Thorn Queen (Dark Swan, #2)(97)

Leith stood there, frozen, eyes on the gun. Finally, swallowing, he slowly lifted his gaze to my face. He was pale, so pale that he could have been on the verge of passing out.

"Eugenie...you're hurt...are you okay? There's blood on your bandage...."

I didn't doubt it and didn't bother to check. "Stop it. Just stop your f*cking concerned act. I don't want to hear it."

In the corners of my eyes, I saw the gentry girls edge their way toward me like some sort of honor guard. I started to tell them to back off, but Leith had no real magic, and I was the one with the gun.

"What are you...? It-it's not an act, I swear it. I care about you. I love you."

"Love me?" I snarled. "People in love don't f*cking drug and rape other people!"

"It wasn't rape. Did I ever hurt you? Did I beat you?"

For a moment, I was so stunned that I couldn't even speak. "You...you're serious, aren't you? You really believe that? You really believe you didn't do anything wrong!"

"It was the only way I could convince you...the only way I could convince you that we're meant to be together. Normal courtship didn't work. Neither did Mother's attempt to just capture you and bring you to the Rowan-"

"Her attempt to what?"

"She used her magic to bind the power of several animals together and-"

"Jesus Christ! That was her?" Katrice had sent Smokey to bring me back for Leith. Lovely. Girard had mentioned her love of woodland animals but not her ability to control them.

"Look," Leith rambled desperately. "We'd be a great team-you know we would. We'd have two kingdoms. You saw what I was able to do to help yours! With your power and my ingenuity-"

"Ingenuity?" I cried. I would have laughed if it wasn't all so horrible. "You have none! You've got a tiny bit more technological know-how than the average gentry, but everything else you stole from humans. You traded it in exchange for these girls' self-respect. You didn't even have the balls to kidnap from your own people!"

Again, much like when he'd raped me, I wished he'd be more belligerent. This idyllic, faux love was worse. It made everything he'd done to me worse. I could feel my temper surging, anger racing through me. I could hardly see because of my fury. Or maybe it was the blood loss. Odder still was a strange shift in the air, a cooling off. It had been humid and stuffy before, but it was definitely cooler now. Not in the way that heralded a Volusian appearance but something different altogether that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

"I won't do it again, I swear. If that's what you want, if that's what'll make you happy and let us be together..."

He took a step toward me, and I fired a warning shot that just cleared his arm and hit the cupboard behind him. He promptly stopped moving, face going paler still.

"Don't move!" I screamed. "Don't even think about touching me."

I still couldn't believe it, still couldn't believe he was going on like this. I kept thinking about what it had been like in bed with him, that forcing and total violation of my body. Once more, there was a slight shift in the air, and I realized what it was. The barometric pressure. I didn't know how I knew, but I did. It was dropping. Rapidly. Ozone wafted through the air.

"I love you," he said in a small voice.

"You are a self-centered, f*cking * rapist," I replied evenly. "And I-I am the Thorn Queen." As the words left my mouth, I suddenly understood what Dorian had meant about me needing to believe I was queen. In that moment, I did. And a person like Leith did not do something like that to someone like me.

"I'm the Thorn Queen," I repeated. Now the air stirred, around us, causing the curtains to flutter and a few things to fall off the counter. "And you are going to pay for what you've done."

"Eugenie, stop. Put the gun down."

I lifted my eyes from Leith's cringing form, and this time, I did laugh-but it was more of a choking sound. Kiyo, Dorian, and Roland stood in the entrance to the kitchen. My saviors. After leaving that front door open when Art had come home, it was like anyone could just traipse right in.

"Jesus Christ," I said. "You guys are a little too late."

It was Kiyo who had spoken, his face tense and worried. "Everyone needs to calm down. You got him, Eugenie. It's over. Put the gun away now."

Roland was tense too, his face unreadable as he stood with his own gun. Beside him, Dorian didn't seem overly worried, but there was none of that usual laughter on his face.

"You don't know what he's done," I growled. "You keep talking about mercy, but at some point it has to end. He needs to die." The wind grew stronger. Some of my hair whipped in my face, but I had no free hand to brush it aside.

"I didn't do anything!" exclaimed Leith. He looked to the other men, face desperate and pleading. "I won her fairly. You know how it is. Back in the old days, that's how it was. The man who caught the queen became king. If she's pregnant, she's my common-law wife."

I saw disgust on Roland's face, his hand tightening on the gun. He started to lift it, but Kiyo, still apparently the spokesperson, made a small motion that caused my stepfather to lower the gun back down. Slightly. "That tradition is like a thousand years old," Kiyo told Lieth. "It means nothing anymore. She's not yours."