Gloombringer the summert.., p.1
Gloombringer (The Summertide Chronicles Book 1), page 1
Gloombringer
The Summertide Chronicles
Sam Burns
Copyright © 2024–present by Sam Burns.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
No AI was used in creating any part of this book.
Content Warning: violence, depiction of unhealthy relationships both with alcohol and other people
Cover art © 2023 by Cate Ashwood
https://www.cateashwooddesigns.com/#/
Editing by Clause & Effect, Sandy Bennett, and Julie at https://bookwormyogi.com/
Contents
1. Adair Courtwright
2. Rain Moonstriker
3. Adair
4. Rain
5. Adair
6. Rain
7. Adair
8. Rain
9. Adair
10. Rain
11. Adair
12. Rain
13. Adair
14. Rain
15. Adair
16. Rain
17. Adair
18. Rain
19. Adair
20. Rain
21. Adair
22. Rain
23. Adair
24. Rain
25. Adair
26. Rain
27. Adair
28. Rain
29. Adair
30. Rain
31. Adair
32. Rain
33. Adair
34. Rain
Acknowledgments
Also by Sam Burns & W.M. Fawkes
Also by Sam Burns
About Sam Burns
For my husband, who is totally worth dueling over.
Chapter 1
Adair Courtwright
The threads of fate are fickle creatures. One day’s bright pink of adoration will turn to the deep crimson of hatred the next. Without attention, the broad ribbons of plum that mean abiding affection can wither and blacken to cobweb strands of disdain. It can be impossible to follow them all, let alone understand them.
Most people have at least a few dozen. Some have hundreds. A few people have thousands; so many it can hurt to look at them.
Unfortunately for Oberon Gloombringer, first of his name, last of his line, head of the Gloombringer family, and one of the four lords of the Summerlands, all of his thousands of threads were slowly turning white.
And white only meant one thing.
Death was coming for him.
It was disconcerting to watch, day by day. At first, I’d thought I was imagining it, because it was happening so slowly that it was hard to notice. I convinced myself that maybe it was the way the light caught the threads—except that light didn’t actually interact with my magic, so no amount of sunlight or lack thereof made the threads change colors.
Every day they were just a little paler. It had been happening for at least six months, and the colors that had once been vibrant and alive were now pale, sun-washed versions of themselves.
Sometimes, I wondered if it had affected his relationships. If the people who despised him suddenly despised him less because his threads were fading. Because his relevance to the world was fading away along with his life. I wondered if it was a curse laid on him by one of his dark red threads, the ones that still stood out in a fading field of color.
Most of the time, I was too busy worrying about the fact that I was shackled to a man who was dying. My strand with him had faded like all the others, but it was still one of his strongest, thickest ties. Just as my father’s tie to him had been before me. And just like my father’s tie to his father, the previous Lord Gloombringer.
Steel gray and thicker than my index finger, it was the strongest tie I had to anyone.
Again, almost exactly like my father’s.
My mother had asked me about it once. I’d been a teenager, newly bonded to my stone, and she’d been trying to comprehend the scope of the power I’d been saddled with, asking questions about how it worked and people’s relationships with each other. She’d been in the hospital, dying of cancer, surrounded by beeping machines.
My father had been working.
I had lied to her.
“Of course Father’s bond to you is his strongest,” I’d promised. “You’re his wife. His whole life. He just can’t say no when Lord Gloombringer calls.”
She’d given me a sad, knowing smile and squeezed my hand as tight as she could manage. “You’re a good son, Adair, but remember this moment. Remember that love was important enough to lie to me about. Because it should be the truth, even if it isn’t for your father. Don’t let the Gloombringer steal your heart and turn it to stone too.”
They were some of the last words she’d ever said to me, since she’d slipped into a coma soon after, and we’d lost her within the week.
My father had never seen her conscious again. He and Lord Gloombringer had made a show of coming to the public funeral, wearing white and bowing their heads as though . . . as though they had cared. But I’d known the truth then. The Gloombringers and their minions had no hearts at all, stone or otherwise.
And now I was one of those minions.
Oh, my link to Oberon Gloombringer wasn’t quite like my father’s had been. Mine was grayer than his, which had been almost silver-bright.
It was mostly a neutral color: gray. The color of links between people who knew each other well enough but didn’t have particularly strong feelings about each other. The fact that mine was darker than my father’s meant that the feeling edged toward disdain, which was no surprise.
Why would I have any other feeling for a man with no heart?
But my feelings weren’t relevant. Feelings themselves weren’t relevant. That was the Gloombringer way. Once, the Gloombringer family had been the heart of the Summerlands. Their original name had been Duskbringer, to signify a time of day rather than the pervading sense of gray that their family gave the world now. Sunset and gloom were decidedly different things, and I thought the Summerlands were altogether worse for the change.
Now . . . well, it was fashionable to be detached, wasn’t it? Feelings were so silly and hysterical and . . . passé. One was supposed to be born, work a job, and then die, leaving the world to a new generation of worker drones who would do the same.
I probably would have given in and become one of them, just like my father, if not for my stone, Rhodri. She was strong, opinionated, and insistent—all impossibly rare things, particularly for a stone. She also regularly reminded me that I wasn’t like anyone else. I’d heard her song, and no one had done that in centuries. She’d been in a museum when I’d heard her, and they’d had to remove her from display because we had bonded.
Magic was the one thing that not even the lords of the Summerlands could truly control. Sometime during puberty almost every single person found a stone whose song they could hear.
At least, that was how my mother had told me the story. My father had said that was romantic nonsense, and in truth it was all scientific, about a human’s ability to resonate on the same frequency as the stone.
Mother said we felt the same song.
Father said we heard a sound because of resonance.
It seemed to me that they were saying the same exact thing, just that Mother wanted it to be something nice, and Father wanted it to be just another thing, like one item on a list of facts.
I wasn’t much of a romantic, but I still liked her way better.
Different types of stones meant different types of magic. There was the ubiquitous common diamond—which was usually some simple change to one’s body: being faster or stronger than one might have otherwise been. Probably half of people bonded a diamond or something else equally bland. Then, there were dozens of smaller stone groups. Emeralds and sapphires and topaz and such, rarer than diamonds and with more useful abilities like luck or empathy.
Rhodri was a stone from one of the smallest groups. She was a moon tear. They were largely shades of gray but with a rainbow-gold sheen in them that varied greatly from stone to stone. The moon tears weren’t the rarest stones in and of themselves, but humans rarely heard their songs.
More than that, Rhodri was old enough, strong enough, that she had a personality. A name that she’d chosen for herself—to say nothing of the fact that as a stone, she’d made the decision to use feminine pronouns. Bonding Rhodri meant that most of the powerful people in the Summerlands knew who I was. Despite the centuries my family had worked solely for the Gloombringers, I’d received—still received—job offers regularly, for ridiculous amounts of money, houses, and other forms of wealth.
A Dawnchaser cousin had offered me my own island once.
As much as I disliked Oberon Gloombringer, though, my father had instilled one thing in me: loyalty. The Gloombringer family had supported me, sent me to school, given me everything I had. I wasn’t one to abandon them after that.
Unique stones like Rhodri were part of why the four families of the lords of the Summerlands were in power—each family had a stone that resonated with their line, passed from one lord to the next. Those four stones were the most powerful known in the world, and frankly, p
With the heart sapphire, Verelle, Oberon Gloombringer could manipulate the hearts and minds of every person he came in contact with. Make them joyous or send them into a fit of tears for no reason other than that he felt like it. Rumor had it that with the Moonstriker family stone, an aquamarine named Iri, Cove Moonstriker could stop time itself on command.
Stone types usually ran in families, like . . . well, like the man I was looking at right then.
Lord Gloombringer’s personal physician, Emile Landreau. He had bonded an amethyst, like his parents and siblings. While no two stones were precisely the same, each one was in a family. Amethyst meant health. Some with amethysts could see and diagnose illnesses in people, like Emile. Some could do the same in animals. Some had limited abilities to actually heal wounds or illnesses.
The doctor sat down on the rolling stool in front of his computer, shaking his head and sighing. “I’m sorry. I understand that Lord Courtwright sees something happening, and clearly there’s no reason to doubt him. But I promise you, there’s nothing physically wrong with you. You are the picture of perfect health for a man your age, my lord.”
Landreau wasn’t trying to bring doubt on me. He truly did believe me. The very average bonds he had with both of us pulsed a simple light gray. He wasn’t lying. Wasn’t scheming and plotting his lord’s death. He truly didn’t see anything.
Unlike him, Lord Gloombringer . . . well, it wasn’t that he didn’t believe me. It was just that—
“I told you that you were being paranoid, Adair,” he said to me as he buttoned his shirt, then turned back to the doctor. “He keeps on about how my threads are going pale, and it must mean something. I told him maybe his eyes are going bad, but he won’t listen to me.”
Landreau looked to me, his own eyes glowing faintly lavender as he stared deep into mine. It was awkward, but I knew he was using his diagnostic ability, not being strangely intense, so I held the gaze without comment or shrinking away. After a moment, he shook his head. “I can’t see a problem with them either, if I’m being honest, my lord.”
Gloombringer waved him off. “He’s thirty now, you know. Just turned in February. I told him the eyes start to go when you’re thirty. That wouldn’t be an illness, would it? Just regular degeneration. And maybe with his song, they’ll get worse faster than the rest of us.”
So arrogant, Oberon Gloombringer. Determined that my eyes were going bad at the relatively tender age of thirty, instead of something being wrong with him, at fifty-six.
The doctor paused, considering. “I . . . I suppose that’s possible.” He turned back to me, shaking his head. “I’m so sorry, Lord Courtwright. It’s just too rare for me to know, about your—”
Instead of finishing the sentence, he swallowed hard and glanced away. My song, he meant. The ability to see the threads. I’d been seeing them for fifteen years, and I had no idea why it made everyone so uncomfortable, but it did. Maybe it was too close to the sapphire ability to see and manipulate emotions, and they worried I would see something in them that they didn’t want anyone to know.
“It is rare,” Gloombringer boomed, far too loud for the enclosed space of a doctor’s office. Both the doctor and I winced, but Oberon didn’t seem to notice. “That’s why I keep him around, of course.”
Of course.
Because people didn’t have any intrinsic value. I wasn’t worth keeping around just because my father had been his father’s closest confidant. Just because my family had been tied to his for centuries. He kept me around because I served, and my ability to see the threads of fate was useful and rare.
I personally meant nothing to him, and sometimes it rankled.
Landreau turned away from us, back to his computer to begin making his notes on the visit. I was no Gloombringer, with a stone that gave me power over emotions, but even I could tell he was uncomfortable. No one liked to be reminded that the man in control of their destiny didn’t care about anyone at all, not even the people who were most loyal to him. He was a good doctor, but his magic wasn’t unique. It wasn’t even rare, the ability to see illnesses. While no two stones were precisely the same, his was similar to a few thousand other doctors working in the Summerlands. He was a few thousand times more replaceable than me, and his lord had just told him that loyalty meant nothing to him.
I didn’t bother speaking up.
It never helped.
Oberon tucked his shirt back into his trousers, then fastidiously brushed himself off and straightened his clothes before putting his dark gray jacket back on. It was the softest hand-dyed wool, custom made to fit his broad shoulders, and probably cost more than the doctor made last year. I couldn’t say much, since my so-rare ability meant Oberon paid me very well, and I had a similar jacket in my own closet.
Still, even mine seemed excessive to me, despite the fact that I was expected to dress that way.
My father had been the Gloombringer’s right hand just as I was now, but his uninspiring common magic, diamond-boosted intelligence, had landed him almost as much valet as adviser.
I was grateful that at least Oberon dressed his damned self.
That’s because you didn’t need some bauble to make you smarter, Rhodri’s high-frequency, melodic whisper popped into my head. You’re already smarter than your father without needing some pointless shiny rock.
The stones, of course, had their own social hierarchy, and they didn’t think much of diamonds either.
Why would we? They’re common clear shiny things. If we cared about them, we might as well be crows rather than intelligent creatures.
The notion of a crow bonding a diamond stuck in my mind, and Rhodri returned a feeling like a shrug.
Maybe, I don’t know. I’ve never bonded anything but a human.
Which made sense. Crows didn’t have fate threads, after all. If they had strong abiding emotions, or relationships, they weren’t the kind I—or Rhodri—could recognize with our shared song.
Oberon and I walked to the car in silence. It was how we spent most of our time together—silent. I ended up spending most of that time talking to Rhodri in my head, because the company was better.
The driver—a fellow with a diamond boosting his reflexes—held the door for us, and I slid in after Oberon, who remained quiet, looking out the window as though the city we lived in was fascinating. I wondered if it was fascinating to him. If Verelle and he spoke as Rhodri and I did, and he could feel the emotions of the millions of people in the city the way I could see random threads racing along the city streets, coming from every building and car nearby.
It should be even more meaningful to him than it was to me, because they were people under his family’s protection.
Why do you care if he dies? Rhodri asked me, out of nowhere. I know you’re worrying, but if he dies, you can find other work. A new place to be. Your life doesn’t end just because his does.
It wasn’t the first time she’d asked, but as yet I’d been unable to give her an answer she found sufficient.
I supposed I didn’t have an answer I found sufficient. As his right hand, it was my job to care if he died, but personally, there was no major reason I wanted him alive.
He was the last of his line, because he’d never married and had children, but he did have a sister who could take over. The problem with that line of thinking was that Titania drank her breakfast. And lunch. And if she was still conscious by dinner, that too. She’d always been pleasant enough to me, but constantly drunk, she couldn’t possibly take responsibility for the millions of people who lived in Gloombringer lands. People who counted on Gloombringer protection.
The people, I reminded Rhodri. Without him, they’re vulnerable. Exposed. The people need a Gloombringer. Someone to control Verelle. Someone to . . .
I almost shuddered as I trailed off. Someone to handle the upcoming peace summit, I finished to myself, even though that was the tip of the biggest iceberg in the world. Someone needed to take the part of the Gloombringer family in the peace summit between the four families—a summit that was starting that very evening.
The families had a string of disagreements starting some fifty years earlier that had eventually led to most of them rarely speaking to each other over the last two decades.
