Thorn Queen Page 0,87

has been seeking missing girls."

I straightened up. "Yes. What about it?"

"One of ours disappeared two days ago. My neighbor's daughter, Markelle." A small, wry smile crossed his lips. "She's a wild one, often wandering off where she shouldn't. But she hasn't come back...and she always does...."

I felt my fists clenching and forcibly relaxed them. I didn't need to scare these people any further. "Aside from the bandits, have you seen anyone else lurking around? Humans, maybe?"

He seemed even more afraid to discuss this topic. "We see humans sometimes, your majesty." I think he thought mentioning my own kind would anger me. "It's not uncommon. Often there are humans who...ah, give chase to some of the denizens of this world." Shamans like me, he meant. "Usually, they leave us alone once they've found their quarry."

I thought back to Jasmine. "Any soldiers or warriors of the gent-shining ones?"

"Occasionally. I presume they're deserters from King Aeson." Not a bad theory, actually. "But we see none of them regularly. There's no one in particular who keeps returning."

I leaned forward, some part of me feeling like everything was about to fall together. "But there is a human you keep seeing, isn't there? Especially since the girls began disappearing?"

He nodded.

It was here. Everything was here. "A man, right? A man with a red snake tattoo?"

"No, your majesty."

"I-what?" I froze for a moment. "Then who?"

"A woman, your majesty. A woman with graying hair that she wears in a long braid."

I stared at him for several seconds, and then I laughed. This seemed to scare them all more than if I had burst into a rage.

"Abigail," I said at last, more to myself than them.

"Your majesty?"

I waved a hand at them. "Never mind."

Abigail. Fucking Abigail and Art. Working together to...what? Abduct gentry girls? But why? I'd toyed with the idea of Art as some kind of sick rapist, but where did Abigail fit in with this? Surely that would hold no interest for her. With a sigh, I pushed the questions to a small box in my mind, needing to wrap this up and get back to the human world. I needed to have that talk with Roland.

"Anything else going on I need to know about? You've got copper nearby, right?" Finding water and food was naturally essential, but it was copper that was going to truly change things in the Thorn Land. It was what all our trade agreements were being based on. "How's the extraction going?"

"Slowly until today, your majesty," the woman admitted. "Our magic users are skilled in many things, but we have few who can work with metal. Much of our labor has been manual."

I frowned. "Why did things change today?"

"Why," she said in surprise, "because you sent the Oak King to us."

"The Oak-wait. You mean Dorian?" I exclaimed. "He's not here now, is he?"

They were all clearly surprised at my surprise. "Yes, your majesty," said the guy who'd spoken earlier. "He's out with the workers now. I thought you knew."

I stood up, still full of shock. "I have to see him. Excuse me."

They all murmured polite farewells and nearly knocked each other over with bows. I didn't stick around to return the formality. Instead, I headed back out into the bright afternoon sun, lightly jogging to where I'd seen the workers on the far side of the village. At first, I saw no indication of Dorian. Men and a few women were digging diligently, sweat rolling down their faces.

Then, suddenly, I heard a slight rumbling, and the ground trembled. Huge chunks of rock rose from the earth, a few of them glinting in the sunlight. They lifted in a cluster and then slowly drifted off to the side of the work site, gently coming to rest on a pile of similar stones. Turning, I looked to the opposite side of the area and finally found Dorian, his hands moving in the air as he guided the ore. His clothes were simple today, but that hair burned and rippled in the sunshine like liquid fire.

His face was filled with concentration as he watched the rocks, but once they'd come to a halt, he broke into a smile as he strode forward. "My lady Thorn Queen, what a delight."

I let him kiss my hand for the sake of appearances-seriously, why were the gentry so into that?-and then pulled him out of earshot of the others. "What the hell are you doing here?" I exclaimed.

"Why, retrieving my copper."

"That's not what I mean!" He shrugged and wiped