Twiceborn Endgame (The Proving Book 3) by Marina Finlayson Page A
Authors: Marina Finlayson
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familiar harbour, and the beginning of a very recognisable sweep of iron girders.
“They’re still in Sydney, then,” Garth said, with satisfaction in his voice, as the Harbour Bridge slowly revealed itself.
And then the woman came into view. Even in the blurriness of the goblin’s image I recognised her. She was one of the most famous shifters in the world.
Daiyu, queen of Japan.
CHAPTER FIVE
Silence fell on the garden, broken at last by the goblin’s nasal laugh.
“You should see your faces.” He grinned as he shoved his glasses up to their normal resting place again.
Garth snarled, as if he’d like to jam those damn glasses somewhere sideways. The thought held a certain appeal.
“Bad news, is it?” Blue continued. “Has she come to steal your crown?”
He lifted his hand and shook the blood-red water from it. The picture in the pond dissipated as the flying droplets struck it.
“I think I liked you better when you were drunk,” I said.
The goblin’s smile widened. “Well, that’s easy enough to fix. Just point me at the nearest bottle and I’ll get on with it.”
“Nobody told you to end the scrying,” said Luce, indicating the now-clear water.
“Sorry, love, couldn’t hold it much longer anyway.”
This was the most cheerful I’d ever seen the goblin mage. His good mood seemed in inverse proportion to the black expressions around him. He lounged on the stone coping of the fountain, his gaze flicking with obvious pleasure between all the grim faces surrounding him.
Bastard. A wholly dragon rage swept over me, an urge to smash his grinning face into ruins. I drew a deep, shuddering breath. Seeing Lachie so miserable made me want to lash out and hurt someone. He’d looked so pale, as if he was suffering from one of his headaches. I’d bet anything that Jason wouldn’t remember that tablets made him gag, and he had to have soluble painkillers instead.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said to Luce, forcing myself to concentrate. Worrying wouldn’t help Lachie, only action would. I needed to be more than his mother now. Focus, Kate . “We know they’re in the city. It shouldn’t be too difficult to track them down.”
I even had the police helping with that now. No, the problem would be what to do once we’d found them. Dragons were very hard to kill. Lately that had been working to my advantage, since I’d faced more than my fair share of attacks. It took something so catastrophic that the body’s supercharged healing powers couldn’t cope with it, like a beheading or a bomb blast. Dragonfire would do it if the victim was in human form, but no dragon was going to stand around in human form long enough to be blasted with dragonfire. Certainly not a dragon as old and cunning as Daiyu of Japan.
That left poisoning, and there were only two poisons known to be fatal to dragons. One was bane leaf, which Jason had used to kill Leandra in her original body, and the other was even harder to come by, which was saying something, since bane leaf was so rare it was just about extinct. The second poison was called du, and the secret of its manufacture was known only to the Chinese queen—who was Daiyu’s sister.
The queen of Japan wasn’t Japanese at all. She had been locked into an exhausting proving for the throne of China with her last remaining sister when an opportunity had come up to assassinate the queen of Japan. Problem solved: now there were two thrones available for the two warring sisters. I don’t know how they had settled who took China and who took Japan, but Daiyu had moved in before the true Japanese queen’s body had even had time to cool, and the coup had been presented to the other queens as a fait accompli. Celeste Rousseau, who ruled all of Europe from her throne in France, had made a rather half-hearted attempt to unseat her, but it had come to nothing, and Daiyu had remained unchallenged since.
Not that I particularly wanted to kill Daiyu. Or at least, I hadn’t
“They’re still in Sydney, then,” Garth said, with satisfaction in his voice, as the Harbour Bridge slowly revealed itself.
And then the woman came into view. Even in the blurriness of the goblin’s image I recognised her. She was one of the most famous shifters in the world.
Daiyu, queen of Japan.
CHAPTER FIVE
Silence fell on the garden, broken at last by the goblin’s nasal laugh.
“You should see your faces.” He grinned as he shoved his glasses up to their normal resting place again.
Garth snarled, as if he’d like to jam those damn glasses somewhere sideways. The thought held a certain appeal.
“Bad news, is it?” Blue continued. “Has she come to steal your crown?”
He lifted his hand and shook the blood-red water from it. The picture in the pond dissipated as the flying droplets struck it.
“I think I liked you better when you were drunk,” I said.
The goblin’s smile widened. “Well, that’s easy enough to fix. Just point me at the nearest bottle and I’ll get on with it.”
“Nobody told you to end the scrying,” said Luce, indicating the now-clear water.
“Sorry, love, couldn’t hold it much longer anyway.”
This was the most cheerful I’d ever seen the goblin mage. His good mood seemed in inverse proportion to the black expressions around him. He lounged on the stone coping of the fountain, his gaze flicking with obvious pleasure between all the grim faces surrounding him.
Bastard. A wholly dragon rage swept over me, an urge to smash his grinning face into ruins. I drew a deep, shuddering breath. Seeing Lachie so miserable made me want to lash out and hurt someone. He’d looked so pale, as if he was suffering from one of his headaches. I’d bet anything that Jason wouldn’t remember that tablets made him gag, and he had to have soluble painkillers instead.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said to Luce, forcing myself to concentrate. Worrying wouldn’t help Lachie, only action would. I needed to be more than his mother now. Focus, Kate . “We know they’re in the city. It shouldn’t be too difficult to track them down.”
I even had the police helping with that now. No, the problem would be what to do once we’d found them. Dragons were very hard to kill. Lately that had been working to my advantage, since I’d faced more than my fair share of attacks. It took something so catastrophic that the body’s supercharged healing powers couldn’t cope with it, like a beheading or a bomb blast. Dragonfire would do it if the victim was in human form, but no dragon was going to stand around in human form long enough to be blasted with dragonfire. Certainly not a dragon as old and cunning as Daiyu of Japan.
That left poisoning, and there were only two poisons known to be fatal to dragons. One was bane leaf, which Jason had used to kill Leandra in her original body, and the other was even harder to come by, which was saying something, since bane leaf was so rare it was just about extinct. The second poison was called du, and the secret of its manufacture was known only to the Chinese queen—who was Daiyu’s sister.
The queen of Japan wasn’t Japanese at all. She had been locked into an exhausting proving for the throne of China with her last remaining sister when an opportunity had come up to assassinate the queen of Japan. Problem solved: now there were two thrones available for the two warring sisters. I don’t know how they had settled who took China and who took Japan, but Daiyu had moved in before the true Japanese queen’s body had even had time to cool, and the coup had been presented to the other queens as a fait accompli. Celeste Rousseau, who ruled all of Europe from her throne in France, had made a rather half-hearted attempt to unseat her, but it had come to nothing, and Daiyu had remained unchallenged since.
Not that I particularly wanted to kill Daiyu. Or at least, I hadn’t
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