The Pretender's Crown

BELINDA WALTER

Witchpower, heavy as thunder in the air, rubbed Belinda's skin as, confident in her invisibility, she slipped through the last few guards and pup tents that made up the body of the Ecumenic army The royal tents, the strategy centres, and the accommodations for high-ranking military lay beyond the common area. Of all of them, one was largest and cleanest, and that was the one she made her way to. She would have known it as her quarry had she been blind, such was the power building there, and she tightened the stillness around her before entering, making certain she would remain unseen until she had well and truly studied and understood the situation within.

She pushed aside the tent door in time to watch Sacha Asselin draw blade and fling himself toward Javier de Castille.

C.E. Murphy

The Pretender's Crown

Love, in the end, tells all.

Belinda Primrose ought not be in this room at this moment, but she is, and every part of her that is thinking and rational knows she should let this game play out. But that's not the part of her that acts: that part is, perhaps, Beatrice Irvine, who is divorced from the truths Belinda's come to know, and whose heart still beats too fast at the thought of a ginger-haired prince coming to her bed. Belinda has fallen, fallen further than she knew, because the queen's bastard would let Javier die, but the woman she is now slams a witchpower shield around the young king, and throws all her strength behind it, so there's nothing left for herself.

And realises, less than a breath later, how very badly she's chosen.

Marius is there, suddenly, terribly: a physical shield far more visible than the one she's offered. Marius is there, between king and killer, and Belinda's scream isn't the only one to fill the war tent. The sound Marius himself makes is dreadful, a gasp of pain and surprise so soft Belinda shouldn't be able to hear it, especially under her own scream; especially under the bull's bellow of horror and rage that Sacha Asselin shouts out. His back's to Belinda, blocking his hands, blocking Marius's belly, but she knows there's blood there, draining the colour from Marius's face.

Guardsmen are there now, between Belinda and the others, swords raised to strike at Sacha, and Belinda is reminded of Ilyana's death, six months ago in a Gallic courtroom. Sacha will die the same way, skewered by long blades, and the only sorrow she has is that she doesn't wield them herself. Her heart has stopped: stopped, she thinks, the moment she entered the tent, and it may never beat again.

But she's wrong, and the contraction that comes next is the most painful thing she's ever known, gutting her, cutting her own throat, weakening whatever strength she had.

Because another scream belongs to Eliza Beaulieu, who has somehow got herself between Sacha and the guards. She staggers now, white-faced, under the plunge of their swords. One man struck from on high, cutting down from her shoulder at such an angle that it can barely have missed her heart; the other has struck through her gut, the same kind of blow that Marius has taken for his king.

The three of them, two men and a woman, fall to their knees, so slowly as to be a dance. There's grace inherent in this death, but only for a moment. Marius, perhaps, knows what Eliza's done; Sacha does not, and his howls are for the man he holds in his arms, his dying friend. One of the guards, horrified, yanks his sword back, and Eliza screams again, folding herself over the blade that's left, the one thrust into her belly. That guard has let his sword go, has fallen to his knees himself in apologetic supplication, and Belinda has the momentary clear thought that he pulled the strength of his blow, else he'd have driven through Eliza and pinned her to Sacha, taking both their lives. She wants to commend his swiftness in doing so, but even if she could draw breath beyond the icy cut of horror in her own throat, she knows he's killed the beautiful Gallic woman. There is nothing to commend.

All of this, all of it, has taken almost three seconds.