Richelle Mead - Iron Crowned

“Are you firing me?” she asked.

I smiled as I gathered up all my weapons. “No, but I want you to have a backup plan in case you get laid off.” Her eyes widened in alarm at the joke. Or, I suddenly wondered, was it a joke?

I brought Jasmine with me to the job because I still felt uneasy about leaving her alone. Besides, she was finally getting her fill of the human world, and I had a feeling her insistence on me returning to the Otherworld was partly selfish.

Later, after I’d finished the job, I kind of regretted bringing a witness.

“Wow,” she said, as we drove home. “You got your ass kicked.”

“I did not.”

“Did too.”

So. This was what it was like having a sister.

“I banished it, didn’t I? You saw it go to the Underworld.”

“Yeah,” she admitted, “but it sure did take a long time. I felt like I could have done it, and I’ve never banished anything before.”

I gritted my teeth, refraining from commenting that I still had her chains. The troubling thing was, I had kind of sucked. I’d been in no real danger—not with a ghost that minor—but it had beaten me up more than it should have. I was off my game, a little slower, a little weaker. I’d walked away with some bruises and now noticed as we drove that my shoulder itched. For a moment, I thought the ghost must have hit me there, but there was no pain. The stitches. I’d nearly forgotten about them, now that they’d finally been able to heal. My skin had probably started to grow over the threads. I needed them out.

No one was at my house, much to my disappointment. I’d hoped Kiyo had stopped by and could remove the stitches. Trying to be optimistic, I decided he must be pulling a shift at the veterinary hospital and wasn’t with Maiwenn. Thus far, I’d heard no official word from her about my new double-queen status. Other monarchs had weighed in, though. Some had responded by showering me with congratulatory gifts and groveling. Others had let me know—in an amiable way—about other monarchs they were pals with, monarchs with big armies. It turned out everyone did fear the Iron Crown.

I called my regular doctor, hoping to get an appointment this week as backup, in case Kiyo stayed absent. To my pleasant surprise, they’d had a cancellation that afternoon and could remove the stitches right away. It was good news for me but an annoyance for Jasmine, who’d just gotten comfortable on the couch.

“Oh, come on,” she said, stretching out. “We just got home. Can’t you please leave me here? I promise not to conquer the world or get pregnant while you’re gone.”

“You know,” I said, “Lara and Tim had sex right where you’re lying.” She jumped up.

A half hour later, we arrived at my doctor’s office.

I left Jasmine in the waiting room, deeming her safe enough with her iPod and magazines for the five minutes it would take to remove my stitches. Maybe she’d read some contraception pamphlets to pass the time.

“They did this in the ER?” the doctor asked when I was admitted to an examination room and had taken off my shirt.

I’d been seeing Dr. Moore for a couple years now. She was a pleasant, mid-fortyish woman who had eventually learned not to ask too many questions about my injuries. She thought I was a “contractor” who practiced martial arts on the side.

“Not exactly,” I said. “I tore the ones the ER did, so my boyfriend had to redo them.”

She took hold of tweezers and a tiny pair of scissors and leaned over. “Well, his work’s neat, and it didn’t get infected. If I’d seen you when this happened, I would have confined you to your bed. I would have known better than to assume you wouldn’t promptly rip these out.”

“Yeah, I really pulled one over on the other doctor.”

She snorted a small laugh and proceeded to pull the stitches out. They stung where they tugged the skin, but honestly, it was nothing compared to my normal wear and tear.

“There you go,” she said, stepping back. “You’ll have a scar.”

I put my shirt back on and faced her. “Battle trophy.”

She rolled her eyes, leaning against the wall with crossed arms. “You shouldn’t joke about that.”

“Sorry.” I picked up my purse, but her expression said we weren’t done.

“Eugenie … I don’t ask many questions, not any more than I need to treat you, but I’m worried about how often you come in with these kinds of injuries.”

If only she knew how many I didn’t come in for. “I—”

“No, no,” she interrupted. “I don’t need to know all the details of your life. I try not to judge—but you might need to. There are jobs out there that are physical in nature. That’s life. But whatever you’re doing … maybe you should reevaluate it. To be blunt, you look terrible today.”

“Oh, that.” Crap. I could hardly explain that it was the residual aftereffects of a magical battle in the Otherworld, during which I’d fought for dominion of a fairy kingdom and become its new master, thus doubling my reign. “I’m just, uh, coming down with something. Just kind of tired, you know.”

She arched her eyebrows.

Double crap.

“Then let’s do some quick blood and urine tests,” she said, straightening up. “Check your electrolytes, thyroid …”

I fumbled for an excuse. I’d never been comfortable with those kinds of tests since discovering I had gentry blood. I was pretty sure human medicine couldn’t detect that sort of thing, but I didn’t want to take any chances. “I don’t have time. My sister’s waiting for me in the lobby.”

“I’m sure she’ll be okay,” said Dr. Moore. “This’ll take five minutes.”

“Fine.” I sat back on the table, defeated. “But can you send someone to make sure she’s still out there? She’s the sullen one.”

Dr. Moore’s nurse returned to send me to the bathroom and then drew blood when I came back. She was in the middle of telling me they would send the tests out to a lab, when Dr. Moore herself stuck her head back in.

“Can we talk for a moment?” she asked.

The nurse discreetly left, and once we were alone, I braced for another lecture about my lifestyle. “I really need to get back to my sister,” I told her. “You don’t know what she’s capable of.”

“Eugenie.” Dr. Moore’s voice was kind but firm. “Most of those tests we have to wait on, but there are a few we do right here with urine.”

“And?”

“And, you’re pregnant.”

I thought about this for a moment and then enlightened her.

“No. I’m not.”

Those eyebrows rose again.

“Your test came back positive. Now, we can’t tell how far just from a urine test, but based on—”

“Your test is wrong!” I sprang up from the table. My world was starting to reel again. “I can’t be pregnant!”

To her credit, she took my outburst calmly, but that was probably part of her training. “The test is very accurate, and it would explain why you aren’t feeling well.”

“I can’t be pregnant,” I repeated adamantly. There was a mistake here. A terrible, terrible mistake, and she needed to understand that. Until she did, I refused even to process what she was claiming. “I take my birth control pills. Every day. Same time. Just like I’m supposed to. I’m not going to lie: I do other stupid shit all the time. But not with pills. I take them perfectly. I did with the antibiotics too. I’m careless with stitches but not prescriptions.”

That calm expression shifted to surprise. “Antibiotics? When were you taking antibiotics?”

I pointed to my shoulder. “When I got this. The ER doctor gave me a prescription.” I frowned. “What? Why are you looking at me like that? I told you: I took them correctly, all of them.”