Richelle Mead - Iron Crowned

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded. “Why did you take off?”

“You first,” I said, taking a step back toward Roland. “What are you doing?” Jasmine moved to my other side. My eyes were on Kiyo, but I could sense Roland bracing for battle. Maybe he didn’t know what was going on, but anyone could have seen how dangerous Kiyo was.

“I wanted to talk to you, and you disappeared!” Kiyo moved forward a little but stopped, recognizing the united front that Roland and I—and yes, even Jasmine—presented.

“Talk? Is that all you wanted to do?”

“Yes. Of course.” Kiyo glanced between all of us. “You promised, Eugenie. You promised if it was a boy, you’d get rid of it.”

“There’s a girl too!” I exclaimed. “You can’t get rid of one without the other.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “The consequences are too big.”

“I can’t kill an innocent. She hasn’t done anything.”

“Not directly. Letting her live means he lives. And there’s nothing innocent there. He can’t live. Eugenie, you know that. I’m not trying to be cruel. Please. Do what’s right.”

Jasmine and Roland remained silent as this drama played out. Meanwhile, I realized how sickened the language of this whole matter continued to make me. Get rid of it. He can’t live.

“You’re so quick to kill your own children,” I said in disbelief, echoing what Jasmine had said a few days before. “Don’t you feel any remorse? You know better than me what it’s like to be a parent!”

“Yes,” he said, clenching his fists. “I do know. And it’s amazing. I wish you could know what it’s like….”

“But I can’t? I can’t have the same chance you and Maiwenn had?”

Kiyo shook his head. “You aren’t the same as Maiwenn. You can’t ever be.”

It was like a gut-punch. I was stunned into silence, and a bit of his fierceness eased. I think he read my reaction as acceptance.

“Look, I don’t get this,” he said. “I don’t get why you’re resisting all of this after what you’ve always said! You never wanted a baby—any baby. If you’ve changed your mind, then … well, try again. You just can’t have these.”

“And what then? I just keep having abortions until a girl comes along? What kind of a sick bastard are you?” I moved forward without realizing it, my anger exploding. Roland put a hand on my arm, keeping me back. It wasn’t affection. It was a warning. It was defensive strategy, keeping us together.

“I’m trying to protect the human world,” Kiyo said. He hadn’t come any closer, but he was as ready as we were, his reflexes even faster. “And you should be too.”

“And what happens if I don’t do what you want?” I asked quietly. Here it was, the moment of truth.

He sighed. “I don’t want it to come to that.”

“To what?” My voice rose sharply, the anguish in me ready to explode. “What will you do?”

“I’ll take you to Maiwenn—by force. And then … and then she’ll take care of it.”

“The hell you will,” I said. Goddamnit, I wished I had a weapon. I almost always traveled with them—but not to the doctor’s office. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Roland’s hand rest on the counter and wrap around something. A wand. He’d had his wand in the kitchen. But of course he would. Unlike me, he hadn’t become careless. “I’ll never let that happen. You guys aren’t going to experiment on me!”

Kiyo’s face displayed a mix of emotions. There was sorrow and disappointment. He did care. He didn’t want this fight between us—but he also believed in his greater good. He believed he had to do anything to stop the prophecy, and I knew then that Deanna had spoken the truth. Ideally, he just wanted the pregnancy to end. If that wasn’t possible, then I was what needed to be eliminated.

“How can you do this?” he asked, his voice both a threat and a plea. “How can you risk all this—just to save one life?”

It was only in that moment, as the words left my lips, that I learned the truth about myself, what I’d been holding deep inside. The girl and boy thing didn’t matter. Only the heartbeats did—those tiny, rapid heartbeats pounding in my ears …

“I’m not,” I told him. “I’m saving two lives.”

I sealed my fate with that. Kiyo moved so fast that I wasn’t prepared for the attack. He sprang toward me, shape-shifting as he did into his giant fox form, fangs out, snarling. A blast of wind slowed—but didn’t stop—his leap, providing enough time for Roland to jerk me out of the way. The wind magic hadn’t come from me. It had been Jasmine, which was why the power hadn’t packed much of a punch. The unaccustomed magic left her gasping, but it had been enough to buy us a brief escape.

Roland pulled me out of the kitchen, out to where we had more space to maneuver in the living room. Kiyo followed without hesitation, all brute strength and speed.

“He can be banished,” I gasped out to Roland. “The same as a gentry.”

Roland gave a brisk nod of acknowledgment. He already knew this, but in the sudden flurry, he didn’t have the necessary pause to do a full banishing. Kiyo reached us, throwing himself on me and pushing me away from Roland. I fell hard to the ground, Kiyo’s weight pinning me there. As quickly as he’d turned fox, he transformed back into a man. Still displaying amazing speed, he pulled me up by the arm. I didn’t know if his intentions were simply to cart me out of the house or to attempt a world-jump then and there, but I didn’t give him the chance. I’d recovered my senses and took hold of my magic. The air grew thick, and a hurricane-worthy gust blasted him away—along with a substantial part of my parents’ furniture.

Kiyo grimaced as he regained his footing and agonizingly took one step at a time toward me.

“Damn it!” he yelled over the roar of the wind. “Stop this!”

“You stop this!” I shouted back. The magic burned in my blood, and no matter how annoyingly weak the pregnancy had made me, my power hadn’t diminished too much. “We don’t even know that this prophecy’s real! I’ve already met one fake seeress. It could all be for nothing.” Roland and my mother had once told me that prophecies were a dime a dozen in the Otherworld, and I’d seen that to a certain extent. Until now, I’d never wanted to take the chance that mine wouldn’t come true.

“But we don’t know!” Kiyo countered. I could see the irritation on his face. I was keeping a storm raging around me, one that held him at bay while hopefully Roland began a banishing. “We can’t risk it. Please. Please come back with me to Maiwenn. We’ll fix this.”

I didn’t answer and instead kept the storm going. My gaze stayed on Kiyo, but I felt the tingle of shamanic magic—human magic—beginning to glimmer. Roland was indeed performing a banishing spell.

Kiyo transformed into a fox again, and with that extra strength, he managed to push through the storm-shield around me and knock me to the ground again. He stayed as a fox this time, holding onto that strength. His teeth bit into my shirt, through to my shoulder, and I yelled out in pain. My magic wavered, and to my astonishment, he began dragging me—slowly—across the living room.

His progress was halted when a small end table slammed into his back. I tell you, those things are lethal. Instinctively, he reared up against his attacker: Jasmine. He shoved her away, and she stumbled back. Snarling, Kiyo returned to me, and I had the uneasy feeling my odds were getting worse as to whether he’d cart me away or just kill me. He could hold on to human thoughts in fox form, but they became increasingly influenced by animal reactions the longer he stayed transformed.