and legs just wouldn't go away. Neither would the knot in her stomach.

Here, in this white-walled room with its crimson bedspread and heavy red velvet cushions, she was relatively alone. Only relatively, because every cough, every move, could be heard.

A strong kingirl wouldn't feel this sickness all through her. A good kingirl wouldn't have gone for the boundary wall. A real kingirl would not have shouted
fuck the clan
at her grandmother.

She was the last hope of the Woodsdowne rootfamily, and all she wanted to do was run like a coward.

No wonder Gran was disappointed.

H
AVEN
C
ENTRAL
S
TAT
ION
HADN
'
T
MOVED
SIN
CE
THE
Reeve; the true iron in the tracks and trains kept the worst shifting and Twisting of Potential at bay. You could see pre-Reeve leftovers everywhere, but they never gave Ruby quite the same satisfied feeling as the tingle all through her bones as true iron tamed the often-invisible flux that had drowned the world at the end of the Great War.

Snowflake-cinders spun lazily down as the train heaved itself to a stop, its blunt nose searching through a cloud of smoke. The platform conductor was sing-screaming the names of other stops along the line—New Avalon to the north, Pocarello and points south—and the breakwheel made a grinding noise as layers of heavy-duty, heavily regimented charm parted. A delightful, shivery pulsing against all her skin, even under her clothes, and Ruby was hard put not to shudder. Gran was a straight, slim iron bar of icy silence beside her, a veil obscuring her face and her hat perched just-so, only a few hints of parchment hair escaping from under its jaunty tilt.

Ruby was in her dirt-caked trainers, again, a pair of ratty jeans, and a faded, scoop-necked Phib sweater of cerise silk yarn that was nevertheless last year's fashion. No
guy
would get the nuances. Ellie, of course, would know exactly what last year's sweater meant, but she wasn't here.

Thorne stood just behind Gran and to her left, his position as an only child among the branches brought home by his place at the sinister side of the root-mother. Gran didn't hold with much superstition, but she was definitely making a point.

Hunter was right next to Ruby, tucked behind her half a step as diplomacy demanded, the bruising on his face already faded to a yellow-green shadow of itself.

Kin healed fast.

Thorne, scowling under slicked-down gel-darkened hair, couldn't have looked any more mutinous if he'd tried. Still, neither could she, she supposed. Hunter just looked a little sullen.

“BREEEEAK NOOOOOOW!” the conductor yelled, and rivers of charm parted. You couldn't
see
the charm-symbols outright, but the train blurred and wavered under them like pavement under heat-ripples. Billows of steam rose, metal glowing red and the cinders whisking themselves into strange angular cloud shapes before blowing away.

She watched as they began to file off the train, disheveled, with red eyes—recycled air wasn't good for anyone's tender tissues. Still, it was better than maybe getting a lungful of spores or Mithrus alone knew what from the Waste. Part of the high price of interProvince passage, for those who couldn't afford to drive or didn't want to take the risk, was the cost of sealing the iron bullet.

The rest was overhead, and indemnity in case there was a derailment. Sometimes even a lot of iron didn't help out in the Waste. All that Potential slopping around without charmers to shape and tame it, bleeding off the excess, made the risk of Twisting exponentially worse.

Not only that, but there were
things
out there. Dangerous, uncontrolled things, untamed Potential even corkscrewing the flora and fauna. That was why they called it the Waste.

A shape looming through the steam. Her spine knew before the rest of her, a zing like biting on tinfoil all the way down her back. Ruby inhaled, sharply, and Thorne tensed beside Gran. Having them both here was vintage Gran—she thought it would give them a lesson. Friendly rivalry was okay, but anything even a fraction of a step above that was frowned upon.

Because it could hurt the clan.

He was taller than her, ink-black hair cropped aggressively short. A strong jaw, the familiar high cheekbones, and a kin's supple movements. There was an oddness about him, rasping against her instincts, but then, he was from another clan and would naturally smell a little . . . strange.

Did he feel the trap closing around him, too?

A flash of mellow gold. Even among the moon's children his gaze would be called spectacular. Sun-eyes, too warm and deep to be yellow. Bad-luck eyes, glowing like the Moon's sister-enemy.

Uh-oh
. She tried to remember if anyone had said anything about that before. He had a brother; did they have the same eyes?

He carried a single large dun-colored duffel, easy grace and broad shoulders handling it like it weighed nothing. A wilted blue button-down, sleeves rolled back to show tanned forearms, a pair of jeans just as thrashed as hers, and very nice boots. Ellie would know the brand off the top of her head, but Ruby just took in the quality of the stitching and nodded internally.

There was a clan cuff on his left wrist. Wide age-darkened leather with silver snaps, the Grimtree crest stamped deeply and creased. Something about the cuff seemed a little weird, but he bowed properly to Gran, just enough insouciance mixed with the respect to denote strength.

He was
definitely
dominant. Just how dom remained to be seen.

“Clanmother de Varre.” A nice deep voice, and Ruby's entire body flamed, a scalding icebath. “Grimtree sends greetings, and respect.”

The veil stirred at its edges, either from a slight movement or a stray bit of breeze. When Gran spoke, it was just above a formal murmur. “Woodsdowne returns the regard. You have changed much, young Conrad.”

“Almost fifteen years will do that. Except to you. They say Woodsdowne is as beautiful as the Moon.”

Ruby's jaw almost dropped. Was he
flirting
? With
Gran
? The boy straightened, and
boy
was a relative term. He was nineteen, but damn if he didn't seem, well . . . pretty effortlessly self-possessed.

“Some branches are always blessed. Thorne, please take our visitor's bag. Ruby.”

“Gran.” She kept her feet right where they were, although she was supposed to step forward to greet him as well.

That golden gaze turned to her. Cheeks hot, her messy hair every which way, why had she deliberately not even combed? Or washed her face? There were probably crumbs on her chin from dinner or something.

His pupils dilated a little. Ruby watched, fascinated, as her tiny image in those black holes vanished behind the shutters of his eyelids. He even rocked back a little on his heels, and the whole rest of the train station went away. For that moment, there was just the two of them, and a broad white smile rose on Conrad Tiercey's face, a crescent of perfect teeth.

His bag dropped with a thump, almost as if he couldn't hold onto it any longer. “It's true,” he said, just to her. “More beautiful than anything.”

It should have been cheesy. It should have been a warning.

A tightness she hadn't even been aware of loosened in Ruby's chest. The smile on her face felt dopey, but she didn't care. “Hello.”
Oh, my God, is that really all you can say? Good one, Ruby.

He swallowed, visibly. “Hi. Ruby, right? Conrad.”

She held her hand out. He stepped forward and took it, gently, strength underneath. His skin was warm, rougher than hers. A slight movement, as if he wanted to kiss her knuckles, but that was old-fashioned. So they just stood there until Gran coughed.

Ruby found her throat was dry. “Moon's greeting,” she managed, traditional words of welcome. “How was your trip?”

“Boring.” The smile returned, a private joke. “I had to make my own fun.”

She grinned back, and it felt completely natural. “I'll bet.”

“You are most welcome here.” Gran took a single step forward, and Conrad dropped her hand. “Our guest is no doubt exhausted. Thorne—yes, thank you. Hunter, please take word to your mother that he's arrived safely; the Elder Circle will want to know.”

“Yes ma'am.” Hunter bumped into Ruby as he went past—not hard, but not accidentally either. There was a line between his eyebrows, and his mouth was pulled tight. “See you later, Rube.”

“Sure.” Later, she would think back and notice how he'd looked worried. The breeze shifted, and she caught a good whiff of healthy male kin, a fascinating new scent without the underlying musk and black earth of Woodsdowne.

There was a harsh angry undertone that should have raised her hackles, but all Ruby felt was a raw unsteady relief.

Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all.