The Pretender's Crown

ELIZA BEAULIEU

The only clever thing Javier has done is to not bring Belinda Walter with him to propose their mad alliance. Eliza might have ended the entire question with a thrown dagger, if he'd been that foolish, and a very large part of her wishes he had.

Instead, she has a knot in her gut, one that draws her heart and her bladder and her stomach into a single knocking spot, so every time her heart beats she feels the need to both vomit and pee. It might be funny, if it didn't weaken her legs and set a tremble in her hands, which reminds her of the fever that nearly took her life and did take her ability to bear children; and that, somehow, brings her back around to where she is, staring at Javier de Castille as though he's put a knife through her.

“How can you even be thinking this?” is what she finally asks, though it barely begins to scrape on the things she wants to say. “You want me to raise her child? Is it yours?”

Javier shudders and shakes his head. “No. No. Thank God, no. She says the child's due at Christ mass, and so it can't be mine. I wouldn't wish that it was. But it is-” He catches her hands in his and holds on too tight, not quite hurting her, but as if letting her go might set him adrift. “It's perhaps our only chance,” he whispers. “It's-”

“This is far more than asking me to live with her as your spy,” Eliza snaps. “Even if I were to bear your child, Javier, nobody would care if you got a bastard on me as long as you also wed a proper princess and make a litter of children on her.”

“I want to marry you,” Javier whispers. “Eliza, how much must I pay for being a fool? Marius is dead-”

“And you're plotting how our lives will go on without him with him not a day in the grave!”

“I have to!” Javier lets her go with a burst of energy propelling himself backward. “Eliza, if we're to make this thing work it needs to be decided now. Now, yes, in the midst of all this hell. We are given no surcease.”

“Why does she even suggest it? Out of love for you?” Bitterness fills Eliza's voice and she can't stop it. Javier, though, only sags and takes the anger as though it's his due.

“Because she wants the babe to live, and Lorraine can't have a bastard grandchild. Giving it up to us saves its life and gives us a chance to be together.”

“And what does she care if we're together? She wanted you for herself, once. Why not seduce you and claim the baby's yours, and end this war with a marriage between Gallin and Aulun?”

Javier, drily, says, “I'm not quite so easily led as that, Eliza.” Some of the dourness fades and he looks away. “She took Sandalia's life. Perhaps she offers us this one in exchange. It's not a fair price, but perhaps it's not a bad one either.”

“She saved me, too.” Eliza slides fingers over her belly, feeling a place where not even a scar remains. “That blow would have killed a child in my womb, Javier.”

“Not if God's blessing was on us both,” Javier whispers. “Our army could use a miracle.”

Hurt stings Eliza, making her feel childish and sullen. “That isn't fair.”

“No. But then, none of this is. I can't begin to find the moment when it all went wrong.”

Eliza takes a breath, then holds her tongue. She has an answer to that, a too-clear answer that harkens back to the moment Marius Poulin walked Beatrice Irvine into the prince of Gallin's favourite gentleman's club. The world began an endless tumble toward horror then, and hasn't righted itself since.

But had Marius done otherwise, Eliza herself would not now be the king's lover, and despite the prices that have been paid, that's the one thing she's wanted all of her days. Had she known the cost would be Marius's life she might have long since walked away, but there was no knowing; there never can be a clear picture of how the future will unfold.

A bowstring ties itself around her heart and contracts, a small pain accompanying a cruel thought: if there is any way in this world for Eliza Beaulieu to triumph over Beatrice Irvine, it may well be in taking her child, raising it and loving it as her own, and knowing that Belinda will never share that joy.

It's the wrong place to begin, adoption out of vengeance, and yet Javier's right in more than one way. It's the one chance they might be given, and if the babe is due at the Christ mass, then she and Javier have been lovers just long enough to make it possible. The Pappas in Cordula will be angry, and so will the Parnan king, but no one would condemn Javier for wedding and making legitimate the first child born to his body, not in a time of war. Most will rejoice, and count it a blessing.

How easy it is. Eliza falls back a few steps and finds a seat so she can drop her head into her hands. How terribly easy, to slip over the precipice from denial to belief. She's thinking already that the child is Javier's, and if it's Javier's then it can be her own as easily. And to be a mother… that's a dream she put away a long time ago, sealed it with lead edges and tried to forget about. “I have never been able to refuse you.”

Javier lets go a rush of air and crashes forward to land on his knees before her, to hide his face in her lap. Eliza puts her fingers in his hair, her alabaster ring white against ginger before she bends to kiss his head. “This is madness, my love.”

“Yes.” Javier's answer is muffled and trembles on the edge of both laughter and tears. “I had better call for the priest, and for Rodrigo. Shall we be wed by noon?”

“A battlefield bride,” Eliza murmurs. “What will you have me wear, Javier? My trousers and linen shirt, and my tall boots with a dagger at the thigh?”

“Do that,” Javier whispers, and looks up with a laugh marred by tears. “And I'll wear one of your diaphanous creations, for my hair's longer than yours already. We'll flummox them all.” He kneels up and catches her face in his hands, kisses her carefully, as though she's suddenly become fragile. As if, Eliza thinks, she truly is pregnant, and he, a man suddenly afraid that his touch might damage her or the child. Heart full of confusion and hope, she returns the kiss, then shoos him to find Tomas and Rodrigo so a wedding might be performed.

In the end she wears one of her gowns, and it's Javier in trousers and a linen shirt. Eliza forgoes her wig, so the short length of hair she's grown out is tucked behind her ears. It's pulled askew by the wind, and is echoed by the flutter and twist of her skirt around her legs and the dance of her heart in her chest. She's never truly imagined being married, has Eliza Beaulieu, and in the crux of it she finds she's terrified. Excited, but terrified, and she wonders if all women come to the altar in such a state.

Word runs to the troops, down to the battlefield, and for a short while at the noon hour, all the fighting comes to a stop. Eliza has no idea why, but as the allied Cordulan troops turn to watch distant figures on the hilltop, Aulun does not advance. Instead they all watch the handful of people presided over by a priest whose voice cannot carry to the men below.

It carries as far as Javier and Eliza, and to the prince of Essandia who's come to stand witness, and to Belinda Walter, who watches from the safety of her witchpower stillness, where no one can see her. Her heart's strangely full as she watches this marriage, giving it most of her attention.

Most, but not all: some of her mind is given over to a witch-power shield keeping Aulun from attacking Gallin's unprotected flank. She ought not: she ought to let her army crash into Javier's and watch the Cordulan alliance crumble under the strength of her army. But she won't have that, not today, not in this moment: that much, at least, she can give to Javier and Eliza de Castille.

When the vows are said and the kiss is made, the watching troops send up a roar of approval that must be audible across the straits. Rodrigo steps forward then, to kiss Eliza's cheeks and then to murmur something in her ear, something that makes her take knee, and before the world's armies, Rodrigo of Essandia crowns a pauper the new queen of Gallin.

Belinda, smiling and appalled at her sentiment, slips away, and spends the day doing what she can to mute antagonism between two warring factions, that a king and a queen may be given one brief moment in the heart of loss and sorrow and blood to find a little joy in the knowing of each other.