The Queen's Bastard

BELINDA PRIMROSE / BEATRICE IRVINE

11 January 1588 Lutetia Five long days of watching had not managed to provide Belinda with the opportunity to steal the keys that Sandalia kept on her person. She had, once, made her way back into Sandalia’s private chambers with lock-picks in hand, only to narrowly avoid a tiny, vicious needle, its tip stained dark, popping out from the lock. Belinda had sworn under her breath, searching her skin for marks, and used a blotter to press the needle back into place. The lock required keys: they needed, it seemed, to be turned simultaneously, and two hands were simply not enough to hold in place two separate locks and turn them together. The witchlight couldn’t be formed into something solid enough to manipulate the locks with her will, and after over an hour of attempting the job, she had reluctantly given up and let herself back out of Sandalia’s rooms.

That had been one of the few times she’d successfully escaped watching eyes in the past several days. Much as she’d chafed at her guards in the previous month, they seemed ever-more ubiquitous now, perhaps the vestiges of Javier’s uncertainty about her faithfulness. She saw no one and went nowhere without armed accompaniment unless she was with Javier in his chambers.

The morning previous, she’d been awakened by a dour-faced dressmaker, who stripped her to the skin-Belinda palmed her tiny knife frantically and threw it into the bedclothes as she was hauled toward the centre of the room-then stood her up and kept her there, corsets bound tight, while he built a dress on her, regardless of the pleas she made on her bladder’s behalf.

He had none of Eliza’s wild imagination when it came to fashion, but if his purpose was to turn Belinda from a provincial Lanyarchan into a Gallic noble to be reckoned with within thirty-six hours, he succeeded admirably. Belinda had been permitted two breaks from standing as a dressmaker’s dummy to eat and relieve herself, and her peevish costumer had eventually deigned to let her sleep, warning he would be still earlier the next morning. Belinda shook off nobility’s habits for the servant she was accustomed to playing, and at least managed to eat and use the necessary before he arrived again to sew her into a gown that rivaled not just Sandalia’s wear, but even her own mother’s.

His one concession to time was that he allowed her a long while to stand in front of a mirror, barely able to believe it was herself she saw there. Some of the sourness left his face as she stood, hardly breathing while she gazed at the woman reflected back at her.

Belinda Primrose did not look like her royal mother. She had none of Lorraine’s dramatic colouring or, most especially, the widow’s peak that all eyes were drawn to, whether they met Lorraine in person or saw her portraits. Belinda thought her own face rounder than Lorraine’s, her eyes larger, her mouth more full; these were things she’d taken from Robert.

But bedecked royally, skin pale with powder and perhaps shaped more by maturity than she recalled it, looking at herself, she saw Lorraine in her for the first time. The gown was a shade the Titian Queen would wear: the green of young leaves, too bright for a winter day and yet utterly fitting for Belinda’s youth and skin tones. Moreover, it brought forth the green in her eyes, making them far brighter and more challenging than she thought them to be. Lorraine’s eyes were grey and narrow; cosmetics did something that hinted at her mother’s eyes in Belinda’s reflection. Even her hair, upswept and bejeweled with emeralds and rubies made, she trusted, of paste, looked lusher than usual, as if the firelight had taken up residence in it. She was by no means the redhead that Lorraine was, or even Javier, but there was golden warmth in what had always seemed to her an ordinary brown.

The gown itself was high-collared, stiff lace and gold threads itching furiously even through a wrap of soft old muslin. It thrust her chin high, making her neck long and elegantly slender. The shoulders were demure in their cut, sleeves coming to points over her hands. There was little of the puffed nonsense that could send a woman to walking through doors sideways in order to fit; that narrowness served to make her look delicate, a thought which Belinda might have laughed at, had she been able to catch breath to do so. She was a worker, strong and trained; to find herself looking fragile was all but beyond comprehension.

The bodice fit with appalling tightness, gold and white worked into the fabric to make a subtle pattern of roses. When the skirts finally flared at her hips, they, too, were far less extravagant than fashion dictated, but considerable enough to create a distinctively feminine shape to her form. Tall shoes lent her height, and only when Belinda finally turned from the mirror in astonishment did her chamber door open to allow Akilina Pankejeff entrance.

To Belinda’s surprise, and even more to her gratitude, the Khazarian countess stopped a few feet from the door to look her over with admiration that bordered on amazement. “The queen told me Pierre was her best dressmaker, even above Javier’s young friend and her radical designs. I believe it now. My lady Beatrice, you are exquisite.”

“Thank you.” Belinda’s voice sounded faint to her own ears and she took a careful breath, straining against the corsets to Akilina’s visible amusement.

“Let’s hope you don’t need to run anywhere today, my lady. I’ve brought you a gift.” She stepped forward, offering Belinda a necklace that caught gold light in its pendant, a thumbnail-size piece of amber, carved as a rose. Belinda gaped at the jewel, heart seized as though she were still a child, offered not one, but two new gowns for the queen’s visit. Akilina remained silent a few moments, long enough to let Belinda admire it, then asked, teasingly, “Do you like it?”

Belinda lifted her eyes, wide with unfeigned astonishment. “How could I not? My lady, I mean no disrespect, but why-?”

“It seems a suitable gift for a queen-to-be,” Akilina replied, and dropped a wink that would better suit a lecherous old man. “And perhaps you’ll recall someday who gave it to you. May I?” She took the jewel back and stepped behind Belinda, sending a thrill of nervous caution down Belinda’s spine. Her touch was light as she fastened the necklace, the stone settling against the hollow of Belinda’s throat, and both women turned to look at her in the mirror.

Amber flashed magnificent rich gold against the green of her gown, its chain so fine that it seemed to hover at her throat unsupported. The dressmaker-Pierre; he had never bothered to give Belinda his name-huffed a sound she took as approval, evidently satisfied that the jewel enhanced his creation.

“Thank you,” Belinda said a second time, peculiarly aware that those were not words that often crossed her lips. “It’s astonishing, and I shall indeed remember from whence it came.”

Akilina smiled with more pleasure than necessary, as if hearing more in the words than was obviously there. “You’re expected in the courtroom at the midday Angelus bells. I’d best go there myself; Her Majesty wants no one to distract from your arrival.”

Colour built in Belinda’s cheeks, less artifice than she might wish, and Akilina laughed as she excused herself, leaving Belinda alone with the dressmaker. “Thank you,” she said to him as well, and his customary dour expression reasserted itself. Belinda fought back another laugh and turned to look at herself a final time before drawing a careful deep breath. “I suppose I should go. I’m to wait in the audience chambers.”

“Wait here until the bells are closer to ringing,” Pierre said abruptly. “Had the woman not been a countess and bearing a gift, I wouldn’t have let her in. No one should see you, my lady. The effect is all the greater that way.”

Belinda blinked at him, startled and then not, at his sudden opinion. He’d had them by the bucketload when it came to her gown, that he should have them in how to best show it off should be no surprise. “All right.” She took another careful breath, dizziness spilling through her, and asked, “Could I perhaps have some wine, then? I’m light-headed.”

He fetched some, and, unexpectedly, a croissant with jam, then stood by with a napkin dangling from his fingertips and a glower set onto his face. “I won’t wipe my fingers on the dress,” Belinda promised, and he looked increasingly dour that she’d even spoken the idea aloud.

Food, more than the drink, helped to steady her head, though with having done no more than stand and turn, Belinda knew she would be desperately glad to rid herself of the corsets when the time came. The idea of curtseying before Sandalia made her dizzy all over again, and she walked carefully to a chair, leaning awkwardly against its cushions; the corsets had far too little give to allow her to bend at hip or waist so she might sit properly. Still, the change of weight seemed to help for a few moments, even if Pierre scowled at the possibility of his creation being wrinkled by her carelessness.

He could not have made a better dress if his plan had been to forbid her any chance of stealing Sandalia’s keys in the bare moments they would be that close to each other. Moving quickly enough, subtly enough, to pick the queen’s pocket was unlikely even if she’d been graced with the chance to wear one of Eliza’s gowns; doing it in the rigid contraption she now wore would be an impossibility.

She would have to risk the poisoned darts and damaging Sandalia’s desk. It lacked any degree of delicacy, but perhaps there was someone she could hang for it, some servant who could be made out as a spy. An Aulunian spy, no less, though the idea brought on a laugh so breathless it could be called a giggle, escaped her. Pierre, disapproving of levity, turned a ferocious glare on her, and Belinda subsided, nibbling her croissant and sipping at the wine. Her heartbeat was too quick, and stillness kept slipping away from her, even when she ought to have held it close and let it help her forget the discomfort of too-tight corsets. It had seen her through a day and a half of Pierre’s ministrations; to find it deserting her now was an irritation.

“The bells will ring the hour in some ten minutes.” Pierre’s voice cut through her reverie and Belinda shook herself, looking up. Her wine was finished, the croissant gone, and the napkin Pierre had offered was caught in her fingertips. She cast her thoughts back, recalling finishing the food and asking for the napkin, but it was a hazy memory, as if breathing shallowly had fogged her mind. She would be glad indeed to shed the dress, even if it made her regal.

“Thank you,” she said yet again, and took the dressmaker’s hand to let him help her rise; without it she feared she may well have been doomed to an afternoon of uncomfortable lounging, unable to rise or sit without some drastic change of state.

Breathing seemed to come more easily again once she stood; movement appeared to be the trigger, the changes of pressure tricking her into thinking she could draw more breath. She curtsied to Pierre, a small thing-the most she dared, and probably more than his station could ever aspire to-and left her chambers in a slow, stately glide that had far more to do with being unable to move more quickly than any particular need for the dramatically slow pace.

The corridors were empty, servants working to prepare a dinner feast and courtiers already in attendance in the audience hall. After five weeks of being watched, Belinda was finally alone in the palace, and completely unable to make use of that private time. Even if she dared slip through shadows to search Sandalia’s chambers again, there was no way to do it in the dress she wore. Better to follow what plan she had, and make her careful way to the audience hall to accept the gift Sandalia had in mind for her. It was as well she was a woman, and not a man come to be knighted. Bad enough to have the chamber hall doors swung open slowly in front of her, ponderously, with the rush of wind they made heralding her arrival even before a crier could shout out her name. Not since childhood, not since she’d bowed for the first time before the queen of Aulun, had Belinda felt the weight of so many gazes upon her.

Then, they had been tolerant, disinterested, amused. Now they judged, and not kindly: she was their prince’s intended, she was backwater and without connections, and she was loathed by many for those things alone.

That she was also, this one day, beautiful, softened some hearts toward her and hardened others. Even uncalled for, the witchpower stretched out, tasting emotion and bringing it back to her in powerful waves. She was prepared for that, braced for it; the stillness held a cool calm centre against which admiration and dislike and envy broke and fell around her. Out of the cacophony she could pick out individuals whom she knew well: Marius, a bastion of regret, his pain a lonely note in the mass of broader sentiment. Sacha, full of smoldering rage tempered by a sense of intent that Belinda couldn’t define.

Sandalia, nearly as cool as Belinda herself, as if she, too, had drawn stillness around her and did only what she must. Viktor, unexpectedly, his hunger and lust pounding through Belinda’s control to bring the faintest heat to her cheeks. Akilina, whose easy laughter felt spiked, as if she had a delicious secret no one else shared. And Javier, whose pride in Belinda’s appearance was softened by a heart-filling joy that Belinda could not, or dared not, name.

Below it all she felt a rumbling anger so thick and murky it seemed familiar; a human predilection toward violence, perhaps, the thin line that kept a group from being a mob near to being crossed over. She was not loved here, though with the thought her gaze skittered back to Javier. She was not loved here, save, perhaps, by one. Her slow footsteps measured the length of the hall with ear-shattering sound, no voices raised in murmurs to discuss her, even after she’d passed.

She curtsied before Sandalia, dropping straight down and inclining her head; there would be no forward bow from the waist to deepen her obsequiescence, not in that dress. For the second time she thought it was as well she wasn’t a man coming to be knighted; the prospect of kneeling in the gown she’d been sewn into was absurd to the point of bringing a smile to her heart, though she didn’t dare let one curve her mouth. She held the pose an achingly long time, the breath gone from her body before Sandalia finally murmured, “You may rise.”

She may, Belinda thought, but whether she could was entirely another question. Concentrated effort pushed into her legs helped her to straighten, so slowly she knew others would call it grace, so long as they didn’t see the tremble that suffused her body. She flickered her glance up once in thanks, then lowered it again, waiting for Sandalia’s words.

They came, soaring over her head to reach the back of the audience hall; Belinda was merely a tool in a showcase; none of this was for her. “Today we have the pleasure of granting a noble title to one who has done this court great service. We have lands in Brittany to our north that are ripe and wooded, well-made for hunting and, we are told, for planting. We regret that there are no living quarters yet on these lands, but we have arranged for a generous allowance so suitable quarters might be built.”

Delight sparked off Javier, boyish excitement at the prospect of overseeing the creation of a new retreat suitable for royalty. Sandalia, in marked contrast, remained wonderfully neutral; Belinda thought she herself could not do better. “We shall recommend artisans,” the queen went on, “and perhaps it will be our honour to visit when building is complete.

“We shall provide a stipend for five years,” she continued, “long enough that the fertile earth should begin to give its return, so our new friend might earn a living from her lands and provide to the crown some small measure of appreciation for the gifts we offer. All of these things and more we are delighted to give to one who has done us such service.

“But first,” she said, and her attention finally came to focus directly on Belinda. “First, we must attend to the matter of Belinda Primrose.”

The core of stillness within her turned to ice, utterly frozen, even as blood thundered in her ears, washing away all other sound. It brought back memory, memory so old that others said it couldn’t be at all: a battlefield, red-tinged and rushing, but what had once been comforting now only emphasized the words that she had carried with her since her birth.

It cannot be found out.

It carried fear into her, intense and sharp, a part of her that could never be cut away. It cannot be found out. Somewhere, extraordinarily distant to where she now stood, Javier’s voice tickled through the centre of her being, bewilderment lifting it high: “Mother?”

Outside herself, she could feel her expression turning to polite puzzlement, eyebrows crinkling as she glanced around herself, looking for the woman Sandalia had named. “Your Majesty?” The external performance would be flawless; that was the purpose of Belinda’s very existence, of the lifetime’s training in hard-won stillness that wouldn’t allow her body or face to betray herself, even when turmoil shattered her insides. It was helped, unexpectedly, by the prison of a gown she wore: Beatrice Irvine, who laughed too easily and let emotion come too quickly, was hindered by the constricting corsets and high throat, but Belinda Primrose felt at home within such constraints: she had been born to a carefully stifled life, and knew well how to work within it.

“Forgive me, my lord prince.” Akilina’s voice, silky smooth, laden with such insolent smugness that a cat would envy it. Witchpower rage lit up Belinda’s mind, golden ferocity that she thought must bleed from her eyes and nose and ears, so overwhelming was its heat. She did not, would not, let it fly free; her only hope lay in absolute innocence, and even a hint of anger now would be her undoing.

“There are things you must know about your intended.”

“Beatrice?” Javier’s voice cracked a second time and Belinda lifted her gaze to his, wide-eyed with incomprehension and a touch of fear.

“I do not know, my lord,” she whispered. “I do not understand.” Her pulse fluttered in her throat, such a gentle admission of girlish alarm and confusion that she almost regretted the gown’s choking collar.

“Do you deny, then, that you are called Belinda Primrose?” Sandalia’s question cracked out over the assembly, echoing against the chamber walls. No one within the hall spoke, their tension clawing at Belinda and telling her that to a man, they feared a word spoken would have them banished from the audience hall and they might miss the drama unfolding. A part of her wanted to laugh at the sheer eager hunger for theatrics; the larger part put away acknowledgment of the emotions that rose up behind her in favour of focusing on those immediately around her. Sacha had stepped forward, his fists clenched as he leaned toward Belinda, as though his very presence might crush her to the earth. Marius, too, had broken away from the crowd, making himself one of the little party surrounding Sandalia’s dais and standing subtly closer to Belinda than to her accusers. Only Eliza’s presence was marked in its absence. A sting of regret touched Belinda for that, though she had no idea what side the beautiful street woman might have come down on.

“I am Beatrice Irvine, Your Majesty,” Belinda protested. “Born in Lanyarch in 1565, daughter of-”

Sandalia cut her off with a sharp movement of her hand, and Belinda caught her breath, staying her words even as she cast another frightened glance toward Javier.

“Mother, what is this jape?” The prince’s voice was so low as to barely carry to Belinda, much less the breathless mass behind her. “Beatrice is-”

“A whore who’d do anything to get the Red Bitch off the Aulunian throne, Jav.” Sacha grated the words out, vicious delight in them. “Know how I know that? I-”

“-fucked her?” Javier interrupted sharply. A whisper ran through the gathering and subsided again, even as Sacha gave his prince, then Belinda, a startled look. Javier’s anger and his will rolled toward Sacha with undeniable power, demanding an answer; more, demanding the answer that Javier himself wanted. “Is that your tale, Sacha? You had the prince’s woman and she was willing to take you for hopes of getting her voice heard in the name of war? It’s an ugly ploy, brother,” he said, voice dropping to a whisper. “Could you do no better than that?”

Quick triumph bloomed and faded in Belinda’s breast as Javier stole the sting from Sacha’s truth; even Asselin could see that he’d lost, that any protest he made claiming exactly that had happened would only make him look the part of a bitter fool. He turned a look of hate on Belinda, who lifted her chin to regard him coolly, as a woman insulted.

“Cleverly done, my lord prince,” Akilina said without a hint of mocking. “If only Lord Asselin were the only one who knew of Lady Irvine’s past. Viktor.” Her voice thickened on the man’s name, rich sounds of the Khazarian language filling that single word even when her Gallic was typically barely accented.

The stiff-bearded guard stepped out of the ranks, gaze torn between Akilina and Belinda. Frustrated laughter ripped a thread free of Belinda’s internal control, witchpower striking through that weakness with only her half-formed intent behind it: he could not be allowed to speak. Javier’s will had moments earlier dominated Sacha; now Belinda strove to do the same to Viktor, seeking the familiar lines of passion and desire to conquer him with. She was his queen; he ought not have been able to betray her. The newness of her powers, the training at Javier’s hands instead of Robert’s-fury at her father, for forbidding her the knowledge she needed to save her own life, shot through the ties she had to Viktor, strengthening them. She was not Rosa. She was his heart’s desire, his loins’ desire. He could not, would not, betray her. She sent hints of promises toward him, the rewards to be reaped from remaining silent, even as she cursed the frailty in her that had allowed him an avenue to tell Akilina what he knew. He clearly had; there could be no other reason for him to be called forward.

Belinda should have killed him when she’d had the chance. Frailty indeed, a woman’s weakness, shared with her queen mother after all. She could let none of her anger show, only watch Viktor with wide eyes as she hammered loyalty into the sexual bond they shared.

“Beatrice?” Javier again, the strength of will that had sustained him now faltering. Belinda jerked her eyes to his, tearing her gaze from Viktor to the prince, and shook her head helplessly.

“I do not know this man, my lord.” Whispered words, desperate with confusion; she could not afford to slip. Akilina laughed, a soft warm sound that ripped through the chamber’s silent air.

“I watched them together, my lord. Watched Viktor go into an alcove and heard their sounds of passion. He called her Rosa, and she spoke Khazarian to him. Your pretense at mispronunciation was very good,” she added lightly, and repeated “Nyet” the way Belinda had, shortening the vowels to an i. “Viktor,” she said again, more heavily and in Khazarian, “tell them what you told me.”

Do not, Belinda willed, and turned her frightened gaze back to the guardsman. He hesitated, hands balling into fists, then finally shook his head. “She is not my Rosa,” he said thickly. “How could she be, so far from Khazar?”

Relief jabbed Belinda in the stomach and witchpower flared along the connection she had built to influence Viktor. Raw desire, pure delight, absolute pleasure: the guardsman made a deep sound at the back of his throat, shuddering as Belinda’s unspoken thanks caught him on a primal level. Marius, closer to her, made a similar sound, his cheeks darkening as he realised the connection between himself and Viktor. Belinda felt the merchant man’s heart spasm, the unwelcome pleasure found in submission suddenly making his pulse race. Belinda swallowed against a certain wicked mirth, seeing that the thing tying both men together was both having bent to her will. Javier, thank God, remained unaffected, the temptation she’d had to top the prince unacted upon and now a barrier to linking him into the domineering witchpower that ate at her veins.

White anger pooled around Akilina, though none of it reflected in her countenance. Admiration slipped through Belinda’s control; the countess was as skilled at hiding emotion as Belinda herself. They might have been friends, if the world had been utterly other than what it was.

“He lies,” a woman’s voice said in Khazarian, and the white of Akilina’s anger cooled. Belinda turned toward the new speaker as did the gathered throng, and among them she was the only one to know despair. Rationality gave way for an instant beneath a child’s furious protest: this woman, this piece of nothing from a remote Khazarian estate, could not be there. Ilyana could not be in Lutetia, her thick blond hair dressed as a wealthy woman’s might be, her clothes far finer than any servant might dream of wearing. She simply could not be there.

And yet she was, and all the anger and betrayed feelings in the world wouldn’t undo that. Hate thickened the girl’s voice, audible even if the words were foreign to most of the Lutetian court’s ears: “She’s probably got his cock locked in a box somewhere and will only give it back when he’s cleared her name. Too bad for her she don’t got the same hold on me. The bitch is a witch, Your Majesty. She did my lord to death and she’s got Viktor under her spell. Probably your prince, too, the poor bastard. Her name’s Rosa and I’ll swear it on my grave.”

Akilina translated, soft-spoken words loud enough for the first rows of courtiers to hear; ripples spread back through the congregation as the speech was handed from one listener to another. Belinda allowed growing horror and confusion to part her lips and wrinkle her eyebrows, tears stinging at her eyes as she turned away from Ilyana’s accusations to listen to Akilina’s translation of them. She took one tiny step forward, reaching toward Sandalia and Javier with shaking hands as she shook her head in denial. “I don’t know this woman, your highnesses. My name is Beatrice Irvine, and I don’t understand why this is being done. Surely I’m not a threat to a woman like her ladyship the countess.” She let herself laugh, rough sound of distress. “Even I know I’m not the best match for his highness, and that if treaties required it I would easily be set aside in favour of someone like Countess Akilina. I can think of no other reason why-”

“Must we play this all the way to the end, Belinda?” Akilina interrupted so gently Belinda overrode her for several words. It was the use of her name that stopped her, chills creeping over her skin and making her grateful once more for the all-encompassing gown: barely more than her fingertips and face were visible to give away any changes in complexion that she might be unable to control. However Akilina had found her out, the thoroughness with which she had done so devastated everything that Belinda had ever been. Her name on the other woman’s lips struck away her last chances at anonymity; even if she survived the next few minutes, Belinda Primrose would be forever associated with Beatrice Irvine, and neither would ever be able to hide again.

But she drew herself up, dragging all the self-respect and command that poor Beatrice had left to her and met Akilina’s eyes. “We must.” The quaver in her voice belonged to Beatrice, whose fright and anger went nowhere near the depths of Belinda’s fury. “I don’t know who Belinda is, or why you seek to destroy my reputation, but if you insist on playing this farce I’ll see it to the end, my lady. I see no other choice.”

Marius cried out, a warning that came an instant too late. Belinda whirled, less grace or power in the movement than she might have wished, her clothing hampering her. Ilyana, forgotten as Belinda made her pleas to throne and countess, leapt forward with her hands clawed, scratching and scraping at Belinda’s eyes. Belinda flung her hands up, green silk gown tearing with a shriek as dreadful as the sound that ripped from Ilyana’s throat. They collapsed to the floor, Ilyana’s weight bearing Belinda down, Belinda’s arms crossed in front of her face. She could fight back, even constrained by the gown, but Beatrice didn’t have Belinda’s taught skills, and to cower was far better than to out herself by competence beyond that which she should have.

Another sound, terrible and pained, erupted from Ilyana’s throat, and her body went rigid above Belinda’s. Whimpering, half crying in the shock and fear that her persona felt, Belinda dared lower her arms a few inches, then screamed outright as Ilyana coughed blood and bile, blue gaze accusing even as it turned glassy. Her body jerked, then slumped heavily against Belinda’s chest, blood drooling down her chin. Belinda screamed again, scrambling backward to get out from under Ilyana’s weight, and knocked into Javier’s shins. She looked up, gasping for breath, to see his unsheathed sword dripping blood on Sandalia’s pristine carpets, and his gaze locked on Marius who stood on Ilyana’s other side, his own blade still buried in the dead girl’s back.

Marius let go his blade as if it burned him, lifting his hands against a sudden shuffle of guardsmen. “Forgive me, my prince. I forgot whose presence I was in.”

“Away.” Javier’s abrupt word was to the guards, not his childhood friend. “I can hardly fault you, Marius, when your impulse was the same as my own.” Each quiet word was infused with apology, the most a prince could offer, and the silence that rang between the two of them made Belinda’s heart ache and pound and ache again, until spots of blackness came into her vision. Marius bowed finally, so deep it might have been mockery could she not, through waves of dizziness, feel profound sorrow and respect from the young man, and a lonesome forgiveness that would break the heart of the man he bowed to, could he but feel it.

“Beatrice.” Javier’s voice was gentle, as gentle as it had been to Marius. He offered her a hand, helping her to her feet; to her relief and embarrassment, the darkness faded from her vision as she was better able to catch a breath. “Are you all right?” He touched her cheek, making her aware of stinging where Ilyana’s nails had caught flesh, but she nodded, carefully folding her arms across her torso as she tried to hold the bodice of her gown back together.

“I’m all right, my lord. I fear the same cannot be said for my dress.” She offered a weak smile and cast her glance downward, not daring to look toward either Akilina or the queen. At her feet, though, lay Ilyana’s body, and the part of her that was Beatrice shuddered and turned away, hiding her face against Javier’s chest. His heart echoed loudly in her ears, and his voice came deep from her close quarters.

“Are you satisfied, Lady Akilina? What more would you have Beatrice go through? Your guardsman admits he’s lying and this wretched creature is dead for your plotting.” He rested one hand around Belinda’s shoulders, lifting the other to snap and gesture for Ilyana’s body to be taken away. His mother, still on her feet at his side, had not spoken or moved during the entirety of the display; now she turned her attention to Akilina as well, cool curiosity in her voice.

“This was not the entertainment we were promised, my lady. Our gown is spattered with blood and our dais stained with it, all for the purpose of making us look a fool, it seems. Is this what your schemings have produced, and nothing more?” Her every word was beautifully precise, as though rehearsed, and for a faltering moment Belinda wondered if it were. Surely Ilyana’s death had not been for show; Marius, for all his youth, would not agree to murder a woman for theatrical court.

That, Belinda thought with a ghost of inappropriate humour, was much more her sort of duty to carry out. But she had no sense of anything from Sandalia, for all that the queen stood very nearly touching distance away. Close enough to steal the desk keys from, but with no way to do it, not now, not at the heart of such a spectacle. The same horrid ghost of amusement came over her, squelching through her insides in search of a place to break free.

“I wish it were, Your Majesty.” Another woman’s voice, more painful in its faint familiarity than Ilyana’s for all that Belinda had never heard it speak the Gallic language before. She lifted her head, the small motion denying all the stiffness that wanted to come into her body. The depth of shock that Ilyana’s appearance had brought seemed to have faded: she felt no outrageous disbelief this time, only a sadness as deep as that which marked Marius.

The crowd of courtiers parted, allowing the woman to come forward. She wore, to Belinda’s surprise and agonizing pleasure, one of Eliza’s fashions, the loose flowing gown making the most of her height and her breasts, the vibrant lime fabric only wearable by a scant handful of women with her generous colouring. She dipped a curtsey, more perfunctory than polite, and kept her eyes on Belinda as she spoke. “I wish it were,” she said again, more quietly this time, as if the words were an apology to Belinda, “and I wish that I had not been called to stand here before you.”

“You are?” Sandalia asked crisply. She was cool and calm, unsurprised, unpredictable, unreadable. Satisfaction swept off Akilina, making Belinda’s stomach tighten.

“I am called Ana di Meo, and I am a courtesan from Aria Magli. I knew this woman in Aria Magli, when she called herself Rosa, but moreover, I know her father. Through him I also know that she is called Belinda Primrose, and that her purpose here is to sow dissent and revolution in Gallin’s heart, and if possible, to take the life of a queen.”

Thunder crashed through the hall, voices rising in shouts of horror and excitement and dismay. Javier tightened his arm around Belinda’s shoulders as if he could protect her from the surge of passion that swept the hall; indeed, the men and women gathered behind Ana stepped forward en masse, suddenly hungry for blood and information.

Belinda felt only silent astonishment, her soul emptied of anything else, even the witchpower rage. It would be her undoing to ask why, though she thought the question might be in her eyes, and that only the lush courtesan would read it as anything other than bewilderment. Indeed, Ana lifted a shoulder and let it fall in such a minute motion Belinda might have imagined it; it did not at all carry the answer she sought. Her gaze carried quiet regret but not guilt: whatever drove her, she would not lose sleep that night over betraying Belinda.

Belinda’s mind danced back to the moment they’d shared at the Maglian pub, the injury she’d seen flicker through Ana’s expression when the tavern’s overwhelming emotional attack had made her draw back from the other woman rather than give in to the sweet, unbartered passion they’d both felt. To condemn Beatrice Irvine as a falsehood seemed an extraordinary retaliation for a fleeting moment’s pain, but Belinda knew too well how desire dismissed could go astray, and had no other answer to consider.

Javier’s voice, above her head, cut through the clamor, witchpower giving it strength: “Who is her father, that you make this outrageous claim and lend it his name as backing?”

Belinda thought, did not say, did not so much as breathe, no, and could not let herself close her eyes or flinch in dismay as Ana said, “Robert, Lord Drake, favoured of Lorraine in Aulun.” “Beatrice?” Javier whispered her name through the commotion rising in Sandalia’s audience hall. Belinda allowed herself a laugh, a tiny shaking sound, and turned her eyes toward the prince, helplessness in them.

“What should I say, my prince? I can’t end this farce by agreeing with them. I’ve never been beyond Lutetia, much less as far as Aria Magli. My father’s name was Robert, it’s true, but he was Robert Stewart, and held a plot of land in the highlands of Lanyarch. I don’t know why they’re doing this.” She felt distressingly exposed, as if wearing Beatrice’s too-raw emotions so openly stripped her to the skin. As if Ana had the power to undress her with words and show the Lutetian court the truth of the woman beneath Javier’s consort. She could do nothing other than hold her ground and maintain her innocence, but doing so was draining the strength from her, and she didn’t dare reach for the witchpower’s uncontrollable fire to shore herself with.

“That is all you need say.” Javier pressed his lips to her forehead, then lifted his voice. “We find this woman, these women,” he said, including Akilina in his accusations, “to be troublesome and cruel-hearted. Beatrice has done none of you any harm, and a woman’s life has already been paid for your foolish, bitter games. I know this woman whom I hold in my arms.” Passion deepened his voice and he tucked Beatrice against his chest more solidly. “She has given me more joy in the brief months I’ve courted her than a lifetime has known before. I had believed myself to be alone.” His voice gentled again and he set Belinda back, his hands on her shoulders as he gazed down at her. The grey of his eyes was bright with passion, his fingers warm against her skin where her gown had torn. His thoughts whispered to her things he wouldn’t say aloud to the gathered assembly: She’s like me, more than any of you can understand. She shares the power that I have. I will make this all right if I have to bend each and every one of you to my will, even you, Mother. I will not be left alone again.

“She’s shown me that I’m not alone,” he said, almost for her ears only. “For that gift alone I would defend her to God Himself.” He looked up again, anger darkening his face. “And I will hear no more of these accusations. We know where Beatrice Irvine is from. Ask yourselves instead what ends the Khazarian countess gains from this drama.”

The crowd turned with his speech, grumblings twisting away from Belinda to focus on Akilina. Only the scant handful at the front of the throne room held steady in their stances: Marius, for whom Belinda could do no wrong; Asselin, for whom she could do no right. Akilina’s confidence flagged not at all, and Sandalia held suspicion above any other conceit. Javier’s steadfast trust was strongest, but the walls of dissonant, strident belief from each of them battered at her, threatening the still core she dared not release.

“I don’t gain a throne from it.” Akilina’s reply was light. “You know that as well as I, Prince Javier. My aspirations reach beyond my grasp, I fear; I must learn to content myself with lesser objectives. This has nothing to do with me, my lord, and everything to do with the safety of your mother’s realm. Of your realm, your Highness. How might I convince you of this?”

“Produce Drake,” Javier spat. “Let me hear it from his own lips. Condemn Beatrice that way.”

A serpent’s smile slipped across Akilina’s mouth and she curtsied so deeply as to border on ridicule. “Viktor.”

The guard, whose eyes had never left Belinda, flinched at the sound of his name, coming to attention. Akilina nodded and he broke from formation, stomping down the cleared aisle through the courtiers. They drew back, watching him as if he were an alien thing, dangerous to them, and Belinda watched him go with a surety and a sickness rising in her. The doors at the end of the hall banged open to allow him exodus, and shut again with a final-sounding boom behind him.

Rage, underlying, too familiar, scented of chypre in the back of Belinda’s mind.

“Do forgive me his condition, my prince,” Akilina murmured to the silent hall. “He’s been most reluctant to cooperate.”

Belinda trembled in Javier’s grip, not from fear but from fury. Akilina’s smugness, her utter pleasure in the situation, was truth enough as to who would be dragged through the doors when they opened again. Belinda wanted, even without seeing Robert, to fall to her knees, to cry aloud and shriek her horror and dismay. She wanted her hard-learned stillness to desert her, to be allowed to be a child abandoned and forgotten but still seeking approval; to break away from what she and her father had made of her and be nothing more than an ordinary woman in a trying position.

Like everyone else, she flinched when the doors banged open again. The tiny reaction felt like her single nod to humanity, for she could not allow herself to fall into despair as Viktor and another man dragged Robert Drake’s broken and bleeding form down the audience chamber aisle.

She did permit herself a cry of dismay, fingers pressed against her mouth, eyes round with horror. Beatrice Irvine was a gentle woman, and a man broken under torture was far from a sight she was prepared to see. She turned away, painful abrupt movement, to hide her face against Javier’s chest, a plea shaking her voice: “My lord, I don’t know this man. What have they done to him? Surely we’re not such monsters…?” Witchpower raged beneath her skin, searching for a weakness that would permit it to burst forth and act, though what form that action might take, Belinda didn’t know. She only knew she wanted to lash out, and that she felt a marrow-deep resentment of the training that forbade it as powerfully as she felt reassurance at that training’s strength.

Grimness filled Javier’s response, more in feeling than in words. “I believe I would know the Aulunian queen’s consort anywhere, even as badly treated as he has been. Akilina, you will explain this.” Sandalia, at his side, sparked with a curious blend of resentment and relief that her son seemed finally willing to take a leading position. He was too much like his uncle, Belinda thought abruptly, and wondered once more at the father who’d gotten Javier on Sandalia. The distraction, however brief, was a welcome one, diverting some of the edged fury elsewhere. Sandalia, just within Belinda’s line of sight, said nothing as she turned to the Khazarian countess, awaiting answers to Javier’s demand.

“Viktor and Ilyana both spoke of this woman.” Akilina gestured with her hands as she spoke, graceful motion encompassing first where Ilyana’s blood patterned the rugs, giving the name to the dead girl, then including Belinda as a woman unworthy of naming. “They knew her as Rosa, on a Khazarian estate north of Khazan. My lover Gregori Kapnist died there and on that same day this woman fled.” She all but wove a spell with her words, speaking softly enough that everyone leaned in to hear. “Tell me, Prince Javier, does your woman wear a knife at the small of her back?”

Javier’s expression became nonplussed, turning from Akilina to Belinda and back again. “Not that I’ve seen.” He offered a faint smile, suggesting, “If you like I could take her away from here and investigate in private.”

A voice distorted with lust and envy came out of the crowd: “Strip the whore here and let us all see you’re not bespelled, Red Prince.”

Javier turned shocked eyes toward the courtiers, who tightened ranks rather than fall apart and expose the speaker. Belinda tried to call a blush and failed, anger at her inability bringing colour to her cheeks a moment later. Javier set his jaw and returned his attention to Akilina, whose unimpeachable confidence had faded a notch at his confession. “I had her journey traced,” the countess said, voice lowered further. “To Aria Magli, where she met this woman and this man, whom I know myself. She was sent here from Parna, Your Highnesses, to bring down your throne.”

“Drake has confirmed this?” Javier scraped the words out, earning Akilina’s laugh.

“Not yet, my lord prince, but he will. Or perhaps Belinda could spare him the pain, and tell us all the truth.”

“My name is Beatrice Irvine!” Belinda cried her reply with all the passion she could muster, frustration bringing tears to her eyes. Emotion leapt in Robert, sharp spike of pride that all but undid her, making tears more real than they had reason to be. “I do not know this man or this woman! They mean nothing to me, and I have no way to prove myself to you!”

“You do,” Akilina said, full of liquid delight. Beatrice turned to her, hands spread beseechingly, and Akilina offered a razor smile. “Perhaps his highness would lend you an already-bloodied sword, and you might end Robert Drake’s life to show your loyalty to your affianced and his kingdom.”

Honest astonishment dropped Belinda’s jaw, though it was Beatrice’s horror that whispered, “You want me to…kill a man?”

“You’re eager to bring down the Red Bitch’s throne, aren’t you?” Akilina asked gleefully. “Kill her favourite, prove your loyalty to Javier, and force Lorraine to overextend herself into an attack on Gallin in one smooth blow.”

Sandalia stepped forward, exchanging a brief glance with Javier as Belinda turned to them, heartbeat high in her throat. “My lord, my lady, I…I can’t-”

“It’s a dangerous game you play, Akilina.” Sandalia spoke thoughtfully, watching Drake and the Khazarian woman in equal parts. “You stand in our court and suggest a ploy that would have our country invaded by another. You must be very confident indeed of your resources.”

Akilina, with wonderful precision, said, “As confident of the breath I draw, Your Majesty. There is no need to fear it will not come.”

Sandalia turned her head, minute movement, to examine the raven-haired countess. “We are pleased to hear your sureness. We extend to you an invitation to remain safely within these walls until your confidence is borne out.”

Muscle tightened in Akilina’s jaw, the tension vanishing into a smile an instant later. “I’m honoured by your concern for my safety, Your Majesty, and delighted to accept.”

“Very well.” Sandalia turned her attention to Belinda with a familiar flickering of her fingers. “Proceed.”

Thickness seized Belinda’s throat, making her suddenly, itchingly aware of the gold-threaded lace scratching against the silk wrap. “What?” Her bluntness had charmed the queen in the past, but it was simple disbelief, not artifice, that forced the question.

“Marius’s sword will serve,” Sandalia said. “We do not care for the idea of Drake’s blood staining our son’s weapon.”

“Your…Majesty…cannot expect me to…” Beatrice’s faintness was Belinda’s own, though the reasons were different. Sandalia arched an eyebrow sharply.

“Our Majesty can and does. Prove yourself, Irvine, or we will have you stripped and searched as threatened. Are you ours, or are you his?”

“Your Majesty, I cannot…I cannot…kill a man-”

“Do it!” Sandalia’s command lashed out with a strength bordering on the witchpower’s.

Golden rage swept Belinda’s vision and she lurched forward a step, the “No!” that tore from her throat a memory before she heard herself speak it. Sandalia, only inches away, drew herself taut with fury-better fury than fear; so much as that, Belinda could still sense even in the midst of pounding, hungry power growing in her-and lifted a hand.

Belinda screamed, aborted sound of terror as guards closed around her, reaching for the torn places on her dress and shredding the fabric from her body even as she writhed and fought against them. A roaring cheer filled her ears, ugly thrills and delight from the courtiers, and she felt a dagger split the laces of her corset, bindings springing wide.

She caught it as it fell forward, clutching it to her chest and gasping for air, half astounded at the ease of breathing. Another pair of hands caught her underskirt, tearing its seam, and it fell away to expose her backside. A gasp of disappointment ran through those closest to her as it became clear no betraying knife pressed against her skin. She lifted her eyes as the guards parted, searching for Javier and trusting her fear and pathos to soften his heart.

There was kindness in his eyes. “You ought to have acted, Beatrice, but perhaps a woman’s weakness is too much to overcome. Let me do it for you. You will respond, sir,” Javier said with simple arrogance. “Confirm the duchess’s accusations or refute them, but you will share with us your answers.” He extended a hand, princely gesture, and with it Belinda felt inexorable willpower come forth from him.

She lifted her head, turning it toward Robert: a mistake, for it warned those eyes that knew to look that she had an expectation of what would happen. Only Javier himself might have those eyes, but of everyone in the courtroom, his were the ones she could least afford to betray herself to.

And his power bludgeoned into Robert’s like a toy knight playing at siege against Lutetia’s great walls. The scent of chypre filled Belinda’s nose again, stinging her eyes to unplanned tears. Javier made no audible sound, but surprise lanced through him like a weapon itself, and he redoubled the effort, pouring a lifetime of easy command into the expectation that Robert would fold beneath his will.

Drake chuckled beneath his breath, the softest surprise in the sound, so muted that only one who knew him might recognize it. Agony lanced Belinda’s heart, tearing her breath away as she saw, too clearly, the houses that would fall with her father’s response. Deception upon deception, so tangled and twisted together she could no longer determine where to begin or end. Who, who, who was the Gallic prince’s father, if not Dmitri, whose look was not at all stamped on him; if not Robert, whose surprise answered any doubt that might have lingered within Belinda. There had been secrets hidden in Javier’s parentage, secrets revealed by his use of power; and now, unstoppable, came the last act of treachery that would undo her in his eyes forever.

Because her father had put a binding on her mind, and whispered it is too soon, it cannot be found out, and today, here, in this place, he had no idea that his daughter had come into her power, and that Javier de Castille had trained her in it, and that to fight the prince in the battleground of the mind was to condemn Belinda to death.

Knowing none of this, Robert lifted his gaze to Javier’s, thin bloody smile cracking a mustache and beard that had grown too long under Akilina’s tender care. He shook his head, clucked his tongue in disapproval, and pushed back, such a flexing of strength that it seemed the whole room moved beneath it. Javier staggered, his hand dropping, and then rage came into his face as he turned toward Belinda. Every aspect of his emotions were threaded with betrayal, truth brought to light by Robert’s easy hand with the witchpower. Belinda knotted her hands in her corset, holding it against herself as if it made a shield, and wrapped stillness hard as iron around herself.

Javier’s anger came down on her with the weight of anvils, fury lending its silver sheen more power than she’d ever felt in him before. It wasn’t the playful jousts with witchlight; there was nothing visible in this attack, only wordless, silent will bearing down against Belinda’s shields. Javier searched for weaknesses, believing her, as a woman, to inevitably have them. To her pride, he found none, his power rebuffed.

Pride lasted barely an instant. She might be his equal in raw strength, but the Gallic prince had a decade of training with his gifts that she did not share. A fresh onslaught rushed her, no longer searching for weakness, but simply crushing: that Belinda’s power had been locked behind a wall in her mind was something not only she remembered, and with inexorable force, he squashed and contained that power again, pushing it back to where it had once been.

Belinda held a pinprick of light against him, struggling to keep it alive within her mind. They had practised shields and throwing blasts of power, but her gift was an internal one, safety from the outside world making an impenetrable cloak around her. It was not made to defend against a comer that pressed against it relentlessly from all sides; its instinct was to make itself smaller, hide in the shadows, go unseen.

Silence came, and the light winked into blackness.

Peculiarly, it was the gown’s destruction that stung her first upon awakening.

A chill had already set in, making her aware of her bones in a distant, aching way long before consciousness was reached. It was dull discomfort, the sort of thing she had so long held herself against that it barely seemed worth considering; certainly it was unworthy of disturbing her rest. Later, when some of the blackness had retreated, she became equally aware of the temperature of her flesh: not so cold as to freeze, but far below what it should normally be, as though she’d kicked off covers as she slept and left a shoulder bared to the night air. She reached for the duvet and found nothing, its lack too removed to be meaningful to her. She drew in on herself, making herself a small curled thing against her hard bed without reaching awareness.

In time, sensibility began to creep back into her: the vague realization that her bed was made of stone; nothing else was so hard, nor pulled the heat from her body even when it felt warmer than the floor around her. Neither words nor clear thought conveyed that to her, merely a recognition of fact as deep as the cold in her bones. Sound encroached even more slowly: the drip of water broken by an occasional spill of the same, splashing against rock. Droplets spattered her body when that happened, bringing a shiver that she felt in her jaw and stomach but not on her skin’s surface. A dank scent came with the water, too-old straw grown soft with mold, and the stench of human offal gone uncleaned.

She knew where she was before consciousness came, and when she opened her eyes to darkness, all that was visible was a remembrance of Pierre’s exquisite creation, shredded and torn and trampled beneath guards’ feet. Courtiers would have surged forward to snatch up scraps, using a shimmer of gold or green to prove that they had been there the day Beatrice Irvine fell beneath the look of angry betrayal in Prince Javier’s eyes.

Belinda sat up slowly, stiffness in every joint. Her hair fell around her shoulders, shockingly warm against the coldness of her skin, and brought a rash of gooseflesh to her. The dichotomy in temperature made her nipples tighten, absurd erotic thrill that activated genuine desire. She closed her eyes against the darkness, wet her lips, and whispered, “Javier,” on that wash of longing, then folded her arms over her breasts, clutching her shoulders to contain what little heat her body had left.

She had not been left so much as her petticoats, all those things ripped away from her on the courtroom floor and left there when they took her away. That she had been given nothing at all to cover herself with suggested the remainder of her life could be counted in hours, not days: no queen would be fool enough to allow such a prize as Belinda was to die of exposure before she could be hanged in a public square, and the oubliette would ensure her death by cold within a few days.

Belinda found she was not at all afraid to die, and wondered if that was fatalistic acceptance or blind denial.

She got up because it was better to move than sit and wait for her fate to come. Better to force blood to flow through her body in hopes that doing so might warm her than to remain seated against the cold and feel life drain out of her one slow minute at a time. She found the walls of her prison: there was enough room, just, to open her arms and turn in a circle; stone brushed her fingertips when she did so. A few pieces of straw had enough strength to prickle her soles, barely felt through numbness, and the faintest crack of light came down from above. She stretched her arms up, searching for a ceiling, and found nothing. For an instant the darkness pressed on her, weighty, before she let go a raw laugh and cupped her hands together, calling witchlight.

A soft glow lit her palms and the confines of her prison. Above her, out of reach for even a tall man, a square of stone made most of the dungeon’s ceiling. An oubliette, yes: simply a roofed pit to be dropped in and forgotten about, too wide to somehow scramble up its sides, too deep to reach its lip even if it were not closed up. There would be other cells elsewhere, but she-and Robert, she warranted-had earned special attention, a private dungeon such as this to prevent any other prisoners from falling on them and risking Sandalia’s sport.

Her fingertips seemed warmer, the witchlight bathing them. Belinda spun it out, expanding the golden ball and stretching it until she literally wrapped herself in it as she so often imagined herself wrapped in stillness. Some of the ache faded from her bones, whether from actual warmth or an illusion of it she neither knew nor cared. It was a way to pass the time, building gowns of light from her power. When the warmth that spread over her body came from a different source, urging an exploration of her sex with her fingers, laughter broke through, unexpected in the cold stone prison. She’d learned to ward herself to some degree against the raging passion that built when she extended power to influence others; to find it equally demanding when she turned her magic on herself was disproportionately amusing. For a time she hoped with active enthusiasm that a guard might be sent to check on her; the prospect of being discovered locked in a black hole in the ground, writhing with passion, struck her as tremendously funny, an emotion Belinda was completely unaccustomed to experiencing or giving in to.

When stone finally scraped against stone and external light flooded her little prison, though, she had long since left witchpower desire behind, and instead lay shivering against the cold stone floor in darkness. Less stagnant air flooded her cell, bringing new chill with it, and she squinted toward the light.

Javier crouched above her prison at its lip, torchlight behind him to hide his face in shadow, though shadow did nothing to disguise the cold anger that rolled off him. He stretched out a hand, opening it; a dagger, no more than palm-length, fell to Belinda’s floor with a clatter. “This was found in your bedclothes.”

Belinda uncurled herself and reached for the blade, tucking it against her chest. She could thwart Sandalia’s execution with that small knife, testing its sharpness in her own heart rather than Sacha Asselin’s, as she’d once dreamed. “Perhaps the countess hid it there,” she whispered. “Javier, I am so cold.” She risked, as she had never risked before, a thread of power stretching toward the prince, seeking any hint of sympathy he might have for her.

“Not for long,” he said implacably. “You die at dawn tomorrow. You and Robert Drake, for intent to kill a queen. Lorraine will have to deny you both to keep her throne, but it should go a long way toward destabilizing Aulun.”

Fear, it seemed, had a place in her after all. Belinda’s muscles contracted all over, urging a soft squeak of terror from her throat. “How can you believe the Khazarians over me?” The tremble in her voice was real, Belinda no longer able to tell her own emotions from Beatrice’s. “I’m like you, Javier. Witchbreed,” she breathed.

The slightest sense of hesitation broke Javier’s surety. Belinda, waiting for the chance, whispered encouragement to that hesitation, sitting up on the dirty stone floor to lift her gaze toward the prince’s. She made a pretty and pathetic picture, she knew, all wide eyes and tangled hair, dirt smeared across her naked body from lying on the ground. She kept her arms folded over her chest, a woman’s frail modesty, and sent her own concept of her helplessness toward the man crouched above.

“Witchbreed like Robert Drake. Your father.” Javier’s words were relentlessly certain, but doubt fogged his emotions, hope sparking through in pulses he tried to quash. “I felt the power in him.”

Belinda shook her head, sending curls over her shoulders. “If it’s there, perhaps that explains how the Red Bitch has kept her throne so long. I don’t doubt you, my lord.” She shivered, half artifice and half genuine. “I don’t doubt that he has the power, but your mother doesn’t. Did your father? My mother died when I was born, and my father herded cattle. The power we share belongs to us alone, not our parents, Javier.” The wish to be free of the oubliette was beginning to pound heavily in her veins, witchpower content to ride quietly until the possibility of escape was at hand. Now, with the stone ceiling removed, the urge to blast through delicacy and demand Javier bend to her will grew harder to fight, for all that Belinda knew it would be folly. She lacked the strength to stand against him with brute force; that had already been proven. She must be subtle, convince him from within of her innocence and of the rightness of her freedom. “I do not know him, Javier.”

He made a fist of his right hand. “Then why did you spare his life?”

Incredulous, frightened laughter broke free. “My lord? Kill a man? Me? Perhaps it’s easier for a man.” Belinda’s voice shivered with respect and not a little fear. “I am only a woman. I have no stomach for such things. That…that girl, the Khazarian girl…I had never seen a violent death so closely, my lord.” She shuddered again, casting her eyes down as much to hide truth as to play at horror and a woman’s gentleness. “I couldn’t do that to any man. Forgive me for my weakness, please, my lord. I did not mean to betray you with it.” She tightened her fingers around her dagger, against her chest, letting the action look like another shiver as she willed her captor to believe her. It was a reasonable argument, she whispered into the witchpower. A woman’s flaw; Javier knew well she was a flawed creature, but she could never be the two-faced creature Akilina had made her out to be.

“Even if I believed you,” Javier said slowly, “my mother never will. Robert Drake is a prize beyond imagining, and to take him from Lorraine far too great an opportunity to pass up. Innocent or not, your death is as much part of the pageantry as his will be.”

“But he is the prize,” Belinda echoed. “I might-” She caught her breath and cut the words away, letting Javier’s hope and curiosity spike again. Making him ask, rather than putting the words into place for him.

“You might what, Beatrice?” He kept his voice low, as if someone might be close enough to overhear. Belinda shook her head, trembling.

“Nothing, my lord. Only a woman’s fear. Only my fancy. Forgive me,” she whispered again. “I couldn’t ask it of you.”

“It,” he murmured. “To allow you to escape.”

She cast her gaze up, full of desperation, and reached one hand toward him, fully aware of her nudity and of the affect cold air had on her body, her nipples tight as if in sexual arousal. Javier’s focus slid from her face down to her throat, then to her breasts, where it lingered as she caught her breath. Desire pricked in him, fed back to her and heating the witchpower she stretched toward him; pink suffused her cheeks and spilled downward, unmistakable excitement to a man whose eyes wanted to see it. She looked to him as her savior, herself a helpless, dominable creature in a position of supplication; she had been his, was his, should be his and could be again through his choosing.

That she lifted only one hand, the other still holding and hiding her knife, was a detail she willed him to ignore. When he hesitated she let herself laugh, a sound of tears, and looked away, fingers curling in despair. “I am a fool.”

“No.” The word was strangled. “Beatrice-is it Beatrice?” Javier asked, half desperate himself. “Or are you Belinda, as they named you? It hardly matters,” he added in a whisper. “How can I let the only woman like myself die?” He moved abruptly, stretching flat on his stomach to reach a hand into Belinda’s prison. “Come. This will not be comfortable, but I can ask no one for help.”

Belinda scrambled to her feet, shaking off cold as she grasped Javier’s hand and almost cried out with its warmth. “Hold tight,” he said. “Both hands.”

She bit her lip and dropped her knife into the bits of straw. The blade struck stone at her feet, sharp metallic clang cutting into her heart: it may have betrayed her, but it was one of the few tangible things her father had ever given her. To lose it in the depths of a Lutetian prison was more bitter than she could imagine.

Less bitter than losing herself to those same depths. She clasped Javier’s hand and wrist with both of hers with all the strength cold muscle could muster. Javier braced himself against the pit’s edge with his free hand, eyes dark and serious on hers. “Are you ready?”

She only nodded, not trusting words. Javier surged upward, jaw clenched against strain. Belinda’s feet left the ground and she cut off a shriek, caught somewhere between surprise and delight at his strength. It took effort not to kick, even realizing extra movement on her part would make her weight more difficult to manoeuver. He breathed hard, fingers white around her wrist, and she felt the determination of witchpower flare, as if it lent him the strength to draw her up. He went to hand and knees, the arm that held her still dropped with her weight, then opened his mouth in a silent roar as he dragged her halfway over the precipice’s edge, falling backward as he did. She scraped over rough stone and swallowed pain, then pulled herself the rest of the way free, crawling forward to collapse against Javier’s chest. Both heaved for air, Javier more than she, though he sat up within seconds, pushing her onto her heels with his hands hot on her shoulders. Questions fired in his gaze and she drew breath as if she might answer them before they were so much as spoken.

His eyes dropped to her breasts again, and desire, irrational and beyond thought, crashed through the hold he had on her. Belinda caught it with her own witchpower, stroking it and feeding it back to him hungrier than it came to her, then reached inside his grip to pull his shirt open. His warmth bled toward her, drawing her close, and she moved forward, hands dropping to loosen his breeches.

“Beatrice-” A dungeon floor was not Javier’s idea of an idyllic romancing spot, that much was clear from his thoughts. Belinda stopped his mouth with a kiss, sliding cold fingers into his pants to curl her fingers about him, earning a quiet gasp and a thrust up into her hand. He said nothing else as she crawled atop him, wrapping her arms under his shirt and melding her body to his. His body was hot against hers, painful relief from the cold, and she rocked against him, letting herself whimper as the chill began to recede from her limbs. Witchpower responded to the heat, coursing through her and demanding satisfaction, but she held it off, burying her nose in the prince’s throat as Marius’s words haunted her: we have not shared physical love.

Love was too dangerous a word for one such as she, even before Akilina had moved to expose her. It left vulnerabilities that she couldn’t afford; she had understood that since her childhood, watching Rodney du Roz fall to his death; watching her father so deliberately whittle away at the emotional structure he’d provided when she was very young. Belinda Primrose was not meant to know love, and she had not until lately felt its lack in the life that she’d led.

Javier slipped his arms around her, holding her as close as she held him. She could taste his thoughts, running free beneath the surface of passion, and shivered at them: they spoke too much of freedom and an escape from responsibility, ideas only whispered at in night’s darkest hours; they were not daylight thoughts, no more for the prince than the assassin. It made commonality between them and flavoured Belinda’s need with a kind of despair. All, all she could offer was what she did: her body, her mouth, her gentleness in place of coupling whose enthusiasm often touched on violence.

“Come away with me.” She spoke against his mouth, knowing even as she said the words that even if he agreed she could never allow it to happen. Javier breathed laughter, breaking away far enough to look questioningly into her eyes. “Come away with me,” she said again. Witchpower surged, rash agreement; whether it was her own or Javier’s she couldn’t tell. “Tonight. You and I are alike, Javier. Let us be together. Forget the rest of the world.” She echoed the thoughts that he did not dare speak, could barely imagine speaking, and for the few seconds that they hung in the air she reveled in them, using them as her only way to offer in words what she hoped to say with shared bodies.

The thrill of the idea peaked and passed, reluctance flooding in its place, and her frustration rose, sudden and sharp. “Come away with me.” She tore at his reluctance, weakening it, searching for a core that wanted to do as she proposed. “Do you not wish to? They could never find us, Javier, not if we didn’t want them to. Perhaps you’d no more be a prince, but you would be free. Come away with me.” She rolled her hips into his, offering physical gratification as pleasing at the dangerous thought she suggested, and Javier’s resistance faded. It was a fairy tale, a dream for playing at, and for a few moments she lost herself in it as they came together in love.

He held her, gasping roughly against her shoulder, after, then drew a ragged breath. “If we’re to go we should go now, Beatrice. Time must not be wasted.”

“You have duties today, do you not?” she whispered. He hesitated, then nodded reluctantly, and she tightened her arms around him. “You must be seen attending them, Javier. I’ll go to the docks and secure a ship to leave on the late tide. You’ll leave the palace after supper-can you lose your guards?”

He laughed, low raw sound. “Sometimes. Yes, I will.”

“Then meet me under moonlight.” Belinda called witchlight to her fingertips, soft and golden, tracing it over his skin. He shuddered beneath the touch, eyes turning dark with desire, and a thrill of delight spasmed through Belinda’s belly. Even a prince could be conquered, it seemed, if only she took the right path to it. “Come to the docks and I’ll meet you there tonight, bring you to our ship, and we’ll go away together.”

She meant it. A jolt of astonishment cut through stillness imposed by habit. She meant it. Her heartbeat leapt, rabbit-quick, and she found an incredulous laugh bubbling deep inside herself. For those brief moments she meant her words with everything she had in her. If it were at all possible, she would make her promise of We’ll be together real.

It was not in the least possible. Her spike of hope and excitement was already dying, larger purposes reminding her of her place and her duties. Desire twisted at her and faded beneath a curdling in her belly, a bone-deep revulsion of abandoning her mother’s cause. It could be no other way, but she could never whisper that truth to Javier. Her life and freedom depended on his agreeing to her scheme; he must believe her, even when she herself could not.

She brushed her mouth against Javier’s and rose from his lap, arms wrapped around herself again to ward off the chill. “Tonight, Javier.”

He closed his breeches as he came to his feet, putting warm hands on her shoulders again. “And until then will you run around Lutetia naked?” he asked, a trace of wry concern in his voice. He released her to close a hand in his shirt and Belinda stopped him with a touch.

“I can get to the laundry and find clothing there without being seen, I think. The prince of the realm cannot be discovered walking the palace halls half naked, my lord. It would not go without comment.”

“Prince no more after tonight,” Javier said quietly. Steadfast emotion came through, no regret in it at all. He had never lived a life uncoddled by warmth and comfort; Belinda felt a bitter note that her lies would spare him learning regret for his decision. Eliza, she thought, would understand. “Are you certain, Beatrice? Your skin is still clammy.”

She offered a weak smile. “Then perhaps we should leave the dungeons, my lord. If we can. The guards…?”

“Dismissed.” Javier’s voice scraped low and raw. “Reluctantly, but dismissed. There is some good to being Sandalia’s son. They aren’t bold enough to forbid me a last while with my lover, even if I saw the laughter behind their eyes as they left. Help me put the lid back on the oubliette. No one will look for you until tomorrow dawn. You’re to have no food, no water. Nothing until the priest comes to hear your confession, and then the axman.”

“So that I’m weak and can’t fight.” Horror crept over Belinda’s skin, chilling her more deeply, and she moved to the oubliette’s far side, helping Javier to wrench the lid back into place. Stone boomed, and beneath the reverberations, Javier offered her his hand. Belinda shook her head, catching his fingers to kiss their tips, then whispered, “You can’t be seen with me, my love. This cannot be found out. Go ahead, and I’ll make my own way behind you. How long did you send the guards away for?”

“Until I seek them and send them back to duty. I’ll give you a few minutes to slip away. Be careful, Beatrice.” He hesitated, words caught in his gaze, then brushed his thumb over her bottom lip and left her knowing that things remained unspoken. Belinda watched until he was out of sight and his footsteps were faded before she drew shadows around herself, using her cloak of stillness to push away echoes of the things he hadn’t said. Even so, they followed her as she slipped through the palace halls naked and unseen, until resolve faltered and she dropped into a corner, hands clutched over her head as she keened, all but silent, through her teeth.

Duty lay on her like weights, pressing down into the corners of her mind. Never in her life had it seemed onerous, never something to be shied from, and yet the heart of her wanted to keep the promise she’d made to the prince. Wanted to bolt from the palace and book passage on a ship to somewhere mad; on a ship to the Columbias, where no one could ever find them. Attending dreams had never been her station in life, was not now her station, and still the wish to follow them crashed through her with every heartbeat, pulling her body apart joint by joint, as the cold had done in the oubliette, sinking deeper and deeper into her. Her breath came raw in her throat, hurting, dry sobs accompanied burning eyes. Sickness roiled up, sharp and bitter, and she rolled onto her hands and knees to hack sour mouthfuls onto the floor.

Her fingertips found the seams of tightly placed flagstones. Belinda dug her nails down and inched forward, dragging herself from crack to crack. Duty lay ahead of her. Loyalty to her queen, to Aulun, to her mother, to the throne: all the things she had ever been. Somehow there was blood on her fingers, beneath the nails, but she crept onward, knees scraping, eyes dry, mind screaming protest and duty trumping all. Steam bathed the laundry hall, comforting to muscles strained with the effort of continuing on. Teeth gritted with anger at her weakness, Belinda pulled herself into a pile of rough warm cloth, undisturbed by the sharp smell of sweat and work clinging to the unwashed clothing.

She was not meant to lose control like that: she ought to have been stronger than the cold that had invaded her core; ought to have been far stronger than the inexplicable war between loyalty and-even then she shied from the word, unwilling, perhaps unable, to name the emotion Javier had awakened in her. It was damnable, whatever it was: Belinda Primrose had spent a lifetime making herself stronger than the things around her; to find herself fallible now was an outrage. To find herself longing for a life other than the one she’d known was inconceivable. There was work to be done, and everything she was, everything she had ever been, everything she would ever be, was bound to that work.

And yet she could not stop trembling: her muscles ached with the tremors and her jaw locked from keeping her teeth from clattering together. Laundry maids hauled clothing from around her, cursing at the cloth’s unaccountable weight. Desperate, she crawled further into the pile of fabric, burying herself in it and releasing witchpower for more conventional methods of hiding. She had slept in the oubliette, but rest had evaded her; that she could not afford to give into the fresh weakness of warmth and darkness was her last clear thought. She didn’t awaken until weight left her body and cold air brushed over her. She came out of the laundry before a maid’s gasp became a scream, one hand slapped over the girl’s mouth and her other arm wrapped around her neck, cutting off air. “Scream and you die. What time is it?” She loosened her fingers and the maid caught a tiny, terrified breath of air.

“S-supper, my lady.” The appellation made Belinda want to laugh: such deference was so well-bred into the serving classes as to come through even under the most absurd of circumstances. Had she been caught as the poor girl in her arms was, she, too, would have been as polite.

Supper. The day was gone, then, and her chances to make right most everything were slipping away. Sleep had cleared her mind: there were so few things that truly needed doing, and all of them were to be done in the name of duty, not desire. “Has Robert Drake been executed yet?”

The girl shook her head, frantic little motion. Belinda exhaled in quiet relief, then brushed her lips against the girl’s cheek. “Do you know who I am, girl?”

She nodded this time, and Belinda clucked her tongue, soft sound of dismay. “You ought to have said no.”

Witchpower roared with satisfaction as Belinda cast the girl’s naked body away minutes later, blood on her thighs staining the laundry, knotted fabric at her throat hiding any marks Belinda’s small hands may have left. She smoothed the dress she’d taken from the girl-it fit well enough-and tucked her hair back, then slipped out of the laundry rooms as a faceless one of many.