The Pretender's Crown

JAVIER DE CASTILLE

Half a year past, Robert Drake threw up a wall of witchpower that stopped Javier's magic dead, and proved beyond question that Bea trice Irvine was in truth Belinda Primrose, and heir to Drake's witchpower. The world has changed since then; changed in so many ways Javier wouldn't know where to begin cataloguing it if he wanted to, and he does not want to. Still, today, now, armed with the things he's learned, he should be able to stand before the witchlord's power. Ought to be able to turn his attack from the Aulunian lines to the Aulunian consort, and devastate Drake with his will.

The one he can do easily enough: witchpower magic turns from troops to a single man, bearing down with a lifetime's expectation of being accommodated; with the expectation that, like any other man, Robert Drake will bow his head and his will to Javier de Castille, and that the day will roll on in the same way it began.

But Robert's power has the strength of the tide, pulling relentlessly, bending and washing over Javier's own, subsuming it rather than being subsumed. Every volley Javier throws out is absorbed, and when Robert lashes back it's as though an ocean crashes down on him, staggering with its weight. Too little sluices away from Robert's own magic, and with the third driving blow Javier drops to his knees, hands buried in the earth as though he could draw strength from it. Robert is the source of the Aulunian alliance's strength; if he can be defeated the serpent's back is broken and Cor-dula might triumph.

Cordula must triumph, for anything less risks not only Javier's neck, but Eliza's, and that's a price too dear to be paid. Too many high costs have been cut from his heart already, and he'll die here on the battlefield before he'll risk losing Eliza Beaulieu as well.

A crack appears in his shields, Robert's power worming its way inside his mind, and Javier thinks he may well do just that, and lose Eliza after all.