“Right.”

He visibly relaxed, again touching my cheek with a sensual languor. “We’ll get you through the queen thing. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“There you go again with the macho protectiveness thing. Who brought who back from the dead?”

“Fair point.”

I gave voice to something I’d wondered about for a while now. “How…how did you know when I was at Aeson’s anyway? Did you really stake out his place and wait for me?”

His eyes crinkled with seductive mischief. Moving his hands to my back, he let his fingers trace the still-healing scars from where he’d scratched me. “There’s no place you can go that I can’t find you.”

I groaned. I’d forgotten about that. “Those damned things are going to heal one of these days.”

“I’ll make more.”

We leaned into a kiss, and like that, things were solved between us. We didn’t need many words to get across how we felt. Maybe that’s how it is with someone you really love, someone you’re connected to. That wasn’t to say we didn’t have reams of communication to hash through in the future, not if we were going to attempt some sort of relationship. But for now, the kiss conveyed enough. It was an exchange of heat, an exchange of love, and it felt like coming home.

“I’ve still got to make amends,” he told me, his lips only a fraction of an inch from mine, “no matter how magnanimous you’re feeling. You know, the usual. Chocolate. Flowers.”

“Whatever. I don’t need the covert signs to know you want to have sex with me. There are plenty of more obvious ones.”

“Like what?”

“Like your hand on my breast.”

“No. This is still subtle.” He pulled my body to his, melding us together. “Now, when my mouth is there, then you’ll know-”

“You’re such a freak. Sex got us into this mess. I don’t know that it’s healthy to rely on it to fix everything.”

“Only one way to find out.”

Queenly authority or no, I didn’t do a very good job of protesting. And when he pushed me down on the couch, I didn’t do a very good job of protesting that we should go to the bedroom. Fortunately, Tim never came home, so I didn’t shock his sensibilities again.

Whatever words he’d withheld in our conversation came out as Kiyo made love to me, telling me he wanted me, would love me forever, and would do anything in the world for me. They were the sort of promises all people make when they’re falling in love, but that didn’t make them any less powerful. I floated on them long after he left that evening, awash in emotion and contentment and residual lust.

I was getting dressed in my bedroom when a voice behind me said: “He’s a mistake, you know. So is the Oak King. You’re better off without either of them.”

I jumped and spun around angrily on Volusian. “Don’t sneak up on me like that! Christ. Were you watching me out there? What is it with you Otherworldly types and your fetishes? Exhibitionists and bondage and voyeurism. Good grief.”

His red eyes regarded me levelly as I finished pulling on my shirt. “I was not joking, mistress.”

“About Dorian and Kiyo? What’s the matter with them? Well, Dorian’s kind of obvious, but Kiyo’s all right.”

He shook his head. “Hardly. He is a fox, and part of him thinks like one. He regards you as his mate, and that is a dangerous thing. He and Dorian are both zealots in their way. They sit at different ends of the spectrum, perhaps, but both are fixed in their beliefs. Each will have his own agenda for you-even the kitsune, whose views you tend to agree with. They will each try to dominate you and make you think it was your idea.”

For one uneasy moment, I thought about how sex had been with each man. Aggressive. Controlling. I’d had small pieces of control, but in the end, I had always been pushed to submission, a submission I welcomed. There was only the one night with Kiyo-the night I’d woken up in the afterglow of remembered power-that I had truly been the dominant one.

“You would do better to find someone milder and more malleable. Someone less ambitious.”

I considered his words. Maybe he was right. Maybe. “Men without ambition are boring.”

“And that attitude, mistress, is why the females of your kind continue to struggle for equality. And why they continue to fail.”

I sat on the bed and clasped my hands in front of me. “I didn’t summon you. Was that all you came to tell me, Dr. Love?”

“No. I came to tell you that you need to visit your kingdom sooner rather than later. The people are nervous and restless. You are their queen, and that means something, no matter how much you loathe it. Your people need to see a strong monarch right away.”

“I was hoping to put that off.” My people, huh?

“I wouldn’t recommend it. Not unless you want a disaster on your hands.”

“So should I appoint you as one of my advisers now?”

“You may do anything you like. As for me, I tend to share Finn’s view. If I cannot rip you apart yet and must be enslaved to someone, I would rather it be to someone more important than a human shaman.”

I’d been teasing him, but my feelings sobered at the thought of Finn and poor Nandi. “You’re the last man standing, Volusian. Who would have seen that coming?”

“I did, mistress.” The incredulous look on his face resembled Dorian’s when he’d told me he loved me. “There was never any question. They were inferior.”

I laughed. “I never thought I’d say this, but after everything that’s happened, you’re the only normal thing I can rely on.”

He didn’t reply.

“Go back to the Otherworld and stay with Shaya. Tell her I’ll be there soon. Only cross over if there’s a message I need to hear.”

“As the Thorn Queen wishes.”

“Oh, be quiet.”

I spoke the banishing words and sent him on. After that, I stretched out on my bed and tried to assess my life thus far. I was still a shaman, one of the most powerful around if the stories were true. I possessed human means of working and controlling magic, using it to fight and banish anything nasty that slipped into this plane. But I was also gentry, the daughter of one of the Otherworld’s biggest tyrants, and I could supposedly be the one to bring about a terrible prophecy-provided my woman-child sister didn’t do it first. I was dating a guy who could turn into a fox and who might very well turn on me if I ever got pregnant. I had the love of a king who could tie damned good knots and wanted my help to take over his world and my own. Somehow I’d developed the power to call storms and blow up people. I’d been to the land of death and returned. And finally, I was a queen: the Thorn Queen, which didn’t exactly sound flattering. Why couldn’t I have been the Violet Queen or something? Why trees and not flowers? There was no accounting for Otherworldly tastes.

I needed tequila and Def Leppard right away.

I walked out to the kitchen, hoping to uncover one or the other but found neither. Instead, I settled for water from a large glass pitcher we kept chilled in the refrigerator. I poured a cup for myself and then set to refilling the pitcher while my mind spun.

Why had everything turned so confusing lately? I didn’t want any of this. I just wanted Kiyo and the occasional exorcism. Love and a way to pay the mortgage. That was it. I didn’t need all this Otherworldly entanglement or the gentry and their games. They offered me nothing. I didn’t want anything from any of them.

Angrily, I slammed the faucet off and turned toward the refrigerator. I didn’t realize how wet my fingers were until the glass pitcher slipped from my hands. Everything after that happened in the space of a heartbeat. The pitcher fell. It hit. It shattered. Without thinking, my senses reached out and seized the water, ordering it to stay where it was. There was nothing to be done for the glass Yet, it didn’t move. The shards hung frozen in midair, just like the water, suspended in the pattern created from the impact. I stared, dumbstruck, until a faint breeze brushed my skin and I realized the fragments trembled slightly. Cautiously, I reached out to that air with my mind and felt its answering resonance. Stretching further, I could sense the currents of power running from me to the space around the glass. The air shifted there as its molecules fought to keep the pieces from falling. Somehow, without even knowing how, I’d made the air obey me, just as I had the water.