Twiceborn Endgame (The Proving Book 3) Read online

  I put them on and looked down at our captive. My turn to draw in a shocked breath.

  “Bloody hell. It’s Kasumi.”

  “What?” Garth clenched his big fist, eager to punch her again.

  “Let me see,” said Ben.

  I passed him the goblin’s glasses. “That’s amazing.” He had a good look at everyone present. Smart man. I should have thought of that. Then he glared at Blue. “You’ve been holding out on us. How do these work?”

  “Goblin glass,” he said sullenly. “Always shows true. Haven’t you ever noticed how many highborn goblins wear glasses? It’s not because they’re short-sighted, trust me.”

  I suppose that made sense, given the ability of goblin spells to change a person’s appearance. You didn’t want imposters sneaking up on you. But this wasn’t a goblin seeming. Kasumi was a kitsune, one of the fabled fox people of Japan, and mimicking the appearance of others was one of her natural abilities. Interesting that the goblin glass could see through that deception as well. I’d never known that was possible, but then, Leandra hadn’t known much about kitsune. They were rarely seen outside Japan.

  I folded my arms and contemplated the goblin mage. He’d had these all along and never mentioned them. What other tricks was he keeping up his sleeve?

  “I guess we know what your first job will be now.” I took the glasses back from Ben. “I’ll need about a dozen pairs of these.”

  “Impossible! They take weeks to make.”

  “You’d better get started, then. I’ll keep these ones as a down payment.”

  “Perhaps some ointment would do? That’s quicker to make, but you would have to keep reapplying it.”

  Ointment? There were fairy tales of people who’d rubbed magical ointment on their eyes and been able to see fairies all around who’d previously been invisible. The trouble was, I wasn’t sure I trusted Blue enough to rub anything he gave me into my eyes.

  “Glasses,” I said firmly.

  I put them back on and looked down at Kasumi again. Seeing the stubbly-faced man disappear, to be replaced by her familiar wide face and dark, red-tipped hair, was disconcerting.

  “Let her up,” I said to Garth.

  “I can’t believe you had the hide to show your face here again,” he growled.

  She shook him off and climbed to her feet, ignoring Steve’s gun. She was a small woman, solid and powerful looking. Her short bob swung loose around her face, red tips as bright as ever.

  “Believe what you wish, wolf.”

  He growled. They’d never liked each other. “I should have hit you harder.”

  “Look at this,” Luce said.

  She held out the signet ring—only now it had a sharp needle-like spike protruding from it. A drop of some thick liquid glistened on the needle’s tip. She pressed a hidden catch or button on the side and the spike withdrew again.

  “What’s in the ring?” She glared at Kasumi as if she’d like to use the poison on her. “Bane leaf?”

  “No.” Kasumi’s gaze was level as it held mine. “We know that doesn’t work.”

  Because she’d already tried that on me. In fact, this was the first time I’d seen her since she’d stabbed me in the heart, fully expecting that the poison on her blade would kill me. And then she’d abducted Lachie. Rage pounded in my head, and bloodlust sang in my veins. I could smash her to pieces with a smile on my face.

  It hurt even more because I’d thought she was my friend.

  “Du, then, I assume.” It was the only other poison that killed dragons.

  Kasumi shrugged, but didn’t answer. I could hardly stand to look at her. She’d taken my son. Had she hurt him? I would tear her apart.

  Luce held the ring as if it might grow fangs and bite her. Perhaps it could. Du was fatal to wyverns too.

  “Let’s inject her and see what it does to kitsune,” suggested Garth in a menacing rumble.

  “Maybe we can swap her for Lachie,” Ben murmured, a quiet voice of reason among all the hostility.

  But Kasumi heard. “Don’t be ridiculous. Daiyu finds him too useful in controlling Jason to give him up.”

  “Not even to save her loyal kitsune?” Ben didn’t look convinced.

  That made Kasumi laugh, though it wasn’t a happy sound. “Daiyu knows I’d be first in line to kill her if I could. There’s no such thing as a loyal kitsune any more.”

  I frowned. The bitterness in her tone had the ring of truth about it. I fought down my rage and tried to think logically. If she’d managed to kill me … what would have happened to her?

  That was an easy one. Garth, or Luce, or Ben—just about anybody in this garden—would have killed her on the spot. She hadn’t come here expecting to walk away. So why commit to a suicide mission if not for loyalty to her queen?

  “What hold does Daiyu have over you?” Was I being a fool again? But I’d been so sure Kasumi had wanted me to succeed, had even liked me personally. Maybe she’d only turned on me because she had to.

  She hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision. “The same hold she has over every kitsune. Not that there are many of us left any more. She’s seen to that. She holds all our hoshi no tama as surety for our obedience. If one of us disobeys her, all will die.”

  “That’s crap,” said Garth. “We’ve seen your stupid star ball. You had it with you when you were pretending to be on our side.”

  The hoshi no tama was the heart of the kitsune’s magic. Without that glowing golden ball she wouldn’t have been able to take Ken Thomas’s form.

  She didn’t look at Garth. “She sent me here to destabilise your proving, and remove all the claimants if I could. She knew I needed my hoshi no tama for that.”

  “Then why didn’t you just run away once you got it?”

  Now she looked at him, a look of withering scorn. “Does your pack mean so little to you that you’d abandon them to certain death so that you could be free? I have children. A husband. A father. She holds their lives in her hands. One wrong move from me and my son and daughter would have their throats slit in their sleep.”

  I looked down. I couldn’t bear that look of desperation in her eyes. More than anything, that convinced me she was telling the truth. I knew what that felt like. Nothing was more important than your children’s safety. It must be tearing her apart to know they were in constant danger.

  “What will happen now that you’ve failed to kill me?”

  “I suppose it depends what you do to me. If I die she won’t take action against my family.”

  “And if you live?”

  “You’d better kill me. If you don’t I’ll keep trying to kill you until I succeed.” She shrugged as if she didn’t care either way, but I wasn’t fooled.

  “Why don’t you join us? Help us defeat her, and your family will be free.”

  “I can’t.” Her dark eyes held a weary sorrow. “She keeps the hoshi no tama of every kitsune in a special case. It is always locked, always guarded. The minute I move against her, she will destroy them. A kitsune cannot live without her hoshi no tama. It would be the end of our whole race. If I raise my hand against her, they will all die. Even if someone else kills Daiyu, they have standing orders in Japan that in the event of her death, all the kitsune are to be slaughtered. Not only can I not move against her, but I must actively work to keep my bitterest enemy alive lest all my family die like dogs. It is a most effective trap she has me in.”

  “We could steal the case.” God knows how, but we’d pulled off some pretty wild schemes together before. It would be worth it to have Kasumi at my side again. The advantage it would give me against my new sisters would be phenomenal.

  Kasumi shook her head. “I don’t even know where the case is. Somewhere on her main estate, most likely. But even if we could steal it, we’d have to steal all the kitsune out from under her nose at the same time, or she’d just have them killed. They’re defenceless without their hoshi no tama. There is too much that could go wrong. I cannot risk it. I’m sor
ry, Kate. I wish it could be different.” The old warmth was back in her eyes for a moment. “But I can’t risk it, not even for you.”

  Deflated, I looked away, back over the now-clear water of the fountain. I caught a flash of orange as a goldfish slipped under a lily pad. The yellow lily rocked ever so slightly, its beautiful petals turned up to catch the sun.

  I’d have to lock Kasumi away, then. Probably chain her in silver, too. She was dangerous, perhaps the most dangerous shifter I knew, even more so than a dragon. It would be like keeping a time bomb ticking away in the dungeon, always wondering when it was going to explode. But what else could I do? I couldn’t kill her. She’d saved my life more than once. We’d been friends. And two little fox children waited in Japan for her to come home.

  “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.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “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.”