Twiceborn Endgame (The Proving Book 3) (8 page)

“Where is your family?”

“Tokyo. At her main estate.”

“And the other kitsune? They’re in Tokyo too?”

“At the moment. Daiyu likes to have them all easily accessible when she’s out of the country, just in case.”

“Good. That will make things easier.”

Hope blossomed on Kasumi’s broad face, and she drew a deep shuddering breath.

Ben gave me a suspicious look. An almost identical one had appeared on Luce’s face. “What things?”

I smiled brightly at him. “I’ve always wanted to go to Japan.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing.” Ben stood with his good arm around me as we watched Kasumi’s motorbike roar down the drive. He still favoured the other one, though he refused to wear a sling. “She’s a dangerous woman to leave roaming around. She said herself she wouldn’t stop trying to kill you.”

“Until the kitsune hostages are freed,” I reminded him. “Then we’ll have a secret weapon.”

“If you live that long,” said Luce, a sour note in her voice.

“Have a little faith. I’m not so easy to kill.”

“Maybe not if you stay here. The security on this place is the best of the best. Let me go to Japan, if you insist on this madness.”

“Luce, give it up.” She’d been trying to talk me out of it since I’d floated the idea, but her arguments didn’t hold water. The only chance we had of pulling this off required a whole lot of compulsions, and that meant dragon involvement. And I wasn’t exactly getting knocked down in the rush of dragons volunteering to join my cause. I would have to go.

“Do you think Daiyu will believe Kasumi didn’t get a chance to see you?” Ben still stared out the window. He looked tired and weighed down with worry.

I slipped an arm round his waist and leaned against him for a moment. He smelled of pine forests and fresh air, with a hint of honest sweat. It was hot outside, and we’d only just come in from the garden.

“You worry too much. Why shouldn’t she believe it? She already thinks I’m an abomination. It’s hardly a stretch to think that I wouldn’t have the dragon-born manners to personally accept a communication from another queen.”

“As long as she doesn’t compel the truth from Kasumi.” His frown deepened.

“Hush.” I stood on tiptoes to kiss him. “She’s not going to compel her. She’s got Kasumi tied up so tight it will take a miracle to untangle her.” A miracle I was determined to provide. “Didn’t Kasumi deliver everything she wanted before? She has no reason to suspect her. Stop dreaming up problems that don’t exist. We have enough real ones to deal with.”

He looked down at me, that frown still lingering. “Like your new plan to somehow sneak into Tokyo and free a bunch of people you don’t know, and who have no reason to trust you, from the probably unbreakable security of the queen of Japan?”

“That’s the one. Genius, isn’t it?”

He and Luce both sighed loudly, and I couldn’t help laughing, though it wasn’t really funny. He was right, it was a crazy thing to attempt, and it wasn’t as if I didn’t already have some major problems to deal with. Seven of them, actually, all thirsting for my blood. But I couldn’t see a way of getting Lachie free of Daiyu’s clutches without risking his safety unless I had someone on the inside helping me. Jason was clearly not an option, which left Kasumi. I could only work with the tools I had. And freeing Lachie was my number one priority right now. In the back of my mind a clock was ticking. How long did I have before Daiyu tired of waiting for my throne and decided to use Lachie against me?

We were kicking around ideas for how we might actually pull off the genius plan when Steve entered, an odd look on his normally cheerful face.

“How’s the repatriation going?” I asked.

Steve had been overseeing the deportation of our prisoners, under Luce’s guidance.

“About halfway there,” he said. “Only ones left are the ones who chose North America. That flight’s leaving tonight.” He hesitated. “You’re not going to believe this …”

“What?”

“That Ken Thomas guy is back.”

Luce was instantly alert. “The real one? You’re sure?”

Surely Kasumi wouldn’t try the same stunt twice.

“We checked him with Blue’s glasses. Seems to be.”

“Who’s his message from?”

“Gideon Thorne, he says.”

Ben stood. “I’ll go.”

He strode out, trailed by Steve, and I raised an eyebrow at Luce. “What could Gideon Thorne possibly have to say to me?”

“An offer of fealty?”

I snorted. In my dreams. More likely a death threat.

Turned out we were both wrong. The envelope Ben handed me didn’t contain a black dragon scale snapped in half, as I’d expected, but an innocent sheet of expensive paper, hand-lettered in a beautiful flowing script.

“It’s an invitation.”

Ben craned over my shoulder to read it. “To what?”

“To the Presentation Ball. Cheeky bastard.”

“Presentation Ball?” Garth’s grey eyes snapped with anger. He’d followed Ben in, back from organising a group of thralls to retrieve Blue’s supplies. “As in Presentation of the Candidates?”

“Yep.” I read from the sheet. “Leandra Elizabeth is invited to present herself to the people of Oceania and her fellow candidates for the throne at a ball to be held on the twenty-fourth day of January blah blah blah. He thinks he can initiate a second proving.”

“You can’t go,” said Ben. “It’s a trap.”

“You think?” I reined in my temper with an effort. No point snapping at Ben. I laid an apologetic hand on his arm and said more mildly: “Of course I’m going. It’s perfect.”

“Perfect for what? Getting yourself killed?”

“Honey, I may be safe sitting in this compound with all my guards, but I can’t
do
anything. I’ve got to get out there and make things happen, or we’ll be trapped in this house until we all die of old age.”

And that could be a bloody long time, in my case.

He grunted in frustration and threw himself into an armchair. “What kind of things can you make happen in the middle of your enemy’s stronghold, surrounded by people who want to kill you?” He scrubbed a hand over his face and through his curly hair, leaving it even wilder than before. “I’m having trouble seeing how this can work to our advantage.”

I sat down too, and started ticking points off on my fingers.

“First, it’s an opportunity to get all my sisters together in one place.”

Garth bared his teeth in a wolfish grin. “Beats hunting them down one by one.”

I grinned back. His bloodthirstiness appealed to the dragon in me.

“So they’re all together,” Ben said. “How are you going to kill them? There’ll be more security than bloody Guantanamo Bay.”

I frowned at him, one finger still up in the air. “I never said I was going to kill them. Second, I’ll have access to Gideon Thorne.” I paused, contemplating the second finger with pleasure. “Him, I am going to kill.”

And they were words I could never have said a few weeks ago. Truly I wasn’t the same woman I’d been before Leandra hitched a ride. Garth’s eyes glinted with anticipation, and I felt a thrill run through me.

“What do you mean, you’re not going to kill the sisters?” Luce interrupted my bloody dreams of taking Thorne down, the black werewolf at my side. I noted she didn’t say “your” sisters. Luce was even less willing than me to accept the existence of these new threats. She’d rather die than admit they might have any claim on the throne we’d fought so hard for. “They’ll sure as hell be trying to kill you.”

“I haven’t ruled out the possibility, but it’s a last resort.”

“Don’t go soft. They’ll have been brought up to fight for the throne, just like you. You’ll never get them to sit around and sing ‘Kumbaya’ with you instead. That’s not who they are.”

“We don’t know who they are, Luce. For crying out loud, they’re not even twenty years old. If I was their age and someone offered me a one in eight chance of survival on one hand or the chance to enjoy my full five-hundred-odd-year lifespan on the other, I might have to at least think about it.”

She rolled her eyes. “You don’t think like a dragon any more.”

Except that in so many ways I did. Why was my head full of Garth and blood when I was supposed to be in love with Ben? Something in the big werewolf called to me in a way Ben didn’t, and it didn’t help that everywhere I turned he was there, his intense blue-grey gaze following me.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Maybe that’s why I’m still alive.”

There was a short silence. Luce folded her arms and stared out the window at the long curving driveway and the terraced gardens leading down to the massive front gate. God knows what she was thinking. Probably wishing she had the real Leandra back.

I focused on Ben, refusing to let my eyes be drawn to Garth, though I knew he was watching me.

Ben scrubbed at his face wearily. “Was there a point three?”

“What? Oh.” One: sisters all together. Two: kill Gideon Thorne. Three? I scrambled for some more good news. To be honest, silver linings were pretty hard to come by these days. “Point three—point three, we have Blue.”

“He could make us a seeming.” Garth’s eyes lit with enthusiasm. “Maybe of that idiot Bear. Thorne trusts him, he might let his guard down—”

“Don’t encourage her,” Ben snapped. “This is a really stupid idea. We’d be outnumbered and surrounded. It’s suicide.”

“Someone’s got to encourage her.” Garth folded his arms, making his muscles bulge, and gave Ben a disdainful look. “Because she’s right. She’s not going to win this war by hiding away. She’s got to get out there and grab that bastard Thorne by the balls before he has the chance to screw us over.”

Well, this was a turn-up for the books. Garth was usually the first one to argue when my safety was concerned. I shot him a grateful look and saw a glimmer of yellow in his eyes as he glared at Ben. His wolf wanted out.

Ben got to his feet and returned the glare with interest. “There’s got to be a better way of doing that than turning up on his doorstep practically gift-wrapped. How’s a damned goblin seeming going to protect her?”

“
I’ll
protect her,” Garth growled.

“I don’t need anyone’s protection. I’m a dragon, not a bloody fairy princess. And I’m going to this ball.” Enough with the male posturing! They were acting like a couple of teenagers.

“Don’t worry, Kate, no one’s going to forget you’re a dragon.”

The viciousness of Ben’s tone shocked me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Why even bother asking anyone’s opinion when you know you’re going to do whatever you damn well want anyway?” His brown eyes were colder than I’d ever seen them. “Typical bloody dragon.”

Oh, God, not this again.

“Yes, I’m a dragon, Ben.” I couldn’t bear the look in his eyes. As if he didn’t even like me, much less love me. “And that’s not going to change. This is the life we’re stuck with. There’s no going back.”

Without another word, he stalked out of the room. No going back. But maybe there was no going forward for us either.

As Elizabeth’s closest living relative—at least as far as the funeral director was concerned—I rode in the official limousine, accompanied by Ben, Garth and Luce. The fact that I’d helped kill her, while ironic, wasn’t considered relevant. This was the benefit of using a funeral home that dealt with shifters on a regular basis.

There was very little talk on the way to the service. None of us were in mourning, but relations between Ben and myself were still strained. Luce stared out the window, and Garth alternated between watching me and glaring at Ben, which didn’t help the taut atmosphere in the car. It was a relief when the limo turned in at the gates of the crematorium and stopped. In front of us stretched a line of cars, barely moving, that wound all the way up the hill towards the chapel.

“Never thought Elizabeth had this many friends,” Garth muttered, scowling at the congestion. Parked cars lined the roadside. Some were even piled haphazardly on the lawn, stowed in whatever little nook the driver could find between the bushes.

“It’s marvellous what money can buy,” said Ben, in that clipped, faintly hostile tone that was becoming the norm for him.

He looked like a lawyer today, dressed in a dark business suit and red tie. I’d never seen him so formal before, and it was a good look on him. It was just a shame the coldness in his dark eyes spoiled the effect.

Shame about the searing hot day outside too. We’d all be broiling once we stepped out of the air-conditioned limo, even me in my sleeveless black shift dress.

The car crawled up the hill. Well-groomed ladies tottered along on their heels, easily keeping pace with us, accompanied by grey-haired men in suits. Society matrons rubbed shoulders with shifters of every stripe as everyone who was anyone turned out for the funeral of Elizabeth Appleby, investment guru and philanthropist. This was one shifter death we couldn’t brush under the carpet. Elizabeth had been big in the mundane world too.

“Half these people probably didn’t like her any more than we did,” I said. “They’re just here to be seen.”

It took us ten minutes to reach the open area in front of the chapel. It was only open because the security guards had kept it clear, shepherding people and cars away. They hulked together like a line of front-row forwards, their auras glowing a deep troll-brown.

One of them opened the door of the limo as we pulled up, then stepped back respectfully. He nodded to me as I got out, and I nodded back. These were a Hunter Valley clan, and their loyalty was to the throne, regardless of who was the current occupant. Since that was me at the moment, I knew they’d die to the last man to protect me, which was oddly comforting, even though I wasn’t expecting any trouble today. Funerals were traditionally an unofficial ceasefire.

Of course dragons were traditionally a bunch of backstabbing traitors too, so Luce and Garth were well prepared. Even Ben was carrying a gun underneath that handsome suit. Most of my staff were here, the thralls at least all armed to the teeth, plus we had the trolls on security and most of the Sydney pack circulating discreetly among the mourners. The funeral director had also arranged for some regular human security, given how many people were expected here today.