The Twiceborn Queen (The Proving Book 2) by Marina Finlayson Page A

communication that would only be visible to the intended recipient.
    I scanned the message.
    “It’s from Carl Davison.”
    Garth’s eyes widened. He crowded in next to Ben, craning his neck to try to read the message. “The software guy? He’s a dragon?”
    Ben frowned. “I thought he was one of Elizabeth’s cronies. What does he want?”
    “He wants to meet with me.” I checked my watch. “In less than an hour. He says I need to know what my sisters are doing.”
    Ben was right. Carl was pretty high up in Elizabeth’s court. How could I trust him? But if he had information for me, could I afford to ignore that?
    “What does he mean, sisters?” Ben looked as puzzled as I felt.
    I leaned back and stared at the ceiling, thinking hard. My turn to put my feet on the desk.
    “Maybe it’s a typo,” said Garth.
    I snorted. Dragons didn’t make typos, not on scales. There was no writing or typing involved, just pure will. If he said sisters, he meant it.
    But what did he mean? I’d had four originally: Valeria, Ingrid, Monique and Alicia. Alicia was the only one still alive. Valeria and Ingrid I’d killed myself. Monique had been blown into itty bitty dragon pieces by a bomb of Valeria’s that had almost wiped me out too. There hadn’t been a body left to see, but I’d been sure she was dead.
    Could I be wrong? Could she somehow have escaped the blast?
    If she had, she’d been lying so low for the last year that there hadn’t been so much as a whisper of her existence. I found that very hard to believe. Not a single sighting? Not even a hint, in a whole year, of something odd going on behind the scenes?
    In a relatively small shifter community like Sydney, where everyone watched everyone else, and the proving was like some giant free show where the non-combatants sat back with their popcorn to enjoy the spectacle, it seemed hugely unlikely. What did she gain by basically putting her entire existence on hold like that?
    But what was the alternative?
    I sat up, slamming my feet to the floor, and gazed at Ben in horror. “There must be another sister.”
    There had been six eggs in that clutch. The sixth egg had supposedly never hatched. It happened sometimes, and I’d never given it any thought until now.
    I tossed Carl’s scale on the desk, its message fading as it left my hand. It lay like a pool of quicksilver, glinting against the blood red of the leather desk top. My mind raced. “Elizabeth only declared the five of us, but she must have kept one back.”
    But why? Dragon queens were notoriously unsentimental about their offspring. Her current attitude to me was pretty clear proof of that. She’d have to be very sure that this hypothetical sixth daughter far exceeded her sisters’ abilities, or risk putting a weakling on the throne. But if she was as good as all that, why not let her join the proving and destroy the rest of us in the usual way?
    I slammed my hand on the desk top. “God damn it. And all this time I thought Valeria was the favourite.”
    “That doesn’t make any sense,” said Ben. “How could she know which daughter was strongest if they didn’t all compete?”
    Garth looked from one to the other of us in confusion. “What the hell are you talking about? I have enough trouble keeping up with pack politics, much less this dragon shit.”
    “Well, this dragon shit just got a lot stinkier.” I rubbed my forehead, feeling a headache threatening. Stress could kill you—as long as the bounty hunters, your mother, your sisters and half the people you knew didn’t get there first.
    “Elizabeth laid a queen clutch, twenty-six years ago. You know queens do that, right, when they’re nearing the end of their lives?”
    “Yeah, and when the daughters grow up they fight and the winner becomes the next queen.”
    “Right.” As if I was likely to forget that part . “But the eggs don’t all hatch at the same time. There can be as much as five years between the first hatching and the