by C. E. Murphy
Akilina’s dark eyebrows shot up and she leaned back to clap her hands together thrice, lazy staccato sounds. “The provincial has teeth,” she said with an edge of admiration. “I think I see why Your Majesty holds such fondness for the country of her first crown, now. Forgive me, Lady Irvine.” She leaned forward again to give Belinda a frank and appraising look. “I baited you, and you’ve set me in my place. Shall we be friends from here on out?”
Belinda smiled, an open and delighted expression, and thought that friendship was not made on words even as she murmured, “It would be an honour, my lady.”
A near-commoner from Lanyarch did not refuse Khazarian nobility when the latter said, “Walk with me, Beatrice,” regardless of her feelings on the matter, or even the surreptitious glance given by her high-born lover. Javier nodded, one barely visible dip of his chin; Belinda thought she might not have seen it, had she not been looking to the prince for a cue. Dinner was over, sweet wine drunk by the bottleful after it, and the polite discussion that lingered was Akilina’s and Sandalia’s to end. The duchess watched Sandalia for weariness, and shortly after Belinda herself would have begged off, did so with grace and self-effacing apology. Sandalia granted the Khazarian contingent their leave, and only then did Akilina turn her hawk’s smile on Belinda and extend her invitation. The bells had run the first small hour of the morning a long time since, and Belinda, as much as anyone, longed for her bed. That Akilina knew it she had no doubt, but while the Khazarian countess might not dare put out a queen, she had no such qualms about inconveniencing Belinda.
“What do you think of us, Beatrice?” Akilina tucked her arm through Belinda’s and dawdled down the hall outside the dining chambers, in no more rush to sleep than the moon was.
“I think all those beards must itch,” Belinda said promptly, and earned a laugh for her efforts.
“Lanyarchan men wear beards, don’t they?”
“They do, so I have confidence that I’m right.” Belinda offered a smile and Akilina squeezed her arm with pleasure.
“What else do you think? I’ve never met a Lanyarchan, so I want to hear everything. It’s my small way of understanding the world, in seeing how others see us.” Akilina’s explanation was guileless, her expression open, and Belinda smiled again.
“Surely you’re not old enough to be so wise, my lady.”
“Surely you’re not old enough to be so skilled at flattery.” Akilina laughed again, more easily than even Beatrice did, and Belinda, walking so close to her, thought that there was no artifice to her humour. Witchpower whispered of Akilina’s curiosity about the Lanyarchan provincial who’d captured Javier’s eye—for clearly she had, if he’d entered the dining hall with her—and a certain glee in keeping Beatrice from Javier’s bed, even if only for a short while. There was more mischief than malice in the emotion, though beneath it all ran a river of intent. It flavoured Akilina’s laugh, but lay deep enough that without touching her skin, Belinda couldn’t read its meaning. “You watched us all very carefully during dinner,” Akilina accused good-naturedly. “You must have come to some conclusions. Besides the beards.”
“You laugh much more easily than rumour has it, my lady,” Belinda said with absolute honesty. “The stories one hears of Khazar are all of dark and dour people, as if the long winter days have pressed the joy out of you. And you don’t dress as I’d imagined. I think of somber colours when I think of Khazar, but—” She broke off briefly to gesture at Akilina’s gown, so deep a red as to be heart’s blood. “And the guards with their bristly hats and broad shoulders all done in such blues, with the yellow epaulettes. The eye wishes to drink your clothing down. It’s wonderful,” she added with a girlish enthusiasm more heartfelt than she expected, and almost laughed at herself. The serving maid role she’d played at Gregori’s manor had never cared for the colours or costumes of the men and women she was surrounded with, and nor should she have; for Rosa those things were merely part of the patchwork of life. Beatrice’s observations and excitement were charming, in a dangerous way.
“Perhaps I’ll have a dress made for you. Your skin is very fair, and would look well in a strong tone.” Akilina’s offer masked a ploy so deliberate Belinda didn’t need the witchpower to uncover it. A gift to the prince’s paramour was a way to draw his attention without being unbearably obvious. Belinda glanced at the amber of her current gown and arched an eyebrow at Akilina, who threw her head back and laughed again.
“That was not an insult,” she promised. “You know what looks good on you. Forgive me, my lady, if you think I’m that crude.”
“I believe I hold the prize for crudity this evening, my lady,” Belinda said diplomatically. “I would be delighted with a Khazarian-style gown, if your kindness extends so far. And perhaps I can introduce you to Eliza, who sets fashion here in Lutetia.”
“The extraordinary woman at the far end of the table,” Akilina said without hesitation. “She is a friend of his highness’s, da?”
“Da,” Belinda echoed, deliberately awkward. “That’s one of the two Khazarian words I know. The other is nit.” She made the word into a scrape in her throat, forcing it into unfamiliarity, and Akilina’s laughter rose again.
“Nyet,” she corrected. “Your Gallic is very good, so you do know how to make the nasal sounds. Nyet,” she repeated, and Belinda imitated her again, retaining the I rather than the proper pronunciation. Viktor was somewhere behind them in the ranks of guards, and she had no intention of making her voice any more familiar to him than it must be.
“I’ll practise,” she promised. “Gallic didn’t come easily to me. I fear I have little gift for language.”
“What are your gifts, then?” Akilina asked lightly, but ice slid in beneath the question. Belinda flickered an empty smile down the hall, thinking of the answers she couldn’t give. Loyalty. A talent for death. An ability to belong wherever she stopped moving, at least long enough to wreak mayhem and move on. And most freshly, of course, the witchpower, a gift she barely allowed herself to consider in Akilina’s presence. She had no sense of indomitable will from the woman as she had from Javier, no recognition of power shared, but caution was a better path to follow when it came to a magic that could see her burned at the stake.
“Passion, I suppose,” she murmured. “But even that burns out in time.” She was not speaking of herself, and she knew it; so, too, did Akilina. The black-haired woman exhaled a short breath of satisfaction and squeezed Belinda’s arm again.
“At least you have the intelligence to see that,” she said magnanimously. “Intelligence sees us further in life than either passion or beauty, Beatrice. Remember that, and you’ll do well.”
Belinda all but bobbed a curtsey even as she remained on Akilina’s arm, then slowed at a cross-hall and looked around, suddenly cheerful. “Now, tell me, Lady Akilina, shall I leave you to wander the palace halls all night, or do you know where you are?”
“Rosa.”
There was no too-quick heartbeat of betrayal this time; Belinda had expected Viktor’s voice to come after her once she’d escorted Akilina to her rooms. She was nearly back at Javier’s chambers when the Khazarian guardsman spoke; he’d been waiting some discreet distance, not following her, not drawing attention to himself.
She ignored him, walking past the alcove he waited in, her gait unfaltering. He stepped out behind her, repeating the name with more urgency, though just as quietly: “Rosa.”
There was no one else in the hall, no one else he could possibly be speaking to. For that reason alone Belinda turned, eyebrows wrinkled curiously. “M’sieur?” Her performances always had to be perfect, but quiet urgency swilled in Belinda’s stomach this time. It was impossible that she could be both Lady Beatrice Irvine and Rosa the serving maid. Viktor knew it, but suspicion rode so heavily on him that he couldn’t let it go. Damnable sympathy for the man rose in Belinda’s breast, complicating everything.
“Rosa, is it you?” He spoke Khazarian, of course; Belinda didn’
t think he had any more Gallic than her assumed persona had Khazarian. She offered an uncertain smile, and shook her head in apology.
“I’m sorry, m’sieur. I don’t speak Khazarian.” Unexpected memory rose in perfect clarity: Dmitri’s exasperation at Rosa’s guise of incomprehension, and the bruise he’d left on her cheek for playing her part so well. Belinda would not allow herself to lift a hand to the memory of that bruise, but instead dipped a nervous curtsey and turned away again.
Recklessness drove Viktor forward to catch her arm. Belinda yelped, small soft sound of terror, trembling as she tried to pull away. Viktor would know nothing of the soft noblewoman’s fear in her eyes, not from the Rosa he knew. He knew ardor and weariness, those being the primary emotions she had let show as the serving girl, and common strength. Rosa might have fought back; Beatrice cowered, tears already marking her cheeks. “No—no, you can’t, you—please, don’t hurt me, don’t—”
Viktor, who had never understood the need to hurt a woman, let go with a look of horror and fell to his knees, offering apologies. Laying hands on a noblewoman, especially a prince’s doxy, could far too easily lead to his own death.
Could, and should. It was by far the easiest way to protect herself: one single scream would have Javier’s guards at her side in a few seconds; one babbled accusation would have Viktor in chains or dead. It would mar the relations between the newly arrived Khazarian contingent and Gallin, and that could only be to Aulun’s favour. It was an opportunity to seize subtle control in Sandalia’s court, gently crafted and offered up to her. Robert himself could not have planned it more perfectly.
Belinda did not want to scream.
A lifetime of training made her draw breath. Alunaer, clean and still under new snow, flashed through her vision. The flavoured memory of wood smoke in the distance, rich and sharp, tightened her throat against sound, and black-branched trees reached through ten years of survival to sink their shadows into her. She did not need to look down to see a body lying broken on the flagstones beneath her. To scream was to write an ending, as one had been written, bloodily, to end her childhood. To scream was to end studying with Javier and to move forward with revolution.
To scream was to let Javier go.
Witchpower thundered through her blood. Belinda reached out on its command, putting her fingers into Viktor’s hair. It was clean, though not so clean as it had been the last time she’d seen him, when he’d knelt before her in just such a way and offered marriage and sex. Recognition jolted him profoundly, any doubt at Rosa’s impossible transformation swept away beneath familiar touch. Belinda dropped to her knees, hands still knotted in Viktor’s hair, and swayed toward him, hungry with the grasp of power.
“You could die for touching me,” she whispered, her mouth nearly against his. She spoke Khazarian, but the witchpower in her blood raged and danced, working to play tricks on the man’s memory even as memories were made. He would barely know she had spoken to him, but he would do her bidding with a need bordering on mania. She would be his object of desire, not because he had known Rosa but because she was a pure and genteel creature, so far above him as to be an angel. Such was her intent, and her experiments with Nina gave her no reason to doubt that Viktor, too, would bend to her will.
“I’ll let you live, in exchange for your services.” She knotted her hands in his hair more tightly, forbidding herself the impulse to loosen her fingers and drive them into his pants, to have him service her in more ways than one. Her pulse beat hot in her throat, desire unlike any she’d ever known for this man aching between her legs and rattling her thoughts. He was stronger than Marius, more delicious to dominate, harder to break, but he had gotten down on his knees to make a match with her and he could not, would not, deny her will. Belinda drew herself closer, putting her teeth over the heartbeat beneath his jaw, and bit hard enough to draw a strangled sound of mixed desire and resistance.
“Love me.” The command sank into his skin with a golden glow, stronger than the shields or witchlight she’d built as weapons. “Worship me.” Viktor croaked agreement, shuddering beneath her mouth. “I am your queen,” Belinda breathed. “You will serve me or you will die.”
His acquiescing nod sent pleasure so strong it became weakness over her, and she sagged against him. His arms closed around her, solid and strong. For an instant intellect clawed through passion, leaving Belinda gasping and chilled. Stillness felt an impossible distance away, unreachable, untouchable, alien to her. In a moment of clarity she understood that it was using the witchpower that turned her into a creature of raw desire and rough lust, endangering everything that she was and everything that she worked for. It cannot be found out. Robert’s concern made sense for a few burning seconds: if this was what she became when she touched the magic within her, she could not, should not, be trusted. Locking it behind a chypre-scented wall had been wise.
And arrogant. Fury shattered understanding. She was not a tool to be meddled with and played by the likes of Robert Drake. That was something he would come to understand; she would make certain of it. Belinda shoved back from Viktor’s warm strength, lip curled in disdain as she studied the paroxysm of agonized need stretching his face. Less out of sympathy than the cold thrill of power, she slid her hand over the front of his breeches, felt his hardness through cloth and curled her fingers around him. One vicious jerk sent a spasm over him, heat seeping against her wrist.
Unkind delight curled her mouth again and she pushed him away, standing up in the same smooth motion. “Watch Akilina. Remember when she meets Sandalia and what they discuss. I’ll come to you when I have need of you.”
She stood outside Javier’s door a long time, flanked by guards whose gazes looked politely through her. She did not look at them, not trusting the witchpower to lie dormant if she did. Not trusting it to not flare up and demand tribute from the unfortunate men who guarded the prince that night. They would die if she met their eyes; they would die because she would take them sexually, fully, and the noise of it would bring Javier to the door, and to hold her position in his bed she would cry rape and the guards would die.
The urge to use that power tickled the centre of her palms and itched at her until as little as she dared step into Javier’s chambers so uncontrolled, she dared stay out even less.
Javier sprawled before the fire, linen nightdress falling around his knees, moon-pale legs stuck out in an ungainly fashion toward the fire. Belinda closed the door behind herself and locked it, hands tight on the bar as she leaned and stared at the casually bedecked prince. He looked up with a grin, wobbling a wine flask at her. “Akilina kept you longer than I expected. You did well, Beatrice. Even that crack about pigs fucking got a laugh. Here.” He sat up, taking her in. “You look a bit disheveled. Did the Khazarian ambassador have her way with you?” He gave her a raucous leer that was better suited to Sacha’s face. “I miss all the fun.”
“My lord, what do you feel when you use the witchpower?” Belinda’s voice came beneath his, soft with something she was reluctant to call fear, but could see no other name for. Javier’s drunk faded with her question, his eyebrows drawing down.
“Feel? What do you mean? Did you feel something from Akilina?” He bounded to his feet, enthusiasm suddenly rampant. “Is she one of us?”
“No.” Regret’s thin edge slashed through her at the disappointment in Javier’s eyes, though he recovered instantly.
“No,” he agreed. “It would be too much, for two women to come into my life so quickly, both bearing such power. Perhaps we’re the only ones, Beatrice. But that’s not so bad. At least we’ve found each other.”
“Yes, my lord.” Beatrice remained at the door, watching Javier as though he were an unfamiliar creature. “Do you feel anything?” she asked again, almost diffidently. “Do you feel…desire, the wish to…dominate?” She remembered, abruptly, the way he’d sculpted her body the first time they’d lain together, and thought that perhaps he did.
His expression, though, g
ave no hint of anything beyond bewilderment. “Do you?” Amusement cleared befuddlement away and he sauntered to her, deliberately leading with his hips. “Aah,” he murmured. “A woman given power finds herself in the unfamiliar position of wishing to flex it, is that it? Does it excite you, Beatrice?” He crossed his wrists, laughter sparkling through his eyes. “Shall you be my cruel mistress?”
“Please.” Belinda spoke the word carefully, turning her face away in order to make herself more vulnerable. She was too aware that the power running through her blood would make her words a command if she were not purposefully cautious. Javier’s laughter would disappear into offense in an instant should she be that bold, and she couldn’t afford to lose his attention now. Not with Viktor in the palace; not with Akilina and her unknown schedule to consider. “Please, do not mock me, my lord. This is not an easy thing to ask.”
Javier uncrossed his wrists and touched Belinda’s jaw, turning her face back toward his. “No,” he said a few seconds later. “I can see that it isn’t. I’m a man, and a prince,” he added after a moment’s thought. “It’s natural that I should be in control, Bea. The witchpower helps to impress that on people, but…no. It doesn’t waken in me a need to lord myself above others. But our stations are very different, and I think I can understand why you might chafe at the bounds of yours, when you and I both know what power you might command.”
Belinda nodded, small motion, barely trusting herself to even that. Javier’s fingertips felt cool against her face, as if her warmth might rise up and swallow him whole. She had let slip an opportunity to control his mother’s court once this evening, shaping that chance into something new and, she hoped, something worth the risk of letting Viktor live. She could not afford to give in to hungry power and try to overwhelm Javier, not now. There would be other chances to wrest control in the court, but not if she pushed the prince so far as to fall out of his favour, even despite the witchpower.