Thorn Queen Page 0,124

leaving that front door open when Art had come home, it was like anyone could just traipse right in.

"Jesus Christ," I said. "You guys are a little too late."

It was Kiyo who had spoken, his face tense and worried. "Everyone needs to calm down. You got him, Eugenie. It's over. Put the gun away now."

Roland was tense too, his face unreadable as he stood with his own gun. Beside him, Dorian didn't seem overly worried, but there was none of that usual laughter on his face.

"You don't know what he's done," I growled. "You keep talking about mercy, but at some point it has to end. He needs to die." The wind grew stronger. Some of my hair whipped in my face, but I had no free hand to brush it aside.

"I didn't do anything!" exclaimed Leith. He looked to the other men, face desperate and pleading. "I won her fairly. You know how it is. Back in the old days, that's how it was. The man who caught the queen became king. If she's pregnant, she's my common-law wife."

I saw disgust on Roland's face, his hand tightening on the gun. He started to lift it, but Kiyo, still apparently the spokesperson, made a small motion that caused my stepfather to lower the gun back down. Slightly. "That tradition is like a thousand years old," Kiyo told Lieth. "It means nothing anymore. She's not yours."

"Besides," I said, my gaze back on Lieth. "Do you really think I'd have your baby if I didn't want to? If I'm pregnant, it's an easy problem to fix."

His mouth dropped open. "You wouldn't...that's blasphemous..."

And indeed it was among the child-hungry gentry. Abortion was nothing I relished either, but there was no way on this earth I would bear a child born of such brutality. A gust of wind suddenly picked up considerably, nearly knocking me over. The kitchen window shattered.

Kiyo was still unmoved. "Eugenie, stop it. Stop the magic. Put the gun down. We'll take him and the girls back. We'll deal with him in the Otherworld."

"How can you say that?" I shouted. "You heard him! How can you let him walk after all this? You don't know what he's done!"

"He doesn't necessarily have to go free," argued Kiyo. "There are other ways."

A blinding flash suddenly burst in the kitchen, leaving me dazzled and unable to see for a moment. At the same instance, there was a crackling roar, so loud that I thought my eardrums would burst. And like that, the means to control lightning clicked in my brain. I understood the patterns, what I needed to summon it-and how to work my emotion into it as Ysabel had said.

I set the gun on the counter. "I don't need this," I told Leith. The wind was roaring around us now, knocking objects everywhere, blowing my hair like a cloud of fire. I was the center of the storm. A very, very faint roll of thunder-nowhere near as loud as the last one-sounded around us. I turned my gaze to Leith, wondering if my violet eyes had darkened the way Storm King's had when angry. "I'm going to suck the air from you and then blast you out of existence with lightning."

Leith sank to his knees. "Please...please don't do this..." The same words I'd uttered to him the first time he'd assaulted me.

The storm raged more strongly around me. "I'm the Storm Queen," I said in a low voice. "And you will pay for what you've done to me."

Kiyo took a step forward. I knew him well enough to guess his thoughts. He was considering attacking me but too greatly feared what I could do with the magic as it grew stronger and stronger. He made one last desperate plea.

"If you care anything about your people-about those girls-you won't do this. He's a prince. You kill him, and his mother will declare war on you. You think the drought was bad? Imagine armies sweeping in and devastating your land. Villages burned. Innocent people killed. Is that what you want? Can you do that to them?"

Around us, the storm raged, and within me, my hate for Leith was a storm of its own, a poison running through my veins. I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him blighted. I wanted him dead. He could not be allowed to be free of his sins. And yet...somewhere in all that hate, all that fury, Kiyo's words penetrated. Is that what you want? Can you do that to