The Twiceborn Queen (The Proving Book 2)

by Finlayson, Marina

  She regarded me steadily. “Most people would have stood there and screamed for security. You’re remarkably cool under pressure, Ms O’Connor.”

  It sounded more like an accusation than a compliment. I’d have to try harder to be unremarkable.

  “There wasn’t time to wait for help. I had to do something.”

  “And you’re positive Mr Stevens didn’t know Ms Johnson either before he was admitted to hospital?”

  That was about the fifth time someone had asked me that. Some of my irritation crept into my voice. “Asking me again won’t change my answer, you know.”

  Detective Hartley smiled, a professional expression that didn’t reach her eyes. “You’d be surprised how often things come back to people afterwards, once they’ve gotten over the shock. It doesn’t hurt to jog their memory.”

  I had a feeling Detective Hartley was never surprised by the things people suddenly “remembered”. Perhaps I was too calm for someone who’d supposedly just killed an attacker with their own knife. Or maybe it was the not-screaming thing. Note to self: scream blue murder next time you get attacked in public. It makes the cops happier.

  “Why do you think Ms Johnson attacked Mr Stevens?”

  I sagged against the hard plastic chair. That was a damn good question. If only I knew the answer. “I have no idea.”

  “According to her co-workers, Ms Johnson was a dedicated nurse, and not the violent type. They’d never even heard her raise her voice to anyone.” Detective Hartley glanced down and read from another page of the notebook. “Divorced, two grown children, never been in trouble with the law. We checked: one speeding ticket seven years ago. Went to church every Sunday.” The sudden snap of the notebook closing made me jump. “Why does a person like that take it into their head to kill someone they hardly know? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Plenty of bad people go to church every Sunday. She had that knife. That seems like she must have been planning something.”

  “True.” She eyed me as if she’d like to ask about my own church-going habits. “But if she planned to smother him, why did she need the knife?”

  Well, damn. Should have kept my mouth shut instead of sending her chasing after more riddles. I didn’t need someone like her poking around at the moment. I had enough to deal with.

  “Does Mr Stevens have any enemies? Can you think of any reason why someone would want him dead?”

  Half a dozen off the top of my head, but none she needed to know about. Hell, I’d been so sure Elizabeth would leave him alone. Could it have been Alicia, trying to get to me through him? A supporter of Valeria’s looking for revenge? Or, God forbid, even Jason?

  I’d described everything twice already, but Detective Hartley walked me through the rest of the scene again, lingering over every detail, before finally agreeing I could leave. Ben and Lachie were waiting outside the interview room. I half expected her to tell me not to leave town, the way they did on TV, but all she said was that she’d be in touch.

  “Here’s my card,” she said. Detective Senior Constable Ellen Hartley, Chatswood Criminal Investigation. “Call me if you think of anything else.”

  “Sure.” Not a chance, lady.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The drive home was quiet. Home. Wherever that was these days. Leandra owned two Sydney properties, one a townhouse in The Rocks, the other a much larger place out the back of Arcadia, an hour’s drive from the city. Both were way more luxurious than the rundown suburban house Lachie and I had called home. Both held troubling memories from Leandra’s point of view. The country place had been the site of Jason’s first assassination attempt. The townhouse was where she died, after he got it right the second time.

  And of course where she tricked her way into my body, leaving her own to die. So not exactly bursting with happy memories from my point of view either.

  Nevertheless, we were staying in the Sydney townhouse, partly for its closeness to Royal North Shore Hospital, and partly because it suited Garth’s paranoia—it was small enough to defend with the handful of security we had. If he’d had his way we would have gone completely to ground, somewhere anonymous with no association with either Leandra or Kate, but I’d had enough of hiding in cheap motels. To win the proving I had to re-establish my dominance fast, and hiding wouldn’t do that. With the great game at a shell-shocked standstill for now, it seemed a good time to regroup. Let Alicia waste time licking her wounds. I would be forging ahead, growing stronger every day.

  Unless … I stopped at a set of lights on the Pacific Highway and frowned at the lone car heading across the intersection. Unless this was Alicia, back in the game already?

  Normally I wouldn’t even consider it. When Valeria had taken trueshape and come arrowing out of the heart of the bushfire like an angel of fiery death, where had Alicia been? Struggling hand-to-hand against Valeria’s forces with the rest of us, choking on smoke and blistered by a hundred flying sparks? Or even up in the roiling sky, taking on Valeria dragon to dragon?

  Not bloody likely. She’d been hiding in her special fireproof bunker, waiting, as usual, for someone else to do the dirty work until she could emerge, make-up unsmudged. It was hard to believe she’d hatched from the same clutch as the rest of us. Her whole strategy so far had consisted of “hide and hope the others kill each other off”.

  But now she had Luce on her side. My hands clenched the wheel till my knuckles whitened. Luce was my security chief, but now she was bound to Alicia by an arcane ritual, forced to aid her instead of me. Just thinking about it made me want to hurt someone. Preferably Alicia.

  Luce wasn’t the type to cross her fingers and hide. She was a wyvern with all the natural wiles of her kind, plus a go get ’em attitude that made her as unstoppable as a force of nature. Luce would be prodding Alicia into action, making her own luck as usual.

  “People say I’m lucky,” she’d told me once, not long after we started working together. “But I’ve noticed the harder I work, the luckier I get.”

  So I could totally see Luce dragging Alicia out of her comfort zone and making her actually do something for a change. The tricky part was seeing why Luce would think attacking Ben would be the best move for my sister.

  I glanced across at Ben. He had his eyes shut, head tipped back against the passenger seat, but he wasn’t asleep—unlike Lachie, whose heavy breathing from the back seat was the only sound in the car. Obviously I’d be distraught if I lost him, but from a practical point of view targeting him didn’t make a lot of sense. She’d be better off taking out Garth, if she could. In her absence he was my right-hand man. Ben had connections to the heralds that might prove useful, but he was hardly a key player.

  Much as I hated to admit it, it was more likely that Ben’s past as a herald was coming back to bite us in the arse. Or, more specifically, his sudden exit from the ranks of the heralds. We’d always known there could be a price to pay for that change in allegiance, and it looked like the bill was coming due. Elizabeth must have decided to make an example of him.

  She had a history of doing that—like the time she called me and my remaining sisters into her study in the aftermath of the disastrous Presentation Ball. I hadn’t fully realised until that moment what a cold-blooded killer she was.

  We stood in front of Elizabeth’s massive mahogany desk like naughty children called before the headmistress. It was impossible to think of her as our mother. Dragons didn’t do motherhood, not in the way that humans and other shifters understood it.

  Her cold blue gaze travelled across each of us in turn. By coincidence, or perhaps unconsciously, we’d lined up in order, oldest to youngest. Valeria stood with her arms folded across her blood-spattered chest, chin lifted in challenge. That pale blue satin would never be the same again. Most people would trash it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she kept it as a souvenir of her first kill. Because, despite her denials, I was one hundred per cent certain she was responsible for the bomb blast.

  Next to her stood
Alicia, her stark black-and-white ball gown still pristine. She’d been way across the other side of the room when the bomb went off. Ingrid, closest to me in age, was next in line and similarly unruffled. Now that Monique was dead, she was the only brunette among us. I looked a wreck compared to her, with a scrape across my cheek and raw patches on my hands and elbows where I’d been thrown to the stone flagging of the terrace. My chiffon skirts were sadly torn but I’d had a lucky escape, thanks to Luce’s quick reactions.

  Monique, who should have been standing on my other side, hadn’t been so lucky. It was her blood that stained Valeria’s dress and coated the broken walls and floor of the throne room. Plus a few other people’s outfits, which were going to need epic dry-cleaning. There wasn’t much else left of our youngest sister, and Elizabeth was seriously unamused.

  Oh, not because Monique was dead. We were expected to kill each other off. Last woman standing got to inherit our dearest mother’s throne. She just didn’t appreciate the battle beginning in her own throne room, with such destructive results. Not to mention the possible risk to her precious person.

  An ornate grandfather clock in the corner ticked solemnly as Elizabeth let the silence lengthen, each swing of its massive pendulum reproaching us for disturbing the peace of the queen’s domain. I stared down at the carpet beneath our feet, following the intricate swirls and flowers of its design, and tried not to draw our mother’s attention. She disliked me enough already.

  “The Presentation Ball is intended to introduce the candidates to the domain,” she said at last, her voice as icy as her gaze. “It is not meant to host the outbreak of hostilities. Such breaches of etiquette are not to be tolerated.”

  Trust Elizabeth to label the murder of one of her own daughters as a “breach of etiquette”.

  “It could have been anyone.” Valeria’s blue eyes, so like our mother’s, were wide with a very unconvincing innocence. “Why assume it was one of us?”

  Elizabeth shot her a scathing glance. “I believe the expression in these cases is cui bono?”

  Who benefits, indeed. It had to be one of us.

  “Perhaps an enterprising shifter, trying to win favour …” Valeria persisted.

  “Oh, give it a rest.” Alicia rolled her eyes. “We all know it was you. Who else has a griffin on staff?” She turned to Elizabeth. “Are you going to let her get away with this?”

  “If you mean, am I going to fight your battles for you, Alicia, then no.” Elizabeth didn’t seem to care much for any of us apart from Valeria, but I swear her lip curled as her gaze rested on Alicia. “But when I find out who was responsible they will be punished.”

  Right. I had no doubt Elizabeth was pissed, but pigs would fly before she punished Valeria for anything. Valeria was the golden girl, firstborn and favoured to win the proving.

  The door opened, admitting Gideon Thorne and two men in dark suits, part of Elizabeth’s security team. Thralls, by the look of them. Their gaze went straight to Elizabeth when they entered, and never wavered from her face as they waited, hands clasped loosely in front of them.

  Thorne’s aura shone a brilliant red, though not as bright as the queen’s. Apart from the thralls, everyone in the room was outlined in dragon red. We were probably the six most powerful dragons in the domain, though the light of half of us would flicker and die soon enough. Thorne would most likely outlive us all. He’d been around for centuries and had the knack of ingratiating himself with the right people. Nasty little bootlicker.

  He perched on the corner of Elizabeth’s desk, the only one permitted to sit in her presence, and indicated the thralls.

  “These are the ones.”

  “You were responsible for security tonight?” she said to them.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Did you search each guest as instructed?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And yet someone managed to smuggle a bomb into my throne room.”

  There didn’t seem to be an answer to that, so they said nothing, though I noticed one of them swallowed convulsively. Even thralls, near-zombies though they were, responded to imminent danger.

  “It’s very disappointing,” she said in a conversational tone, then waved her hand at Thorne.

  He nodded, and before anyone could react, sabre-like claws burst from his fingertips, and he slashed the throats of both thralls in one smooth swipe. They were dead before they hit the floor.

  Alicia leapt back to avoid getting blood on her dress. Even Valeria looked shaken by the casual violence. Thorne’s claws disappeared as fast as they’d come, and he pulled a snowy white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hands, all without moving from the spot.

  “Let’s have no more disappointments,” said Elizabeth. “My home is off limits for your duelling in future. Understood?”

  What else could we say?

  “Yes, ma’am,” we chorused.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  We drove across the Harbour Bridge, its great steel girders criss-crossing above our heads, their huge size making the cars below look like tiny coloured toys. Five nights ago Valeria had been perched up there like some nightmare bird, even her great size diminished by the mighty bridge. I’d swooped across this deck, though there’d been no headlights lighting it up then, no traffic at all, the bridge closed for the big New Year’s Eve fireworks display. I’d flown all around it, ducking and weaving as I tried to stay ahead of Valeria’s slashing claws.

  It was hard to believe now. Everything looked so normal. The only reminder of that night was the missing dove. The fireworks had ended, as they did every year, with a waterfall of fireworks fountaining from the deck of the bridge into the harbour and the lighting of a symbol that was meant to hang from the top of the arch for the whole month of January. This year it had been a dove, symbol of peace.

  Unfortunately two warring dragons had knocked it askew, and the damaged symbol had been removed the next day. Just as well I wasn’t superstitious. That was one bad omen.

  I took the turn-off for The Rocks and threaded my way through narrow streets, quiet now, past the clock tower, up through the Argyle Cut and home. The houses here had been built before Henry Ford ever dreamed of the automobile, so there were no driveways or garages attached to the narrow homes. Street parking was always hard to find, but I didn’t bother looking. I might be keen to reassert my strength, but I wasn’t stupid. Walking the streets of The Rocks late at night with a small child and an injured man for company was asking for trouble I didn’t need.

  I double-parked outside the house. Garth must have been watching for me; he came bounding down the front steps before I even had the door open, Steve on his heels. They were both big hulking guys, and with the light behind them they looked like a badass Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Up close, though, no one would mistake them for twins. Garth, with his buzz-cut greying hair and care-worn face, was probably twice Steve’s age, but the differences in temperament were even greater. The big werewolf scowled at me as he scooped Lachie out of the back seat, whereas a welcoming grin split Steve’s dark face as he slipped behind the wheel. But they were both good at their jobs: the car disappeared and we were safe inside in a matter of seconds.

  “You’re late,” Garth growled as I followed him upstairs to settle Lachie into bed.

  “What are you, my mother?”

  He didn’t even blink. “If I was I’d bloody ground you for coming home at this hour. Where the hell have you been?”

  “You knew where I was! At the hospital.”

  “You left for the hospital at five. For a short visit, you said.”

  In Lachie’s room I pulled down the sheet and he laid Lachie on the bed. The poor kid didn’t even stir. Though Garth continued to glare at me he took off Lachie’s shoes and socks with gentle hands.

  I felt a little guilty. A new emotion for the part of me that remembered being Leandra. Tomorrow I’d have to send one of the guys out to buy me a new mobile phone. I’d lost mine in all the excitement last
week and hadn’t had a chance yet to replace it.

  “Something came up.”

  Something in my tone alerted him. He stiffened, then almost dragged me into the hall, his nostrils flaring.

  “Whose blood is that? Are you hurt?”

  Normally he would have noticed it the minute I came in. Werewolf noses were very sensitive. Too busy telling me off to listen to his senses.

  “Not mine, and no.” I laid a calming hand on his arm. “Chill, Garth. It’s okay. Come downstairs and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  The front door opened as we reached the bottom of the stairs, and Steve came back in. We joined Ben in the lounge room, where he’d subsided into an armchair. The room was small by Leandra’s standards—she’d always preferred the country property—but in the old part of The Rocks nothing was newer than a hundred years old, and all the buildings were crammed in, rubbing shoulders with their neighbours. Nobody had big lounge rooms around here. She’d done it up nicely, though, with plenty of antique furniture and expensive-looking paintings on the walls. No one who saw the room would be surprised to discover her favourite colour was red—the chairs were covered in red velvet, and their wooden arms were stained a deep rose that matched the dominant colour in the rug that covered the floor.

  “And what’s the one-armed wonder doing here? Thought he had a few more days in hospital?”

  “Hospital got a bit too lively,” Ben said without opening his eyes. “Hello, Garth. Nice to see you too.”

  Steve and I sat down side by side on a velvet-covered lounge, which creaked as it took Steve’s muscled weight. He was half-Maori and built like a tank. Garth prowled back and forth across the Persian rug, unsettled, while I gave them a brief rundown of the events at the hospital and our visit to the police station. His aura flared with bright orange streaks, and his normally grey eyes were ringed with yellow, sure signs of the inner wolf’s distress.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have let you go without me,” he said.