The Twiceborn Queen (The Proving Book 2) by Marina Finlayson

suppose?”
    “Probably. Either her or the government, but she seems the most likely candidate. I can’t imagine the government getting its act together this fast, for a start. And they haven’t got her money to throw at something like that. It must have cost a bomb.”
    “And she has more to gain from sowing doubt.”
    I grinned, swinging in the chair. “Oh, I don’t know. I heard yesterday some African country was considering declaring war on Australia. That might have stirred them up in Canberra.”
    “Really? Why?”
    “Something about wiping out all the black magicians we’re supposedly harbouring.”
    He snorted. “You can’t believe everything you read on the Internet.”
    “Apparently not. Do you think many people will believe this? What about all the people who saw it in real life?”
    He leaned against the desk, looking thoughtful. “Most people won’t take much persuading. They don’t want to believe it, so they’ll grasp at any plausible explanation. And if the media run with it … Things don’t have to be true to be believed. Ask any politician. As long as you shout it long enough and loud enough you wear people down.”
    “True. If it muddies the waters enough we’ll only have a few crackpots convinced we’re real by the time it all dies down.”
    “Let’s hope so. The last thing we need at the moment is more publicity.”
    A proving was hard enough to keep secret at the best of times, with people turning up dead all over the place. Having the eyes of the world on us made it that much more difficult. And I already had the police interested in me. I couldn’t afford to feature in any more of their reports.
    I turned back to the computer and checked my Twitter feed. Predictably, it was running mad with speculation. I watched tweets fly past at a furious rate. The world was still enthralled by the dragon spectacle.
    I suppose that was to be expected. It was a huge story, at a very quiet time of year, and everyone had an opinion. At least it was keeping Elizabeth too busy with damage control to take any action against me for causing the whole mess.
    Ben leaned over my shoulder. “What’s this not the Middle Ages hashtag?”
    I ran a quick search, and my heart sank as I scanned the resulting column. The tweets flashed past almost too fast to read, and it wasn’t hard to see why. Talk about a hot topic. Seemed like half the world wanted to get out the pitchforks, and the other half was trying to persuade them that this was “ not the Middle Ages ”.
    We’re all Australians. This is #nottheMiddleAges
    Civilisation has moved past the age of witch hunts. #nottheMiddleAges
    You can’t accuse someone of being a werewolf just because you don’t like them. #nottheMiddleAges
    I winced a little at that last one. It would be happening soon, if it wasn’t already. True or not, people would be accused. Neighbours would insist they had a right to know; they had children to protect, and before you knew it someone’s house would be firebombed. Maybe someone would take pot shots at the old lady who lived in the creepy old house, or kill a little boy’s dog because they thought it was a werewolf. Someone else would be driven out of town. Someone would lose their job, or their girlfriend—or their life.
    Humans were so goddamned tribal. If you weren’t Us, you were Other, and Other was to be feared. And where Fear walked, its big brother Hate followed in the shadows, growing stronger and more powerful.
    I blew out a heavy sigh. Not that people would always be wrong to fear. God knows there were plenty of shifters only too ready to do them harm. I just felt sorry for the innocent ones caught up in the mess, and the humans who’d never heard of shifters who would now be victimised just because.
    A tweet caught my eye and I frowned. Dead woman a dragon? I clicked the link and arrived at a feature article in the Sydney Morning Herald .
    “Damn. Look at this.”
    Ben read aloud, his breath stirring my