Richelle Mead - Iron Crowned

“I don’t know,” I said. There might be some safety benefits to this sort of gentry “adoption,” but I had a feeling that Dorian wasn’t telling me all of them—particularly things that benefited him alone. He was still upset with me. He didn’t like Kiyo. There was no reason that I could see for this. “I have to think about it.”

“Think fast,” Dorian said. “Things will be in motion soon, particularly once we get you back to your own lands.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why would you want to claim someone else’s children? I mean, I get your wanting to see the prophecy come true, but you don’t have to take that extra step.”

“Maybe someone else’s children are better than no children at all,” he said.

It was another odd statement from him, a surprising one. Both philosophical and touching. Yet, I still believed there was a deception here. This wasn’t out of love for me. Not anymore. His hand moved toward my stomach again and he didn’t pull it away this time, though he made sure to keep away from my hand.

“Let me ask you a question,” he said when I made no response. “Why did you choose to keep these children? Do you fear the unholy procedure your people use to end life? Were you unable to live with your daughter’s blood on your hands?”

My mind rewound back to that day at the doctor’s. That day? Hell. It had only been earlier today. So much had happened since then that weeks might have gone by. My horrible ordeal with Kiyo had blurred the memories, but now, the ultrasound came back to me, the sights and sounds as real and vivid as though I were experiencing them all over again.

“I heard their heartbeats,” I said at last. “And I saw them.” Well, kind of. Those blurs still didn’t look like much to me, but the point was irrelevant. “And when I did …” I groped to explain my feelings. “I just … I just wanted them. Both of them. None of the rest mattered.”

A slow, strange smile spread across Dorian’s face. “That,” he declared, “is the most gentry thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

Normally, I would have mocked him for using “gentry” instead of “shining ones.” It was a slip he sometimes made around me. His words’ content, however, was of more importance. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Not so. Humans overthink things. They throw away life heedlessly. Honestly, after all this time, I was beginning to think you were more human than shining one.”

“I hate to tell you, but I am,” I said.

Dorian made himself more comfortable, and the hand on my stomach moved so that his arm lay over me, almost—but not quite—an embrace. It was possessive, like I was a prize that had fallen into his lap. “Are you, my dear? You’re expressing philosophies very like my own. You’re carrying a child that will allegedly conquer the human world—a world you can’t go back to for a while, seeing as it would give the kitsune an edge. You’re safer here in this world where, I’d like to add, you rule not one but two kingdoms. That,” he declared triumphantly, “makes you, by my reckoning, more like a gentry than a human.”

I looked away, not meeting his eyes—because I had a crazy feeling he was right.