The Twiceborn Queen (The Proving Book 2)

by Finlayson, Marina

  “Why should a dragon bother learning human history? What do I care what the monkeys have been up to?”

  Mr Saunders was an old man, the first old person I’d ever known. The permanent staff at the farm were all my mother’s thralls, mostly young, fit men apart from the middle-aged couple who posed as my parents. Supposedly I was too sickly to attend school or get out much, and they were homeschooling me. The only other people I saw were my mother—very occasionally—and slightly more frequently, her right-hand man, Gideon Thorne. And since they were both dragons, they looked even younger than my middle-aged guardians, their bright red auras blazing with good health.

  Mr Saunders’ wisps of white hair and thick-lensed glasses fascinated me almost as much as they grossed me out. Thank God I would never look like that, with half my face sagging down my neck and my shoulders rounded with age. If he’d had an aura it would have been flickering and dull, but he was human, so no aura cradled him in its soft glow.

  Still, he could sit up straight when he wanted to, and he did so now, giving me a disapproving look from under his thick white eyebrows. Those eyebrows were a shocker too, with random hairs curling off in all directions. Someone needed to do him a favour and introduce him to a pair of scissors.

  “You have to live in the human world,” he pointed out. “You need to understand it. And you have a lot of work to do if you are to catch up with your older sisters.”

  I was always being reminded that my whole life was a competition with the sisters I’d never met, but the way he spoke sounded more specific, as if he actually knew these elusive girls.

  “Have you met them? My sisters?”

  I sat up straighter too, hands flat on the pitted surface of the desk, eager for the answer. I’d seen photos of them, but that wasn’t the same as meeting them in real life. All my life I’d had information about these girls shoved down my throat, but personal anecdotes would be so much better than dry facts.

  “Some.”

  He heaved his creaky old body out of the armchair across from my desk and turned to study the view through the French doors. Outside chickens strutted across the lawn under flapping sheets on the line. The library where I had my lessons was at the back of the old farmhouse. Beyond the clothesline and the low hedge that marked the boundary of the mown lawn, the fields stretched off into the distance until the rough paddocks met the foothills. It was a pretty scene, but too familiar. I watched the hawk wheel off into the blue in envy. I wanted new sights in my life. New people. People my own age. The only teenagers I saw were the ones in the sitcoms I loved to watch whenever my guardians decided I’d done enough study for the day.

  “Which ones? What are they like?”

  “Like you.” He stood with his gnarled old hands clasped behind his back as he gazed out at the fields, framed on both sides by tall bookcases stuffed with books. “They ask too many questions instead of doing their work.”

  I glared at his back, hot resentment coursing through me. How would he like to be cooped up here with only thralls for company? I was a future queen, but he turned his back on me as if I was no more than a thrall myself.

  And he wasn’t even a shifter. Just another stupid monkey.

  Though, for some reason, not an enslaved monkey. I’d probed his mind the first time he came, expecting to find the usual enthralled fog, but his thoughts were clear. Now, as I stared at his back, a bold new idea came to me.

  Before I could think better of it, I sneaked into his mind again. I was getting better at it. He didn’t move or give any sign that he’d noticed my presence. I’d tried practising on the thralls, but entering their minds was like trying to wade through molasses, with nothing inside to catch hold of anyway. This was the first unguarded mind I’d had the chance to play with.

  I pushed as gently as I could. I didn’t want to scare him away, or have him telling tales to my mother or Gideon Thorne. Outside a cow stared my way, huge brown eyes vacant as her jaw moved in rhythmic circles.

  “But my questions are important.” I added as much mental persuasion to my words as I dared. I didn’t want him to end up as mindless as that cow. “How can I win the proving if I don’t understand the other candidates? As my teacher, isn’t it your duty to teach me about my sisters? They’re more important to me than stupid human history.”

  He turned to consider me. Oops. Maybe that had been a bit heavy-handed.

  But then he nodded.

  “Perhaps you’re right. Well, then.” He settled himself in the armchair again and smiled. “If you finish your work quickly, we’ll have time for some questions at the end of the session.”

  I guess that would do for a start. Feeling rather pleased with myself, I picked up my pen and got stuck into it.

  Every day Mr Saunders answered more of my questions. I learned that Valeria had a quick mind but only used it if the lesson interested her. Mr Saunders didn’t approve. He also thought she wore too much eye make-up for a girl who was barely fourteen. Alicia was very pretty, liked reading and had a terrible fear of spiders. Ingrid ate too much and sometimes wasn’t very nice to her servants. That didn’t seem so bad. Maybe Mr Saunders had been on the receiving end of some of her insults. Monique was younger than me and still seemed rather babyish in her ways. She had a pet cat called Mouse.

  “Where do they live?” I asked, putting some mental pressure behind the question.

  “You know I can’t tell you that,” he said reprovingly. “You are kept separate for a reason.”

  “I wish I had a cat.”

  “You have dogs here, don’t you?” He seemed surprised. “And horses? Why do you need a cat?”

  I shrugged. The dogs were working dogs, and I was rarely allowed to ride the horses. The thralls were probably afraid I’d ride off into the sunset and never come back. If I had a cat it could be a pet of my very own, something to cuddle up with in the long slow afternoons.

  But more than a cat—more than anything—I longed to meet my sisters. Sometimes I daydreamed that we all lived together like the Brady Bunch, with a mother and a father. We would fight over little things like borrowing each other’s clothes, but underneath the bickering we’d be best friends.

  Mr Saunders’ stories had brought my sisters alive in my imagination. If we could only talk together face to face, maybe we could find a way out of the proving. Maybe we could really be sisters, instead of rivals. The more I thought about it, the more logical it seemed. Who wanted to kill all her closest living relatives? I certainly didn’t. It seemed to me that the monkeys, inferior though they were in almost every way, actually had the edge on dragons when it came to families. All the people in those TV families seemed happier for having their family around them, and they all stuck together when times were tough.

  An idea began to take shape as I pushed Mr Saunders harder, thirsting for every last drop of information he could give me. He knew where my sisters lived. He had a car. All I needed was his devoted co-operation.

  All I needed was a thrall of my own.

  It was surprisingly easy. I’d never enthralled anyone before, but I’d imagined the subject would resist, that there might be some difficulty. But I surged into his mind, unstoppable as the tide. One minute he was drilling me on the causes of World War I, the next he was blinking at me, his mouth forming a little surprised “O”.

  “Mistress,” he breathed, and I smiled at the look of devotion on his face.

  After that everything fell into place. My new thrall brought me something to slip into the drinks of the thralls who had night shift. All I had to do then was wait until the rest of the household was asleep and sneak out.

  The old clock in the hall was about to strike midnight when I slipped out, avoiding the floorboards on the wide veranda that always creaked, and hurried down the steps. The big sky above glittered with stars but they cast little light.

  I wasn’t afraid. Country nights are always dark. There were no streetlights on our dirt road, but I made my way to it easily enough. The workin
g dogs, chained up for the night, barked as I passed, but no one paid any attention. All our defences aimed to stop people coming onto the property. Nothing stopped me from leaving.

  My feet found the dark road, and I strode along it with a bounce in my step. I should have tried this before. Freedom felt good. Frogs croaked in the ditch beside the road, and something rustled in the field as I passed: a fox, perhaps, or a cow shifting in her sleep. I’d told Mr Saunders to wait where our road joined the main one into town, a couple of kilometres from the farmhouse. Sound travelled at night, and I didn’t want the noise of his engine to wake anyone.

  I half-expected to hear a car start up behind me, and one of Elizabeth’s thralls to come chasing after me, but the only sound was the crunch of my sneakers on the dirt road. As I walked I wondered how my sisters would react. Would they be pleased to see me? I had gifts for all of them in my backpack: a favourite book for Valeria, my old teddy for Monique. Valeria looked the most like me: we both had long blond hair and were tall for our age. Maybe we’d have a special bond, though she was the oldest and I was fourth in line. Did she think the way I did about the proving? What a stupid, wasteful system it was. Surely if we put our heads together we could come up with something better, and then we wouldn’t have to be kept apart any more. We could all grow up together, just like a real family.

  When I reached the meeting place there was no Mr Saunders to greet me, no car idling by the side of the road. Was I late? I squinted at my watch but it was too dark to read the numbers. I thought I’d left plenty of time, but I’d never actually walked that far from home before. Maybe I’d gotten it wrong.

  I shifted anxiously from foot to foot. Was that a car in the distance? Maybe he was the one running late. Stupid thrall. Now I’d stopped walking I could feel the bite of the cold night air through my thin jacket.

  The noise of the car’s engine got closer, and soon I could see the headlights approaching. I waited a little back from the road, half-hidden by the overhanging branches of a tree, in case it wasn’t Mr Saunders.

  But I recognised the bulk of his big Ford when he pulled up, so I opened the passenger door with relief and climbed in. The interior light didn’t come on when the door opened.

  “You’re late,” I said as the car pulled out onto the road again.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  My heart leapt into my throat. That wasn’t Mr Saunders’ voice; it was—

  “Thorne! What—where’s Mr Saunders? What have you done with him?”

  “I’ve done nothing with him. I daresay he’s asleep in his bed, considering how late it is.”

  “But …”

  My heart still stuttered from the shock of finding Gideon Thorne behind the wheel. How was this possible? I’d enthralled Mr Saunders! He couldn’t have betrayed me. So how did Thorne get here?

  “You didn’t really think we’d let an untethered human anywhere near you, did you?” It was dark in the car but I didn’t need light to hear the sneer in his voice. “Saunders is my thrall. It’s possible to disguise the signs if you know what you’re doing.”

  Which clearly you don’t, that tone implied.

  My pride in having enthralled my first servant deflated like a punctured balloon. “So I didn’t really enthral him?”

  “Of course not.” His voice snapped with impatience. “You can’t enthral someone who’s already in thrall to another dragon.”

  “Then why did he let me think I had?”

  The car turned in at the gates of my very own farmhouse. It had taken less than two minutes to drive the distance that had taken me twenty minutes to walk in the dark. The lights at the front of the house were on, and I slumped in the seat, feeling dispirited. Looked like the other thralls had only been pretending to be asleep, too. What was the point? All that effort, and here I was, right back where I started.

  “To see what you would do.” He switched off the engine and sighed. “Sadly, you have proven to be a great disappointment. I was thrilled when Saunders said you were pumping him for information on your rivals, but this—this is appalling.” He indicated my backpack with revulsion. “What kind of dragon takes presents for her enemies?”

  I shrank away from the fury and disgust on his face, lit by the floodlights from the veranda. I struggled to understand.

  “They’re my sisters. What should I have taken?”

  “A gun? A knife? Poison, perhaps.” The front door of the farmhouse opened, and two thralls stepped out onto the veranda and stood with folded arms. Clearly they were just waiting for me to come slinking home, tail between my legs.

  “What difference does it make if you were going to stop me anyway?”

  “But I wouldn’t have.”

  I stared at him. He made an impatient gesture. “Oh, go inside. I can hardly stand to look at you.”

  I fumbled for the door handle, stung by the look on his face and the weight of his words. He wouldn’t have stopped me if I’d intended to kill my sisters?

  I slammed the door and marched past the waiting thralls, head held high though my legs were trembling. Safe in my own room again, I locked the door and threw myself on the bed.

  The episode hadn’t been a complete waste of time. I learned two valuable things that night. The first was that I wasn’t safe in my own home. If one of my sisters decided to try to kill me, Thorne would let them make the attempt, would even applaud it.

  The second thing was that I hated Thorne. I vowed to dedicate myself to preparing for the proving. I’d show him—and my mother—that I could be the strongest, most ruthless fighter ever. I would be queen, whatever it took.

  And then Thorne would pay.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Ben, of course, wanted to come. Being unable even to cut up his own food hadn’t done anything to affect his protective instincts, which were as strong as ever.

  “I can still fire a gun one-handed,” he said.

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” I leaned in and rested my face against his for a moment. The bright light from the window showed the unhealthy yellowish tinge to his tanned skin. Dark shadows lurked under his eyes. He was still a long way from his usual strength. “Stay here and look after Lachie for me instead.”

  Lachie was lying on his tummy in front of the TV, chin propped in one hand. Totally absorbed in some superhero cartoon. His new theory was that all the superhero stories were real, and that they were actually all shifters. I’d asked him how many shifters he knew who wore their undies on the outside and were allergic to kryptonite, but he’d waved away my objections.

  “Details, Mum.”

  “Dave and Thommo are here,” said Ben. “Rob too. The house is full of people. He doesn’t need me.”

  “They’re not family,” I said.

  “And I am?”

  “You know you are. Family isn’t about blood.”

  “Oh? What is it about then?”

  “Love.”

  His breath caught as he gazed down at me. Somehow this conversation had gotten very serious.

  And then he laughed. “Damn you, woman, how can I argue when you say things like that?” He swept me into a fierce one-armed hug. “You know I can’t refuse you anything. Fine. I’ll stay home and be good, even though the little turkey won’t notice if the house explodes as long as the TV’s on.”

  I kissed him, glad to see him smile. “You need the rest anyway. I worry about you.”

  He snorted. “Well, that only seems fair. I worry about you too.”

  In the end I left Steve behind as well. The away team consisted of Garth, two of the ex-thralls, and the two werewolf girls. It was kind of cosy, even in the big car, with six of us.

  Eric and Alex, the two ex-thralls, were armed to the teeth. Their jackets concealed a number of suspicious bulges. Leandra was a lot more comfortable with firearms than I was, but even I had to admit they were a necessary evil in the current situation. The three werewolves probably all had knives hidden away somewhere. A knife was a d
aytime wolf’s best friend. At four o’clock in the afternoon they wouldn’t be able to change if we ran into trouble. Not that traumatising a bunch of office workers with rampaging werewolves in a busy place like North Sydney would ever be a preferred option anyway. Shifters had had quite enough publicity already.

  We crossed the Bridge, joining the stream of traffic leaving the city. Peak hour was already underway, though being school holidays it was nowhere near as bad as usual. With a bit of luck we might even be able to find a parking spot when we got there.

  The address Carl had given me turned out to be a low-rise office block on the outskirts of North Sydney. The ground floor housed a dentist and an empty rug shop with Closing Soon! Hurry, last days! still plastered across the front window. The parking gods smiled on us; there was an empty spot a few doors down, which was even more of a miracle considering a busy building site was right next door. A multi-storey office tower was going up, its concrete and steel reaching for the sky behind the white hoardings that blocked it off from the street, and the thunderous rat-a-tat of jackhammers filled the air.

  Eric got out and fed the meter, looking like any businessman on his lunch break in jacket and tie, his short beard neatly groomed, while Garth and Alex moved warily down the street. Garth wore his usual T-shirt and dark jeans; he said he only dressed up for weddings and funerals. Today the T-shirt featured the Death Star and the words “Home Sweet Home”. Alex trailed in his wake, looking uncomfortably warm in his jacket. Summer in Sydney was no place for a jacket; his face glistened with sweat, bright red. He looked like a retired boxer, or maybe a footballer. He’d probably been quite handsome before someone had spread his nose half over his face.

  Plenty of cars passed, and there were several people on the street; I could see Garth’s tension in the way his head moved from side to side, trying to see everything at once. The noise from the building site would be adding to his stress, assaulting his sensitive hearing and making it impossible to hear the approach of enemies. And if there was one thing werewolves hated, it was being sneaked up on. They disappeared into the foyer while the other two wolves and I waited in the car.