The Twiceborn Queen (The Proving Book 2)

by Finlayson, Marina

  “A ritual beheading for the abomination, eh?” I smiled for the first time today. “Perfect.”

  Garth eyed me as if I’d run mad. “How is that a good thing?”

  “Because Kasumi can impersonate anyone she likes. Even a bounty hunter. If she assumes the identity of Carl Davison’s wyvern again she can bring me in to Elizabeth. I will be this close to her.” I held my thumb and forefinger a centimetre apart. “She’ll think I’m finished. And then I can strike.”

  “Bit hard to strike when you’re wrapped up in chains,” he objected.

  “Silver chains.” Silver prevented a shifter from taking trueshape. Whenever the hunters were required to deliver a live captive they bound the unfortunate shifter in silver, so they couldn’t access their powers. “And I seem to be immune to silver’s effects now. Remember the silver bullet?”

  He glanced sideways at Mac. Yes, she probably remembered the silver bullet more than any of us, but that was no reason not to speak of it. People tried so hard not to say things that might remind you of your loss, but I knew from my own bitter experience that you didn’t stop mourning a person just because no one mentioned them.

  She nodded, her gaze firm. “You weren’t affected by silver poisoning at all.”

  Yet Jerry had died in agony. If she thought that unfair she said nothing. But I’d paid a high price for my new immunity. I wouldn’t wish the events of the past months on anybody. Well, maybe Valeria, but she was already dead.

  Garth pushed his chair back with a violent motion. That man couldn’t bear to sit still. He stalked to the window, then turned abruptly and regarded me, arms folded across his massive chest.

  “So you’re going to let her chain you up and deliver you to the one person who wants you dead more than anyone else, in the middle of her court, surrounded by security and probably a dozen other shifters.”

  “That’s the plan,” I agreed.

  Garth would never make a poker player. His face darkened, that monobrow drawing into a furious scowl.

  “I won’t allow it.”

  Red-hot rage flooded my body, spreading fire through my veins. He wouldn’t allow it? Who the hell did he think he was?

  “I don’t remember asking your permission.”

  Goddammit, why couldn’t I surround myself with thralls? Unquestioning obedience looked a lot more appealing all of a sudden. How dare he? He was only a wolf.

  Listen to yourself. That’s dragon thinking. Rage disappeared as suddenly as it had come, leaving me chilled. Ben would be horrified if he knew I’d felt like that, even for a moment. I took a deep breath and reminded myself of all the things that were wrong with taking thralls. I refused to become like the other dragons. I wouldn’t lose my humanity, but I would have obedience.

  “I’m the head of your security,” he burst out. If looks could kill Kasumi would have dropped dead on the spot. His aura flickered with the violence of his feelings. “This is suicide!”

  “It’s risky—”

  “Risky? It’s bloody ridiculous.”

  “—but we can’t keep going the way we are.” I held his gaze in challenge until he looked away. “We can’t take any more hits like last night. It’s worth taking a risk to win, and have this damn proving over with.”

  “Then why not have one of us take you in? I’ll do it. I can pretend I’m after the money.”

  “Now who’s being ridiculous? As if Elizabeth would fall for that. She’d be on her guard from the minute we walked in, and we’d both be dead.”

  “But what’s to stop your precious kitsune from handing you over for real? Maybe that’s been her plan all along, and that’s why she joined us.”

  “For God’s sake, Garth! That would be a bloody convoluted plan. What’s wrong with you?”

  He clenched his fists. “I need to keep you safe.”

  “Perhaps I can provide some peace of mind for the wolf,” Kasumi said. She always called him that; I’d never heard her use his name. He certainly wasn’t her favourite person, but she didn’t seem offended by his open distrust. “He may hold my hoshi no tama as surety while we are gone.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” he growled.

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out something that looked like a large pearl, though to my dragon-enhanced sight it glowed with a strong yellow aura. It was the same colour as Kasumi’s own aura, but much brighter, as if the aura that normally showed around a person had in her case been concentrated in this one tiny object instead. No wonder her aura was so hard to pick out. Her power resided here instead, in this glowing pearl. She hardly even looked like a shifter to my dragon sight.

  “This is my hoshi no tama.” I could tell from the expression on Garth’s face that he wasn’t impressed. To him it would look like a normal pearl—a biggish one, sure, but nothing special. “They are sometimes called star balls. Every kitsune has one; it is the heart of our powers. Some say it is our soul made visible.”

  It sounded rather like a dragon channel stone to me, though the functions it fulfilled were different. Interesting that it was outside her body. That must be awkward sometimes. What did she do with it when she took fox form? Carry it round in her mouth?

  “If a kitsune is without her hoshi no tama for long,” she continued, “she will wither and die. You must guard it carefully while I am gone.”

  She placed the pearl on the table and he stepped forward and took it. I thought she flinched slightly as his big fingers closed on it, but that could have been my imagination

  “You’d better look after her, then,” said Garth, a world of menace in his voice, “or I’ll crush this thing to dust.”

  She nodded.

  “Satisfied now?” I took my plate to the sink. As far as I was concerned that was the end of it, though I knew Garth. They could have put his name in the dictionary for the definition of the word “stubborn”. He probably wouldn’t be satisfied if she promised him her firstborn child. I turned the tap on hard and blasted smears of egg yolk and toast crumbs off the plate and watched them swirl in the sink.

  “I still don’t see why I couldn’t come too.” Yep. Stubborn. “I could pretend to be a captive.”

  “In silver chains? It wouldn’t work.” The hissing jet of water carried away every trace of breakfast. Wish it was so easy to get rid of my other problems. “Give it up, Garth. I need you guys to keep Lachie safe for me. And if I don’t come back …”

  He glared at me. “That’s not an option.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Garth was still arguing as we prepared to leave.

  “I’ll need my hoshi no tama to make the transformation,” Kasumi said. “Just for a moment. You can have it back.”

  He dropped it into her open palm. “Why couldn’t you turn into Gideon Thorne, or the head of Elizabeth’s security—someone she trusts—and go in there on your own and kill her?” He turned eager eyes on me. “Then we wouldn’t have to risk you.”

  “And what do you think would happen to Kasumi if she managed to kill the queen without me there to take power?” Swift and bloody vengeance, that’s what. Garth would probably see that as a feature, though, not a bug. His dislike of the fox woman was as intense as it was illogical. “Thorne would finish her off and call Alicia to tell her the crown was hers. We’d be no better off.”

  He opened his mouth to argue.

  “Garth! No more. I’ve made my decision.”

  He closed his mouth and looked away in reluctant submission. Kasumi drew a tiny silk bag from her pocket. She opened it and extracted a single short hair.

  “I will use Carl Davison’s servant again,” she said. “I have one more of his hairs.”

  Right. The wyvern whose form she’d worn yesterday on her little fact-finding mission. Fascinated, I lingered on the bottom step of the sweeping staircase, watching as she placed the hair on top of her head, then brought the hoshi no tama to her lips. For a minute I thought she was going to put it in her mouth, but then she inhaled deeply, and the
yellow glow surrounding it rushed from the pearl into her nostrils. She drew in so much her face began to glow softly, like a child’s night light. To my dazzled gaze each crystal of the elaborate chandelier overhead caught and reflected the light back on her where she stood by the front door. I blinked in the bright light, and then her features started to slip.

  It was a little like watching a werewolf transformation, only without the horrendous bone-crunching sound effects. The whole thing seemed much more peaceful, almost Zen-like. Her nose lengthened and her wide, rather flat face narrowed and developed pronounced cheekbones. A man’s strong jaw appeared, dotted with stubble, and her dark hair lightened and shrank away, till a man stood before us.

  Taller than Kasumi, he looked even older than Garth. I knew his face, though I doubt I’d ever known his name; he was just one of the guards I’d seen hanging around Carl Davison at my rare appearances at court. It was astonishing, but even more impressive to me was the fact that a sky-blue aura glowed around his form. The man was a wyvern, and now Kasumi’s aura reflected that. This made a goblin seeming look like amateur hour.

  “That’s freaky,” Garth muttered. And he couldn’t even see the aura.

  She handed the hoshi no tama back to him without commenting or even looking at him. Their hands were now the same size. Amazing.

  “What happened to the hair?” I asked as she put the little silk pouch away.

  “The one I used in the transformation?” Her new voice was deep, and it caught me by surprise. “Burned up by the change.”

  “Oh.” So there were some limits to the superhero-type powers of the kitsune. “So it’s a one-time thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how long does it last?”

  “That depends on many factors: the age and strength of the kitsune, their familiarity with the subject, the power of the source. It will last long enough for our purposes.”

  A little evasive, but that was shifters for you. They didn’t give up their secrets readily.

  Before we left I ran upstairs to Lachie’s room to kiss him goodbye. He still slept, and didn’t stir as my lips brushed his soft cheek. I eased gently into his sleeping mind to check the strength of the compulsion: fading now but still strong enough to keep him calm till I could return.

  I refused to consider not returning.

  I turned to find Garth watching from the doorway.

  “It’s all right,” he said softly. “I’ll make sure he’s okay.”

  “I know.” Funny how quickly trusting Garth had become second nature. Now there wasn’t a safer pair of hands in the world to trust my son to, but it wasn’t that long since he’d been trying to kill me in my own kitchen. Ben had saved me then.

  Thinking of Ben brought a rush of anxiety. This was no time for a one-armed man with a bounty on his head to be wandering around unprotected. Not that there was ever a great time for that, I guess. Stupid, stubborn man. All because he wanted so desperately to be useful. He wasn’t answering his phone. Not surprising, since he must know I’d only yell at him if he did. Steve hadn’t even been able to track it. He’d probably dumped it.

  I watched Lachie, reluctant to leave. He slept hard, his small body splayed across the bed, the sheet dragging on the floor, half kicked-off. He looked younger asleep. I could glimpse the cute curly-headed preschooler he used to be in the curve of his cheek and the way his arms were flung above his head in sleep, though it was a long time since those scrawny arms had carried any baby fat.

  “He might be a bit out of it when he wakes. Get some food into him and he’ll probably go right back to sleep.”

  “What if he asks about you, or … or anything else?”

  He meant Alex, of course, and all that Lachie had seen.

  “I doubt he’ll be that lucid. Just tell him I’ll be back soon.”

  “I bloody hope so.”

  He looked so miserable I gave him a quick, hard hug on impulse. It felt like hugging a rock. The guy was solid muscle. “Cheer up. What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

  “We could all die?”

  “Okay, the second-worst.” He still didn’t even crack a smile, and he hugged me back with a firmness that bordered on desperation, as if he thought he’d never see me again. I felt his lips brush my hair. “Oh, come on, Garth. Have a little faith.”

  Not that I had much to spare. Hope was in pretty short supply too, but I wouldn’t give up as long as I could see any glimmer of it. Whatever it took to keep Lachie safe.

  “It’ll take more than faith—we need a bloody miracle.”

  “Then it’s lucky we have Kasumi to work one for us.”

  “I don’t like how much you’re relying on her. It’s dangerous.”

  “Being alive is dangerous.” But the alternative was unthinkable. I thumped him hard on the shoulder. “You just concentrate on staying that way, and I will too, okay?”

  His gaze softened. “Okay.”

  I left him there and hurried back downstairs. Kasumi waited in the foyer.

  “Ready?” she asked, her deep voice catching me by surprise again.

  What had I been expecting? That she’d still sound like herself? That wouldn’t be at all obvious, would it? Of course she’d take on her new persona’s voice as well as his looks. But knowing there was a woman inside that body felt so weird.

  She wound a length of silver chain around my body several times and padlocked it shut. Not that that would hold me. The chain would snap like string, padlock and all, once I took trueshape.

  Despite the heat I wore a long-sleeved shirt, to disguise the fact that the silver wasn’t raising the usual welts on my skin. Apart from the heaviness and the occasional clanking as I moved, I felt quite comfortable. Though I’d expected that, it was hard to forget a lifetime’s aversion to silver. It seemed like a miracle. I decided that was a good sign. This was meant to be.

  We went out to the car.

  “I’m sorry,” Kasumi said as she opened the hatch, “but you’ll have to ride in here. It wouldn’t look right otherwise.”

  “No problem.”

  Kasumi laid the back row of seats flat to make room for her “prisoner”. She helped me in, and I lay down awkwardly, the carpet tickling my face. The slam of the hatch closing reverberated through my skull. As the car moved off I watched treetops and sky swing past from my odd vantage point. I had to brace my feet against the side wall as we took the first corner.

  The upside-down trees rushing past made me queasy, so I shut my eyes and focused on the plan. Elizabeth would be keen to make a spectacle of me; she’d probably have me dragged into the throne room as soon as we arrived, to ensure the greatest number of people witnessed my downfall. A crowd could certainly work to my advantage once the fighting started, with so many people shocked and panicking.

  The big flaw in the plan was weapons, since Kasumi wouldn’t be allowed to bring any with her, and if they found one on me our cover would be blown. Of course, not finding welts on my skin would do that too.

  I should probably do something about that. I opened myself to a trickle of power and urged my body into a new shape. Unlike Kasumi the chameleon, I only had two to choose from: my regular human and dragon shapes. But I knew that each could be adapted slightly, and one form could bleed into the other, like my dragon claws appearing when the rest of me wore human form.

  I focused on the areas where I could feel the chain digging into me, and pushed for something ridged like scales, but still made of soft human flesh. I wouldn’t know how successful I’d been till later, but hopefully it looked enough like welts to pass a cursory inspection.

  At last the car turned and slowed to a stop. I knew it wasn’t just another red light when I heard Kasumi’s assumed voice, deep and gravelly.

  “Bill Watson to see the queen.”

  “Haven’t seen you in a while, Bill,” another voice, presumably the gate guard, replied. Well, that was a relief. We would have been screwed if Bill was already here. I lay still, eyes close
d, as if I were unconscious. If I hadn’t had dragon hearing I wouldn’t have been able to hear the guy over the rumble of the engine. It sounded like he stood a good distance from the car. Perhaps he hadn’t left the gatehouse. “Sorry to hear about your lord. You been laying low?”

  “Something like that. You know how it is when a dragon dies. Everyone’s looking for someone to blame.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No. But I guarantee she’ll want to see me. I’ve brought her the abomination.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No.”

  “Seriously?” A new note of respect entered the guard’s voice. “Show me.”

  “Sure.”

  The car door slammed and footsteps approached the rear of the car. Then the hatch opened. Through slitted eyelids I saw the gate guard leap back as if bitten.

  “She’s not gagged! Are you crazy?”

  “Relax. Those chains are made of silver. She couldn’t even compel you into taking a cruise to Hawaii.”

  The guard chuckled a little nervously, then stepped forward and laid a tentative finger against the chain. He snatched his hand back and inspected the blister forming on his fingertip with satisfaction.

  “Well done.” He slammed the hatch and walked away. “You’ll have to tell me how you managed it some time. I’ll buy you a beer. I bet it’s quite a story.”

  Kasumi laughed. “Sure is.”

  Then she got back into the car for the short trip up the driveway.

  Next time the hatch opened I was more prepared. Kasumi’s strange male face grinned down at me. A familiar mansion bulked behind her, and I could smell the tang of salt on the air.

  “Show time,” she said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Like a stone dropped into a pond, ripples spread out from us. The moment we stepped into the cool of Elizabeth’s foyer the whispers started. It was as if the blast of air-conditioned air that greeted us carried the rumour of our presence around the house. I heard doors, not slammed exactly, but closed with a sharp sound that spoke of haste, and voices passing on the news with various degrees of excitement.