Thorn Queen (21 page)

The horror of it was setting in. Until that moment, I had thought there were few sexual crimes worse than gentry guys consistently trying to rape me to get me pregnant. As shocking as it seemed, I was wrong. If this were true…if this idea that Dorian was suggesting was true…well. That was worse. Gentry girls taken because they were the ideal sexual partners: young, disease resistant, hard to get pregnant—even with a human. I almost laughed. It was like Tim’s poem about the maiden who’d come from another world, whose beauty and youth were so great that mortal men had coveted her.

The question was, how did the gentry girls feel about this role? A lot of girls wanting to get pregnant might wholeheartedly embrace human lovers—literally and figuratively. But Moria’s traumatized state suggested her stint with Art hadn’t been welcome…

I stood up and rubbed my eyes. “Oh God,” I repeated. “The stuff…all the stuff…”

“What?” asked Dorian, understandably confused.

Dropping my hands, I looked back at him. “These shamans, Abigail and Art. They live well. They have more possessions…nicer things than they should for the jobs they have.” Art’s giant house in an upper-class neighborhood. The shiny SUV. Abigail’s luxurious—albeit messy—apartment. Her extensive jewelry collection. “I don’t know how, but they’re making money off it. Off these girls.” I slumped against the wall. “And I don’t know what to do about it.”

Dorian rose and came to stand by me. “You’ll stop them.”

I shook my head. “It’s not that simple. Art was right—there’s no shaman council. I can’t report them to anyone, certainly not human authorities. There’s no accountability, no laws that apply here.”

“They’re breaking
your
laws,” he said, leaning toward me. “Therefore you have every right to stop them. Treat them as you would any other criminal in your land. Kill them.”

“I can’t!” I exclaimed. “I’d have to actually catch them
here
, and so far I haven’t been able to. And I’m certainly not going to go to Texas and kill them there.”

“Why not? If a murderer from my kingdom killed someone in yours, I wouldn’t bat an eye if you came to slay him.”

“It’s different. They’re…”

“Human?”

I hated to admit, but yes, there it was. I had chased Otherworldly monsters from my world back to this one and never hesitated to kill them or banish them directly to the Underworld. But somehow, the thought of intentionally tracking humans and killing them…

I didn’t need to voice my answer for Dorian to understand. Exasperation flared on his face, this time mixed with…anger.

“Damn it, Eugenie. You just told me you had to put things right! Which is it? Or does it only depend on what’s easy at any given time? What your mood is? Who you like better that day?”

“It’s not that easy!” I exclaimed. “You don’t understand. You
can’t
understand. I’m caught between two worlds here, with two sets of loyalties. I’ve spent my entire life being human—being part of that world. You can’t expect me to throw all that away and betray my own kind.”

He opened his mouth to retort and was interrupted by a faint roll of thunder. Whatever words he’d been about to utter disappeared, and he laughed. “Do you hear that? That’s you, Eugenie. Your anger.”

I shook my head. “I can’t control thunder and lightning yet.”

“Not control, no. But you can summon it unconsciously. Do you think there’s anything in this land that isn’t tied to you?” He gestured around us. “All these people here…all the people in this village looking at you with adoring eyes…
they
are your own kind too. This is what I meant when I said you’re the only one who doesn’t seem to realize you’re a queen yet! All these people are looking to you to protect them and do what’s right. If you can’t do that, then you might as well back off and do what the kitsune and your stepfather want you to do.”

“Dorian, I can’t kill in cold blood!”

He gripped me by the arms, voice calm but infused with anger. “You can do whatever it is you have to do! You are a queen. Forget all this talk about Storm King’s grandson. Right now,
you
are his heir. You are on the verge of becoming one of the most powerful rulers in this world, which means you don’t have the luxury of being squeamish. You can rule with love, but you have to rule with ruthlessness too. You are going to go down in history, Eugenie, as one of the greatest monarchs we have ever seen. And it is going to start with
this
—this wrong that you’re going to right. If you can’t do it, if you can’t stop those who are hurting your people, then you might as well stop the rest of this charade. Go out there and tell those people you can’t do anything for them, that you can’t feed them or protect them because they aren’t your kind and aren’t worth bloodying your hands for!”

He was shouting now, breathing heavily. I stared at him, eyes wide, filled with a little of that fear I always got when his temper rose. Moments like these reminded me of just how powerful Dorian was physically and magically. His lazy, lean appearance was deceptive; I’d seen him fight. Between that and the power he wielded, I hoped there would never come a day when we were truly antagonists. Outside, I heard thunder again.

It took me several seconds to muster an answer, and when I spoke, my voice was very small.

“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t tell them that.”

“I know you can’t,” he whispered.

And then, still gripping me, he leaned down and kissed me. More astonishingly, I kissed him back. It seemed like all the emotions that had consumed me recently—all the rage and confusion—were poured into that kiss. My teeth bit against his lips, and when he shoved me against the wall, I welcomed the brief pain. Our hands were all over each other as we kissed, mine running the length of his body while his more aggressively hiked up the dress I’d earlier regretted wearing. In a matter of seconds, it was pushed over my hips, leaving my legs bare. With one hand still holding the skirt up, his other pushed between my thighs, slipping underneath the thong I’d put on this morning in the hopes of getting intimate with Kiyo.

Those clever fingers slid into me, stoking a wetness I hadn’t thought could come on so fast. My small exclamation was muffled in his crushing kiss as he alternately thrust his fingers into me and pulled out to tease and dance with my clit. It was the latter he eventually settled on, circling and stroking as heat built between my legs and made all my muscles tense up. Then, the burning flood of sensation exploded, and I came with another cry that his kiss smothered, a cry that faded into a moan as my body trembled and spasmed from the shock waves of heat and electricity still shooting through me from his touch.

My orgasm created no pause in the action, though. The hand that had just brought me such pleasure moved from between my legs to his pants as he began to unfasten them. His mouth finally left mine, moving on to my neck, his kisses hot and fierce. He shoved his pants down, and I felt him against me, hard and ready as he pressed his hips to mine. My hands were tangled in his hair as I tilted my head back to receive his kisses, but his hands, busy as always, were prying off my underwear. The reality of what was happening sank in.

“Wait…” I murmured, lost as his mouth bit against my skin. “No, we can’t…I can’t…”

“You can,” he breathed in my ear. “Let me…let me do it. Let me bury myself in you. Let me spread your legs and take you like I did before. We are gods in this world, Eugenie, with no other lovers who are our equals. No others who are worthy of this joining.” The thong was on the ground now, and I could feel his erection pressed against my skin, so, so close to sliding in and doing all the things he promised. He rested his hands under my thighs and hoisted me up against the wall so that my legs wrapped around his hips.

“Dorian…” I gasped. “I’m with Kiyo….”

“So? You’re a queen. Do you think you can’t have as many lovers as you like?”

“It’s…it’s wrong. We can’t…”

“We
can,
” he said, voice low and full of promise. “And when we do, this land will be reborn….”

Afterward, I would never be entirely sure if I would have let him do it. I like to think I would have stopped him. I was in love with Kiyo, after all, and loyal to him. Surely I would have said no and shoved Dorian aside. I wasn’t in love with him…or was I? In those moments before we’d kissed, I’d felt like he truly
got
me and understood the things in my head. I think I’d probably loved him since around the time we’d met; I certainly never lost the attraction. Still, that didn’t make cheating on Kiyo right.

Whatever decision I would have made was taken from me when there was a knock at the door.

I jerked away from Dorian and hastily shoved my skirt down. He more casually turned away to pull his pants back up, seeming in no particular hurry. The door opened, and the lead councilwoman stuck her head in. Even with Dorian’s back to her and me dressed, it had to have been obvious what was going on—particularly with my underwear on the floor. If she found it shocking, though, she didn’t show it, and I recalled how free the gentry were in public.

“Your majesties,” she said politely, “there’s a storm coming in, and the workers were wondering what the Oak King wanted to do.”

Dorian, decent once more, turned around and gave her a laconic, charming smile. “A storm? Really? How truly unexpected. Well, tell them to bring as much of the ore as they can into storage before the rain and cover the rest up. I’ll come check on it in a moment since I have a feeling the Thorn Queen is about to depart with some haste.”

The woman gave a quick curtsey and shut the door once more. “You’re right,” I said, jerking my thong back on. “I’m leaving.”

“Yes,” he agreed, still smiling. “Because that’s your normal course of action when something happens that you don’t know how to process.”

“That’s the thing,” I growled. “
Nothing
happened here, okay? None of this did.”

His eyebrows rose. “Really? Because I could have sworn that something happened when my hand was between your—”

“No!” I would have approached him with clenched fists to drive home my threat but was afraid of what would happen if I was close to him again. “This didn’t happen. This was anger and confusion and me in a weak place, okay? I appreciate what you’ve done here with the copper—really. And for the advice on the girls. But that’s it.”

I turned, not wanting to look into those green eyes or see that smirk anymore. I didn’t want to admit that loving two men was just like the rest of my life, ripped into two worlds. I needed to get out of here and get back home—though I wasn’t sure which home I meant. Dorian didn’t try to stop me, but his voice rang out after me as I hurried out and rain began to fall outside.

“Don’t forget what I said, Eugenie. Crown or not, you
are
a queen, so don’t be afraid to do what you have to do. Love and ruthlessness. Those are the keys.”

I returned to my castle in shock—and in a downpour. My control of water let me shift the rain away from me, but after a while, I didn’t feel like wasting the mental effort on it. It felt kind of good after such a hot day, and besides, I had a few other things on my mind. Like if it was going to rain
every
time I got aroused. That was not cool. I guessed I could handle it so long as it rained other times as well. I didn’t want the connection to be so obvious.
Hey, it’s raining! The queen must have gotten laid. Ooh…is that hail? Must have been into some kinky shit today….

I was also debating whether or not having a guy stick his hand up your skirt and get you off was technically cheating or not.

Okay, I supposed there wasn’t much “technically” about it. I was getting caught up in gender stereotypes. If I’d gotten him off—say, like, by going down on him—there would have been no question of infidelity. So, this was no different. Fuck. How had it happened? One minute we’d been arguing…the next? Grope central. There’d been emotion and magic, and it had all happened so fast. I shivered, thinking of all the warnings about using strong magic. Was that to blame? Or just my own weakness? And at the same time, I couldn’t also help but think that strong magic could solve a few of my problems.

Excepting, of course, the problem of whether or not I should tell Kiyo what had happened between Dorian and me…

“Your majesty!”

Nia went crazy when she saw my drenched state. She had a hundred remedies for me, but all I wanted was a simple towel and the jeans and shirt I’d arrived in earlier. Waiting for the servants to draw hot baths around here took too much time and effort; I could get back to Tucson and into my own shower or sauna much more easily. And after still being unnerved by Dorian, I was particularly anxious to return to what I saw as safety. Though lately, I was starting to think no place was safe anymore.

Before leaving, I exchanged brief updates with Rurik and Shaya. I told Rurik that we had a date for demon hunting, and that Jasmine would indeed be going with us. His feelings on that were mixed. He knew her power was useful, but secretly—or, well, not so secretly—he was part of the camp that felt I should kill her. He seemed a little reassured about her, at least, because Girard had brought the custom cuffs as promised. They provided greater mobility for her but were even more limiting for magic. Judging from Jasmine’s dismayed reaction, Rurik felt they’d been successful.

Well, that was something, I supposed. And from the look on Shaya’s face, Dorian’s help with the ore was a good thing too—even if it had come with strings attached.

“That was very kind of my lord,” she said. Both Shaya and Rurik often used the honorific “my lord” when discussing Dorian, as though he were still their master. I considered their old loyalty endearing but wondered if they’d ever feel like they truly worked for me. “It’s expedited things immensely. You can’t imagine how quickly things will move once the ore is processed.” She grinned, eyes gleaming as all sorts of plans and organizational thoughts swirled in her mind. “You must have been very pleased at what my lord did for you.”

Well, “pleased” was one way of looking at it, I supposed.

Oh, and I was happy about the expedited ore too.

A strange feeling settled over me, that same one I got each time Dorian did something nice for me—sexual gratification aside. I had no idea what his role in my life was anymore, save that he was helping me a lot. Judging from Shaya’s face, this was a big favor he’d done for me. An idea for repayment came to me.

“Shaya…is Girard still here?”

She nodded. “I gave him a room for the night, so that he wouldn’t have to travel in the rain. Is that all right?”

“Yeah, yeah. I just want to talk to him for a sec.”

She led me to his room, and like before, he was overjoyed and overeager to see me. Seeing him reminded me of Leith, which gave me a small pang of regret. I still felt badly about what had happened with the Rowan prince, but there was nothing to be done about it. I couldn’t return his feelings. Girard, fortunately, was a different matter. He wanted prestige and position for his talents, and I was more than willing to give that after explaining to him the project I wanted to commission.

“Yes, your majesty. I can most certainly do that. Why, I can start sketching right now.”

No doubt he was happy to work on something that wasn’t part of Katrice’s woodland animal collection. I left him to it, gushing with praise and how much it would mean to me. Girard was a nice guy, despite his ambition, and I decided I’d rather surround myself with those wanting job promotion over getting me into bed.

I returned to Tucson at last, grateful to find the house quiet. Tim was out, but he’d left me macaroni and cheese—the good homemade kind with bread crumbs on top—and a note:

Bitch receptionist called and wants to make sure you don’t forget your job tomorrow.

I hadn’t forgotten the job tomorrow, but the reminder was a good one with as much as had been going on lately. One of the cats rubbed against my leg as I microwaved my dinner, and I absentmindedly scratched her on the head, wishing it was actually Kiyo’s fox form circling my ankles. I didn’t like the way he and I had left things, even if they’d ostensibly been friendly. There was still tension between us, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that he just wasn’t understanding me lately…and that Dorian was.

Argh. Dorian.

As I tossed my clothes on the bathroom floor—including that damned thong—I couldn’t help but think of him again.
Stop it, Eugenie. You’re obsessing
. Surely…surely I would have said no if we hadn’t been interrupted earlier, right?

Right?

And Kiyo, Kiyo…what was I going to tell Kiyo? Just because we were having friction in our relationship, it didn’t mean I had license to do what I’d done today. I had no respect for lies or any other subtle dishonesty. I didn’t like that behavior in others. I didn’t like it in myself.

But after standing in scalding water for twenty minutes, no real answers about anything came to my mind. I finally emerged, my skin sufficiently plump and pink, and toweled off. After that, it was into comfy pajamas: blue and gray flannel shorts and a white cotton tank top. It might have been raining in the Thorn Land, but here it was dry and hot. Night had cooled the air somewhat, and I’d opened all the windows to air out the house. As a light breeze blew in, it took everything in me not to start tinkering around with the air. I could sense every particle, and the thought of controlling them sent a shiver through me.
No
, I scolded myself. I’d done enough today. I needed to have a no-magic-in-Tucson rule, I decided.

Establishing that magic and men were issues that were not going to be solved tonight, I set out to work on another. It wasn’t quite ten yet, which meant Roland would be up. Sprawling on the couch in front of the breezy patio screen door, I dialed him on my phone.

“Eugenie,” he said with delight. “We’ve been wondering what happened to you. You haven’t been returning calls. Your mother was worried, but I told her you were probably just busy.”

I smiled. It was nice to have Roland in my life, someone who understood the ups and downs of this job. “I have been. Really busy.” I almost started to offer him the overflow of jobs I’d had Lara turn down for me and stopped myself at the last minute. If he knew I wasn’t keeping up with my work, it would only trigger an alarm for him and subject me to questions I wasn’t ready to answer.

“Did you ever talk to Art and Abigail?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “and that’s actually why I was calling you. I think…well, I think they’re trafficking in gentry girls or something.”

There were several moments of silence.

“Trafficking? What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means I think they’re abducting girls and…I don’t know. Either pimping them out or selling them or something equally disgusting. It’s like a fairy sex trade.” One of the cats, a calico, came and made herself comfortable on my stomach.

“Eugenie…I’ve known Art for almost ten years. I’ve known Abigail longer. What you’re saying is absurd. You have to be getting bad information.”

“They’ve both been sighted in the Otherworld, right around where their gate opens! I even talked to one girl who all but identified Art! She was totally traumatized, Roland. And both Art and Abigail live better than they should be…”

“That’s not evidence,” he said. “They’re probably doing good business.”

“In a town that size? Even with a gate like that, they can’t have enough work to afford the stuff they have. You and I have a ton more jobs than they do, and we don’t live that well.”

“It’s a moot point. This whole thing is far-fetched, and your evidence is sketchy. I mean, have you seen gentry girls tied up in his house?”

“No,” I admitted. “Largely because he won’t ever let me inside. Which is also suspicious.”

“No, Eugenie, it’s really not.” Roland sounded tired. “Look, it sounds like all you’ve got is circumstantial gentry evidence. And you know how they are.”

“I know that their people are being taken against their will and possibly having horrible things done to them.”

“Key words:
their people.
”

“Are you saying it’s okay for girls to be sold into a sex trade? After what happened to Mom?”

“How can you ask me that?” he exclaimed. “But this isn’t the same thing. We’re not police who work both worlds. We protect humans. There must be someone over there whose job it is to protect them.”

There is
, I thought.
Me
.

“Can you at least talk to Art?” I asked.

“And what? Ask him if he’s kidnapping gentry girls?”

“Well…maybe you could pose it a bit more delicately.” I squelched a yowl of pain as the cat leapt up off me and onto the back of the couch. Her hair puffed up, and she twitched her tail in agitation. Not surprising. Both dogs had just entered the room.

“I can’t ask him that,” said Roland. “And what if he says yes? Then what are you going to do?”

Dorian’s words came back to me.
Kill them.

“Look, I don’t know yet, but I just need to find out if—”

I heard a low growl from one of the dogs and was about to yell at them to knock it off. The cats and dogs didn’t usually fight, but every once in a while, there would be a brawl. I couldn’t see the dogs, though, and the bristling calico’s attention seemed to be on the screen door, not the floor. I sat up and saw the dogs sitting right in front of the door, staring out into the night as well.

“Eugenie? Are you still there?”

“Yeah, hang on a sec.”

Balancing the phone on my shoulder, I stood up and instinctively reached for my weapons, which were on the coffee table. I shoved the wand and my silver athame under the elastic waistband of my shorts and took the gun and iron athame with my hands. One of the dogs growled again, and I slowly approached them at the door.

“Eugenie? What’s going on?” Roland’s voice was worried now.

“I’m going to have to call you back.”

I managed to disconnect the phone and drop it on the floor without losing the athame. Outside, the night was still, the only noises coming from the wind in the trees and the faint sounds of traffic on the far side of my quiet neighborhood. I closed my eyes a moment, reaching out to search for anything that didn’t feel right in this world. Some shamans had this ability, but not many. The more time I spent in the Otherworld and among gentry, the more developed my senses became.

Finally, I caught it. The sense of something Otherworldly. The animals, God love them, had noticed before me. Whatever this interloper was, it was keeping to the farthest edges of the house’s property. It had apparently been lurking for a while, which seemed odd.

“Ah,” I realized with a soft chuckle. “Stopped by the wards, huh, you son of a bitch?” I’d had a witch lay protective lines and spells all around the house when the attacks on me first started. It was kind of a magical home-security system. It wouldn’t keep out everything, but it definitely thinned out a lot of my nuisances.

I could have simply ignored whatever was out there, but the idea of Otherworldly creatures loose in my neighborhood didn’t sit well with me. Sliding open the door, I slipped outside, every nerve in my body on high alert. I walked the perimeter of my backyard, keeping inside the ward’s lines. My house was on a cul-de-sac, backing up to a small stretch of open, scrubby land before giving way to the next neighborhood over. I doubted whatever this was would be out in the front of the house, where it would be in sight of neighbors.

Ah, no—not an
it
. They. I could sense more than one. Standing on tiptoe to peer over the wooden fence, I nearly missed his eyes on my first sweep. A rock elemental—that is, one of the gentry who lacked the strength to travel to my world in his full form. He was blocky and unwieldy looking, his stone body mottled black and white. I had only a second to make my assessment before he charged. His weight and strength cracked the wooden fence, and then—he hit the ward. It was like an invisible wall that bounced him back.

His disorientation gave me what I needed. I dropped the gun and reached for my wand. Silver bullets weren’t as effective against gentry as steel ones anyway, and I certainly wasn’t going to fire off shots and possibly get the police called if I could help it. I channeled my will into the wand, ripping open a path to the Otherworld. My snake tattoo burned on my arm as I summoned the power of Hecate. I recited the incantation to finish the ritual. The elemental felt the magic of the banishing seize him but couldn’t fight it. He was too weak. In a moment, he dissolved from this world, sent back to his own, leaving only a pile of rubble behind.

Another shape appeared beside where he’d been, and I saw the dim lighting shine off water. Another gentry who hadn’t been able to cross in his true body. He’d appeared as a water elemental, a man-shaped body of liquid that dripped and sloshed with each step.