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it was a good thing too. Kiyo fought against all of them as they laid hands on him and began dragging him backward. They made little progress, so great were his struggles He was strong, so insanely strong, and it scared me to think what would have happened if I'd been left to him in my weakened state.

"Dorian!" roared Kiyo, still fighting against the guards' grip. "Don't do this! You'll regret it!"

Dorian had returned to his normal laconic persona. "You will address me as 'King Dorian' or 'Your Majesty,'" he replied. "And you will not disobey my orders within my home."

The floor trembled, and I heard a gasp from those gathered. Uneasily, I remembered an idle comment Dorian had once made, about how he could bring the castle down around us if he wanted to. The walls stayed intact, however, but a large section of the stone floor ripped up, eliciting more cries of fear. Before my eyes, the slab of stone morphed and stretched, then flew through the air toward Kiyo. It wrapped itself around his torso, enclosing his arms in a sort of magical strait-jacket. Kiyo, unsurprisingly, stopped struggling, but his shouts didn't cease.

"Eugenie! You don't know what you're doing! This isn't over! Eugenie!"

"Get him out," said Dorian coldly. "Now. If he resists again or changes form, kill him."

The guards hurried to obey while Kiyo continued yelling his outrage at me, Dorian, and the world. I hoped they moved fast because Dorian had had a point. If Kiyo transformed into a fox, he'd slip out of his stone prison. Of course, he'd have to transform into a small fox, which would do little harm, but still. It would be a lot better for all of us once Kiyo was outside the walls.

The guards must have succeeded because no more commotion followed. Jasmine turned to Dorian.

"You should have killed him anyway," she said flatly. Her standard response.

The ghost of a smile flickered across Dorian's lips, though his eyes were still hard. "You're nearly as delightful as your sister," he observed. "No matter how displeased I am at the two of you right now, I admit, things will certainly be entertaining with you around. And they will become very entertaining soon." That was directed at me. "If you think you brought a war down before, you haven't seen anything yet, my dear. You've caused me quite a bit of trouble."

I barely heard him. The adrenaline was fast fading from my body, and all the pain from fighting with Kiyo and then doing the forced transition began returning. I felt sick, and my surroundings were spinning once again.

"Sorry," I managed to say to Dorian, just before collapsing.

Chapter 26

"So, let me make sure I'm following this correctly."

I sighed and shifted on the bed, knowing Dorian was repeating this conversation mostly because he liked seeing my discomfort.

"Your 'technology' can tell you you're having a boy and a girl, when they're due, and allow you to hear their heartbeats," he continued. "But some medicine inexplicably totally counteracted the other one you take to prevent pregnancy."

"Took," I muttered. "Seeing as it's kind of pointless now."

Dorian leaned back in a plush armchair, face expressing overly dramatic pondering. After fainting, I'd been given a guest room befitting my status, a good sign since "hospitality" simply meant protection and in no way related to one's accommodations. It wasn't quite as nice as Dorian's room, of course, but the mattress was thick and fluffy, and the green velvet canopy coordinated with the heavy brocaded bedding. As sick as I'd felt, I honestly would have been content to curl up on the floor somewhere. I'd been awake for about an hour now, alone in the vast room save for Dorian.

"What a fascinatingly bizarre turn of events," he mused, stroking his chin. "If you thought the Iron Crown scared people, just wait until this news spreads. Which, of course, it already has."

I draped a hand over my forehead. "Isn't it bad enough that I'm carrying a world-conquering prophecy child? Why all the political fallout?"

"Because you're carrying a world-conquering prophecy child," he responded. "It's the type of thing people tend to have strong feelings about."

"I thought almost everyone wanted to conquer the human world."

"Most," he agreed. "But not all. Especially those who - after observing your record thus far - might fear you'll conquer this world first."

I rolled over to my side, giving me a better view of him. Since the earlier spectacle, Dorian had masked whatever personal feelings he had