The Pretender's Crown

BELINDA PRIMROSE

2 April 1588 † Alunaer

Her father's voice awakened her, so loud and unexpectedly clear that she jolted to her elbows, staring around her cell in heart-racing anticipation.

It was empty, as it had to be, nothing more than herself and a sliver of moonlight to occupy it. But Robert's voice lingered, reverberating from the walls. She could smell chypre, the cologne he always wore, and slowly she realised that the scent lit flares of witchpower in her mind. Chypre had haunted her when Javier had helped to waken her witchpower, too, its familiar scent part of the barrier that had been erected to keep her magic caged.

She whispered “Robert,” but by then she knew he wasn't there, and that his voice had only spoken within her mind.

Prepare, the echoes said again. Prepare, my Primrose. Prepare for war.

C.E. Murphy

The Pretender's Crown

It wasn't done for a bastard daughter to demand to see her mother. The audacity would have driven Belinda from comfortable thoughts, had her thoughts not already been so badly disrupted by Robert's missive. She had left the convent with Dmitri, meek and pious as always, and between a corner and a straight place had called the stillness to her, wrapping herself in it more swiftly than she'd ever done before. Shadows had flooded from sunlit places, drawn to her, and though Dmitri, attuned to her use of power, had whirled, it had been too late.

She had run full speed through Alunaer, had stolen quill and paper from a scribe within the palace, and, too frantic to waste time trying to explain to Cortes how she'd come by her information, had left an imperious note on his desk: there was word from dearest Jayne, and it must be imparted to the queen at once. Her majesty would know the meeting place.

And now she waited, heartbeat high but chin held higher yet, for Lorraine's arrival in the secret chamber. Illogical certainties surged through Belinda's mind, upsetting the calm she could normally call at a whim. Lorraine would know what to do in the face of war; Lorraine had to know, for she was the queen. She must be warned, as early as possible, and then she would take Belinda from her hours of study and give her a task of toothy import. Belinda longed for that, longed for the action she had been raised to. Weeks of studying had broadened and deepened her skills, yes, but weeks of Dmitri's guidance had taught her little more of his plans. Like Robert, he wanted a pawn most of all, intending to play her and sacrifice her when need be. But Belinda was the daughter of a queen, and if she played the pawn, it was now only a part, a learning place until she was ready to remake the board.

With war on the horizon, that time might well be soon.

The silent door opened, bringing the same warmth it had last time. Belinda whirled on her mother, ignoring all protocol to blurt, “There will be war.”

Lorraine lifted a finely painted eyebrow and said, drily, “We are unobserved, yes, and we are honoured by your obsequience.”

Teeth grinding, Belinda sank into a curtsey that scratched plain grey wool over her skin, and remained there until Lorraine said, “You are meant to be in a convent, girl, not running about Alunaer wearing garb that places you as missing from one.”

Belinda muttered, “No one saw me, your majesty.”

Lorraine sniffed. “Not even Cortes, who claims a note appeared on his desk from nowhere, though he was looking at it at the time. We are curious as to how you arranged that.”

“A lady never tells, majesty.” The ground-out words brought her back to Aria Magli, where Robert had teased her with that very phrase; to her surprise, Lorraine echoed it now.

“A lady never does, girl. A gentleman never tells.”

Edgy to the point of daring, Belinda lifted her eyes to meet Lorraine's. “As a lady who's never done, loved by a gentleman who never tells, will you tell me, majesty, if it is never done nor told, what matters how it might be done?”

Astonishment too fresh to be offence flooded Lorraine's face. For the briefest of moments Belinda allowed herself a feeling of solidarity with the queen: perhaps it was only with each other they might both strip away certain masks and allow true emotion to come through, for she doubted Lorraine would have permitted herself such an expression in a courtroom.

Then again, rare indeed was the courtier who would dare the rudeness Belinda had just put to a reigning queen. She set those thoughts aside, making her words into knives. “There is war coming. I have it from Robert's voice. Aulun must prepare.”

She knew as soon as she spoke that she had chosen her words poorly, and yet she'd picked them with as much deliberation as she could. Still, anticipation lit Lorraine's aging features. “Robert has returned?”

“No, majesty. It was-” Belinda clenched her hand in the shapeless convent robe. “His voice came to me as if in a dream, majesty, but I was awake. It sounds a fool's lark, and I know it, but this is not a thing to make light of.”

“We will decide what is and what is not to be made light of.” Lorraine's voice was ice, pure and hard. “What else did he say?”

“Only to prepare. Majesty, I know I am rude and uncouth and young and not supposed to be here-”

Lorraine humphed, but Belinda bowled on, as much determined as she was any of the other things she named herself. “-but I am also your majesty's-”

There was no break in Belinda's speech, no silence she could hear, and yet words unspoken fell after that phrase, words so clearly unspoken that Lorraine stiffened even as Belinda continued what she had never broken in saying: “-loyal servant, and have been all my life. You do not know me well, but you know Robert. He would not have sent me here with things to say to you if I were flighty or unreliable, and he would not have given me this warning, no matter how esoteric the manner, if it was not something that Aulun should act on.”

“And if we do,” Lorraine said, still wonderfully cool, “what will your role be, girl?”

Startled out of her passion, Belinda opened one hand. “As it has always been, majesty. Whatever you command it to be.”

“Remember that,” Lorraine said. “Remember that, in the days to come.” She turned and stalked from the round chamber, leaving Belinda bent in a curtsey and bewildered to her core.

She stole a pastie from a street merchant on her way back to Dmitri's home, savouring the hot gravy that dripped over her fingers and the fatty, tough meat that required long and careful chewing. The convent's food was plainer, and Dmitri's much finer; this simple fare harkened to the innumerable roles she'd played as a servant girl, and gave her comfort. Grease ran to her elbows and stained her clothes, and she cared not at all, licking her fingers clean as she pushed Dmitri's front door open and, content, breathed in warm scented air.

Blinding pain shattered across her face, white at first and then fading to throbbing red. She staggered, catching herself on the wall, and lifted a tear-blurred gaze to see Dmitri's hand coming down toward her again. Choler flowered in him, spilling over without words; always without words, from the dark witchlord, but vivid and clear none the less: she had given herself to him as a student, a vassal, and to break away as she had done, to call her power and hide from him so she might pursue an errand of her own, was a slight that must be answered.

Her own witchpower flared and a golden shield caught the blow with the reverberating force of a blade smashing into armour. Dmitri's wrist cracked, getting a yell from him, and without thought Belinda struck back. Not physically: he was the larger and had the advantage, and besides, outraged magic had her in its grip and intended its own methods of subdual.

The surge of power came from her core, gut-deep and roaring through her. It took Dmitri in the chest, slamming him across the room with more force than she'd imagined having to command. She felt from him a response, a quick cloud of darkness that sprang to cushion him as he smashed into the far wall. Saving his life, she supposed, but in her rage she saw it as providing her with a chance to play with her catch a while longer. Her head swam with pain still, flashes of white that disrupted the golden haze she saw him through.

He got one hand under him-the left, the one he had not hit her with-and began to shove upward, fury blackening his eyes. Belinda barely knew the sound she made, derision so harsh it hurt her throat. She knocked his hand from beneath him with the satisfaction of a kick, realising distantly that he had shielded against her this time, and that it had been as though she'd had no more than empty air to push against.

“How dare you.” Her voice was as distorted as her scoff had been. “Have you forgotten what you are? What I am?” She stalked toward him, crouched over him with a clawed hand at his throat. “I have asked for guidance and wisdom and teaching, none of which, none of which, give you leave to make so bold with my person. How dare you.”

His pulse throbbed quick and hard beneath her fingers, his breath coming shallow under the pressure she exerted. With skin touching skin, she could feel him gather power, preparing another strike, though his thoughts were still his own. She reached for the memory of what Robert had done to her, the chypre-scented wall he'd placed in her mind, and a waterwheel of sensation built within her. She pushed that toward Dmitri, a cascade of power that shut away the gift he called his own. Shock lit his eyes and she leaned closer, aching with power. “I can neuter you with a thought, witchlord. Your magic is mine to control. Name me.”

His answer came raggedly, almost a defiance: “Belinda.”

Belinda's fingers tightened at his throat, nails digging in. She did not, in that moment, much care if he lived or died; his audacity in hitting her outweighed any skills she might learn from him. “Name me.”

“Belinda,” he grated again. “Belinda Primrose.”

A spark of appreciation for his willpower glittered through her anger, but the anger was greater. She didn't speak a third time, only brought all the golden fire within her to bear, power rushing toward him. Teeth clenched, Dmitri resisted a few seconds longer, then, in so much as he could, threw his head back, a cry tearing from his throat: “My queen!”

Triumph spattered through Belinda. She swayed above Dmitri, riding the waves of his raw, forced submission. This, the witch-power whispered, this was what she was made for: for placing herself above others, for veneration, for brooking no weakness in herself or haughtiness in others. A path of domination lay before her, so bright and clear it seemed to burn through her mind, through the walls, all the way to the horizon and to the distant stars.

That thought twisted, dredging up the memories stolen from Robert, the explanations offered by the man who sprawled beneath her. To the horizon, to the stars, and to a queen and a war she understood too little of. For an instant she saw that impossible monarch as a rival. Ambition blazed before the greater part of her pulled back, turning away from worlds beyond in order to deal with the one she belonged to. Whatever esoteric fate might lie tangled with Robert's plans, there was a war coming to her country, and if its first battle was here, in Dmitri's fine warm home, then she would win, and worry about the next as it came.

Dmitri struggled to reach his power again; Belinda could feel his indignity and astonishment that she'd cut him off from it. Part of her took pleasure in it, though part of her was filled with offence that he should think his magic was not hers to command. If Robert could shape her ability to touch the witchpower when she was a child, she should be able to control Dmitri's, or any man's. She caught his undamaged wrist and brought his hand to her face. Even in the midst of her anger and power, she felt the sting of his touch against the bruise he'd left there, though despite all the ways she'd forgone the stillness, she could not let herself wince in time with the pain. She whispered, “Heal this,” instead, and released the slightest trickle of Dmitri's own power.

Everything that he had surged toward that break point, a black wall of magic determined to overwhelm her own. Belinda steeled her core, meeting that onslaught with confidence that turned to a deep thrill as Dmitri's power splashed against hers and rolled back again. Warmth spilled through her, nestling in her belly, her breasts, between her thighs, and her pulse heightened as she acknowledged desire that had been forcibly put away in the last weeks of study. Dmitri was right: the witchpower was not sex, nor was sex power, but he was wrong as well, and all the things that helped her live in her flesh were things that fed the magic.

“Heal this,” she said again, and this time all the power that came to bear turned toward the talent she had no knack for. She could almost hear Dmitri's thoughts, could almost, in holding his magic, understand the science he said lay behind the healing. Blood and bone; those were things she knew, vessels and veins, but from his power's touch she caught glimpses of other things, too small to be seen, which healed and regenerated under his magic. They were the stuff of life, but then the healing retreated, taking with it any chance of comprehending and leaving her hungry for the intimacy of that touch again. Belinda reached for it, her power surrounding Dmitri's, and in doing so she brushed old intent and aspiration within him.

She'd not had the skill in Khazar to sense that focus, not in the way she could do so now. She had known then that he wanted her; now she could taste the ambition in that want, as though she were a means with which to obtain an end.

Staggering clarity told her that he, too, could be a method by which she might create her own purpose, rather than simply following the path laid out before her by Robert and Lorraine, or even Dmitri. Witchpower heat scalded her skin from within, coaxing that thought to fruition. Once, not long ago, she had been unable to turn her back on duty. Now she grasped eagerly at new possibilities flowering in her mind, then let them go again before they became whole concepts, for fear Dmitri might share her talent of stealing thoughts, and not wanting to share these.

The loose novice's robes were easy enough to shed, even holding Dmitri's throat; she rucked them over her head and flung them to the side, shaking them off her wrist as she changed hands to keep the witchlord pinned. His gaze went black as he looked on her, simple human desire unladen with complications. Belinda wet her lips and released a thread of his power as she nodded toward his injured wrist. “Heal that.”

She felt the surge a second time, felt tantalisingly close to comprehension as he mended cracked bone. Muscle flexed in his shoulders as he brought his attention back to her, minute warning that, healed, he might attempt to seize the upper hand. She hissed a warning, soft primal sound, and he stiffened, earning her quick grin. Stiff was how she wanted him, but not so much that he thought himself the master in their tete-a-tete. She leaned forward to put her mouth by his ear, shifting some of her weight on his collarbones, but leaving enough on his throat to remain a reminder that he would pay for foolishness. “Your power is mine to command, dark prince, and I am tired of teasing. I would have you please me now.”

His lashes tangled over dark eyes, a thin smile curving his mouth. “I am still clothed, my queen.”

Belinda bit his earlobe. “That should hardly stop you.”

Chagrined amusement ghosted through her on the trickle of power she allowed him access to. Then, behind the chagrin came new purpose, flavoured with the intention to overwhelm her. That near-awareness of knowledge flooded her again, though its focus seemed changed. No longer healing, but still exciting the blood, triggering changes-once again, she almost grasped the thought and the science behind what he did, and then sensation became something to ride on, making her heady and uncaring of how, so long as it was done. Heat swelled between her thighs without a touch, without caresses or soft words or hard hands, without any of those things she'd been trained to. Desire came on like a dream, intense, half-imagined, drumming an incessant beat that had no physical component and yet aroused her as thoroughly as any man's hand might.

She didn't know when clawed fingers left his throat in search of tugging open his breeches. It was witchpower, it seemed, which held him down: even freed from her grasp he stayed where he was, gaze heavy on hers even when she tilted her head back and rolled with pleasure. He remained still as she settled on him, more strength of will in that lack of motion than most men had, and it was her own sound of liquid delight that echoed in her ears as he filled her. His length curving inside her brought the finish to what magic had begun, sending spasms through her and the slightest sense of smugness through the witchpower link she shared with her lover. Had it been Javier, she might have laughed; with Dmitri it only stoked challenge and a need for further control.

It was only later, much later, as she dragged herself back to her convent cell, that she wondered if that, too, had been a lesson in her magic, or if it even mattered.