The Queen's Bastard

BELINDA PRIMROSE / BEATRICE IRVINE

19 October 1587 Lutetia, Gallin A gong and a whimper of dismay awakened Belinda, sunlight filtering through tangled lashes and turning her vision to red in the moment she became aware. The bell sounded a second time, and so did the whimper, the latter bringing a lazy smile to Belinda’s lips. She slid a hand across the sheets, encountering a curve of flesh and following it upward to find the sloppy spill of a breast. The nipple reacted as she plucked it, hardening and earning another whimper, more bewildered and shy than the first. Belinda rolled closer, setting lips and teeth to the girl’s breast, eyes still closed with lazy satisfaction, and slipped her hand down the girl’s body, sifting her fingers through rough curls. Dismay squeaked in the girl’s throat and Belinda lifted her mouth to speak even as her fingers delved inside the young woman, seeking a moisture that had not left her in the night.

“Is it different in daylight, Nina? You seemed eager under the stars. Is it frightening now? Is it wrong?” The need for domination had left her while she slept, content filling her mind as the pool of witchpower within her replenished itself. But an edge remained, though whether it was power demanding more or simply the irresistible toy in her bed, Belinda was both uncertain and uncaring. Her dark-haired parlour maid lay bound ankle and wrist, wide open for teasing and taking, far too sweet to ignore.

A cruelty that had left her had deliberately chosen to keep Nina spread through the night, a kerchief shoved into her mouth and tied so the girl’s crying wouldn’t disturb Belinda’s sleep. Nina’s hair was still damp with tears, pincurls slick and delicate as they stood away from her temples, and marks reddened the sides of her mouth where she was gagged. Viciousness was gone, but Nina’s helplessness woke pulsing hunger in Belinda’s veins, strong enough to kill any impulse to release the girl. “Shall I stop, lovely child?” Her thumb worked a quick hard circle between Nina’s thighs, sending a shudder of confusion through her body. The protest she’d begun was swallowed, eyes wide and uncertain. Belinda chortled, rolling her weight on top of the young woman, who exhaled sharply through her gag.

The bell sounded a third time, sparking irritation. Belinda flounced off the bed, knowing full well she behaved like a spoilt child, and snatched up a dressing robe to run down the stairs in. Being left to answer the door herself was certainly her own fault, with Nina occupied as she was.

Marius, a high-collared cravat not quite hiding bruised tooth marks on his neck, stood outside the door with eyes dark and haunted. “Beatrice…”

Belinda caught him by the sleeve and pulled him inside, molding herself against him as the door closed behind him. “Did you sleep? Your eyes, my lord…”

“I could not.” His voice was hoarse and Belinda smiled against his chest, then turned a sweet gaze on him as he clutched her upper arms. “I shouldn’t be here, but I cannot think for desiring you, Beatrice. What have you done to me?”

“Young lust, m’sieur. Young love. This is its taste.” Belinda loosened his grip on her by lifting her hands to touch his collar. “I was cruel. You must forgive me, please.”

He hissed, jerking his head, though his pulse leapt as she touched the marks she’d left. “Did you find a girl to sate your need, my sweet?” Her own heartbeat rose too quickly, surprising her with the dark playfulness in the question. She’d thought her power replenished, with no need to take more, but the impulse to tease the young merchant rode her heavily, pressing her beyond good sense back into passion. Good sense: she clawed at the memory of it, aware of how quickly it had fled her the night before, and feeling it falter again as Marius shook his head with another quick hard motion. Laughter and desire, so tied together she could fight neither, spilled through her, and Belinda stepped back, taking his hands. “Then let me help you.”

Hope flared in his eyes, so bright it made her laugh again, breathless. She shifted her shoulders, letting her dressing robe fall loose, so that only her arms, pressed to mound her breasts as she drew Marius with her, kept it in place. His gaze dropped to the soft flesh she displayed, arrested by it. “Lady Beatrice.” His voice was thick, tongue clumsy with desire. “I would not have imagined you so…” He swallowed, unable to find the word.

Belinda wet her lips, walking carefully up the stairs, each step taken backward so Marius kept his eyes on her body. “So wanton, my lord?” Her own voice was hoarse, more artifice than desire, hiding laughter instead of showing need. “I said my husband was old, not well suited for pleasing a young woman. I did not say he was…unimaginative. He had a young wife, and certain…desires to play out.” Laying the blame on a man who’d never existed, making him cruel and hard and creative, made it too easy to blur the line between herself and the role she played. Too easy, but necessary: Beatrice should never have Belinda’s expertise, not without an excuse that a young man, half in love with the idea of rescuing a lonely widow, could accept. “Let me show you how I can ease your need.”

She knocked her bedroom door open with her hip as she spoke, Marius fixated on her until Nina’s shrill scream broke through the gag as a pathetic, high sound. She twisted on the bed, hands knotted, hips raised as she struggled against her bonds and only tightened them with her efforts. A blush scarred Marius’s cheeks, his gaze torn between Belinda and the writhing, bound girl on the bed. “You have admired her, have you not?” Belinda whispered. “She has known a man’s touch before. Take your pleasure from her, and think of me.”

Nina screamed again, bucking and flinging herself against the bed. Marius flinched, his colour still high, and spoke with no conviction: “She does not want me.”

Belinda released his hands, letting her robe flutter around her as she went to the bed. “She will,” she promised, confidence burning inside her. More than confidence: a drive to prove herself, to explore, to control; all things lying outside Belinda’s sense of self, lying beyond her long-imposed stillness. There were reasons to draw back, reasons that seemed far away and faded behind a wall of golden fire. It was without hesitation that Belinda sat at Nina’s side, stroking her hand down the younger woman’s belly as she repeated, “She will.”

Nina shrieked again, spitting a curse that spilled new tears from her eyes and turned to dry sobs inside a breath. Belinda leaned down, kissing tears away and touching Nina’s breasts. She could taste her servant’s thoughts if she wanted to, helpless repetitions of resignation struggling with the need to defend her own honour, discomfort at the erotic potential of her mistress’s touch, a horrifying acquiescence that hungered for more. “Nina.” Belinda whispered the name, taking her hands away and shifting to sit at the head of the bed, lifting Nina’s head into her lap. “Are you afraid, Nina?”

The girl nodded, dying hope coming into her eyes, into her thoughts. Perhaps her mistress would let her go from the nightmare she’d been brought into in the dark hours, if she admitted to her fear. Belinda’s soft smile made that hope blossom and Nina twisted, not in rebellion this time, but in supplication. Love me, protect me, save me, I’ll do anything spun through the desperate action and Belinda’s own body tightened with desire. “Do you want him to fuck you, Nina?”

Belinda felt hot tears spill along her own temples, felt the tension in Nina’s neck as the girl shook her head frantically. Another smile curved Belinda’s lips, offering another shard of cruel hope to her serving girl. Power sang through her, encouraging, dominating, and Belinda leaned closer to whisper against Nina’s ear. “Do you feel any desire now, Nina?”

Nina shook her head again, coldness in her body and thoughts telling Belinda the answer was true. The witchpower needed no gathering: it was there, golden and heavy, exploring the nuances of Nina’s emotions. It heated and shot a throb of need into Nina along thin tendrils of connection, so sharp and unexpected that even Belinda gasped with it, uncertain if it had been her own choice to fill Nina with aching want. Belinda knew that aspect of desire all too well, memories of a lifetime’s training at learned arousal in a submissive position rising, then spilling into Nina. Caught by her own lust and the witchpower’s strength, Belinda focused on the ache in her own body and the heat of need climbing in her.

Nina gasped, eyes unfocused. Her hips relaxed, then lifted in a different way. Her nipples hardened under the onslaught of desires chosen for her, and triumph blossomed in Belinda’s breast. Hungry with the ability to do so, she sent shame through the witchpower, and watched tears fill Nina’s eyes again, even as she whimpered behind her gag and pressed her knees apart. Emotion washed back to Belinda, need rising until it hurt coupled with Nina’s humiliation at her body’s sudden betrayal. Belinda let the shame go, replacing it with rage. Nina vaulted upward as best she could, straining and twisting, cords standing in her neck as she screamed deep, raw sounds of fury against her gag. Belinda fed that, her own breathing growing ragged, until Nina’s eyes were shot with blood from the force of her protests and sweat soaked her body. Belinda sensed, more than saw, Marius hovering a few feet away, too taken with the sights to retreat and utterly uncertain of his place there. Nina’s diametric changes in emotion excited him beyond his comprehension, as did the girl’s dark head in Belinda’s lap.

“Is that better?” Belinda whispered the question over Nina’s hair as she released the rage. “Have you fought enough, love? Do you think we believe your anger?” Sensuality bred from exhaustion slipped in with the words, slow need throbbing again. Nina turned her head, whimpering as her body betrayed her again, and finally her gaze came to Marius. He took a rough step forward and she moaned behind her gag, lifting her hips. “Touch her,” Belinda commanded, and he put his hand between the girl’s legs as if Belinda manipulated his desires as well. Nina sobbed and Belinda flooded her with the impulse to submit and offer herself to the merchant youth. She accepted it, spreading her already-wide legs and pleading with her captured voice and eyes. A curve slipped over Belinda’s mouth: she had no sense of Nina believing her emotions and needs were anything but her own, betraying as they might be. A servant girl was an easy target, bearing nothing like the will of a prince or queen, but it could be done. Her gift extended that far.

Belinda looked up, a smile still playing her lips. Marius was trembling, his hand sealing the heat between Nina’s thighs. “Do you wish to be cruel to her, m’sieur? As I was to you?”

A flash of heat scored off him, then faded as he shook his head, uncertain of which woman to look at. Without touching him, Belinda couldn’t know his thoughts, but the emotion that poured from him said despite the momentary impulse, his better nature was true. That he wanted the helpless servant was unquestionable, but he had no need to do her brutally. Belinda pulled her lower lip into her teeth, watching the youth with dark eyes, and sought out that instant of spitefulness that had sparked through him.

It was there, buried beneath an overwhelming eroticism at the strength Belinda had shown the night before. He was a man; he did not think of himself as submissive, and yet he’d given her his throat and, mortifyingly, his arse, and liked it all. Belinda grasped that moment of humiliation and played it forward, making it larger than it had been; making him think on and remember it, when he preferred to put it away.

There was a woman here who could not resist him, Belinda whispered into that sliver of embarrassment. A woman who could not use him the way he’d been used. A woman to regain his manhood through, a woman to dominate and show his strength to. She would not dare laugh at him as Beatrice had seemed to, or would she? Was that amusement in her wide eyes now, recognizing that he’d been taken by a woman? Was she gagged to stop her laughter, those sounds in her throat not need or fear or desire, but mocking?

Marius curled his lip, hand twisting at Nina’s crotch to slam soaking fingers inside her. She cried out behind her gag and Marius’s eyes darkened further, free hand fumbling at his leggings to loosen them. Belinda’s heart raced, lip caught in her teeth as she leaned in, unable to stop herself from encouraging his building outrage with her own body language. Her breasts spilled forward, close to Nina’s face, and she felt a spike surge through the man, as his imagination had the servant suckle the mistress.

Belinda nearly laughed with split concentration, feeding enough of her own raw want to Nina to keep the girl on the agonizing edge of fear and desire. At the same time she drew on Marius’s barely acknowledged desire for domination, turning it and feeding it into anger that it had happened. He closed his hand over Nina’s throat and replaced his fingers within her with his cock, a hard claiming that pulled a raw gasp of pleasure from Belinda. Nina cried out in bewildered pain and Marius tightened his hand at her throat, every struggle she made pushing him deeper into the violence Belinda had called up in him. She laughed, rocking her own hips forward with enthusiasm, floating on physical and emotional links to the two she had made unwilling lovers.

It was easy. Too easy, perhaps; sex and passion were easily built upon, the mortal weakness for pleasure. So easy she’d become lost in it, letting newfound power stretch and explore even beyond what she would have thought to be her own limits.

Beneath lust, beneath desire brought to the boiling point, the thought that the witchpower was controlling her made a cool angry place inside her. Whether it did, whether it could, she would not allow it to happen freely. Belinda licked a hungry tongue over her lips, rolling with the need that built between Nina and Marius until it lay so close to completion it seemed nothing could stop it.

She threw her head back and with all deliberate cruelty, as much to herself as to the bespelled pair beneath her, called the stillness. Proving to herself that she could. The witchpower was second to the stillness. It had to be, even if it could burn away that recollection with passion. It had controlled her. Now she must control it.

Stillness swept over her, a lifetime’s practise stronger than any desire she had ever known. She distanced herself from the passion that wet her thighs, slowed her heartbeat and ignored the pain nipping at her breasts until it was gone.

Marius, unprepared for sudden flaccidity, croaked in disbelief, all his desire for violence, for sensuality, drowned as thoroughly in Belinda’s calm as it had been built by her witchpower. Nina cried out again, dismay at the cessation of emotion; Belinda had not even left her her own dismay and fear at what she’d been brought in to. There was nothing left for either of them, no climax, no pleasure, so cold and wrapped in the survival trait Belinda had developed for herself were they.

Passion was easy. Cutting its throat was power, and that power lay in the stillness, not the witch-magic itself. Relief trembled deep inside her, that even lost in pounding want, she could bring herself back under rein. Belinda rose from the bed a paragon of tranquility, dressing gown gathered around her breasts and leaving her shoulders bared. Marius lifted his head, face twisted with befuddlement, and she touched his cheek, heartbeat slow through years of training. “Finish her while I dress, my love.”

Not quite trusting her now-silent witchpower, Belinda released her hold on the lovers, leaving them nothing but their own emotions, Nina’s fear and Marius’s bewilderment. The young man scrambled away from the servant girl as Belinda left the bedroom, wrapped in carefully held stillness. “I’m doing this for Jav.” Eliza thrust her jaw out with the words, laying them flat between herself and Belinda. Belinda dropped her eyes, letting Beatrice’s easy smile quirk her lips.

“So am I.” She lifted her gaze, meeting Eliza’s evenly. “With that in mind, we might make the best of it.” Marius, flushed and flustered, had left before the noon bells had tolled. Belinda had climbed the stairs, skirts gathered and curiosity high in her mind, to investigate what he had left behind.

Nina, exhausted, confused, blushing to the tops of her breasts, had been left curled on her side, bindings released to let the girl huddle around herself, small and afraid. Surprise had wrinkled Belinda’s forehead. She would have taken the order brutally, the finish she demanded was one the pretty serving girl would never wake from. But that was her training, her expectation, and her cold way of facing the world. Marius was, at his core, a kind man; if Belinda had doubted it before, she no longer did. Left with a living, breathing, blushing girl, she’d bathed Nina herself, finding herself unaccustomed to the gentleness she felt at doing so. She liked the girl, and if Nina were to live, then best to do right by her, as much as could be done.

Nina had been calm when the bath ended, able to meet her mistress’s eyes. Whether a need to survive overcame humiliation or whether Belinda’s careful attempts to alter the girl’s memories were successful, Belinda was unsure. If her ministrations had worked, Nina’s night had been spent in Beatrice’s bed, indeed, against the cold and a fire that had burned out without new wood to feed it. Belinda told herself there was nothing of soft-heartedness in trying to rebuild the girl’s thoughts, only a test to see whether she was able, but a thread of unusual guilt ran beneath the experiment. She had been roughly used often enough to wish the edge could be blunted, and she’d been trained for it. Nina had found herself caught in a web she had no chance of understanding, and it brooked unexpected sympathy within Belinda’s heart.

She’d offered Nina a length of cloth to dry herself with, deliberately brushing her hand over the girl’s naked breast. Nina had squeaked, a small sound of startlement that flooded Belinda with the same innocent confusion and desire that a similar touch had once brought, and Belinda had been satisfied with her investigation. Nina had been set to airing a room for Eliza, putting out bedding and wall hangings of equal quality to the ones in Belinda’s rooms, and Belinda had gone to await her new housemate.

Eliza arrived with almost nothing. A stand for the wig made of her own lustrous black hair, a trunk barely touched with clothes. Her men’s wear was blatantly folded on top of the few items within the trunk, and she shook them out now, as Belinda watched. “Nina will do that,” Belinda offered softly. Eliza’s lip curled.

“I don’t need a servant, Beatrice. I’ve done for myself all my life.”

“I know. But if we’re to make the best of this, there’s no harm in settling into the house like you belong, is there?” To her surprise, Belinda meant the question, oddly hopeful she could make a friend of the prince’s beautiful friend. “Nina honestly won’t know what to do with herself if she finds all your things already put away.”

“Nina knows I’m a guttersnipe,” Eliza snapped. “Just as everyone else does.”

“Eliza.” Belinda took a few steps forward, putting her hand on the taller woman’s shoulder. Eliza flinched away, jaw set again. Belinda dropped her hand, but not her voice. “Have you noticed the prince has a friend from each obvious class, in you three? The nobility, the merchants, the poor. You were all too young, I think, for him to make that choice deliberately, but if you play it right now, it could make him even more beloved than he is. No one expects you to become something you aren’t. You know where you’re from, and God knows the nobility will never let you forget it. But if you’re generous with your time and your money and bring the poor to Javier’s attention, even the nobility won’t be able to despise you outright. And the poor will love you for it.”

Eliza spat, the sound so violent Belinda expected to see a glob of moisture land on the bedpost. “The poor will hate me as much as my father does for living.”

“Javier loves you,” Belinda said steadily. “The poor will see you as one of them who touches the stars. You can give them all a dream. Dreams are more precious than coin, sometimes.”

“What would you know about it?” That was spat, too, but Eliza had stopped putting her own belongings away.

Belinda drew her lower lip into her mouth, searching for an answer honest enough to ring true without belying the persona she’d assumed. “I could see it from the prince’s face,” she said after long seconds. “That to him, sleeping with the pigs was a colourful expression. That it was outside the possibility of reality. I wasn’t born to nobility, Eliza. My title came with my marriage bed.”

Eliza’s shoulders stilled as if she dared not breathe until Belinda’s confession was through. For her part, Belinda took a deliberately deep breath, speaking to those squared shoulders. “We were landed, though not generously. No Ecumenic seems to be well-endowed now, not after a half century of Walter rule. My husband was old, his wealth a gift for loyal service to the Reformation queen. We had no dowry to offer him, not even my beauty.”

Eliza’s shoulders pulled back, a twitch as loud as words. Belinda cast a smile at the floor. “Don’t bother,” she murmured. “You’re beautiful, Eliza. I’m pretty. I don’t need protests to other ends. Besides, it wasn’t beauty my husband desired. It was a girl wellborn enough to not cause comment and ordinary enough to…not cause comment. He had certain pleasures,” she said to the slight turn of Eliza’s head. “Pleasures a beautiful bride might have dared object to, or that a father with his daughter’s beauty to sell might have found ways to avoid. Pleasures a young man might risk saving a beautiful woman from. I…didn’t offer those risks. I never slept with the pigs,” she added more clearly, and out of all of it, that was the lie that stung to speak, “but I know more of that life, from my childhood, than I do of this one.” She fluttered a hand at Eliza’s room.

“Your husband,” Eliza said in a high voice, “died of old age.” There was a question around the edges of her statement, one that neither woman would allow to come to the fore. Belinda’s heart went tight, internal expectation that she didn’t allow near her features.

“I was fortunate.” Her voice, too, was high and soft. “Perhaps there’s someone you know whose age is creeping up on him.”

Stillness, as profound as any Belinda knew, settled over Eliza again. When she spoke, it was not to the topic at hand, its weight too heavy in the afternoon-lit bedroom. “Do you really think they could be made to see me as something other than Javier’s whore?”

“I think that if that’s what you want, you’d better begin by growing your hair out.”

Eliza turned, a startled hand going to her shorn locks, protest blackening already dark eyes. “It’s that or wear your wig all the time, and hair’s cooler than a wig. You’re acting out of defiance.” To her own surprise, sorrow curved Belinda’s lips. “You’re throwing it in their faces, that you’re a woman protected by the prince and so you dare to do the unconventional. I know you don’t like me, but I have no reason to lie to you when I say you aren’t physically capable of being conventional. You’ll be beautiful when you’re sixty, when all the rest of us are merely old. Wear the wig,” she said softly. “Grow your hair. Put aside the men’s clothes and dress in your own gowns. Set convention. Be generous to where you came from, and yes, Eliza, they will see you as something other than Javier’s whore. Not all of them. There will always be small-minded and bitter people. You’ll have to be stronger than they are. But you are beautiful. You’ll be able to make most of them love you.” She sighed. “And you’ll be able to make Jav regret all his life that he’s not the one who can have you.”

She kept her hands relaxed at her sides, against the impulse to curl them. The card she played was a dangerous one, using simple words and an unexpected truthfulness to ally herself with Eliza. The more-or less; she was as yet uncertain as to which it was-subtle manipulation of emotion lay within her capabilities, but Belinda found herself unwilling to indulge in that game. Alliances forged with words were better-known to her, more trustworthy, and would leave no mark of molding on Eliza’s mind. Whether that was even a risk worth considering, Belinda didn’t know, but better to avoid it if she could.

Besides, she admitted in a rare moment of honesty, she simply wanted the dark-haired beauty to like her. Friends were a luxury she was unaccustomed to indulging in, and a hazardous one at that, but Beatrice felt the lack more than Belinda ever allowed herself to.

“And will I have to share him with you?” Eliza’s voice was still careful, her body still held in statuesque quietude. Belinda coughed out a derisive breath.

“A Lanyarchan provincial? His fascination for me is fleeting, Eliza. You’ll have to share him with someone, but it won’t be me. My sights aren’t set that high.”

“He’s never shown even so much fascination for me.” Strain cracked Eliza’s voice now, making her sound more youthful than she was. Belinda finally dared move, taking herself to stand before Eliza and offer her a hand.

“There are four of you, and none of those men are your brothers. Giving yourself to any one of them changes the balance. Gives weight to that couple’s desires over the other two. Javier is a prince. Royalty does not afford friends easily. It may be easier, and wiser, to refuse to see you, than to risk the only friendships that go back so far as to withstand the test of sovereignty. You were children,” Belinda whispered. “Parents might care for the rank of person their children associate with, but children care nothing for it. You, I would think, most of all, more than Sacha or Marius, even, would stand that test. All you wanted was some pears.” Her smile was fleeting and sad.

“How do you know us so well?” Eliza didn’t take Belinda’s hand, but her question lacked accusation, filled instead with resignation. Belinda lowered her eyes to the floor, self-same smile turning wry.

“Envy, perhaps,” she replied, discomfited to find a degree of truth in that. Only a degree; the larger part was in needing to know, to see clearly, for her own survival. For the survival of her queen. “That, and I’ve been made a satellite around a body that works. Perhaps it’s easier to see you from the outside, looking in.”

Eliza sighed, turning her gaze away, and after long moments swore under her breath. “Have you ever had to grow your hair out from this length, Beatrice? It looks and feels horrible.”

Belinda’s mouth quirked, eyes bright. “We’ll just have to find someone skilled enough with scissors to make it bearable. Or buy you a sheerly impossible number of wigs.”

“With Javier’s money.” A note of bitterness sounded in that and Belinda, despite the earlier rebuff, deliberately reached for and caught Eliza’s hand.

“Not if you don’t want to. I have money of my own.”

“I don’t.”

Belinda tilted her head, curious; Javier had accused Eliza of stealing more than a palmful of coin off him, and Eliza had claimed to him that she had cash. But that might have been a fob to make a prince cease worrying; there was no reason to suppose the cheapside beauty still had the money. “Well, then. We’d better set about doing something about that, hadn’t we?” “You’ve taken her under your wing more fully than I’d expected, Bea.” Javier lay sprawled on a divan in Belinda’s sunroom, one long leg kicked over its edge, the other knocked up rakishly so his free hand could dangle over his knee. Belinda sat tucked into a chair beside him, allowing him her fingertips to pluck and drop idly as he watched her household run.

In ten days her home had been transformed. Eliza, given her head and a budget, had stalked through the Lutetian streets to make tightfisted deals with merchants bewildered by the stacks of coin she left even when they insisted a friend of the prince couldn’t possibly be expected to pay for the wares she bought. She purchased cloth, bejewelments, threads, all manner of sewing material, and before the first day was out a quiet young woman appeared at Belinda’s door, jaw set with determination. She would not, she explained hastily, be able to come back for the gown herself, but she would send her serving-maid. As it was, her mother believed her to be on the way to visit a friend, but rumour had sparked in the streets and she had seen for herself the gowns that Eliza wore. She wanted to be the first outside the prince’s intimate circle to wear a fashion made by Eliza, and was willing to risk her mother’s angry hand to have that first gown.

Eliza, irrationally offended at the link to Javier, had opened her mouth to refuse and Belinda had stepped on her toes with a solid heel, accepting the commission while Eliza’s full mouth whitened with annoyance and pain.

“Don’t be absurd,” Belinda told her acerbically, once the girl was measured and gone again. “You’ve taken a loan out from me. I have no intention of letting you welsh on it through foolish pride. Now, unless you intend to sew every gown yourself, I’d suggest you turn some thought to hiring a seamstress or two, and if you’ve any sense you’ll take one from your old address.”

Eliza had spluttered, railed, and ultimately acquiesced. By morning she had three seamstresses, all from her old quarters, and Belinda had kept Nina running all morning to bathe the three more thoroughly than they’d ever known in their lives. Eliza’s mouth had tightened, but she hadn’t argued; there was no profit in staining expensive fabric with dirty hands, or holding it against bodies smelling of refuse and shit when there were baths to be had. One of the women nearly refused the hot water, until Eliza reminded her of the pay she’d be earning for a little cleanliness. Muttering about it being against God’s will, the woman had climbed into the tub and emerged forty minutes later looking a decade younger than she had going in. She’d asked twice for a bath since then.

“It’s not my wing,” Belinda said mildly. “It’s the chance unshadowed by your wings, my lord. I’m glad to help.” She was privately delighted at how true that was; watching tautness fade from Eliza’s stance as it became clear she could succeed on her own was worth the disruption to the household.

“Unshadowed,” Javier murmured. Belinda shrugged.

“Close enough for her pride. They come to her now because of your friendship, but in six months’ time they’ll come for her creations, and in five years most of them won’t remember she was your friend first.”

“Will she make something for you?”

Belinda arched an eyebrow. “If I pay her, but if you’d like another gown to ruin on your garden floor, my lord, I’d as soon wear a muslin shift that can be replaced more easily.”

“No.” Humour curved Javier’s mouth momentarily. “I want something to present you to my mother in.”

“Your mother.” Belinda’s heart gave a sudden uncharacteristic thump, filling her throat. A note of panic cut through that fullness, Beatrice’s shock at the idea of meeting the regent briefly overwhelming Belinda’s own tense delight, though as seconds passed her own emotions conquered those of the role she played. She ached to meet Sandalia; after months in Gallin’s capital city, waiting on the queen’s return, she would finally have something to report to her “dearest Jayne.” There had been no sudden move against Aulun in the months she’d spent in Lutetia; indeed, if a plot was moving at all, Belinda half felt it was she who lay at the heart of it. Perhaps Robert’s intelligence was overblown.

Or perhaps the plotting of a queen’s murder was a slow and careful thing. Belinda felt the prickle of hairs wanting to stand on her arms, and refused her body that tiny show of emotion. “I had not thought…” The protest was token, a whisper, something to ease the amusement on Javier’s face.

“You can’t go skulking about the back halls of the palace forever, and,” he lowered his voice, “I have no intention of putting you aside just yet, for reasons you know well. Better you meet her,” he said more briskly. “Become a part of the court. Perhaps you’ll even find yourself a better match than Marius.”

“Would you take me from him, then?” Belinda asked, allowing the question to distract her for a moment. “It’s cruel enough what you’ve done. Would your friendship survive handing me to another noble?”

“Even if it were Sacha,” Javier said with arrogant confidence. “Marius’s heart would break, and in a week he’d find a new love. He’s my man, Beatrice, and his soul is a true one.”

“All the more reason to treat it well.”

Javier sat up, copper hair falling into his eyes. “Beatrice, are you telling me you’re in love with Marius? Do I keep you from your heart’s match?” Teasing and jealousy both tinged the question, Javier’s will flexing unconsciously toward her, as if to bend her to the answers he wanted to hear.

“No,” Belinda said, neither influenced by his extended power nor lying. “But a loyal man should be treated well, not used callously for his good heart.” As she’d used him, she reminded herself without rancor. His visits now were a paroxysm of discomfort, the merchant youth barely able to keep his eyes from Nina, nor willing to allow himself to look at her. Belinda’s work on the serving girl’s memory seemed to have held, and she showed no discomfort or interest in Marius’s presence than was dictated by their classes. Belinda lifted a shoulder and offered Javier a smile, letting thoughts of Marius slip away. “No matter. I would be honoured to meet your mother, my lord prince. Is she…is she like you?” Belinda drew her fingers over his, the question light and cautious. He chuckled.

“Flat-chested and redheaded, you mean? No.” A judicious pause. “She’s a brunette.”

Belinda laughed aloud, taken entirely by surprise. “I’ve seen paintings. She’s not flat-chested, either. You know what I mean, Jav.” Her voice lowered. “The witchpower.” There was no more vital piece of information. She’d come to Gallin expecting the challenge of-Better not to think it, not when her own gifts could pluck thoughts from the air around someone she touched. She withdrew her hand from his, knowing Javier might keep a similar secret close to his own heart.

“Is your mother?”

Belinda thought of Lorraine, slender and elegant on her throne. She was fond of pearls, their creaminess playing up her pale skin. Belinda shook off the image as surely as she’d forbidden herself thoughts of her duties in Lutetia. “My mother died when I was born.”

Javier shrugged, languid motion of dismissal. “Then there’s no comparison to be made there. You and I are what we are, Beatrice. We won’t worry about others, except in the impression you’re to make on them. Have Eliza make you something innocent, Bea. Mother will know better, but she likes the illusion that the women I keep are nothing more than youthful playmates.”

“As you wish, my lord.”

There was nothing innocent to the gown’s cut.

In a decade of learning to dress to hide herself, to please men, to make herself beautiful or plain, she had rarely worn something that made her feel as unrestrained as Eliza’s design did. It was not that it was overly immodest, or lacking in underlayers; the gown Belinda and Javier had ruined had been more daring in that respect.

Part of it was the sleeves. Capped and ruffled, they followed the curve of her shoulder, just covering it, and left her arms bare. Belinda had objected: it was October, and the palace was often cold. Eliza sniffed without sympathy and handed her a cape.

Even that enhanced the gown. The cloak’s ties, stretched across Belinda’s collarbones, made the round scooped collar’s dip seem all the more extravagant. Her breasts were shelved high, a new corset tucked beneath them, and a broad ribbon made a waist of the dress immediately beneath her bosom. It flowed loose from gathers below that, and above offered a shocking expanse of bared skin before a lace ruffle that scraped her nipples made a nod toward propriety.

Most extraordinarily, it was pink. Belinda had gaped at the fabric when it was brought in, unable to stop herself even as smugness played at Eliza’s mouth. “I thought you were putting away mannish things,” Belinda’d managed to protest, and earned Eliza’s laughter for it.

“Who says only men can wear pink? Or would you pretend that you’re too weak for the color, as they say women are?”

Beatrice might have stood her ground, but Belinda knew better than to fall for the taunt. She found herself eyeing the fabric more covetously despite herself, and had ignored Eliza’s triumph. It was frothy muslin, so light it would take layer after layer to give it a decent weight. That, Eliza had agreed with, though the final dress still all but floated, and with the afternoon sun behind her Belinda knew full well her figure would be visible through the gown’s layers. It was not at all innocent.

And yet, looking at herself in the mirror, her hair piled into ringlets that fell around her shoulders, even feeling lush and sensual, Belinda’s reflection to her own eyes looked virginal and soft. Pure. The costume was so far from fashionable it would very possibly horrify Sandalia, but if its outrageousness passed muster, the effect was exactly as Javier had asked.

“What I want to know is what’s beneath all that diaphanous material.” Javier spoke from her bedroom door, his reflection appearing in her mirror only after his voice wrapped around her. Belinda tilted her head toward his image, smiling.

“I thought you were waiting for me at the palace.”

“I thought I’d better investigate Eliza’s creation, to make sure we weren’t both to be humiliated.” He came into the room, drawing the knot free from her cloak and catching it as it fell. “My mother may have a stroke, Beatrice.”

“You said innocent,” Belinda said lightly. “Would Eliza deliberately humiliate me in front of the queen?”

“No,” Javier said so steadily Belinda believed him. “Mother likes Eliza, so far as she grasps her existence at all.” He dropped a curious kiss on Belinda’s bare shoulder. “Perhaps I should warn her you’ve been dressed by my friend. It might alleviate her shock somewhat.”

“I have other, more ordinary gowns, Javier,” Belinda murmured. “If you disapprove-”

“On the contrary. I approve enough that I’d prefer to keep you here and discover what’s beneath that dress.”

“I am, my lord.” Belinda turned around with an impish smile and stood on her toes to brush her mouth against his ear. “Nothing you’re unfamiliar with.”

“You’re a woman, Bea. It’s a woman’s gift to be eternally mysterious.”

Belinda laughed aloud and kissed Javier a second time before threading her arm through his. “Your mother’s taught you well. Shall we not keep her waiting, my lord prince? I do not,” and for once Belinda spoke with all honesty, “want to make a bad impression.”

“You won’t,” Javier promised, and with the murmured words, escorted her to the Gallic queen’s court. Sandalia, Essandian princess, queen of Lanyarch and regent of Gallin, was not a tall woman. Javier had done her a disservice with his teasing about her figure; even in the straitlaced corsets that were fashionable, her petite curves were hinted at. Nut-brown hair, richer than Belinda’s, was neither dyed nor powdered to hide signs of aging; unlike Lorraine, Sandalia had years yet before age began to catch her. She’d borne Javier as little more than a child bride, her husband lost to battle within weeks of Javier’s conception, and she had ruled Gallin in her son’s name and with her brother Rodrigo’s support for more than two decades.

Belinda was surprised to find her heart beating rapidly as she approached the throne. The assembly was far from the formal audience at which she’d met her own mother ten years earlier, but her own anticipation of the event was far more acute. Then, she had been preparing to kill a man for the first time, with no idea that meeting the Titian-haired queen would bring understanding to a vivid memory from the first moments of her life. Today she met another target, much higher in rank than the unfortunate Rodney du Roz had been.

Du Roz. Of the rose. A startling clarity and question fell over Belinda even as she heard Javier murmur her name, even as she curtsied deeply and kept her eyes lowered, waiting for Sandalia to assess her. In nearly all her guises she called herself Rose, or some variation thereof, stealing her father’s pet name for her in deliberate deference to him, and making a purposeful connection to the girl she’d once been.

How much of it, she wondered for the first time, was an homage to the first man who’s life she’d taken? Surprise burned her cheeks and she reached for stillness, then let it fade again: the flush might do her good under Sandalia’s watchful eye. Let the Gallic queen think her a Lanyarchan provincial, shy and overwhelmed at meeting the woman who was arguably the rightful ruler of Belinda’s homeland.

“Rise.” Sandalia’s voice was sweeter than Lorraine’s, a soprano of operatic quality, if it could be trained to sing. Belinda straightened from her curtsey, daring to lift her eyes to the queen’s for an instant, then dropping her gaze again as benefited her station. “We presume our son’s little friend designed your gown, Lady Irvine.”

Irritation flared in Javier’s eyes, as open to Belinda as the impulse for a hard look that she doubted he would dare lay on his mother. A sting of sympathy went through her; Belinda, in Eliza’s place, wouldn’t care for the condescension in Sandalia’s tone, either. That Javier felt outrage spoke better of him as a man than Belinda might have thought, and for an instant her heart softened toward him. There was nothing he could say, certainly not in public, that would not make him look the fool and insult his mother. One might be rude to street urchins, even, or especially, when they weren’t present, but offending the queen was a mistake no one would dare.

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Belinda’s whisper barely reached the throne. Sandalia leaned forward, brushing her fingertips against her thumb, not quite a snap of sound.

“Come forward, Lady Irvine. Let us examine Eliza’s artistry.”

Javier’s chagrin faded at the interest-no more than polite, but there-in Sandalia’s tone, and at his mother’s use of Eliza’s name. Belinda took two careful steps up toward the throne, its daised height helping to make up for Sandalia’s diminutive size. Jav’s throne, angled to the right and a step below the queen’s, still put his head nearly level with hers; she was, indeed, not a tall woman. “Turn,” Sandalia ordered, and Belinda did, eyes cast out and up to examine the throne room briefly and thoroughly from the closest she might ever come to royalty’s vantage.

Courtiers and hangers-on watched with envious eyes, belittling gazes, anger, and lust; they were a wash of colour, coveting Belinda’s position above them and resenting her for it. It took no gift to understand that; she could see it from their expressions, painted with politeness that lay too thin over rage: there were daughters who belonged where she now stood, favoured of the prince. There were sisters who had been overlooked. Belinda would find no friends within the Lutetian court, though should she hold her place with Javier, she had no doubt that dagger-smiling women would flock to her side.

“Pink,” Sandalia said when Belinda had completed her circuit. “An unusual shade for a woman, Lady Beatrice.”

Sudden impishness caught Belinda with a smile. “It was that or a tartan, Your Majesty. Mademoiselle Beaulieu thought the dress better suited to pink.” She let the Lanyarchan burr come through strong in her Gallic, everything about her delivery bright and delightful, though her heart hung between beats and she felt nothing but calculation as her gaze flickered to the queen again, seeking approval at her audacity.

Her heart crashed into motion again as Sandalia lifted an eyebrow so discreetly it didn’t so much as mar the smooth skin of her forehead, then allowed herself a full-mouthed twist of a smile that reminded Belinda unexpectedly of Eliza. “We are inclined to agree.” Sandalia’s voice warmed a little more, her brown eyes curious on Belinda’s face. “It is not an unattractive shade for a woman of your colouring. We’re not certain we would see it as pink at all, if there were not so many layers to enhance it. Tell us, Lady Beatrice, do you think we would look well in Mademoiselle Beaulieu’s fashions?”

Hope surged from Javier, so sharp and controlled it cut through Belinda’s heart. She kept her eyes from him, knowing that the answer couldn’t be tainted by seeking his approval; Sandalia would see that, and think less of her, and even more, less of Eliza, for it. But the queen had called Eliza by a title, far from the belittlement she’d first used, and that, combined with the question, emboldened Belinda to lift her gaze and study Sandalia’s petite form with a cautiously critical eye.

“Your Majesty…” Belinda tilted her head, then took a deep breath, risking her place in Sandalia’s court on a moment of truthfulness. “Your Majesty, if you will forgive a blunt Lanyarchan assessment, you have a form that women envy and men covet, and very likely the other way around as well.” Dismay sparked from Javier’s direction, but Belinda went on, eyes earnest on the queen. “This style of gown would enhance Your Majesty’s finest assets and help to prove that youth’s bloom is not yet gone from Your Majesty’s face or figure. That said, Your Majesty is not especially tall, and truthfully, I would have to see one of mademoiselle’s gowns on Your Majesty to say whether the straight lines of current fashion lend a gravitas and height that a woman of power might feel necessary, or whether the soft femininity of looser lines might enhance her strength in its own way. I would like very much to see it,” she finished, deliberately wistful, then added a twist into her smile. “If for no other reason than I believe Your Majesty would look lovely in this fashion, and the idea of the Aulunian queen echoing it amuses me. It would suit Your Majesty; it would not suit her.”

Nor would it. Belinda thought Lorraine too wise to fall for such an obvious prat, but she was vain and considered herself-rightfully, as a queen-as a maker of fashion. Moreover, there was something inherently youthful about the loose lines of Eliza’s design, and Lorraine’s vanity was tightly tied to an unaging, girlish self-image. To have such a fashion come out of Lutetia and to have it look poorly on her might injure an enormous pride that Belinda had no need to prick, but which suited Beatrice enormously.

Emotion raged behind Sandalia’s mild expression. Belinda could all but taste it, sudden glee on the Essandian princess’s part at the idea of flaunting the sixteen-year gap between her age and Lorraine’s. Belinda had no need to touch the queen’s hand and read her thoughts: amusement and avarice washed off her, almost as clear as words, and echoed the lines Belinda wanted her to follow. Setting a new fashion, one that played to her youth, would remind not just the Gallic and Essandian peoples but the Aulunians, that Lorraine was aging, and Sandalia still so young as to be able to bear another heir. That she was only just young enough hardly mattered; Lorraine, at fifty-five, still seemed to flirt with the idea, and if a people could accept that, they could far more readily believe that thirty-nine-year-old Sandalia might mother a second child.

Moreover, there was the question of Javier. Lorraine had no heir and Javier, as grand-nephew to Lorraine’s father’s, first-and by the Ecumenical church, only legitimate-wife, had in the eyes of many the only genuine claim to the Aulunian throne. Sandalia was comfortable in her position as regent, reluctant to give away her power to a son whom some murmured should have taken the throne at his sixteenth year. Reminding Aulun of Javier’s presence, even in so simple a way as introducing new fashions that played to vitality and beauty, could benefit an intention to set the prince on Aulun’s throne, leaving her own seat in Gallin unchallenged.

Belinda lowered her eyes, no longer certain if she followed Sandalia’s emotion or her own-plan, she found herself thinking, and the stillness came over her whether she wanted it to or not.

We face insurrection against our own beloved queen. Robert’s words hung heavily in Belinda’s mind, his voice as clear as if she heard him speaking now. She had come to Lutetia to seek out a plot against a pretender reaching for Aulun’s throne, and to whisper word of that plot in her father’s ear when the time came. That the seeds of it lay dormant in the men and women she’d met, Belinda had no doubt. It was too soon, too soon by far, to know whether Sandalia herself strove for the ends threatened by Robert’s warning, but something new shaped itself now. If those ends were not yet in place, then Belinda herself might put them there, might push and prod the pieces into place in order to devastate Gallin and Essandia alike, leaving Aulun and Lorraine and the Reformation unchallenged in western Echon.

Coldness spurted through Belinda’s hands, alien ambition rising in her so rapidly that only the safety of self-imposed and uncrackable control kept her breath from quickening. All her life she had been sent to spy, to do murder, and to inspire treacherous lust. Never had she found herself so close to guiding strings with her own fingers. There did not have to be rebellion to root out, nor a queen piece to dislodge. She could build the rebellion, and damn a princess in the making of it.

Inexplicable joy tore her heart upward, giving it the wings of desire and excitement, so unfamiliar to her as to nearly undo her. For an instant even her control faltered, a smile of astonishment playing at her lips. Had Robert intended her to step into such a powerful position, or did his intelligence lead him to deeper plots than she had yet seen? The latter she would discover, and the former, if it was not so, would be a jewel in her crown of quiet triumphs.

Sandalia saw the smile that touched Belinda’s lips and read it the only way she could, her voice light and amused. “It is a dangerous thing to heap laughter on one monarch’s head when you stand in the presence of another, Lady Beatrice.”

Belinda lifted her gaze to the Gallic queen and let her smile come more fully, no repentance in it. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

To her delight, Sandalia laughed aloud and Javier, at his mother’s right elbow, slumped a few inches in his seat, shooting Belinda a look that told her all too clearly what a fine line she’d chosen to walk. She didn’t dare drop a wink of reassurance, both propriety and her own relief preventing it, but her smile crinkled her eyes, more emotion than she was accustomed to letting through. “We will see your Eliza in our private chambers next week, Javier,” Sandalia said. “We prefer not to be offered pink. You may go.”

Fierce delight and a thick wave of gratitude swept out from the ginger-haired prince, though he merely inclined his head and crooked a small smile of his own. “Yes, Mother. I’ll tell her.” He stood, executing an elegant bow to the tiny woman who’d birthed him, and Sandalia put a hand on his arm as he turned away.

“Do not become too attached, Javier.” She spoke precisely loud enough for the command to reach Belinda’s ears as well as her son’s. “Your young lady is bold and clever, but Essandia and Gallin’s crown prince will not marry a Lanyarchan upstart.”

“I never dreamed he would.” Javier pitched his voice as she had, courtiers straining to hear and to look as though they weren’t trying to. “Nor did she.”

“Women always say that.” Sandalia released Javier’s arm, then offered Belinda a token that would have the court dancing on her wishes: “We would enjoy your company at supper tomorrow evening, Lady Beatrice. Wear something impetuous, and be prepared to discuss Lanyarch and Cordula. I would fain to hear how our sister Ecumenics do under Alunaer’s rule.”

“Your Majesty.” Belinda curtsied so deeply as to doubt her own ability to rise again, Javier saving her from an ignominious failure by offering a hand as she began to straighten. She ducked her head in thanks and slipped her fingers into the crook of his elbow, listening to a wave of murmurs crest before them and ripple after them as they left the hall.

Only outside it did she clutch Javier’s arm in half-real alarm. “Wear something impetuous?” she whispered. “What would she have me do, wrap a sheet in ribbon and leave my breast bared, like the statues of ancient Parna?”

Javier laughed aloud, as easily as his mother had done moments earlier. “We’ll ask Eliza to dress you, and your tongue will be impetuous enough. What were you thinking, Bea? Comparing Mother to Lorraine?”

“Comparing her favourably,” Belinda retorted. “Sandalia is nearly as close to belonging on the Aulunian throne as my queen as you are to belonging on it as my king. She should sit in Lanyarch as queen and you are to be crown prince to-”

“To a land of rabble-rousers in skirts, by your reckoning,” Javier said coolly, “as well as heir to Essandia and Gallin.”

Ice flew over Belinda’s skin, caution come too late. She drew her lower lip into her mouth, a show of contriteness that went deeper than she expected it to. “I’m sorry, my lord.” The apology was whispered, all she dared. “I meant no disrespect for the position you now hold. It is only-”

“An endless desire to replace Lorraine with an Ecumenic ruler,” Javier said, still cool. “Your lust, Beatrice, has better places to show itself. I will not hear words of sedition against Aulun spoken near my mother, not when the Titian Bitch seeks any excuse she can find to unseat her and have her put to death.”

“Sandalia is a queen in her own right,” Belinda said steadily. “It does not do to openly commit regicide, even if, especially if, you’re another regent. Take her power, yes, I’m sure Lorraine would do that. But having her killed, Javier.” Her voice softened. “I think even the Aulunian queen would balk at that.”

More than Beatrice’s naпvetй allowed Belinda to speak the protest. Lorraine’s reluctance to have another sovereign put to death was a topic at her court, discussed vigorously, well out of the queen’s hearing. Men thought it a sign of a woman’s weakness and her unsuitability to rule; women, if they thought anything, kept it to themselves, opinions private enough that not even Robert knew how the ladies of the court felt about the queen’s reticence in securing her throne through bloodshed. Belinda believed them to think as she did, because she did, that regicide was a dangerous precedent, and should it be used it must be done untraceably. It was not weakness, but prudence, and moreover, a public and well-known horror of such means could only stand the queen well should her rivals fall unexpectedly.

A bloom of satisfaction took Belinda’s breath, then eased it into a smile. She made it winsome, turned it on Javier in hopes of soothing his pique, and let herself ride pleasure that had nothing to do with gross physical delight and everything to do with a necessary job done well. It cannot be found out. It never would be. There were far worse things than a lifetime spent in the shadows: a lifetime of uselessness was a condemnation Belinda couldn’t imagine. Lorraine could, and would, retain her moral stance, and might well never know the details of the dance that helped keep her enthroned. She did not, in Belinda’s estimation, need to; impossible choices could be lifted from a queen’s hands and given over to another to ease her way as easily as might happen for anyone else. More easily, perhaps: the royal name inspired a loyalty that an ordinary man might never command.

“I think you understand less than you imagine of the affairs of royalty,” Javier snapped, unmoved by her hopeful smile. “Being on my arm does not make you privy to the thoughts or means of those above you.” His witchpower was extended, an unconscious and indomitable expectation that she would acquiesce. Belinda permitted herself the luxury of imagining to grind her teeth, imagining tightening her fingers on his arm in irritation, all in a core of her so deep she barely felt relief from those internal allowances. Pride, strange thing that it was, would not allow her to actually roll beneath the prince’s will, but unlike the moment of challenge at the drinking house, she at least did not stand against it, did not meet his urge to conquer with her own untouchable centre of stillness.

“I’ll watch my tongue, my lord,” she murmured instead. “Forgive me my impertinence.”

Javier relaxed, confident of his supremacy. “It’s easy to forget your provinciality,” he offered magnanimously, then dropped his voice to add, “particularly knowing that which we share.”

Belinda deliberately dimpled, stepping ahead to twitch her skirts at him, eyes bright with mischief. “A bed, my lord?”

Javier surged toward her with a laughing growl, and she skipped out of reach with an obligatory squeal. An instant later they were running down the halls of the palace, the one after the other, given over to playfulness that different circumstances forbade both from often indulging in. “I am bored with these tricks, my lord. There must be more the power can do.” Belinda lay on her belly on Javier’s bed, shoes abandoned and her feet kicked up behind her, a palmful of witchlight glowing in her hand. It winked out as she spread her fingers, earning Javier’s scowl.

“It took me months to call the light consistently, Beatrice. You can’t abandon your practise after a few weeks because you find it dull, nor can we risk pursuing our gifts too far. You know what would happen if we were found out.”

Beatrice flung away his protest with a wave of her hand, fully aware he was right and still too impatient to bow to his will. “How old were you when you began, my lord?” she said irritably. “I’m an adult, my power matured.”

“I was ten,” Javier admitted. “But that means nothing.”

“It means everything,” Belinda said. “You flex your power, Javier, weight others with your will. I wrap myself, hide myself, in mine. I’d been practising that for years by the time I was ten, long before power woke in me.”

“Power you hid until I showed you it could be used,” Javier said shortly. “Women fear strength, Beatrice. You should see that from your own behavior. Now make the witchlight again.”

Unwilling to throw the truth in his teeth, Belinda schooled her features and called another palmful of light to her hands. She wouldn’t allow irritation to fuel the soft golden orb; that would give Javier a score in a battle she could barely define. She wanted her strength to come from the control she’d learned through a lifetime’s practise, not from raw, manipulatable emotion. She heard Javier say, “Good,” and ignored him, subsuming annoyance beneath hard-won dominance. The witchlight wavered before stillness won out, serene confidence brightening her globe to brilliance.

“Javier.” Belinda looked up, half-imagining warmth radiating from the light between her fingers. The prince turned to look at her, golden shadows warming his face and turning his eyes the shade of her magic. She sat up on her knees, cupping power, and flashed a smile. “Catch.”

The impulse to throw it overhand, as hard as she could, shot through her. Instead she underhanded it, refusing the urge to use strength. It spun through the air in a delicate fiery arc.

The air between herself and Javier flexed, Javier’s will thundering as though she’d offered an attack and he could end it by overwhelming her. Silver shot through the air, a shield of his own moonlit power. Belinda’s ball splashed against it, golden fire raining down in droplets, and she flinched back, feeling the impact as if she’d crashed against something solid herself. Javier’s eyes rounded, youthful dismay that brought forth a laugh that Belinda usually kept well under control. An external focus of power certainly had its uses, but the prince would never match her ability to hide expressions. She stretched out her hand, calling the fallen sparks of witchlight back to her, and held them against her bosom when they’d returned, her eyes bright on Javier’s. “Did you feel it?”

Javier’s slow one-sided smile answered more thoroughly than words. “Try it again.”

“And have my nose smacked up against a shield again? I think not.” Belinda rubbed her nose in offense, then lobbed her power with her free hand, deliberately winging it wide.

Javier fell into a fighting stance, eyes snapping to the golden ball even as silver creased the air again. Belinda put intensity behind the desire to stop her power’s movement, and it brushed against Javier’s shimmering shield with a tingling caress instead of painful force. He split an astonished grin and she curled her toes under herself, lower lip caught in her teeth as they both stared at aspects of magic dancing with each other in the prince’s bedchamber.

“We should stop.” Javier’s voice had no conviction. “Can you imagine what it looks like from outside? Fire darting across my room and light glowing bright and white like no torch anyone’s ever seen?”

“The curtains are drawn. There’s nothing to fear, Javier. Or will you be content with always hiding your skill, never pursuing its depths? I will not.” Belinda tossed her hair as Javier’s expression darkened.

“We dare not show it, Beatrice. Tell me you’re not that great a fool.”

“I’m not.” Belinda brought a second ball of witchlight into being, the first one flickering but holding its position as fresh light cupped itself in her palm. “But look what you’ve done here, with just a little push. Shields, Javier. What else is possible? Can you make it invisible, so it can be used in battle?” She sent her own magic rolling out of her palm, taking a slow and circuitous route toward Javier as he glanced first at her, then at his own shielding. Concentration made a line between his ginger eyebrows, and the silver sheen of power faded a little at the edges. He exploded a breath of air, nearly a laugh, and shook his head.

“I may have to claim it’s Gabriel here to protect my royal arse. I don’t know if I can take the moonlight away, Bea. It’s always been there.”

“Concentrate.” The word came hard, Belinda’s attention split three ways, but Javier gave no notice of her second attack until golden witchlight spun out behind him and wrapped itself around his eyes. He shouted, clawing at his face, and his shield failed. Belinda shot up onto her knees, hand extended to direct her first attack toward the prince, who roared in offense as witchlight invaded his chest.

Laughter burst forth from Belinda’s throat and lost her concentration in doing so, both hands clapped over her mouth. For all her complaints, Javier was right: they couldn’t afford to be found out. The witchlight blindfold she’d wrapped him with faded and he glowered at her, shooting a cautious look at the door. No one came to it, his guards on the other side evidently unconcerned with noise. Her laughter, Belinda thought, might have been the saving grace after Javier’s shout.

For a moment they faced each other, both panting with effort before Javier curled his lip as if to damn the consequences and pooled silver light in his palms. With an instant’s thought he split the ball of power into two and lobbed them, one after the other, toward Belinda. She shrieked, half startlement and half play, and flung herself across the bed, dodging physically even as she tried to focus on the idea of hardening the stillness, pushing it out of her as a force of its own.

Silver splattered against a brief golden shield, the reverberated impact less startling than her success. Javier shouted with pleasure and Belinda, half off the bed, lobbed another handful of power at him. He ducked, not bothering to shield, and power exploded behind him as it smashed into the wall, leaving a scar above unlit candles. They both gaped at the mark on the wall before Javier turned toward Belinda, censure warring with admiration.

Heavy pounding on the door startled them both badly enough to jump, and Javier’s expression shot toward anger before he swept his hand over the mark on the wall and stalked toward the door, yanking it open. “All’s well,” he said sharply to a dismayed guard. Then, unexpectedly, a snigger ran over his face and he added, “A little disagreement over how the candles ought to be arranged. They said we gingers are tempermental, but God save me from the brunette in my bedroom. You’ve heard nothing at all, of course.”

The guard looked in nervously, eyeing the scarred wall and Belinda in equal parts. She scrambled for the edge of the bed, twisting her hands behind herself guiltily, as though she might be holding one of the maligned candles. Something in the guard’s expression changed, as though he was trying not to laugh at his betters, and then he stepped back with a rap of his fist against his chest. Javier closed the door and turned on Belinda, who ran to him, hands against his chest as she looked up with laughter and adoration in her gaze. “I am trouble,” she whispered in delight. “And you, my lord, you are control and restraint and-”

He put his hands over hers, silencing her with the gesture. Belinda drew a sharp breath, words lost beneath Javier’s grey gaze and the things his touch told her. Even in his irritation he sparked with life, a joy unrecognizable to him after a lifetime of solitude. She had brought that to him, saving him from lonely constraint; saving him from the Hell that he was sure was his for all eternity. For a few aching seconds her heartbeat matched his, breath stolen beneath an exquisite agony that knew he could not keep her, and still found itself daring to hope he might find a way.

The strength of passion undid Belinda, leaving her gazing at Javier in astonishment. A lifetime of duty had never warned her of being needed, not for herself; only for what she could do. Hunger crawled up through Belinda’s body, claws of determination curling in her groin and stinging her breasts, a taste of ambition burning away thought. She slipped her hands from beneath Javier’s and knotted them at his hips, making a clean insatiate line of her body against his. “Look at who we are together, my lord, my love, my prince. Think of what we could do together. Think of the thrones we could hold.”

But for all that he desired her, he went still, eyes darkening to silver. “We, Beatrice?”

Rage, pure and unexpected, took Belinda’s voice and flooded her body until she felt as though heat poured off her. It captured her power, building it higher, alien and exciting. Javier had no right, no place, in questioning her use of we, not when her power was clearly as great as his. It burgeoned inside her, begging to be used. It would be easy, deliciously easy, to let that rage ignite the very air, to burn Javier where he stood for daring, daring, to question her-!

Belinda forced clenched teeth into a smile, internal struggle more violent than anything she could remember. Pushing away outrageous anger and slowing her heartbeat should be the work of a moment, the calm of stillness captured and wrapped about her. Instead witchpower flexed and fought her will, demanding Javier acknowledge her as equal, even superior: she could do what he did not, disappear from plain sight, manipulate others into acting as she desired. He could be used like any man, made to think well of himself and his cleverness while all the time doing her bidding. That he stood against her was exciting, profoundly interesting, but his gambit would ultimately fail: he was only male, slave to her will.

Belinda shuddered from her core all the way to her skin, so profound Javier caught her out of concern, despite the challenge she’d laid at his feet. Eyes closed against another surge of unaccustomed ambition, she whispered, “We both know I could never stand at your side and share power, but I might offer it to you in support, from behind those thrones you conquered. I meant nothing more, my lord. Forgive me.” She opened her eyes, procuring a weak smile that had more to do with deep-seated uncertainty about her own impulse to dominate than the sought apology Javier would see it for. “Once more I’ve failed to watch my tongue, and I’d only just promised I would do so.”

Mollified, he drew her closer again, voice dropped as he murmured, “Then perhaps I should watch it for you, Beatrice.”

Belinda trembled, subsuming the outraged witchpower as she tilted her head back and opened her mouth to the prince’s.