The Twiceborn Queen (The Proving Book 2)

They say hindsight is 20:20 vision, but still I can’t help that niggling feeling, the one that whispers that I should have known. Mothers are supposed to have ESP, right? Or at least eyes in the backs of their heads. There must have been some sign that things weren’t right, some little clue to tip me off, if only I’d been paying more attention. But I was still high on happiness, my world one giant bubble of joy, and the only thing I was paying much attention to was how good my son’s hot little head felt nestled under my chin.

I was so happy I’d forgotten bubbles always burst.

The chief reason for my happiness sat on my lap, his attention riveted by the small TV that hung from the ceiling. His sweaty curls tickled my chin as we squished together into the visitor chair by the side of the bed. Like hospital rooms everywhere, this one was cramped and smelled of disinfectant and sick people.

The window showed a grey day outside, with a light summer rain falling. Other wings of the hospital stretched off to the left and right, with the multi-storey car park hulking in all its concrete glory in the distance. Not a view to lift anyone’s spirits, but mine were in no need of lifting.

I hugged Lachie a little tighter and he wriggled in protest—though he didn’t take his eyes off the TV. Typical. Screens of any sort have a magnetic attraction for ten-year-old boys. After seven months of believing him dead, I had my boy back. I’d been to his funeral, spent months in a hell no mother should ever have to go through, all courtesy of his father’s scheming—and now, here he was, alive after all. Talk about a miracle. The parting of the Red Sea had nothing on it. Not even the thought of my ex and the pain he’d caused me could dent my bright new happiness.

The other reason for my smiles lay in the hospital bed asleep, looking like a Greek god with his curly dark hair and chiselled jaw. I shifted one hand to cover his big one where it rested on the crisp white sheet. Ben had suffered nearly as much from Jason’s scheming as I had, knowing that Lachie was alive but unable to tell me. Jason had promised to kill Ben’s own nieces if he gave me even a hint that I was grieving for nothing.

Dragons. Such a class act.

“Hey, look, Mum!” Lachie’s bony little elbow nudged me. “It’s you again.”

“Uh-huh.”

The TV replayed the footage from New Year’s Eve. Like half the population of the planet, I’d seen this footage at least a dozen times in the last few days, but I watched again, fascinated by the sinuous curves of dragon necks and tails, the power of those golden wings as the two fantastic creatures swooped and soared over Sydney Harbour in their deadly battle.

Seeing yourself like that was strange—especially when you hadn’t even known dragons existed a week ago.

And now I was one.

“I’m glad you killed her,” Lachie said as the dragons on the TV dived into that last fatal plunge toward the water.

That had been one terrifying moment. Valeria was bigger and stronger than me, but I’d been fighting not only for my own life but Lachie’s too. I’d only just discovered Lachie was still alive, and I was damned if I was going to lose him again.

I put everything I had into protecting him. And when I say everything, I mean
everything
. A few days earlier, Valeria’s sister Leandra had managed to colonise my body in a last-ditch attempt to cheat death. She’d been fighting me for control ever since. But when I realised only her strength could save Lachie, I’d let her win, never expecting to be me again.

God knows why I was still here—whoever “I” was now.

“Me too,” I said as the dragons on the screen disappeared into the harbour in a gigantic fountaining of water. Was I a dragon or a human now? Did I have one soul or two? I still felt like Kate—but I felt like Leandra too. I had two sets of memories, but only one purpose: do whatever it took to keep Lachie safe.

Maybe that had unified us. I couldn’t feel Leandra as a separate presence any more. That had been one crazy week as we fought for control of the body. Poor Garth had never quite known who he was talking to.

The big werewolf was another reason to smile—he’d been a true friend at a time when friends were pretty thin on the ground. Strange how quickly things could change. The first time we met he’d been trying to kill me. Now he was waiting at home, probably watching the clock, too. The guy fussed over me more than I did over Lachie.

Ben’s fingers twitched under mine, then turned to clasp my hand.

I leaned in for a kiss. “Hey, sleepyhead.”

“Hey, yourself.” His dark eyes warmed with a smile.

“How are you feeling?”

“Why don’t you feel for yourself?”

I rolled my eyes. “I prefer my men with slightly fewer bandages.”

“Can’t blame a bloke for trying.” He shrugged, then tried to hide the resulting wince.

His arm was swathed in heavy bandaging. Jason had done his best to take it right off in the fighting at Valeria’s mansion on New Year’s Eve. In fact he’d meant to kill me, as I lay defenceless and half-dead on the ground, but Ben had leapt between us and taken the blow instead. The doctors weren’t sure whether Ben would ever regain full use of the arm, but frankly he was lucky even to be alive.

He sat up, his tanned skin dark against the bleached white of the hospital sheets, and I propped pillows behind his back.

“How’s my main man?” he asked Lachie.

“Good.”

“Look at Uncle Ben when he’s talking to you.”

He dragged his gaze from the TV and made an effort to remember his manners.

“Good, thanks. Is your arm feeling better?”

“Much better.” Liar. “Are you looking after your mum for me?”

“She’s got Garth for that.”

Ben frowned but said nothing. He was having trouble adjusting to the changes in my life and the new people in it. Sometimes I thought he didn’t believe I’d actually turned into a dragon on New Year’s Eve. After all, he’d been a bleeding mess on the ground when it happened, so you could understand him being kind of distracted. Yet there was the evidence, in glorious technicolour on his TV screen, replayed at least once an hour. January was a slow news time of year, and news stories didn’t get much bigger than this.

TV, newspapers, magazines, the Internet—
especially
the Internet—had exploded with speculation.
Dragons are real! Giant hoax over Sydney Harbour! Secret government experiments! Supernatural wars threaten civilisation!
The headline writers would wear out their exclamation mark keys if they weren’t careful. And that was before we even got started on the mounting speculation as to what other types of supernatural creatures might turn out to be real or, my personal favourite, whether little green aliens were about to invade.

As far as I knew, little green aliens were off the menu, but just about everything else was fair game—perhaps even more than the wildest speculations. No one mentioned goblins, for instance, and I’d seen plenty of those. Or at least Leandra had. Having someone else’s memories that seemed as real to you as your own could get confusing.

Vampires and werewolves were the main object of fascination, and they were certainly both real. My new best friend Garth was a werewolf. He was alternately revolted and amused by the speculation about his kind. Some people would have jumped his hunky werewolf bones at the first hint of his shifter nature. Others were too busy sharpening the pitchforks and axes. On the whole I think he preferred Option B. You didn’t want to mention
Twilight
around him.

Some talking head on the TV was calling for the establishment of a centre for paranormal research, “to enhance our understanding of the weird and wonderful creatures living among us”. Right. God knows how he thought that would work—we “paranormal creatures” didn’t tend to leave evidence of our presence lying around for humans to find. Navy divers had been all over the harbour in the last few days, searching in vain for any sign of the giant dragon corpse that should have been lurking in its depths. But of course they found nothing. Valeria had returned to her human form in death, and there was no reason, other than coincidental timing, for the police to link the body of the naked woman they’d pulled from the water with the death of the dragon.

“Elizabeth must be beside herself,” Ben said, one eye on the TV.

I was pretty sure “beside herself” wouldn’t even begin to cover my dear mother’s emotions. The shifter world had been hidden from humans for centuries, and that was just the way she liked it. As one of the eight dragon queens who divided the world between them, she was accustomed to having things arranged to suit herself. I’d heard nothing directly from her, but the waiting was killing me. If the other shoe dropped, it was going to make a hell of a noise. She’d killed shifters before, for breaking the great taboo against taking trueshape where humans might see. And that was just for isolated incidents. It didn’t get much more public than what Valeria and I had done. The shifter world had its arse well and truly hanging out. Valeria was dead and beyond her reach, but what she might do to me had me tossing and turning at night. She wouldn’t give a damn that Valeria had instigated the whole thing.

Ben turned his full attention to me. “Have you got somewhere safe to stay?”

“We’re at my old place in The Rocks. Leandra’s old place.” God, this was doing my head in. I/me, she/we: I had to find a way to keep it all straight in my mind. “Garth rounded up a handful of …
her
old thralls, enough to keep the place secure.”

I hadn’t enthralled them again, though. I’d had some personal experience with the terrible foggy state of mind being enthralled produced. Sure, you got unquestioning loyalty. Thralls could follow orders like champions, but thinking for themselves wasn’t part of the deal. With everything in such a state of flux, a certain liveliness in the wits department seemed like a better option.

And besides, enslaving people didn’t sit as easily with me as it used to when I was Leandra.

“You should find somewhere less obvious.” His face was drawn, whether with pain or worry, I couldn’t tell. Probably a bit of both. “Everyone knows where she lived.”

Ben, at least, had no difficulty speaking of Leandra as separate and dead. He glanced at Lachie, as if he would have liked to say more, but didn’t want to alarm him. Ben didn’t have kids of his own, or he would have known: we could have planned a detailed moon landing, or the assassination of the Pope. As long as the TV was on, Lachie wouldn’t take the slightest bit of notice.

“You worry too much. If Elizabeth hasn’t acted by now, she’s probably just going to let the proving run its course, and hope Alicia does the job for her.” Maybe if I said it with enough conviction it’d turn out to be true.

I glanced sidelong at Lachie. Yep, Pope-assassination time. Even if he’d been paying attention, I doubt he knew what the proving was. I sure wasn’t planning on telling him. He didn’t need to know his mum was one of the last two players left standing in a fight to the death to see who would be the next queen of Oceania after Elizabeth died.

“Don’t underestimate her. God, I can’t wait to get out of here. I feel so useless lying in this bed.”

I leaned in and cupped his stubbly cheek in my hand. “Didn’t the doctor say you’d be out by Monday? Just a couple more days. You’ll be back in the shop in no time.”

“Fu—forget the shop!” He caught himself with a guilty glance at Lachie and lowered his voice. “I don’t give a rat’s arse about the stupid shop. It’s you I’m worried about.”

“Well, you should be worried about it. You can’t exactly be a herald any more, can you?”

Heralds were the couriers of the shifter world, running messages between sometimes warring parties with guaranteed neutrality and dedication to the task. Now Ben had thrown in his lot with me, no one would trust him to be neutral for a second. There went most of his income.

And I certainly wouldn’t let any man of mine walk willingly into enemy territory. Valeria had already proved that some shifters had absolutely no respect for the rules when it came to the safety of heralds. Ben may as well have painted a target on his back when he hopped into my bed.