The land started to quiet, except for the spot beside me. It trembled from the force of something trying to get out. I scrambled away lest it impale me. Moments later, a tree burst from the earth, springing up with unreal speed. Reaching almost twenty-five feet in the air, its spiky gray-black branches spread out. Purple blooms sprang all over it like a cloud or a veil.
Then all went still. I gaped. I had a Tucson summer around me. Only it was better. The kind of summer you always wished for but rarely achieved.
We all sat there frozen, peering around for what would come next. Only Dorian and Volusian seemed nonchalant.
“What is this tree?” Dorian asked softly, looking upward.
I swallowed. “It…it’s a smokethorn.” My mother had a couple of them in her yard.
“A smokethorn,” he repeated, lips turning up in delight. I stared at him, still in shock.
“What…what just happened?” I managed. The sweetness of mesquite came to me on a light breeze, heady and delicious.
“He’s given you a kingdom,” said a clear, soprano voice. “You stole what I should have gotten.”
Jasmine Delaney stood just on the outskirts of our little gathering.
She looked wraithlike in the early morning light. Her strawberry-blond hair hung long and loose, and a form-fitting blue gown covered her slim body. Her wondrous, enormous gray eyes appeared black without full illumination. Finn stood next to her.
I clambered to my feet. Beside me, Dorian did the same, albeit awkwardly. He touched my arm. “Be careful.”
Something was wrong here, but I couldn’t put my finger on it yet.
“Jasmine…” I said stupidly. “We’ve come to take you home.”
Her lips formed a flat line, not exactly a smile and not exactly a grimace either. “I am home. After putting up with humans all that time, I’m finally where I should be.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying. I know you think you want to be here, but it’s wrong. You need to come home.”
“No, Eugenie. I’m saying what you should have been saying all along. I recognized my birthright, and I came for it. Whereas you…” She shook her head, anger kindling in her words. The intensity of that hate seemed absurd with her young, high voice-as did the fact that she’d actually used the word “birthright.” Too much time with the gentry. “You became the biggest rock star around here. You could have had it all, but you couldn’t handle it. You spent all your time bitching and moaning, acting like it was so hard to be you. It was stupid, but they all ate it up. Even Aeson did.”
She sounded near tears, and a lump formed in my throat. Not because I felt sorry for her but because I knew with a deadly certainty what she was going to say.
“He thought because you were the oldest and had your stupid warrior thing going that you’d be the one to have the heir, not me. He was going to toss me aside, even though I’ve been faithful to him the whole time-even before he brought me over. It didn’t even matter. He was ready to get rid of me for you.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to block out her eyes. Those enormous gray eyes, gray like the sky on a rainy day. Just as mine were the violet of storm clouds gathering. Wil’s words came back to me, lamenting their childhood: Our dad was always off on some business trip, and our mom was constantly sleeping around on him. Their mom had indeed slept around-with one of the gentry, on one of Storm King’s assorted liaisons in the human world. There had been a reason Jasmine reminded me of myself.
“Jasmine…please. We can deal with this…”
“No. I’m tired of you, Eugenie. You’re the worst sister ever, and you aren’t going to be the one who gets to have the heir and start the conquest. I am.”
I glanced over at the lanky form beside her. “Finn…?”
He shrugged, as chipper as ever. “Sorry, Odile. I gave you the chance. I spread your identity around, hoping you’d see reason. You think I wanted to be some shaman’s toadie? I picked you because I thought you were going places. You blew it, so I traded up.”
My shock over these developments shot into anger. Finn had betrayed us. He’d let Aeson know we were coming. He’d even tried to stack the deck against us by separating Dorian from me earlier.
Before I-or anyone else-realized what I was doing, I strode over to where my captor had tossed my assorted weapons. In a flash, I held the wand. I touched Persephone’s gate and said the banishing words. Finn’s mouth dropped open in astonishment, but he was such a weak spirit-never meant to be more than a toadie, after all-that his resistance was a nonevent. My will, channeled through the wand, pulled him through the pathway I’d created. A moment later, he vanished, transported into the Underworld.
Banishing him didn’t really fix the mess I was in, but it made me feel better.
Jasmine’s face darkened, her eyes narrowing with bitter hatred for me. Christ. I still couldn’t believe this. She was just a kid.
“Your staff got downsized,” I told her.
“I’ve got more.”
I felt a surge of water in the air and a dozen translucent, feline forms appeared beside her. They reminded me of lions, but their bodies moved like water swirled inside them, dynamic and restless, just underneath their translucent skin. Their eyes glowed an almost neon blue, and their teeth and claws looked about ten times longer and sharper than a normal lion’s.
“Yeshin,” Dorian murmured in my ear. “More water creatures.”
I caught the implied message. Maiwenn had had nothing to do with the fachan or nixies. Jasmine had sent them, using the power inherited from our father to attempt to kill me. She’d wanted to get me out of the way so she’d be the only one in line to fulfill that crazy prophecy. Maybe I should have been outraged, but mostly I felt jealous. Jasmine could summon water denizens, and I could not.
The yeshin moved toward me with a sinuous grace, saliva-or was it simply water?-dripping from their fangs. For a moment, I couldn’t act. Then Kiyo moved in a golden-orange streak beside me, tackling one of the yeshin to the ground. Their limbs and claws bit into each other as they wrestled, rolling over and over in the dust.
I came to life, grappling on the ground for my gun. Finding it, I ejected the clip and dug through my coat pockets until I found a silver one. Meanwhile, four other yeshin advanced. Dorian waved a hand, and a small dust cloud rose up and swirled in the creatures’ eyes. With his other hand, he pointed at me and yelled at the guards.
“All of you! You know your duty. Defend her.”
The guards stayed fixed, staring uneasily between the yeshin and me. Then, one stepped forward, sword raised. He let out a battle cry and charged forward to the yeshin nearest him. A moment later, the others followed suit.
“Stay back from this, your majesty,” I heard Shaya say. “You’re too weak now.”
She was right. Dorian was pale beneath his burns, barely able to keep himself upright. Giving me a brief glance first, Shaya closed her eyes in concentration. Seconds later, two saguaros ripped themselves from the earth and lumbered toward a yeshin. Their weight and grappling helped immobilize it. I took aim and fired until the yeshin moved no more. Straightening back up, the saguaros plodded on to their next victim. I followed them, ready to repeat the process.
Nearby, Kiyo looked to be on his third yeshin. I watched as he pinned it down, his sharp teeth tearing into its skin. Liquid leaked out, not blood but water. Still, it made a valiant effort to fight him, one clawed paw snaking out and gouging his side. Blood appeared on him, but it didn’t seem to faze him. He kept moving, tearing into the beast until it died. Then, without hesitation, he moved on to the next one.
The guards-my guards?-fought yeshin in small groups while Volusian aided with his magic. Shaya had created another set of moving saguaros but looked tired. She had her sword drawn and hovered near Dorian, watchful and protective through her fatigue.