Richelle Mead - THORN QUEEN

Shaya seemed mollified and distracted enough by Dorian’s gifts that I was able to slip away without too much argument. I made the crossing back to my world, not even bothering to change clothes before I went. When I finally got back to my own house, I had the pleasant surprise of finding Kiyo lying on the couch. Three cats slept on the couch’s back while one rested on its arm. The fifth lay sprawled across Kiyo’s stomach.

“That,” he said, “is a great dress. Smells a little like horse, though.”

I glanced down at the purple silk dress, which was holding up remarkably well considering all the dust and sweat it had been subjected to today. “It was part of a diplomatic outreach.”

“Dorian, huh?”

“What was your first clue?”

“The slit.”

I headed across the living room, toward the hall that led to the other side of the house. “I’m hitting the shower. You want to go to Texas with me afterward?”

Kiyo straightened up, spooking a couple of the cats. “Is that like a new restaurant? Or do you mean the state?”

“State. I have to go talk to those two shamans that Roland told me about.” I glanced at a clock. “We’d probably have to stay overnight.”

He considered. “If we can be back by noon tomorrow, I’ll do it.”

I assured him we could and then left to shower away the day’s dirt. Miraculously-and a little disappointingly-Kiyo didn’t come harass me while I cleaned up. He had a tendency to show up while I was showering and offer to “help” clean me off.

Conscious of our time, he let me be, and a half-hour later, we were ready to hit the road. Yellow River was just over the Texas border, making it about a four-hour drive if we kept a little over the speed limit. Kiyo liked to drive-I think it was some manly instinct-so I let him. We stuck to casual topics, which allowed my mind to wander to the Otherworldly affairs on my plate.

The whole stress of running and caring for a kingdom still weighed upon me, but I had the comfort of knowing I’d done what I could and that Shaya would manage the rest. That was her job. We both knew it, and she would perform her duties excellently. I needed to stop stressing about that. The missing girls…well, those were my problem. At least, I’d made them my problem. Meeting with these shamans in Yellow River would hopefully shed light on that situation, so until I saw them, there was no point in worrying about that either.

Ysabel…yes, well, that was something worth worrying about. I’d just let a viper into my household and took some comfort in realizing that my reluctance to stay the night in my castle would probably save me from being smothered in my sleep. If I’d had my way, I would package her up and send her straight back to the Oak Land. My stupid promise bound me. Maybe she did have something useful to teach me, but I had no evidence that she’d actually try to be helpful. She’d probably just glare the whole time, no doubt paranoid I wanted to move in on Dorian….

Dorian.

I sighed. He was a problem, one I kept thinking would go away but didn’t. I needed him, and we both knew it. So long as I did, he was going to use that as leverage to keep seeing me and taunting me. For the most part, that annoyed me. I hated being part of his games. Yet, at the same time, there was always something irresistible about Dorian, something that made me laugh in spite of the exasperation he so often caused.

And, yeah…I hated to admit it, but no matter how much I loved Kiyo, and no matter how much I’d washed my hands of the romance between Dorian and me, there was still a part of me that would probably always be attracted to him. Our night together still haunted my dreams. His hand on me earlier today had woken a lot of those feelings, and I couldn’t help but imagine again how easy it would have been for him to slide that hand up my leg….

“Eugenie?”

“Huh?” Kiyo’s voice startled me out of my indecent thoughts.

“What are you thinking about? You have the weirdest look on your face.”

“Oh, well, I…” I was totally astonished when the next words burst out of my mouth. “How come we never have any foreplay?”

Kiyo’s hold on the steering wheel momentarily faltered, and I feared we’d run off onto the shoulder. He quickly regained control. “What are you talking about? Of course we have foreplay. Remember that thing I did with the honey last week?”

“Yeah, I guess. But that’s more the exception than the norm. We always just kind of jump right into it.”

“You never really seem to mind.”

He had a point. “No…I mean, it’s always good. It’d just be nice to…I don’t know. Expand our horizons.”

“I’m okay with that,” he said after several thoughtful moments. “I’m up for anything. It’s just my…well, instincts, I guess, that tend to drive me right toward the main attraction.”

I knew what he meant. The problem with spending part of your life as an animal was that you picked up some of their traits. Foxes in the wild didn’t really devote a lot of time to foreplay.

“I don’t really mind. I’m just saying that I’d like to shake it up.”

He fell silent for a while. Finally, he asked, “Does this have anything to do with Dorian?”

“Why do you say that?” I asked blandly.

“I don’t know. More instinct.” His dark eyes narrowed as they focused on the road. “I’m not stupid, you know. I know you slept with him.”

I jerked my head in surprise, unable to attempt any sort of denial. I’d never technically lied to Kiyo about what had happened with Dorian, but seeing as we’d been broken up at the time, I’d never really felt the need to go into detail.

“How do you…” I couldn’t finish the question.

Kiyo gave me a rueful smile. “Dorian used to watch you like a starving man who wants meat. Now he looks at you like he wants seconds.”

I didn’t say anything. No response came to mind.

“It’s okay,” continued Kiyo almost amiably. “I know it happened when we were apart. What’s past is past-so long as it doesn’t mess with our present.”

It was rather magnanimous of him, and I felt both grateful and guilty. “It’s in the past,” I agreed. “It has nothing to do with anything anymore.”

The first shaman Roland had directed us to was a guy named Art. Like Roland and me, Art lived in his own piece of suburbia, in a large house that hardly looked like it belonged to someone who battled spirits and gentry. The sides were painted a sunny yellow, and the yard-which bore the signs of daily tending-was even ringed with a white picket fence. I could hear children playing down the street.

In fact, Art himself was out in the yard, weeding flower beds as the afternoon light turned orange. I pegged his age around thirty or so. A red snake tattoo coiled around one of his arms while a stylized raven showed on the other. No doubt there were more under his shirt. He glanced up and smiled when we stopped beside him on the house’s sidewalk.

“You must be Eugenie,” he said, standing up. He brushed dirt off his gloves and looked apologetic. “I’d shake hands, but…”

I smiled back. “No problem. This is Kiyo.”

The two men exchanged nods of greeting, and Art directed us around the side of the house. “Roland said you wanted to chat, right? How about we sit down in the back? Let me clean up, and I’ll go get us something to drink.”

Kiyo and I followed his direction and found ourselves sitting at a cute, umbrella-covered table in a backyard even more lush than the front. Though a bit more humid, Yellow River’s climate wasn’t that far off from Tucson’s, so I could only imagine the amount of water and labor it took to maintain this greenery. A funny thought came to me, and I couldn’t help but laugh.