“Fine.” Hey, apart from my missing son, my missing boyfriend, and enemies lining up to kill me in all directions, what did I have to worry about? Life was just peachy.
He didn’t say anything else, just stood in the middle of the marble foyer and watched me all the way up the stairs, his brows drawn in that familiar brooding look. It was a relief to escape to the privacy of my own room, where I didn’t have to put on a brave front any more.
If only Ben would turn up, or at least send word, that would be one worry off my list. He’d disappeared the previous night, off on a mission of his own, leaving a note to say he’d be out of contact for a while and not to worry. Not to worry! Considering he was human and injured, that was a bit of a joke. He had no shifter powers to aid him on whatever idiot quest he was on, just a gun and his native stubbornness. When someone like Ben says don’t worry it usually means they’re off doing something highly dangerous and/or illegal. Events had kept me well and truly distracted, what with the attack on my house, our own assault on Elizabeth and my remaining sister Alicia, plus Kasumi’s assassination attempt and the kidnapping of Lachie. It had certainly been an action-packed twenty-four hours, but I’d still managed to sneak in plenty of fretting over whatever Ben was up to. Knowing him, it was probably both stupid and dangerous.
Still, sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof, and all that. No need to borrow trouble, there was still plenty coming my way. I peeled off my disgusting clothes and had a shower to wash off the blood and grime, but I didn’t feel any cleaner. That would take a lot more than soap and water. It still bothered me that I hadn’t even known the name of the man who’d died tonight.
Leandra had been like that. She’d cared so little for her thralls that she’d had trouble telling them apart. They were no more than interchangeable lumps of meat to her, their only value in the service they could provide.
That wasn’t me. I refused to become like the other dragons. I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror. Troubled green eyes stared back. The wound on my cheek had completely healed already. A pink scar on my breast showed where Kasumi had plunged the dagger into my heart tonight, but by tomorrow that too would be gone. Dragons were fast healers.
Just as well, since people tried to kill them so often. Maybe they should consider a rethink on their personal relationship strategies. Alone in the sumptuous marble-lined bathroom, a sudden longing to be human again filled me. Back then my bathroom had had a couple of bare patches where tiles had fallen off the walls, and a water stain on the ceiling, but I hadn’t even known that shifters were real. I’d trade a lot of luxury for the certainties of life in those days. Dragons and werewolves and goblins had been creatures you read about in stories, not people you met on the streets of Sydney.
And now I was one. Stupid bloody Leandra.
I turned out the light and climbed into the massive four-poster bed, but sleep refused to come. Would Jason keep our son safe? His record of doing that wasn’t exactly glowing. Valeria had hurled my little boy off the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge when he’d been in his father’s so-called care. Now Jason had thrown in his lot with the Japanese queen. How was I going to get my son back before she decided that Lachie was more use to her as a tool to hurt me, never mind that he was the son of her new ally?
I shifted uneasily on the pillow. There’d have to be a honeymoon period, where she’d be pleased with her new alliance. Maybe a week. Maybe more. Surely I had a few days, at least, before the situation went that far. I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry. My curly-headed boy had been through so much already. He was tougher now, but I longed to hold him in my arms all the same. He tried to act grown-up, but he still liked a cuddle at bedtime. A story too, though he could read perfectly well himself. And Jason hadn’t had the patience for such things even when we were married. Busy with his new alliance, would he make time for his son?
I rolled over, staring at the hulking shapes of unfamiliar furniture in the dark. I had so much to do tomorrow, decisions to make and plans to set in motion if I were to have any hope of surviving what was coming. And I had to survive, for Lachie’s sake.
Beside me the bed was empty, the sheets cold where Ben should be lying. My feelings about him were … mixed, and it wasn’t even as simple as Kate-feelings versus Leandra-feelings. Our friendship had turned into something more only recently, but already the initial euphoria was fading in the face of his reaction to my new dragon status. It was a hard thing to look at the face of the person you thought loved you and see only revulsion. I’d thought he would get over it. I was still me in many ways. Trying to be, anyway. But if anything it was getting worse.
And then there was the pure Leandra rage at his calm assumption that he knew best. That he had the right to wander off as he pleased on his own mad quest to find the goblin mage Blue Monroe, despite my insistence that we didn’t need any goblin magic. I was trying hard to talk myself out of that rage, because I knew the old Kate wouldn’t have felt like that, and it only seemed to prove his point that I’d become too dragonlike. But still it persisted, seething away under the surface of my concern for him, until I couldn’t tell whether anger or relief would win out when he finally reappeared.
At five o’clock in the morning I gave up and got dressed. I wandered downstairs to see who else was about, and spent fifteen minutes cross-examining the two thralls on duty in the comms room as to their names and complete personal histories. I also discovered the dead man had been known to his mates as “Wazza”, was a mad-keen Eels supporter, and liked Mexican food, the hotter the better.
The lights were on in the kitchen, and I followed the sound of voices and the smell of coffee brewing and found Dave and Luce and two more of the new thralls getting ready for their shift. I gave them the third degree too before they hurried off to their duty.
Luce eyed me over the top of her coffee cup. She wore her usual black pants and long-sleeved top, despite it being the middle of summer. “You can’t save everyone, you know.”
“What do you mean?” I sank into a chair at the big table, feeling grumpy and defensive.
She nodded at the door the thralls had disappeared through. “Those guys, me, Dave—all of us—we’re all expendable. You need to think like a dragon if you’re going to make it through this.”
“Speak for yourself.” Dave set a steaming cup of coffee in front of me. He had big hands for a smallish guy, but he handled the delicate cup with the same competence as one of his knives. One of those hands gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “I’m not expendable. None of the rest of you bastards can make a decent cup of coffee to save your lives.”
Luce gave him her usual poker face, refusing to be diverted. “Obviously I’d prefer not to be expended myself, if it comes to that. But the point is, we are resources.” She turned serious brown eyes on me. “You can’t afford to be getting all attached to people, or the proving will break you. The only certainty we have here is that people will die.”
“I think that’s been pretty well demonstrated already,” I said, a little tartly. “But the day I stop caring about that is the day you may as well kill me too. I am not the Leandra you knew.”
Just as I wasn’t exactly the old Kate either. Damn, this shit was complicated. I was certainly coping better with all the death and mayhem than I ever would have before. There was a dragonish ruthlessness that hadn’t been part of Kate’s makeup. But I was still human enough to feel that people mattered. Everyone was the centre of someone’s world. I’d known what it was like to lose the person you loved most. My world had ended the day Lachie died, and I only came back to life when I discovered he wasn’t dead after all. I would never forget the all-consuming pain, the despair, the black void that had swallowed my heart. I could never see death the way Leandra had, as an unfortunate necessity in her plans.
Luce shrugged. “I’m just trying to help. A little distance is not a bad thing.”
“I’ll bear that in mind.” It certainly seemed to work for her. She wasn’t exactly the warm
cuddly type. “Since you’re here, we may as well go through what needs to be done. How about some breakfast, Dave?”
My new super-healing powers certainly seemed to require a lot of fuel. I was always starving lately.
Dave grinned at me from the other side of the long serving bench that separated the main room from the cooking area. That side was his, and when he was working no one else was allowed there, though he’d made an exception once or twice for Lachie. The two of them had formed a snack-sneaking conspiracy against me. “Bacon and eggs?”
“Perfect.” Who would be sneaking junk food to Lachie now? Was he even being fed properly? I swallowed the familiar pangs of worry and tried to focus on what Luce was saying.
“I’ve already anticipated some of your commands,” she said. “I have people watching the airport and the major hotels, plus others checking all Jason’s known addresses.”
“He’s not likely to go to any of those.”
“No. Not likely. But we’ll check anyway.”
“What about the wolves? Have they turned up anything?”
“Not yet.”
“No sign of Kasumi?”
“No.” Luce’s lips thinned. She had shared Garth’s opinion of the kitsune woman. “Jason said she’d gone back to Japan, and I think it likely he was telling the truth. We checked the passenger manifesto of last night’s flight to Tokyo. Her name wasn’t listed, but who knows? She could have been on it, but we can’t be sure.”
I nodded. Kitsune were impossible to detect if they wanted to remain hidden. Not even their own mothers could have told them apart from whoever’s face they wore. It was a skill that had allowed me to defeat my mother, the reigning queen, and my sister, both of whom had a lot more resources than I did. Funny how a kitsune on your side tended to even up the odds.
Sadly, I’d also learned that their skills could be put to use in less positive ways, such as pretending to be someone else and then putting a knife through the heart of an unsuspecting victim and kidnapping their son. Definitely a mixed blessing.
However, dwelling on the past wasn’t going to get us anywhere. It certainly wasn’t going to bring Lachie back. I had to focus.
“Do you know of any way to unmask a kitsune?”
Luce had been bound to Alicia the whole time Kasumi was with us, so I hadn’t had the benefit of her considerable experience. I looked hopefully at her, but she shook her head.
“I’ve never had much to do with them. They rarely travel outside Japan. The goblins might know, but you know what goblins are.”
Yep. Unreliable, and liable to charge you a fortune just to tell you the time. After borrowing your watch.
“Well, never mind. We have a coronation to plan.”
One delicately arched eyebrow rose in surprise. “A coronation? What about your new sisters?”
That had been yesterday’s bombshell. Just when I’d thought the proving was over I’d discovered the existence of seven new sisters. Seven more people I’d have to kill if I wanted the throne. No, that wasn’t right. I couldn’t give a rat’s arse about the stupid dragon throne. I hadn’t even known it existed until recently. Seven more people I had to kill if I hoped to ever be left alone to live in peace with my son.
“What about them? As far as I’m concerned, Elizabeth had five queen daughters. We’ve fought it out to see who should succeed her like good little queenlings, and I’m the last one standing. Therefore, the throne is mine. If she chose to lay another clutch of queen eggs later and rear them in secret—and we only have the word of traitors on that; they could be imposters for all we know—then that was her choice. But since she’s dead, as far as I’m concerned any plans she might have had for them die with her.
“I hold the throne, and I refuse to recognise that they have any claim whatsoever.”
Luce’s gaze was cool. “They won’t care if you recognise them or not. You’ll still have to kill them.”
“Perhaps.” I hadn’t given up hope of finding another way. “But I don’t see the point in legitimising their claim by accepting a second proving. Let’s invite the overseas queens and get the damn crown on my head already, before they all decide they want to annex the place. I need to at least appear to be in control.”
“Even if you’re not,” said Dave, coming to remove my empty plate.
I smiled up at him. “Especially if I’m not.”
Luce and I spent the next hour going over the arrangements for the coronation. I could get Mac to handle the details for me. She was still feeling guilty about Kasumi impersonating her to attack me, though it was hardly her fault. Giving her something to do would keep her mind occupied. By the time Luce and I had finished, the sky had begun to lighten and the currawongs warbled in the trees.
“Give the prisoners some breakfast, then bring them to the throne room,” I said.
The throne room had had a thorough cleaning since the bloodletting yesterday. Elizabeth’s ostentatious throne had been removed and replaced with a more modest chair. I didn’t care for the dragon assumption of superiority over every other living being—and besides, it was impossible to get the blood completely out of the fabric. It would need to be reupholstered. Greeting guests while seated on the blood of your murdered mother just didn’t seem right, even if the old bitch had deserved it.
My own, very human, mother would probably do some bloodletting of her own if she found out that I’d been keeping Lachie’s miraculous return from the dead from her. I felt terrible that she and my sister both still mourned him, but the idea of making all the necessary explanations of the current situation seemed even more overwhelming than having to take on seven new sisters and the overseas queens combined. Besides, if I told them he was alive I’d have to tell them he was in Jason’s clutches. I wanted to wait until I had him back safe and we could celebrate properly.
Not that there weren’t plenty of other things clamouring for my attention. Like the matter of what to do with Elizabeth’s former household, now eating breakfast in my dungeons. In a normal proving, they would simply serve the new queen once the old one died, but there was nothing normal about what had happened here. Usually the incoming queen didn’t behead the old one. Nor were there usually seven extra claimants nobody had ever heard of before—although I knew some, at least, of Elizabeth’s staff had not only heard of them but had aided in keeping them secret. Loyalty was going to be hard to come by, but I had to know who I could trust.
Garth and Luce joined me as I settled myself on the “throne”, standing one on either side of me like a pair of mismatched bookends. The room was long, enormous by any standards, but big even for this mansion. It had been designed to impress, funnelling guests down its imposing length to cower before the queen on her dais. One side was floor-to-ceiling glass, with French doors opening onto a paved terrace nearly as big as the throne room itself, and offering a view of sparkling blue ocean and a curve of white sand below.
“Ready?” asked Luce.
I nodded, and she signalled a thrall to throw wide the double doors at the far end of the room.
In marched an odd assortment of shifters, their auras glowing in many colours, from the blue of a lone griffin through the greens of the water shifters to the many earth tones of the goblins and other earth shifters. Alicia’s two leshies were among this last group. Dragon red was conspicuously absent.
I looked them over. Some I’d seen before, like Bear, the leshy who’d freed Gideon Thorne yesterday. He scowled in my general direction but didn’t meet my eyes, probably afraid I’d capture his will again. He was lucky I didn’t do worse: Thorne was a powerful dragon, the spymaster of the previous queen. Now, thanks to Bear, he was free to continue his scheming against me.
Others were household staff who hadn’t been involved in the fighting yesterday, several humans among them. In all there were about forty people under the watchful eye of all my new thralls. The shifters wore silver handcuffs to prevent them accessing their powers, and the guards had the whole group cov
ered with assault rifles. The fear in the room was palpable.
I’d be scared too, in their position. Any other dragon would probably fix the problem by telling the guards to open fire. Luckily for them I wasn’t any other dragon.
I rose, drawing every frightened eye in the room. “By right of proving, I am now your queen.” In spite of myself, the words touched something deep within me. Leandra had waited so long to say them. But this wasn’t how she’d dreamed this scene would play out, with her original body lost and her soul twinned to mine.
A few of the prisoners stirred, but no one dared argue.
“I need loyal subjects, not backstabbing traitors.” And definitely no double agents. The battle ahead was going to be hard enough. “Therefore I have an offer for you.” Special introductory offer! Hurry, last days! It was Elizabeth’s money I was spending, so I had no problem being generous. “Anyone who wishes to leave my service is free to do so. You will be given a plane ticket to any other domain you name. My servants will see you aboard the plane.”
The expressions on the faces in front of me ranged from incredulous through darkest suspicion all the way to the first glimmerings of hope. The leshy Bear looked frankly disbelieving.
“You’ll let us go?” he said. “Just like that?”
“But my family’s here,” said a voice from the crowd.
“In that case, you face a difficult choice,” I said. “You can arrange for your family to join you overseas, of course, but this domain will be forever off-limits to you. I won’t have you running off to support Thorne and his pretenders to the throne. If you want to oppose me, you’ll have to do it long-distance. Anyone who is found in this domain again will be put to death.”
I put some power into that threat, so it resonated with them. I sure as hell didn’t want to ever make good on it, but they had to believe I’d do it.
“What’s to stop you killing us the minute we say we don’t want to work for you?” Bear objected. Naturally he wouldn’t consider working for me. His head was way too far up Thorne’s backside to change sides now.
Twiceborn Endgame (The Proving Book 3) Page 2