The Pretender's Crown

BELINDA PRIMROSE

She doesn't have to be there to see the battle.

The glee that rises in Belinda Primrose banishes every other moment of delight in her life as if they were the stuff of dreams, wispy and unobtainable. It is as though the storm itself carries the shapes of ships and soldiers to her: the storm, and Javier de Castille's witchpower, which she can feel on the water as though it's a living thing. Javier is aware of where his ship is-in the lead, a place of arrogance and power-and aware of where the other ships of the armada are in relation to him. Silver spiderwebs between them, catching water drops and shimmering with life; Belinda only needs to touch it and it vibrates. She can imagine a quiet gasp birthing from that touch, a sound any man might make in the midst of intimacy.

Her own power searches out the other ships, the ones not latticed together by Javier's magic. Those ones are her own: they become golden with raindrops, not so much bound to each other as becoming bright spots in her mind, warm against the cold of the storm and against Javier's moonlight power. With these bits of magic, she draws an image in her mind.

The picture is a dire one.

The storm has driven the Aulunian navy back and the armada forward, and the armada's greater numbers are allowing them to close on the Aulunian ships like a crab's pincers. They are not quite surrounded on all sides: the cliffs at the Aulunians' back are dangerous, and while they still may be miles from shore, the Cordulan captains are being cautious. The pincers are still open at their tips, leaving a narrow gauntlet that the Aulunians could try to run. Assuming they survived that run, it would leave them racing for the Taymes with the entire armada on their tails. Tall protective cliffs and men ready to drop boulders onto enemy ships would only slow the Ecumenic army a little, should it come to that.

Belinda, as though she reaches for a lover, opens one hand, then the other, and makes herself supplicant to the sky.

For weeks she has practised with the quieter weather in Alunaer. Has brought rain, has pushed clouds around the sky and has blown skirts and hats awry with wind. Once, walking back from Dmitri's home, she brought a patch of sunlight with her, no larger than a half step in front of her or a half step behind her. She imagined the sisters would see it as walking in God's light, graced by His presence, and had been obliged to let her little square of warmth go before entering the convent, for fear fits of giggles would overcome her. She'd scolded herself once more that Beatrice Irvine had been bad for her, but in the obliging tag-along sunlight, she'd felt no real remorse.

She has entertained herself with rainstorms and downpours, and they have only hinted at preparation for opening herself to the raw, uncaring weather of the straits.

There is no will behind the storm; that's her first thought. It truly is uncaring, a thing of neither malice nor goodwill; it simply is, just as the sun is, just as the ocean is. Nothing in it pushes back at her magic. Dmitri makes a warning in the back of her mind, things he's said in study: that a weather pattern changed here affects the weather there; that it is the sort of thing she must keep in mind.

She has, it seems, dutifully kept it in mind. Now she discards it, because like the storm, Belinda has no care for what happens there, only here, and here, she demands that the winds bend under her will, and break themselves on the silver net of Javier's power.

Astonishment lashes back at her.

Of a sudden, there are two games at play: there is the wheedling of the storm, calling on it to pitch and roll and fling silver-bound ships toward the sea bottom. She knows it's her own eagerness that she assigns to the waves; they themselves have no care for the destruction they wreak. But there's more satisfaction in imagining she's unleashed a fury hungry for purpose, and that she's given it that purpose through benediction of heart.

It needs to be kept tame, though, this storm, because without taming, its indifference to which ships it sends to the ocean floor counts in cost to the Aulunian navy. And there is the second game: Javier, in the midst of the straits, now tries to bend the storm to his own whim. He's in the heart of it, and she can feel his confidence, thrumming with the same power the bashing water holds. He has defeated her once, and now has rage to back his magic.

For an instant, deep inside her, a knife cuts, and lets stillness out.

Too much is lost in that moment. She's safe, protected from her own scattered and confusing heart, but the stillness is an internal thing, and has no use for magic vented on the outside world. Javier rips away her control as easily as he overwhelmed her in Sandalia's court. The tempest is his, and it turns, lashing at Aulun's navy: in her witchpower vision she can see ships shudder, can see men swept into the raging water, can see Lorraine's crown resting on Javier's brow.

Belinda Primrose has not known much fury in her life. It's a wasted emotion, difficult to hide and dangerous to show. She has trained herself so very carefully to take anger and feed it to her stillness, making herself untouchable. That training has slipped these past few months; slipped enough that she indulged in temper and commanded Dmitri against his will.

The insult and ambition from which that pique was born is a weak pale flame against the wrath that surges through her now.

She is on fire. Witchpower burns through her until her skin is lit with it, and it's her own sentiment that it helps put into words: she will not have her people destroyed, she will not have her mother's crown lost. She will not have it, and with her fury comes a backlash of power so extraordinary that a league away, Javier de Castille is knocked off his feet and smashes back against the Cordoglio's mast.