feathers and black wings, and I felt myself being pulled out of this world. Just before I left completely, she spoke again. Her voice was tired and maybe just a little sad.
Keep your love. I have no use for it anymore.
An instant later, I woke up in my physical body, gasping and choking for air as I returned to life.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
About two days passed before I had enough of a grip on consciousness to get out of bed. I had dim recollections of a commotion outside Aeson’s stronghold after returning to my body that night but little more. Shaya had cradled me in her arms. Dorian had yelled for a healer. But best of all, beside me I’d seen Kiyo stir.
Now I woke up in one of Dorian’s many guest rooms. It was smaller than his but as opulently decorated as everything else around there. I’d come to a few times before this but only now found the strength to stay up. Nia, who had hovered by my side the entire time, remained less convinced.
“You shouldn’t…you need to sleep more…”
I was stripping off the long chemise they’d put me in, trading up for my recently laundered clothes. “If I sleep any more, I’ll be dead, and I’ve already come too close to that. Where’s Dorian? I need to talk to him.”
“I’m sure he’d come to you, your majesty.”
I winced at the title. “No. Just take me to him.”
Despite her protests, her sense of duty couldn’t disobey the order. She led me through the maze of corridors where I earned a number of curious looks from the various occupants. Since my initial arrival, I’d become sort of a common fixture around here, accepted and ignored. Now people regarded me with the same frightened curiosity I’d first received.
Outdoors, we found Dorian in one of the gardens, standing over a small, fluffy dog. Muran hovered nearby, and between them, they tried unsuccessfully to coax the dog to lie down and roll over. It merely sat looking at them, tail thumping.
Dorian noticed me first, his face breaking into a wide smile. The healers had been at work on him too; no trace of the burns remained. “Queen Eugenie, lovely to see you out and about.”
Muran nearly fell all over himself to bow. “Y-your majesty.”
“We need to talk,” I told Dorian firmly. “Alone.”
“I never tire of being alone with you. Nia, take this unreasonable beast away with you. And take the dog too.” He waved them off.
Once alone with him, I demanded, “What the hell were you thinking?”
“There are so many incidents to which you could be referring, I don’t even know where to start.”
“Yes, you do. You made me queen of Aeson’s kingdom.”
“Your kingdom now, my dear.”
I paced around in the grass irritably. It was the middle of the day, crisp and sunny. “I didn’t want it. You had no right to do it.”
“It’s done. Besides, if I hadn’t, someone else might have snatched it up. Would you have liked to see your charming little sister on the throne?”
That stopped me. Extensive searching had found no trace of Jasmine. She seemed to have gotten away cleanly during the yeshin fight.
“Give it to someone else. There has to be a better choice than Jasmine or me.”
“Give it away?” He laughed his wondrous melodic laugh, the one that declared all the world was a joke. “The land recognized you. You can’t go back on that. It’s yours forever…well, at least until you die. Or pass it on to an heir.”
“Great. Here we go again. I might have known you’d start pushing that.”
“I did no such thing, but…since you brought it up…”
I stopped pacing and glared at him. “Quit it. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t even want to think about it.”
Some of his humor faded. “Maybe you should. Jasmine certainly will be. If she has a son first, all your good intentions won’t matter. You say you don’t want it, but you know…it could all turn out differently if you beat her to it.”
It was so alarmingly close to what Storm King had told me in the Underworld that I didn’t even know what to say at first. Was this a coincidence? I felt pretty sure that all I’d seen there had been an illusion, meant to test my resolve and make me face my fears.
“What’s wrong?” Dorian asked, seeing my face. There was nothing sly or knowing in his expression, only worry.
“Nothing. Look, forget about the prophecy for a minute. Go back to the Alder Land thing. If you were so worried about it falling into the wrong hands, why didn’t you just seize it for yourself?”
“Why, Eugenie, do you think me so power hungry?”
“Yes. I do. I’ve heard and seen as much. When these kingdoms were formed, you wanted more. And you had your chance when Aeson died.” He didn’t answer, and I pushed on, knowing I was right. “But that would have upset a lot of people, wouldn’t it? Maiwenn and the others might have turned against you. But by making me Alder Queen…you got a placeholder. No one can say anything because I defeated Aeson fairly in battle, and now you have easy access to the same power. You plan to use me and this fucking title to extend your control.”
“You have a very low opinion of me. No wonder you’re so upset.”
“Come on. Why else would you have done it?”
He stared in astonishment. “Why, because I love you.” He said it as though it was the most reasonable thing in the whole world. Like I should have known this already.
“You barely even know me.”
“We’ve known each other almost as long as you’ve known the kitsune, and I daresay you think you’re in love with him. Your little foray that night demonstrated as much. By the gods, that was one of the most foolish things I’ve ever witnessed. You stopped breathing. I thought you were dead.”
I heard the catch in his voice, and it really struck me that he just might love me after all. It gave me a strange feeling, one I didn’t know how to cope with. Dorian loving a person was almost incomprehensible. I thought of him as loving only his own amusements and ambitions.
“I do love Kiyo,” I said in a low voice. “And if we can work it out…I’m going to-”
He shrugged, carefree and lax again. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t mind sharing you.”
“You told Aeson you don’t share.”
“As a general rule, no-and certainly not with the likes of him-but I don’t think you’ll give me exclusivity, so I must compromise.”
“There isn’t going to be any exclusivity or compromise.”
“So you say. You also said you’d never come to my bed in the first place. Or that you’d ever use magic. You probably said a dozen other things too. We all saw how those turned out.”
“Stop it. I’m serious about this.”
“And so am I. You’re a queen now. You control part of this world. Ally with me, and we’ll be the greatest power since your father.”
“I don’t want the power or the Alder Land.”
“It’s the Thorn Land now.”
“I-what?”
“The land conformed itself to you. The Alder Land was Aeson’s domain. Yours is the Thorn Land. You’re the Thorn Queen.”
“The smokethorn,” I recalled. If someone tried to force a crown of thorns on me, that was going to be seriously fucked up.
“Very fitting actually. A tree covered in beauty yet possessing a sharp and deadly core.”
I shook my head. “I don’t care about metaphors. I don’t want to rule this kingdom.”
