The Twiceborn Queen (The Proving Book 2) (4 page)

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.

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.

“You can’t tag along everywhere I go. We were fine.”

“We need more men,” Steve said, in his deep, slow voice. “We can barely protect you here, much less when you go out.”

I huffed out a frustrated breath. He was right, of course. The problem was how to find them.

“Oh, for God’s sake sit down, Garth. You’re going to wear a hole in the carpet.”

The werewolf sank into a chair with bad grace. Its delicate lines had been built for smaller people, and he looked enormous in it. Enormous and grumpy. “Anyone we recruit now is suspect. Alicia or Elizabeth could plant someone on us.”

But if we couldn’t find allies they’d have little trouble finishing us off. Catch-22.

“Unless we take people we already know,” Steve said. “What about the rest of the old team?”

Only six of Leandra’s eleven thralls had signed on again. Two Garth hadn’t been able to locate and the other three obviously didn’t like my chances, as they’d refused to have anything to do with me. I’d offered bucket loads of cash, but money could only buy so much. Since I’d refused to enthral them, I couldn’t force them to change their minds. They were lucky they’d only been enthralled by Leandra for a few months, or they would have been left comatose when she died.

Apart from them, the old team had consisted of Jason, now playing for the other team, and Luce, ditto. Oh, and the werewolf pack whose alpha had already refused to help me last week.

Garth shook his head. “No go.”

Steve hesitated. “Maybe … some more thralls?”

“Seriously?” He knew how I felt about thralls. The world looked very different when you’d been on the other end of a dragon’s mental powers, and I was a changed woman. No more thralls for this dragon. “You’ve been a thrall. You think that’s any way to live? Unable to do anything except follow orders? Barely able to think for yourself?”

He shifted in his seat, clearly uncomfortable, like a puppy that knew it had done something wrong and was waiting to be kicked. He’d been pretty happy to hear I’d had no intention of enthralling
him
again. “I’m not saying it’s the best answer. Maybe just for a little while. They wouldn’t know any different—and we need the manpower.”

“No. Not an option.”

I missed Luce. She’d made a great head of security. As Leandra I’d hardly had to think of such things before, she made everything run so smoothly. And now she was trapped in Alicia’s camp, bound by magic to my worst enemy. Or maybe my second-worst enemy. I had a few to choose from.