Twiceborn Endgame (The Proving Book 3) Read online

  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.

  “Somebody help him,” said one of the blondes. It might have been Faith.

  But they all knew there was no helping him. Abruptly his movements ceased. His head flopped to one side, and pink-tinged foam slid down his cheek from his open mouth.

  I stepped forward, one hand pressed to my own rebellious stomach. Every eye in the room turned to me, some fearful, some filled with hate, all shocked by the sudden turn of events.

  Naturally that was the moment my stomach chose to give up the fight, and I hurled all over Thorne’s shiny leather shoes.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Luce whipped a napkin off the empty drinks tray and passed it to me without comment. I wiped my mouth and drew a deep breath, fighting to get myself under control. If this was anything like the time Kasumi had poisoned me, the nausea would last a good half hour.

  “Excuse me.” There was disgust on some of my new sisters’ faces, but also a respect that hadn’t been there before. Clearly they all knew what had been in that champagne glass—probably smeared all over the inside of it, enough to kill any dragon three times over—and the fact that I was still standing had them almost as spooked as the sudden death of their mentor. If they were a little older and wiser, one of them might have seized the opportunity to attack me while I was unwell. All I could say was thank God for teenagers.

  I pressed the napkin to my lips again. “Just give me a minute. I’ll be fine.” No need to tell them about the half hour of chucking. If they thought I had superpowers, all the better. “I’m pretty hard to kill, as you’ll find out if you try.”

  Hope came forward—I think it was Hope—and knelt by Thorne’s side in a rustle of ruby silk. She pressed her fingers against the pulse point in his neck.

  “Is he dead?” Valiant asked.

  “Yes.” Hope drew back, putting some more distance between herself and me, though whether through fear of me or worry that I’d throw up on her wine-coloured dress, I couldn’t tell. If it was the latter, it was a pretty smart move. My stomach heaved, and I had to concentrate everything I had on resisting the urge to decorate the carpet again. Garth rested a warm hand on my bare shoulder. His worried eyes whirled with yellow. No doubt this brought back bad memories. He’d held me in his arms all too recently, thinking he was watching me die of poisoning.

  “And a good thing, too,” I said. “He had you believing you had no choice but to kill me and each other, didn’t he?”

  “That’s because we don’t,” said Valiant. “And you needn’t think we’re defenceless just because you managed to knock off Thorne.”

  She held her chin high, but there was more bravado than conviction in her words. They were too young. Oh, I was sure they’d been raised, just as I had, in the knowledge that they must kill all their sisters if they hoped to win the prize of the throne. And dragons were a greedy lot: wanting the throne and the life of privilege that went with it wasn’t difficult. Nor was the capacity for backstabbing—it was practically a birthright. But no other dragons grew up knowing how very small their chances of surviving were. It messed with your mind, having that hanging over you all your life. Not many were strong enough when push came to shove.

  I looked around the room, meeting the eyes of each sister in turn. Most showed as much fear as defiance, and I certainly couldn’t blame them. Leandra had been one of the most pragmatic of her clutch, but even she had found the proving tough going, and these girls were far too young. Only Faith in her stark black gown showed no fear as she glared back at me.

  But even Faith might prefer a sure thing to the risk of the proving. As Leandra had discovered, anything could happen, no matter how well prepared you were.

  “Of course you’re not defenceless.” I gestured at the tight knot of supporters clustering behind each girl, just as my team gathered protectively around me. “We all have our resources—but look around this room and ask yourself: how many of these people will still be alive a year from now?”

  I let them take a moment for that to sink in. It was a sobering thought. Eight sisters, and only one of them could live to take the throne. All of the others would die, and many of their supporters with them.

  The smell of vomit was strong, mixed with blood and a pungent odour that meant Thorne must have voided his bowels as he died. The mingled aromas were hard to take, but they made a vicious point: this was what awaited almost everyone in the room. Nothing but blood and death and ruin waited down the traditional path.

  “How confident do you feel that you will be the lucky one, that lucky one out of eight, to make it through?” I glanced at Faith, but her face was a mask. “I can tell you Valeria was plenty confident, but look where she ended up.”

  Floating in Sydney Harbour with an almighty hole punched through her heart, that’s where. And I’d put her there. It certainly didn’t hurt to remind my sisters of that. Their odds of coming through a proving alive had gone down considerably since I’d entered the game.

  Faith glared at me, doing her best
to project an icy calm. Shame the trembling of her aura gave her away. “And I suppose you have some other option? Apart from boring us to death?”

  “I certainly do. Fighting is a loser’s game. Seven of us will die so that one can win everything. Why not agree instead to split the prize?”

  “What?” Angry tears sparkled in Valiant’s eyes, and she clenched the ivory satin of her gown tight enough to wrinkle it. “I thought you had some sensible alternative. What kind of garbage is that?”

  There was a murmur of agreement among the blondes.

  “Are you suggesting we divide the domain between us?” Faith asked, an incredulous note in her voice. “Just agree to share the cake instead of fighting over it?”

  It sounded perfectly reasonable to me. “Why not? Just because it’s never been done before? This is the twenty-first century. Time to update a little.”

  “And I suppose you get the biggest slice?” Her eyes, green as my own, glittered with challenge. “You’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to settle for some speck of dirt in the middle of the Pacific Ocean while you get Australia. I’d rather fight.”

  A couple of the others muttered their agreement, but several more seemed less sure. It was easier to feel that way when you were the eldest sister, I guess, brought up from birth to expect success in everything you did.

  “Really? You’d really rather take almost certain death? Australia’s a big place. And don’t forget about New Zealand and Indonesia. I’m sure we could manage to stay out of each other’s way and still keep everyone happy.”