The Pretender's Crown

BELINDA PRIMROSE

14 February 1588 † Alunaer, capital city of Aulun

She had no last name, not properly. Robert had always called her Primrose, for his imaginary sister who was supposedly Belinda's mother. But if she had taken her adopted father's name, she might have been Belinda Drake, who had been sent to a convent at age twelve, and who had never returned from it.

Belinda Primrose wore those shackles now. For nearly a month she'd slept in a dull grey cell and said her devotions five times or more a day; had worn a scratchy woollen shift and knelt on cold stone, and had heard achingly little of the world beyond sturdy convent walls.

The nuns were kind to their new ward, whom they'd been told had come from another convent. Belinda, when she spoke of her past, murmured obediently of a poor but pious abbey in the Aulunian west. She knew the names of her wimpled sisters, details of her mother superior's life, and could sketch a fair layout of the buildings if asked. Belinda had no doubt at all that such an abbey and such a woman and such sisters existed: she had no doubt, in fact, that a hazel-eyed, brown-eyed girl had played her role for ten years and more at that quiet western convent, and she had very little doubt as to what fate had greeted that woman when Belinda entered the convent in Alunaer.

She tossed restlessly, sleep evading her more thoroughly tonight than it had in weeks past. If she were not obliged by Lorraine's orders to remain hidden, she would climb over the walls and explore Alunaer, seeking out whatever trifle it was that disturbed her dreams.

A month ought to have been more than enough time to reestablish control over her actions and behaviour, but instead curiosity plagued her, a wondering to what purpose Lorraine had had her ensconced amongst religious women; to what purpose she was wearing the mantle that had been created for Robert Drake's adopted daughter over a decade earlier. It had been a lifetime since Belinda had been required to wait, and in that time she had become accustomed to performing one duty or another. For eleven years, since the day she had watched Rodney du Roz fall to his death and lie twitching on snow-covered stone, she had had purpose, and had known the purpose even of waiting. As a child, not knowing why she was put aside, ignored and hidden, had chafed; now she had come full circle, and once more suffered the frustration of being uninformed.

Eleven years. Her eyes opened and she sat up, blind gaze across the darkened cell. The sisters had spoken of it, but she'd paid no heed, assigning no meaning to the preparations for the feast of Saint Valentine that so occupied the others.

Du Roz had died this day, eleven years ago.

There would be no more rest found this night. Belinda flung her blanket back and slipped her feet into unpadded slippers, hurrying to pull her novice's robe on over the shift she slept in. More mundane clothes might be found in the laundry: there were often visitors to the abbey, rich or widowed women in need of time away from families or troubles, and from time to time they left behind gifts. Anything other than a robe would do, and she could escape the convent walls to-

To go to the palace, and look down from the steps at the place where du Roz had died. Belinda stopped in the middle of her room, motionless, wondering at the thought; wondering what good it might do, or what doors in her mind it might open.

That, then, was how the abbess found her moments later: standing frozen in a dark room, dressed to face the day, her face turned up toward the ceiling and sky as though God might offer an answer to some unknown question.

Impulse had left Belinda by then, had left her cold and appalled. There were no answers in du Roz's death, not even if she knew what questions to ask. She knew why he had died: he, and all those who had crossed her path whose graves were now filled with rotting memories. He had presented a danger to Aulun and its queen, and there was nothing else to be taken from his short life or her hand in ending it.

“Forgive me, mother,” she said in the quiet, cultured voice Belinda Drake had been given. “My dreams have disturbed me, and I thought to visit the chapel and find comfort in God's presence. Did I cry out in my sleep?”

“You did not,” the woman said crisply. Everything about her was crisp, from her soprano to the parchment-fine lines around her eyes. Had Belinda not been so hideously bored, she might have liked her. “I came to wake you,” the abbess said. “Your father is here.”

The abbess here-perhaps even the one in western Aulun-would not know Robert, Lord Drake, the queen's favourite courtier, for her ward's father. Drake was an uncommon enough name, though more expected in the western counties where she was meant to be from, but last names were rarely used in the convent. It was a mark of worldliness that Belinda used her given name at all; she would have been better suited by a saint's name, and that she was not might mean there was a fate for her beyond the convent walls.

And there was: that, at least, Belinda was certain of. Her heart sang, thrill of joy entangled with wholly genuine befuddlement. Robert had no place coming to the abbey, nor had there been any word of his return to Alunaer. Sequestered as Belinda was from Cortes's spies, she might not have heard, but for a good and godly group of nuns, the sisters knew and shared a fair bit of gossip about the world beyond. Robert Drake's return might have warranted discussion.

Belinda spoke over the rush of her own thoughts, asking, “My father, my lady?” with shy confusion.

The abbess came forward and took Belinda by the upper arms, an offer of strength. “I suppose you must be used to thinking of yourself as alone in this world, child. Your mother in the west wrote to say you've heard nothing from your family since becoming a novice, but he is still your father.”

“Yes, I-I suppose.” A high soft voice, trembling with uncertainty and a hint of hurt to come. Belinda admired her own performance, though astonishment still whirled in her mind. Even if Robert had returned, visiting her here seemed unlikely in the extreme. There would be some desperate task for her to accomplish, if he was willing to breach Lorraine's orders to see her. Excitement fluttered up, though it remained tightly bound within her, coming nowhere near her face.

The abbess drew Belinda into an unexpected hug, all her crispness melting away into the gentleness of the embrace. “It must be shocking to choose this life so young, and to only now discover the outside world may still want a part of you, too.” She stepped back an arm's length, still holding Belinda. No one, Belinda thought, had shown her such unstinting compassion since she'd been a child; since before the queen had come to Robert's estates, and the life she'd known made her wonder at the cost of such generosity. There was nothing of price in the abbess's quick reassuring words, though: “You need not see him tonight, child, or any night, if you wish me to send him away.”

“No!” Belinda's voice broke as she tried to modify the command in it. The abbess's eyes widened, then wrinkled again with sympathy as she squeezed Belinda's shoulders. “Forgive me,” Belinda whispered. “I didn't mean to be brash, mother. I only-I think I must see him.”

“Yes.” Sympathy deepened in the abbess's eyes. “You may be right, child. Come.” She took Belinda by the hand as though she were a much younger girl, and guided her from the cell and through the dark quiet abbey halls. Belinda kept her breathing smooth and even, forbidding the rushed beat her heart wanted to seek out, and allowed herself to cling to the abbess's hand, a child indeed. It didn't matter how or why: Robert was alive, safe back in Aulun, and once more the waiting was over.

The abbess stopped outside the visitor's hall. The cessation of footsteps let silence leap up all around them, a creature with its own presence. “Were he any other man I would insist on joining you, child, but because he is your father the choice is yours. Would you like me to be there?”

“No.” Belinda cleared her throat to put more strength into the word, and offered a tentative smile as she shook her head. “I think I can be bold. But you'll be nearby if I need you?”

Pride bloomed in the old woman's face. “I will. Only pull the bell and I'll be there in a moment.”

“Thank you, my lady.” Belinda caught the abbess's hand and pressed her lips to the ring the woman wore. Then with a quick flash of a nervous smile, she pushed open the hall door and stepped inside.

A rug lay over the stone floor, rare luxury in the abbey, and meant only to help welcome guests. Cushioned chairs and a sturdy table sat beside a well-built fire, and tapestries hung on the walls, holding in heat and making the hall the only truly warm place within the abbey. That, Belinda told herself, accounted for the sudden flush in her cheeks, the excitement that suffused her. She kept her gaze downcast, hands folded in front of her, a picture of modesty while the door swung shut and closed away the abbess from hearing their conversation. Only when she heard it latch did Belinda whisper a single word, the double-edged blade she always permitted herself once each time she remet Robert Drake: “Father.”

“Hardly.” Dry word, familiar voice, not at all expected in this place or time. Belinda jerked her gaze from the floor, surprise too great to hold in check with the stillness. Better that way, perhaps: he would expect her to be surprised, and with a man like this it was safer to play to his expectations.

Like Robert, he'd changed little in the years since Belinda had first seen him. Thick black hair was fashionably cropped, and a sharply trimmed beard enhanced his hawkish features and thin sensual mouth. Deep-set eyes were dark enough to reflect firelight, and his figure was as slim and well-dressed as any courtier in Lorraine's court.

But he was not of Lorraine's court, no more than Sandalia herself might have been. He had been in Khazar at Irina's side; had fathered a child on the imperatrix if Belinda did not miss her guess. He had the witchpower that Belinda shared with Javier de Castille, the new king of Gallin, and with her own father, Robert Drake. They were alike, all of them, and nothing at all of things she understood.

“Dmitri.”

His pupils contracted, surprise bleeding darkness from his eyes and turning them hazel. Only then did Belinda remember she wasn't supposed to know this man, certainly not by name. He had not given it the once she'd seen him in adulthood, nor had Robert offered it up when Belinda had mentioned the man who'd come to her in Khazar and set her on the road to kill a queen. It was childhood memory that gave her his name, and that memory was one she had not been intended to possess. Even now, thinking back, she could feel the waterwheel rush of power draining into her mind, trying to lock Dmitri's presence into an unreachable place within her; even now she could recall the sting of certainty upon waking; the knowledge that Robert had tried to alter her memory and had failed. She'd kept that secret, as she'd kept many others, well-hidden until now, when a careless slip told the black-haired Khazarian consort that she knew him better than she was meant to.

But there were ways she might know him besides her own faultless memory. Robert might have told her his name; studies of the Khazarian court would have mentioned this man, with his intense eyes and sensual hands. She could know him without betraying herself, and at the heart of it, she no longer cared too dearly if she had given herself away. Dmitri belonged to the secret circle of witchpowered folk her father seemed to head, and as such would have answers.

More than answers; sudden recognition spilled through her. Her unusual restlessness harkened back to the summer night in Khazar when she had awakened, prickling with awareness that some unknowable game was afoot. Then, as now, it had seemed that Dmitri had drawn her from sleep, his very presence sparking things in her that had never before existed.

As suddenly, a third point made a line. The night Dmitri visited Robert at his Aulunian estates had been the first and only time in her youth that Belinda had called the witchpower to life. With his nearness, she had awakened to the ability to draw shadows around herself, and had stood boldly before two grown men, eavesdropping and unseen.

Witchpower ambition flared, kindled desire, and spilled through her as golden fire. Abandoning caution, Belinda stalked forward, pressing herself close to Dmitri and lacing her fingers in his hair. “You.”

The low command in her own voice was unfamiliar. Wantonness, subservience, yes; those things she could call on at any moment, and use them to manipulate and guide the men around her. She could command; she had proven that to herself with sweet biddable Marius and with the less tractable Viktor, but even so, she didn't expect to hear demand in her words, particularly when she spoke to a man of Dmitri's easy, arrogant self-confidence.

Even less did she expect the way his eyes widened and his chin lifted, giving her a show of throat that seemed as against his grain as issuing orders lay against hers. Incongruity struck him as obviously as it did her, and he froze, expression caught between consternation and acquiescence. She had won: certainty thrilled within her, tightening her belly and nipples and making a pool of heat between her thighs. He might struggle with it, fight against her, offering up delicious challenge, but she had already won, by being nothing more than what she was. That knowledge settled over her like a cloak, foreign and strange and unexpectedly comfortable.

“Dark prince.” Belinda spoke against his throat, her lips finding his pulse. “I know you, Dmitri. I have known you since I was a girl, and I am weary of playing the part of the unschooled child. You will teach me what my father has not. You must. Your presence awakens power in me, dark prince. I have been waiting for you.”

Ambition flared in him, not the clarity of language she'd learned to steal from Javier and Marius, but profoundly recogniseable regardless. Emotion wasn't bound to weak words: it ran deeper than that, and whatever witchpower talents Dmitri had, they were not enough to mask his thirst for conquest. She was a dichotomy to him, a creature caught between being worthy of veneration, and simply being desired as any woman might be. Not for the first time, with his body pressed against hers, she thought that a man's own weapons were the best to use against him, and so when she spoke again it was with more sexual hunger, and less burning command.

“You wanted me, in Khazar. Had you time, you said. I was almost naked then, ready for taking. Do you like that more, Dmitri, or do you like me as I am, trussed in a sister's robes, innocent and unworldly? I like this, I think.” She touched her tongue to his earlobe, then bit hard, and knotted her hand at his nape when he jerked violently.

“I like this,” she murmured again. “Then, I might have welcomed you, spread my legs and cried in pleasure, but here my abbess stands just beyond the door, waiting to see if her daughter needs her strength or guidance to face a man. Perhaps I'll scramble, naked, for that door, full of silent sobs for my shame and fear, and you'll pull me back and have me like a dog. You will put your hand over my mouth to keep me from crying out, and I, struggling for breath, will fold and bend to your will… ah!” She caught his wrist as he brought his hand up, denying him the leverage to tear her novice's robes. “I'll play at your game, but we must not give the abbess cause to think me abused at your hands, Father. And if that's a game you like we'll play it, too, darling papa, but the part of me that is not your innocent sister knows men, and I will have my pleasure before you are given yours.”

He was taller than she, much taller, but went to his knees with surprising willingness when her fingertips on his shoulders directed him there. She stepped back, aware of an edge of cruelty at leaving him to follow, but the witchpower that rode her both exulted at the freedom of making a man come to her, and whispered that it was no more than his due: God knew she'd crawled to enough men in her life. And besides, when she found the table's edge to lean against, and dropped her robes around her ankles, follow he did, and ended with his tongue and fingers in her cleft and little hint, even with her witchpower-laced awareness, of resentment. Too aware of the ancient nun outside the door, Belinda bit her hand to keep silent as deft skill and willingness brought her to come with more speed than she had often known. Power broke in her with climax, silent golden tide overwhelming her senses for long seconds. It had been mere weeks, and still too long, with hungry magic in her veins. When she shivered herself to full consciousness again Dmitri still knelt, watching her now; it was not the action she might have expected from the man. He might have thought their bargain met, and flipped her on her belly to have her on the table before she made thoughts or words again.

“Stay.” Her fingers were still in his hair, as though she would put him where she wanted him, but even she heard the plea in the throaty word, no more command or witchpower riding it. “My dark prince, stay a while and be tender and give me more. My need is not yet met.” Trembles shook her from the core, a cry for pleasure to continue unabated.

“I have more to teach you than to squirm and cry out beneath my tongue.” He had not, she realised, spoken since she'd recognised him, and the sardonic quality of his voice was not at all lessened by the cup he'd drunk from. “I think perhaps you'll be more eager for lessons if I leave you now, daughter, and do not return until I've secured safe quarters for you beyond these cold grey walls.”

Shock coursed over her, tightening her belly and breasts all over again. “You can't.”

“Can't what?” Dmitri stood, gaze suddenly bright with amusement and the awareness that such humour was callous. “Can't take you beyond the abbey? I can by daylight, most certainly, though perhaps I'll have to return you to this prison at night, as your red-haired queen has seen fit to ensconce you here, and she may have worthy reasons. No matter. Cold nights alone in your little cell should make you glad enough for morning to bring me to your side.” Challenge crept into his eyes, darkening them again, and his voice dropped lower, more sensual and more dangerous. “Or do you mean I cannot walk away from your desires? Perhaps I can't. Would you like to wield your power and see? Do you believe you can roll my will as easily as you did a foppish boy's, or a lustful guard's?”

Memory cascaded over Belinda, the inexorable line of her father's will, and the way Javier's had broken against it, sand castles dashed against glass. And she herself had fallen beneath Javier's power, that externally focused desire, so different from the stillness she'd developed. Dmitri would be more like Robert, and she too fragile to stand against either.

Aware, very aware, that she still stood exposed, and finding a kind of strength in it, Belinda took a slow breath, and on it warned, “Someday I will be able to, dark prince.”

Dmitri's gaze slid down her body, taking in the changes made as she breathed in, then came back to her eyes with no more hint of laughter. “Aye, so you will, and on that day I'll kneel before you and be your vehicle for delight until needs you've never known you had are sated.” His eyebrows quirked upward. “Until then, I suggest you dress yourself so we might face your abbess with our happy reunion and make arrangements to spend time together outside the convent walls.”

Chagrined, Belinda did as she was told.