The Pretender_s Crown ic-2

by C. E. Murphy

  A bolt of thunderous power slammed into her, barely deflected by golden witchpower that seemed to know better than she did that an attack was coming. A gasp knocked free of Belinda's lungs, the charge of shared magic with Javier as strong as it had ever been. She clenched her teeth against desire, refuting it; the magic wasn't stronger than she was, and base needs were things to be put away. There would be other men to satisfy herself with: this man would condemn her soul to Hell.

  The next blow she caught more easily, and the next more easily still, until Javier lobbed magic at her with all the finesse of a screaming child, and she only stood deflecting his power as it gradually lost strength. She would not fight; would not, no matter the cost. In time Javier slumped, then fell to his knees and bent forward against the earth to scream out rage and frustration. Only then did Belinda gather her nerve and approach him, crouching to hover her hands above his back, not knowing if a touch would earn her another beating. “Is it Eliza?” Genuine fear broke her voice: she was certain her own life would be forfeit if Eliza Beaulieu was dead.

  Javier shoved her away, but without the heart of his earlier blows. “As if you don't know.”

  “I swear on my mother's name that I don't. I can't lie to you, Javier, not anymore. I don't know what's happened.”

  “It's Tomas,” Javier whispered. “Murdered, and with him any hope of salvation for my soul.”

  “Tomas?” Belinda frowned, then dropped her chin to her chest, eyes closed. “The priest.” She had no more words after that, protestations of her innocence seeming gauche, and expressions of sorrow alien to her.

  “Why would anyone kill him?” Javier's voice cracked. Belinda put a hand out again, then let it fall, more uncomfortable with offering solace than with his pain.

  “To remove your inner circle,” she answered, though she doubted he wanted a response at all. “To make you vulnerable, king of Gallin. There are very few who've been so close to you, and most of them are dead now. If I intended on weakening you, it's how I would do it. Marius and Sacha, now Tomas. The only one left is Eliza. Protect her, Javier. Give up your quest for the Aulunian throne, if you must. Don't let her die, too.”

  Javier lifted eyes gone black with hate to meet Belinda's gaze. “If you intended on weakening me. You would know. Is this what you planned, when you were Beatrice?”

  “I thought it would make you too fragile,” she said coolly. That was necessary, the icy exterior, for below it she felt Javier's loss, tearing at him until it tore at her as well. Better by far to be the untouchable bitch he thought her than to break beneath the weight of his sorrow. “I considered it, yes, and if it had become necessary I might have taken one of them from you. Not two, not three. Taking one would have made you cling harder to those who were left, and I numbered among them then. This many dead is a waste.”

  “Who stands to gain from my weakness?” Desperation filled the question, as though the young king of Gallin truly had no answers. Belinda stared at him, then got to her feet and went to ruck through the ramshackled tent in search of wine.

  “Aulun, most obviously. Could Robert Drake have done this?” She found wine, poured it, and returned to Javier, standing over him as he drained the cup.

  “No,” he said less hoarsely when the drink was gone. “I left him and rode straight to Tomas, to seek his advice on what to do with you. Your father's unwilling to bargain for you,” he added shortly. “His heir's in Alunaer and her avatar can be replaced.”

  Worry seized Belinda's gut and forced her to sit, still reserve too distant to support her. Threads of plots came unravelled before her eyes, replaced by grim certainty. “Then he knows what I'm doing.”

  “What?” Javier turned his own hollow gaze on her and Belinda took his cup away, pouring more wine and drinking it herself. “How can he know?”

  “I don't know.” Belinda flattened her fingers over her belly, staring beyond Javier. “Lorraine knew, too. About the child. Perhaps she told him, perhaps…” She closed her eyes, drawing a slow breath to calm her heartbeat. Too many emotions, twisting in and out of being too quickly. Perhaps that was what war did, tore every possible reaction from deep in the soul and gave exhausted men and women too little time to deal with even one feeling before another rose up to drown it. “We're witchbreed, all three of us,” she finally said. “He would want the child born. He'd see it as a tool to be used in the future, a new generation to shape this world. So perhaps he saw what I did: that the only kind of safety I can find is here.”

  “And the rest of it?” Javier's voice cracked again. Belinda brought her attention back to him, seeing pale skin and grey eyes and ginger hair all working together to make him look sallow. Grief etched lines in his face, aging him and offering no hint that he'd been distracted from his losses by the change in topic. He'd only set them aside, and not far, at that: they scratched just under the surface, until looking at him was painful. She had not, she thought, ever suffered a loss that scored her so deeply; indeed, the closest she'd ever come was in Beatrice Irvine losing Javier de Castille to Belinda Primrose's duties. She looked away sharply, suddenly feeling as though she'd given away too much.

  “One problem at a time,” she whispered. “This game is hard enough to second-guess. Until we have other proof, let's assume he's looking only as far as the child's birth. I think he wouldn't expect me to look farther.” She hesitated a moment, thoughts running ahead of her words, then murmured, “Go to Eliza. Bury Sacha and your priest. I don't belong in the midst of your sorrow, and will not keep you from what needs doing.”

  That he accepted the dismissal, got to his feet and left the tent, might have been amusing, had Belinda not thought of someone else who might profit from his solitude.

  It was not done for the queen's daughter to slip from one enemy tent to another in the middle of the night, no more than it might have been done for that same daughter, unacknowledged, to demand an audience with her mother. Still, Belinda did the one as readily as she'd done the other, and did it exquisitely aware that not so long ago, she might have been acting on official orders to enact what she planned. No more. The Aulunian heir would never be sent to assassinate anyone. That part of her life had passed in Lorraine's courtroom, as final as any death.

  She'd called stillness, and, wrapping herself, entered Akilina Pankejeff's tent with no one the wiser. She had no proof at all that the Khazarian duchess was responsible for Tomas's death, only a sense of rightness about it. Javier was almost entirely bereft of friends now, and had no one beyond family to turn to. Rodrigo had never in all his years as Essandia's monarch proved himself so cold, but Belinda well knew Akilina's ambition and skill in the game of politics. Even if the priest hadn't died, there was still a matter of Belinda's own vengeance to be answered. Akilina had stripped her bare in Lutetia; she would repay the dvoryanin by stripping her of her life.

  In more than ten years of doing murder, Belinda Primrose had never moved with such focus. Death was a duty, not a passion: not until tonight, and she succumbed to the desire to forget all else while she pursued her retaliation. Once inside Akilina's tent she released the stillness to stand and watch a dead woman breathe a while. It was a dangerous indulgence: Akilina might open her eyes, might have time to draw breath and scream. Even so, she'd have no more time than that, and she would die with Belinda Walter's image burned into her mind.

  “She's pregnant.”

  With a silent howl at her own lack of caution, Belinda snapped the stillness back into place, wrapping it tight so that all eyes might slip away from her, but when she turned toward the voice, Rodrigo of Essandia seemed to stare at her still.

  She had not seen him. She ought to have seen him, ought not to have allowed herself to concentrate so compleatly on her own revenge. Her life was a trinket now, one dangling from the Essandian prince's long and well-shaped fingers. Those fingers were steepled in front of his mouth, and he sat relaxed in a scoop-shaped chair, one leg cocked at the knee and the other loose and straight before him
. He was nearly as hidden by shadow as Belinda herself could be, but she ought to have seen him.

  “My nephew cannot do what you're doing,” he murmured, more curious than afraid. “More's the shame for him, perhaps, though I can imagine why you might have developed that skill where he did not. He was brought up in sunlight, and you, in shadow. I wonder why you dropped this cloak of obscurity at all. Is it so she would see your face and know whose vengeance was exacted in the moments of her death? Let me see you, Belinda Walter. Let me see our beloved Aulunian queen's bastard. Please,” he added after a moment, almost droll, when she remained where she was, draped in dark safe shadow. “You and I both know that I'm no match for you, if you want me dead.”

  Because that was true, and because he knew it, and, in the end, because her curiosity was as great as his, Belinda released the witch-power again. Stillness faded away, exposing her to moonlight and vision once more. She felt beacon-bright, unmasked. A glance at Akilina betrayed her intentions, and she turned her attention to Rodrigo, suddenly aware of the sound of his voice in the air. Robert had once muffled noise around himself: Belinda drew on that feeling of rag-stuffed ears, and built a circle of silence around herself and the Essandian prince. Only then did she dare to speak. “We know why I'm here. Why are you, my lord?”

  Amusement creased Rodrigo's eyes. “My lord? How formal. You're well-trained.”

  Belinda said, “I am,” without regret, and looked toward the sleeping woman on the cot. “Will you try to stop me?”

  “The child isn't mine.”

  Surprise snapped Belinda's gaze back to Rodrigo. He spread his fingertips, thumbs still touching, making a wave of indifference with his body that his emotional presence echoed. The temptation to cross to him, touch him and steal his thoughts, raised hairs on Belinda's arms, though she quelled the impulse and instead said, “You're certain?”

  “I paid her washer-woman very well for certainty of when her courses came. Even if she'd had the wit to lie to me with her words, her face told me what I needed to know. She should have been bleeding the day we married. She was not, nor has she since. The child is not mine.” Rodrigo smiled thinly. “I sit here in the nights, trying to decide which page from your grandfather's book I might follow.”

  Belinda, suddenly as droll as he'd been a moment before, said, “Let me encourage you to divorce her, my lord prince. Join Aulun in its Reformation, and set Cordula on its ear.”

  A broader smile flashed over Rodrigo's face. He was handsome, better-looking by far than Javier, though Belinda's insides twisted at that thought. His looks would have left no mark on Javier, of course, but it was easier not to dwell on that, and to try to ignore the taste of ashes in her mouth.

  “I think not,” Rodrigo said, thankfully not privy to Belinda's thoughts. “I might have the marriage annulled; the Pappas would grant me that willingly enough, knowing the child wasn't mine. He'd grant it anyway,” he added shrewdly. “He wants me wedded to one of his own faithful women, the better to control me.” His gaze slipped from Belinda to Akilina. “Or I might have her beheaded. No one would blame me.”

  “Irina might.”

  Rodrigo's smile changed again, became something smaller and more approving. “You think quickly. Lorraine may have chosen well. But then what am I to do,” he said, and his hands spread again, making mockery of the question. “Do I close my eyes and pretend I don't know? Do I raise another man's child as heir to the Essandian throne?”

  “Whose?” It hardly mattered, but curiosity had her in its grip, and Rodrigo de Costa seemed inclined to offer answers.

  “Sacha Asselin's, I should think,” he said. “It was he whom I paid to liberate Akilina from prison. You may have done me a favour today, in cutting down my nephew's oldest friend.”

  Belinda's heart beat once with the speaking of Sacha's name and hung endlessly in her chest, a pain that struck her breath and did not cease for long seconds after Rodrigo had finished speaking. Witchpower, bright and gold, flooded her mind, her body, and squeezed her heart, setting it to beating again. Then she was across the room, not kneeling at Rodrigo's feet; she, or the witchpower, had too much pride for that. Too much ambition, as well: those things were what drove her hand to touch Rodrigo's hair, drove desire coupled strongly with revenge, and drove a wicked delight that brought many paths in Belinda's life to a full circle. “One throne,” she murmured, “might see fit to do another a second boon, my lord prince.”

  He caught her wrist and moved her hand from his hair, opening a shock of thought that ran counter to anything she'd stolen from a man since her gifts had developed. Oh, she was pretty enough, in his eyes, all bright with moonlight and intense with golden power that was in every way Javier's opposite. He might desire her in an abstract way, in the same fashion a painting or a landscape might be desired, but lying with the wife he'd chosen had not awakened in Rodrigo a particular enthusiasm for earthly vices. He would take Belinda from a sense of duty, but only if he were certain of getting a child, and thereby Aulun, for his troubles.

  For a heady and amusing instant, he was easily the most desirable man Belinda had ever known. Habit kept laughter from breaking out loud, but it danced on her lips, and witchpower swirled through her, more than ready to break a prince's will. She shut it away, more pleased with his ruthless pragmaticism than she could ever be with bedding him. She was trained to turn practicality into need, so she might seduce when and where she must. She'd never imagined finding the same remorseless lack of romanticism in a man.

  “What,” he said aloud, “favours might we exchange, Belinda Walter?”

  “Do not marry again. Permit Javier to be your heir. He and Eliza will have a child within the year; your succession, and Gallin's, will be assured.” Belinda's heartbeat ran rabbit-quick with the excitement of setting plots in motion. These were not the plans Robert had, nor even the ones she'd shared with Javier. These were her own, and not even the witchpower struggled against her ambitions.

  “Do not marry again,” Rodrigo said, with just enough emphasis on the final word, and a glint of interest in his eyes. “My faith only permits me one marriage at a time, till death do us part, Lady Belinda, and my wife is young and healthy. How ever do you imagine I might marry again?”

  “Get what sleep you may, prince of Essandia,” Belinda suggested. “The next days will be difficult, and you'll need all your wits about you in your time of sorrow.” She stepped back, and he rose, pausing to study her with a curious expression.

  Whatever he found in her gaze seemed to satisfy him; after a moment he went to the tent's door and there stopped to look back and murmur, “Belinda.”

  And Belinda, who rarely permitted herself the intimacy of a name, said, “Rodrigo,” in return, and watched him go.

  RODRIGO, PRINCE OF ESSANDIA

  What is most violently clear in Rodrigo's mind is that he has just walked away from the woman who murdered his sister. There's room in his thoughts to wonder if it's worse that he has turned that same woman on the perfidious creature who is his wife, or if allowing Sandalia's murderer to walk free is the greater crime. Either way, she's Javier's prisoner of war and his nephew is wise to keep her alive, so whatever ends Rodrigo might pursue in revenge would be ill-advised, and yet…

  She ought not be allowed free rein of these camps, much less tacit permission to murder his wife, but Rodrigo watched her appear and disappear from his sight, which tells him there's likely no way to prevent her from doing precisely as she wishes. And the worst of it is she would indeed be doing him a favour, and that's a topic he doesn't dare broach with Javier or even breathe to the new priest who will have to take his confession. He can't go to God burdened with this particular plot, but there's time a-plenty to repent, and perhaps in later years he'll be able to face a confessor.

  He's unpleasantly surprised, come morning, when Akilina joins him for breakfast. A flush creeps up his face, making him feel the fool, and when the Khazarian dvoryanin enquires after his health, he is forced to lea
ve the fire, claiming a sickness of the belly that is entirely true. Akilina, astonished, drinks the watered wine that's been all she can stomach in the mornings, and lets him go.

  It's that afternoon that she complains of cramps, and she is bleeding by evening. The worried doctor feeds her more wine to keep her blood up, and Rodrigo, watching now, begins to feel a slow horror that is worse even than having allowed Belinda to survive. He can't be certain that this isn't nature rejecting a faulty child, and that, he's sure, is the brilliance of the Aulunian queen's bastard daughter at work.

  It takes three days, in the end. The child is lost by the morning, but the bleeding will not stop. Not until the second evening is Akilina weak enough to slip into unconsciousness, and Rodrigo keeps vigil during the night, from duty and an uncomfortable conscience. It would have been one thing to awaken to a murdered wife. It is another entirely to stand by and watch her die by pieces, and to know that he didn't stop it happening. That he commanded it happen, in any way that matters.

  It's during that long night that he wonders why Belinda Walter is so cruel, though the answer comes to him easily enough. Her father was captured, tortured, and thrown at Sandalia's feet all on Akilina's word; Belinda herself was stripped bare of both possessions and the lies that had insinuated her in Sandalia's court, all at Akilina's bidding. It is a precise vengeance, this death, a repayment for humiliation, and it is deeply telling. It is also profoundly natural, for women die of childbirth and difficult pregnancies all the time. The man in Rodrigo loathes Belinda and the prince admires her; she is a honed weapon, and will be a dangerous, worthy opponent when she sits on the Aulunian throne.

  He opens the tent flaps at dawn, wanting, oddly enough, for Akilina to die in the light. Her faith is not his own, but last rites were given in the last minutes of her consciousness, and it seems better, somehow, to take the final journey with the first rays of sunshine touching her skin.