Twiceborn Endgame (The Proving Book 3) (11 page)

“Actually I go by Kate these days,” I said. “How could I resist the opportunity to meet these so-called sisters of mine?”

He refused to rise to the bait, and looked past me at the others. “And I see you’ve brought some old friends. Good to see you again, Lucinda. You too, Corinne.”

Luce’s bow was as shallow as his had been. She’d been insulting shifters since before he’d been an egg, and had made it an art form. Corinne smiled but said nothing, her huge dark eyes downcast. She looked nervous, and her grip on Yarrow’s arm seemed tighter than necessary. Fair enough. I’d be nervous too in her place, surrounded by enemies, with no resources to call on. Selkies were sweet, but the ability to turn into a seal wasn’t something that came in handy too often.

I was pretty nervous myself, though the sight of Thorne’s smug face brought anger boiling to the surface, washing away the nerves. I’d never liked him, even before he’d turned traitor. Now he was standing between me and my hopes for a happily ever after with Ben and Lachie at my side. The ordeal of the proving had gone on long enough. It would be my pleasure to rid the world of him and his hopes for a second one.

His eyes rested on Corinne for a long, thoughtful moment, then he turned back to me.

“I thought you might like to meet your sisters in private before the official ceremony.”

“That’s a little unorthodox of you.”

He smiled. “This whole occasion is a little unorthodox, wouldn’t you say? Of course, if you’d like to proceed with the ceremony instead …”

“Not at all.” My smile was as insincere as his. “I’d love to meet them.”

He waved us forward, and led the way through an unobtrusive door guarded by two goblins. These ones wore no glasses. We followed him down a short hallway and up a flight of stairs into a large sitting room that overlooked the pool. Two merfolk splashed in the shallows, performing tricks for the other guests, and the party looked to be in full swing.

Thorne closed the door behind us, and all outside noise instantly cut off. Interesting. A soundproof room. My heart began to beat a little faster.

Though the room was large, there were so many people in it that it felt crowded. A log fire crackled in a massive hearth on the wall opposite the door. Even in summer, evenings in the southern highlands could be cool. The room was furnished in a “country manor” style, with large leather lounges planted on a scattering of deep blue rugs. The wall opposite the windows was filled with glass-fronted bookcases in a dark-coloured wood. There was even a stag’s head mounted on one wall.

Every head turned our way as we entered, and conversation died. Most of the people were standing, despite the number of empty seats. In fact, only seven were sitting, all women, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out why. Six of them had blonde hair, piled high on their heads in a way that reminded me so much of Valeria I had to grit my teeth. The seventh had hair almost the same colour as mine, a rich deep auburn. Which was ironic, really, since my physical body was absolutely no relation to any of these women. Each had an identical hostile expression on her face and an aura that blazed dragon-red.

My new sisters.

The rest of the people in the room must be their various entourages, and the different auras of many kinds of shifters glowed among them. Now I looked more closely I could see they were clumped in separate untrusting groups, each hovering close to their own mistress. Just one big happy dragon family.

Thorne raised his voice, though there wasn’t a sound in the room. “Ladies, if I could have your attention.”

The guy obviously liked the sound of his own voice. Perhaps this was his big moment. This would be a good time to spring his trap, whatever it was. Behind me Luce and Garth fanned out in a not-so-subtle attempt to give themselves room. Best to be prepared. I caught Blue’s eye, and he gave me the barest nod.
Ready when you are
. He slipped from the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

The laser-like focus in the room shifted from me to Thorne, though I noticed the auburn-haired one kept sneaking little looks my way. Maybe she was excited to finally have a sister that wasn’t blonde.

“May I introduce Leandra Elizabeth.” He spread his arms wide as if producing a rabbit out of a hat.

“It’s Kate, actually,” I said.

“Of course. And these are Elizabeth’s other daughters: Faith, Hope, Charity, Virginia, Justine, Prudence and Valiant.”

Each stood as he named them. Valiant was the auburn-haired one.

“Nice names,” I said. “Mother must have been feeling very virtuous when you were born.”

No one laughed. Tough crowd. Guess they’d heard it too many times before. Belatedly I recalled I was supposed to be wooing these women to my side, not pissing them off with stupid puns. My sense of humour often got the better of me when I was nervous.

“Please, don’t stand on my account.” I threw myself into the nearest armchair and crossed my legs. Rather a lot of leg showed through the slit in the dark green silk gown I wore, but I sat back, trying to project an air of relaxed confidence. Gideon Thorne wasn’t running this show any more, I was. I considered Valiant. I suppose “Valerie” would have been too close to “Valeria”. Elizabeth did seem to go for names that made a statement. Thought what “Leandra” was supposed to mean I had no idea. “I bet you go by Val. Are you the youngest?”

Valiant sat down in a rustle of ivory silk, which looked amazing against her creamy skin and auburn hair.

“Only by two months,” she said, cocking her head as if daring me to make something of it. “There’s not such a big spread between us as there was in your clutch. And only my
friends
call me Val.”

And I wasn’t one of them, said her sneering expression.

Valeria’s egg had hatched almost a full year before mine, which wasn’t unusual in a queen clutch. Though the eggs were laid over a period of weeks, they matured at different rates, and a large gap between first and last to hatch was common. Usually this was bad news for the younger daughters. It certainly had been for Leandra, though it wasn’t Valeria’s bigger size that had killed her but the automatic bias that favoured the firstborn. More supporters flocked to the firstborn daughter, since her odds were better than most, and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I wondered which one was the oldest here. Faith, probably, since Thorne had most likely introduced them in birth order. She was the one in the figure-hugging black dress. The others had already blended together into an indistinguishable lump of blonde hostility.

“And how old are you?”

Now the defiance was even clearer. “Eighteen.”

Bloody hell. They were children. Only seven years older than Lachie. They must be old enough to take trueshape, or even Thorne wouldn’t have risked this farce, but only just. They had at least another five years before they would be considered more than babies, by dragon standards. Leandra had been twenty-five when the proving started, and even that had been young. At twenty-nine, I felt like an old woman by comparison.

Thorne beckoned forward one of the servants standing around the walls and ordered champagne. “The Bollinger, I think.”

The man bowed, and a Hermes charm swung forward as he did so. I checked the other servants. They all wore charms prominently displayed. Heralds. Not a bad idea. Their charms would neutralise any offensive magic in the immediate vicinity. Thorne wasn’t taking any chances.

The herald returned and presented a bottle of champagne to Thorne as if he were ordering in a restaurant. The older dragons were such wine snobs.

And he was looking old. His jaw had sagged into jowls and there were bags under his eyes. He looked like a man on the brink of retirement, though clearly he had no thought of retiring. No doubt he meant to install one of these children on the throne and rule through her. He had the experience of being Elizabeth’s right-hand man behind him, and if the lucky candidate didn’t have too much spine he could probably manage it for a few years until she learned the ropes and kicked him out. But how many did he have left anyway? Dragons stayed young-looking right up until the end of their lives, when they suddenly aged enormously. To be looking nearly sixty was a bad sign.

Not that I was going to shed any tears over Gideon Thorne’s life expectancy. In fact, I was going to do my damnedest to cut it short. He watched the herald pour the champagne with a predatory smile that made me wonder.

I turned my attention to the fizzing champagne. The herald had opened it in front of us, so it was unlikely to be poisoned. Why the smile, then? I watched the man’s hands closely, but he merely picked each glass up, then set it down on the tray once it was filled. No odd furtive movements, no slipping anything into one particular glass that I could see.

“We should drink a toast,” Thorne said as the bubbles subsided in the last glass.

“To what? The death of seven out of the eight sisters in this room?”

“To tradition.” He ignored my dig, though several of the blondes scowled at me. Valiant shifted uncomfortably, as well she might, considering her odds. “To a successful proving.”

He took a glass from the tray. The herald moved around the room, offering the tray to each sister. I was last. I took the remaining glass.

Thorne raised his. “May the best candidate win.”

We all raised our glasses. If not the champagne, something about the glass itself? Mine looked identical to the others but, unlike my sisters, I hadn’t been given a choice. Thorne took a sip, watching me over the rim of his glass like a kid waiting for Santa on Christmas Eve.

Definitely something about the glass, then.

I caught movement in the corner of my eye: Luce, shaking her head at me. I rose, and Thorne rose too, mere steps away. If I reached out my hand I could almost touch him.

Funny, I would never have called myself a gambler before. But Leandra’s recklessness was part of me now, and besides, the odds were good. More than good. I knew Thorne had taken the bane leaf from Elizabeth’s safe. The chance of the glass having been treated with du instead was vanishingly small. Thorne had no connection with the Chinese queen or her sister.

And he didn’t know that bane leaf was no longer fatal to me.

I tipped back my head and drained the glass, setting it back on the herald’s tray with a clink that echoed like a death knell in the suddenly silent room. Thorne’s face was a picture of anticipation. Valiant let out a long slow breath, as if she’d been holding it, and took a sip from her own glass.

“About the winning,” I began, stepping forward as if to address the room, but really positioning myself closer to Thorne. I wasn’t going to need Blue’s diversion after all. “I hate to spoil your party, but that’s already been done. The official proving, begun by Elizabeth, is over, and I now hold the throne. I can see these girls are dragons”—I waved an airy hand at the blondes, their red dragon auras shimmering around them—“but I only have your word for it that they’re Elizabeth’s queen daughters. Far more likely that they’re neuters. You’ll forgive me if I’m not inclined to believe you.”

Several of the blondes huffed in outrage, but it seemed to me that it was more for show than authentic. Their hungry eyes watched me like vultures circling a dying animal.

“I have documents drawn up and signed by your mother supporting the claims of her daughters,” said Thorne. “
All
her daughters. There’s even a proclamation explaining her reasons for the unorthodox nature of her actions to the domain.”

“How thoughtful of her.”

“Would you like to see the documents?”

“Of course.” I didn’t doubt such documents existed. They might even be genuine. Thorne sent a herald to fetch them and we settled in to wait. Everyone else was waiting for something else, though. The tension in the room had rocketed up the instant I swallowed that champagne.

It shouldn’t take long. It had only been a couple of minutes for Leandra, before the cramps and the dizziness had taken hold. In my own case the poison had been delivered with a side order of knife through the heart, so I hadn’t been paying as much attention to the symptoms, though I remembered the chucking. That part was hard to forget. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone for quite such a melodramatic gesture in downing the whole damn glass, but I’d needed to keep Thorne feeling he had the upper hand. Right up until the minute he realised he didn’t.

I perched on the arm of a chair, which took me a little closer still to Thorne. Sure enough, before the herald returned, an uneasy sensation began to churn in my gut. Luce had drifted a little closer, though not close enough to be perceived as a threat by the old dragon. I frowned, letting one hand creep to my stomach, and Thorne’s eyes lit up.

“I feel …” I stood up and wobbled forward a step. My acting wouldn’t have won me any Oscars, but Thorne was in the mood to be convinced.

“Yes?” he asked, his voice oozing fake solicitousness. He could hardly keep the smile from his face, the bastard. “You feel unwell?”

I grunted and doubled over, clutching one arm across my gut. The other I held out toward Thorne.

“Mistress?” said Luce. “What’s wrong?”

But she stayed out of my way as I pitched forward in a sudden motion and let myself fall against Thorne. He held his arms out to receive me, staggering a little as my weight dragged him down. He must have felt the prick as the tiny needle in my ring stabbed into the fleshy part of his thumb, but his mind was so focused on his own apparently triumphant deception that he didn’t notice mine.

At least, not until the effect of the du hit him. His body went stiff under my hands, and I pushed him down. To the others it must have looked as though my own collapse had pulled him off balance. But as I rose and his body began to thrash in spastic movements, the anticipation in the room turned to horror.

The blondes leapt to their feet, pretty faces aghast. Valiant’s creamy skin had gone ashen, and she stared at me as if I were a ghost. My team closed in around me, menacing despite their lack of weapons. It was as if time stopped as we watched Thorne’s struggles. His heels drummed on the carpet and his head jerked from side to side, though his eyes had rolled back in his head and he saw nothing.