She smiled and turned to him, putting both hands on his chest and patting her fingers against the soft fabric of his doublet. "Yes." She sighed and dropped her hands a few inches, putting her forehead against his chest for a moment. Then she stepped back, holding her right hand up. Gold coins glittered between her fingers, then jumped as she flipped her hand over and bounced the coins, three of them, across her knuckles. "I am."
Javier clapped his hand to his purse. "Eliza!"
She laughed, popping the coins over to land stacked in her palm. Javier picked them up, scattering them across his own palm; they were all faceup, all imprinted with the same year. "How do you do do that?" that?"
"Practise," Eliza said with a shrug. She bent her wrist in and fetched a fourth coin from inside of her sleeve, holding it up between two fingers. "Practise and a healthy disregard for other people's belongings."
Javier snatched the coin out of her fingers, grinning. "Are there more?"
Eliza spread her arms. "You'll have to look."
"Eliza...."
She dropped her hands and shrugged. "It's your coin, Jav. I don't mind making it my own. Call it the cost of setting me on your lover."
"You'll do it, then."
She eyed him, turning back to the river. "Sacha told on me, didn't he. He told you my father found out what I'd been doing."
"Yes." Javier put his backside against the railing and studied his feet.
Eliza's mouth quirked and she shook her head. "Darling Sacha. I don't need your protection, Jav. I have enough money hidden away to make a fine life for myself."
"And yet you don't do it."
"Of course not. Your mother would never approve."
Javier frowned. "What?"
"Come on, Jav. Your streetside friend suddenly makes good? All of Lutetia would think I'd given into your wiles and you were putting me up in style. The prince's mistress."
"Is it such a terrible facade?"
"No." Eliza pressed her lips together, leaning more heavily over the river. "But I won't climb the ranks on rumour of royal bed, Jav. I'll find a way by myself or not at all."
"Let me help. Take the position in Beatrice's house. It's a place to begin, Liz."
"You're a hard man to say no to, Prince Javier."
"I know." He bumped his hip against hers, smiling. "And you won't, will you?"
Eliza's shoulders dropped. "I'm not a lady, Jav."
"You will be." Javier twisted to put his arm around Eliza's waist, kissing her temple. Belinda felt a sigh go through him, relief that the argument had ended without him making his plea an order. Below that lay gladness, not just that Eliza had agreed, but that he'd spoken earlier with Belinda, choosing his battles in the right order. Not, Belinda knew, that she could have refused the prince any more easily than Eliza could have. "I have to get back," he murmured against Eliza's hair. "Someone will miss me."
"She'll miss you." miss you."
"No. I only spend the night with one woman at a time. She's not in my chambers tonight. Tonight was yours."
"Charmer." Eliza turned her head to kiss his cheek. "Good night, my prince."
Javier left her on the bridge, less alone than either of them might think.
Eliza watched the river until the bells tolled the half hour after Javier's departure, nothing of her emotions readable to Belinda's weary investigations. Only when Eliza slipped away did she let the power go, staggering under the onslaught of stars after so many hours hidden in shadow. She reached for the railing, leaned heavily on it, forcing herself to shallow gasps when she wanted to drag in half-panicked lungsful of air. It would not do, would not do would not do, to show weakness from use of power. Belinda curled her lip, barely an expression on the outside, but focusing all her remaining strength through it, forcing all her disdain at her own faltering vigor into it. A lifetime's training straightened her spine, steadied her breathing even when her legs trembled and her heartbeat scampered with speed and lack of air. This was what the stillness was for: to forbid anything external from seeing her frailty. The stillness had nothing to do with the power she'd used to excess; it was her own gift to herself, studied and learned. The witchpower might enhance it, but the stillness was not born of the witchpower, and Belinda would not allow herself to soften in its use now. She spread her fingers against the bridge railing, light gentle touch that forbade her leaning, and slipped a smile into place as she gazed out over the quiet water.
No wall stood in her mind any longer, the odd, inexplicable flavour of her father washed away, his barricade destroyed. The desire to act was no longer separate from the ability to do so, golden strength finally her own. What was left of it? The day's exercise had drained that pool so thoroughly she could only feel the emptiness where it belonged. She cupped her hands together as if she would call the witchlight to her, but in truth made no effort to-it would respond no more than a man exhausted by a hedonistic night. Like a man, though, it would replenish itself; Belinda had no reason to believe that, but found herself easily confident of it, the fear that it might not return as absurd as fearing the sun might not rise.
Taking her hands from the railing to cup them told her she had the strength to stand unsupported. Replacing them there made it clear how much preferable support was. An unexpected quiet laugh bubbled to the surface and Belinda leaned forward, catching a glimpse of her reflection in the dark water below. Returning home would be more of a challenge than slipping unnoticed into the palace had been that day.
Water rippled and distorted her features for an instant, adding a length to her face and peaking her hairline in a way that reminded her of Lorraine. Belinda straightened again, brushing her fingers against her forehead to wipe away the thought. Allowing herself to dwell on the Aulunian queen was always dangerous, but more so now. She could slip into the minds of others and sense their emotions, even share their thoughts if she touched them. Should Javier have a similar secret, then Belinda must be certain to keep her mind guarded always. Her duties to Aulun had to remain in the quietest part of her, lest she be exposed and die for her troubles.
There was a trick still left to be explored. Belinda put away thoughts of her work and turned to a thrill of exploration that brought another smile to her lips. Beatrice, she thought without heat, smiled too easily. Even now, when the Lanyarchan lass had been set aside for a while, her influence lay over Belinda like a cloak. Still, she chose not to wipe away the smile as she considered the last step she might take with her newfound skills.
She could read thoughts, gauge emotions. Influencing them would be a power worth reckoning with. An Essandian princess might be moved to suicide, if caught in the right mood, or her red-haired son made to fall in love with and rashly wed a barren commoner. Javier was a perilous target to test on, though; his own witchpower might easily make him immune to Belinda's influence. And if the power were a gift of royal blood, then Sandalia, too, might be difficult to sway.
But the weaker minds around them could be used. Asselin already moved toward sedition; with a little effort, he might betray himself and his compatriots. A plot against Lorraine, built by those close to Javier-perhaps, to succeed, Belinda didn't need so much as Sandalia's own hand in the pot. Sacha's ambition might well bring Belinda far closer to her goal, his plots the mechanism to undo them all. And sweet Marius would- "Beatrice?"
Belinda startled more profoundly than she could remember doing since she was a child, a jolt flinching her entire torso as she twisted toward the sound of her name. Marius, in an extravagant hat and boots that showed off the shape of his calves, came up to her in astonishment. "Beatrice, whatever are you doing out here alone at this hour?"
"Has it grown so late?" Her question was distant even to her own ears, a flighty smile curving her mouth. "I suppose it has, hasn't it? I've watched my reflection in the dark water without thinking anything of it." Marius put his arm around her, warm and solid, just as the memory of her father had been. Belinda turned her head toward his throat, inhaling the scent of a tavern on his skin: wood smoke and ale.
"Are you all right, lady?"
"Better now," she murmured. Marius's pulse leapt and she put her lips against it, probing curiously with her tongue even as her own thoughts demanded to know what she was doing. Marius gasped, the soft sound of startled pleasure, and Belinda lifted her hand to knock his hat off and pull herself closer to him, closing her teeth over the rapid beat in his neck. The hat made a lonely splash against the water and Marius made a strangled noise, desire mixed with bewilderment.
"What, m'sieur, have you never had a woman act first?" Belinda kept one hand in his hair and slid the other down his body, rucking cloth out of the way to investigate what manner of man his codpiece concealed. He croaked and sagged, catching the bridge railing for support as Belinda let go a delighted chortle to tease his throat. "Less padding than a decent woman would imagine. What a lovely surprise, Marius Poulin."
"Beatrice...we...the prince...we cannot..."
"The prince is welcome to join us." There was sense in Marius's protests and none at all in Belinda's actions, but she withdrew her hand to unlace his ties and shoved his breeches down a necessary few inches. Need pounded through her, a desire for control and domination that was nearly alien to her. Her position was to be weak, attractive, usable; men of power, the sort she was trained to seduce and kill, did not in general appreciate a strong hand in bed. The sudden opportunity to take it was disconcertingly appealing, all the more so for the very problem that Marius had voiced. Belinda pulled him around until her back was against the bridge railing, put his hands on her waist in a demand he understood whether intellect ruled against them or not. He lifted her high enough to rest her bottom on the railing, Belinda twisting her skirts out of the way as she pulled him closer.
He muffled a cry against her shoulder as she sheathed him within herself, and she bit his throat again, hard enough to leave marks. "Have you ever shared a woman with your prince, Marius?" All her rules were shattering, stillness forgotten in the demanding rock of her hips. His name was on her lips, used more than once, filled with a hunger that confused her. "They say there's so little between a woman's walls that if you both take her at once you feel the other. Shall we invite Javier, Marius, my love?" She nearly laughed at her last word, its gratuitous nature garnering another cry from the youth buried within her. She slid forward on him, barely balanced on the railing for all that he groaned and pushed forward again. "Hold me tight and we'll pretend, Marius. Fuck me well and imagine the dangers of taking the prince's lover as your own."
For once, gloriously, her lover's enjoyment meant nothing to her. Her breasts ached, body throbbing with a need that she gave in to utterly, forcing her own hand between their bodies to seek out her own pleasure. Marius protested and she bit him again, drawing a sharp sound of confused pain and then the tilt of his chin, giving her his throat in acquiescence. She wrapped her legs around his hips, dragging him closer, trusting his strength to not let her fall, and his hands knotted at her waist in a promise that he wouldn't. "Harder, Marius." Belinda barely knew her own voice, low with demand and desire, but the youth in her arms whimpered as he drove into her, desperate to oblige. A sensation of rightness overwhelmed her, carried on climax beginning to crest; she had spent too long, far too long playing to the whims of others. Marius would be hers, marked as hers, and no one would dispute her claim.
She knotted her fingers in his hair, pulling his head back to force him to look into her eyes. His own were wide, glazed with desire, pupils dilated. His breath was harsh, the play of his mouth lost and sweet. Belinda brought his mouth to hers and when he begged a kiss bit his lower lip until she tasted blood. "You'll make me come," she whispered. "With your next thrust you'll make me come or I'll cut your throat and leave you here to bleed, I swear it on my soul."
Honest terror slid through him, delicious rewidening of his eyes as he believed a threat Belinda knew she could carry out. His body went still in hers, no bad thing with her own weight bearing her down on his cock, making a spot of desperately rising pleasure as she worked her fingers against herself. But she smiled against his mouth, shaking her head. "Oh no, love. Not now. You don't get to stop now."
She took her hand from his hair, his head falling forward over her breasts, though fear still held him still. She slipped her hand down his backside, fingers spread wide over his crack and then diving relentlessly inside him.
His voice broke, high sharp sound as he shoved forward, scraping her against the railing, scraping against the bone within her that brought violent spasms of heat spilling through her body. She bit his shoulder again, rolling against him with her own whimpers and cries knotted in her throat. Marius still dared not move, only clung to her and gasped in uncertain need as she took what she wanted from him. Only when she slipped her fingers from within him did he groan and risk rocking forward again, a plea that broke hard laughter from Belinda's throat. She pushed herself off him, balanced on the railing momentarily to shove him away and thump her feet to the ground.
Confusion filled his face, his hands spread in question, unsated cock jutting at a desperate angle through the folds of his tunic. Belinda straightened her arm, fully cognizant of another man she'd pushed away thus, a lifetime earlier, and watched Marius stumble back a step, but not to his death. "Come now, Marius." Her voice was harsh in her ears, mocking more viciously than he deserved. "Can you imagine the disaster of making me pregnant, with the prince as my lover? I can't risk your seed spilling inside me. Put it away and take it home to a serving girl." Her heart banged against her ribs, cruelty aching and distinct within her, as much in search of release as the fading throb between her thighs had been. She crimped a fist against the hurt in his dark eyes and brought her voice back under control, a greater struggle than she liked to admit.
"Go, Marius." Almost nothing more than a whisper. "Your sweet mouth, your eyes. I knew enough to resist, but it's hard when one man can't be denied where another is wanted." Sorrow etched the words and a flush came over Marius's cheeks, forgiveness too easily obtained. "Tomorrow," Belinda promised. "Tomorrow we'll talk, we'll try to see how this can be gotten through, when I know now I'm not strong enough to stand strong against you." Tears filled her eyes, tangling in her lashes and making hot lines down her cheeks as she turned her head, offering her throat just as he'd done for her moments earlier. "Forgive me, m'sieur."
"Beatrice." Marius's voice went rough and he stuffed himself back into his clothes before stepping forward to catch her in a hopeless, desperate hug. "There is nothing to forgive. You're right, of course you're right, about children, about...tomorrow." He broke his own near-apologies off and clenched her against his chest, a promise of safety. "I'll call on you tomorrow," he promised, then released her so quickly it seemed he feared what he might do. Within seconds he'd taken himself away, hurrying across the bridge without daring to look back. Belinda watched him go, licking the coppery taste of blood from her lower lip.
Feared what he might do, or, she thought, feared what she might do. Red fire tinged the edges of the reemerging golden pool of power within her mind, as if she had for the first time acknowledged her own strength. It made no sense; she had acted against her own character and reveled in it. She did not take, or risk, or demand, not in the fashion she had just done, and yet it felt more pure and delicious than any moment she could remember. She did not release the stillness she'd learned so carefully and rut without a thought for anything but herself. Less than a quarter hour earlier, she would have said she could could not do so. not do so.
Fresh fire burned through her, spilling from the top of her skull down through her body, making points of desire in her nipples and groin. She wet her lips, eyes half closed as she considered the barrier that no longer lay in her mind. Perhaps it had held back this part of her, too. She had broken down that careful barricade, drained her witchpower to nothing, and in the aftermath given in to her own wanting in a way she had never imagined doing. If those things were connected, it was a lesson learned: using her power to its nadir was aggressively dangerous to her, destroying a lifetime's careful study.
Her perfect memory rose up with a gift: a serving girl's blush and shocked hunger following her down the stairs.
Belinda smoothed her skirts and set herself homeward, a predator's smile curving her mouth.
9
SANDALIA, QUEEN AND REGENT
19 October 1587 Lutetia, Gallin
The queen arrives back in Lutetia with neither pomp nor circumstance. She has the flags covered on her ship and slips into port late at night, meeting a prearranged and nondescript carriage to take her from the docks to a country cottage on the palace grounds. She sleeps under guard, and awakens in the morning to the smell of breakfast in the outer room. Pulling on a dressing gown, leaving her hair tousled and down, she steps through the bedroom door to smile at Javier. "How do you always know?"
"What kind of son would I be if I didn't know when my mother came and left her home?" He stands, first to bow as benefits both their stations, then to step forward and kiss his mother's cheeks. "I thought your business with Rodrigo was only supposed to take a month."
"Petulant child." Sandalia walks barefoot to the table, greedy for a croissant and rich salty butter. "I hadn't seen my brother in two years. A visit was warranted."
"You've written to him." Javier retains the deliberately sulky tone, earning Sandalia's laughter.
"And I wrote to you. You, however..." She points her butter knife at him and laughs again to catch his expression of guilt. "Who is she?"
Javier's eyes widen. "She? She who?"
"Jav." Sandalia speaks the nickname fondly. "Even if you didn't write, my spies did. Don't pretend there isn't a woman."
"If you know there's a woman," he says easily, "then you know everything about her already, and there's nothing to tell." He glanced at her for permission, then sprawled in a chair, gangliness of youth briefly still apparent in his form. "Her name is Beatrice Irvine, and she's a minor Lanyarchan noble."
"Yes. I don't recall the Irvines, or her father. Roger, I think his name was?"
"Robert." Exasperation fills Javier's tone. "Mother, you lived in Lanyarch less than two years. For all the stories, I cannot believe you slept on every every hearth in the godforsaken country. You can't be expected to know every parent and every child birthed there since you were fourteen. Even," he adds lightly, "if that was only a scant handful of years ago. How is Uncle Rodrigo?" hearth in the godforsaken country. You can't be expected to know every parent and every child birthed there since you were fourteen. Even," he adds lightly, "if that was only a scant handful of years ago. How is Uncle Rodrigo?"
Sandalia laughs. "Handsome, but not as flattering as my son. Handsome," she repeats thoughtfully, "and, perhaps, growing ambitious at long last."
Quietude surrounds her son, an expectation that she's learned to recognize as a moment when those things that he desires will come to him. He has extraordinary will, and she wonders if he realises how easily he influences others.
"Aulun." He barely breathes the word, aware even in the privacy of her own small cottage how carefully watched he and his mother are. "Curiously," he says an instant later, tone normal again, "Beatrice may be of some use there. She's passionate, Mother." He leaves words unsaid, words that Sandalia has no need to hear spoken. Passion is an excellent vice, easily shaped to foolish behavior. Passion can be used to set flames from embers that have been too-long untended.
"Irvine," Sandalia repeats, and taps the flat of her knife against her mouth. The blade tastes of salt and butter and she licks her lips absently. "Have you looked into her family?"
"No, and I haven't checked her teeth, either. She's for rolling, Mother, not breeding." There's something tense in his words, something he wishes to hide. It's possible he's fallen in love with the girl, though it seems he still understands how she can be used.
"Javier." Sandalia puts steel into her voice, enough to make him flinch as if he were still a guilty child. "The Church says we must come pure to the marriage bed. Surely you haven't broken that covenant." She's teasing, but Javier's mouth flattens for a moment before breaking into an easy smile.
"Of course not, Mother. She's told me a little of her family," he adds more patiently. "Her father was landed but not noble, and that her title comes from marriage to some old man aged enough to be her grandfather. Aside from that, I haven't looked into her family, not beyond the painting of her father that hangs in her hall. I don't know if it was his face or the painter's skill that's lacking, but Beatrice must be her mother's daughter." Tension eased, he chuckles and reaches forward to dump jam onto a chunk of pastry.
"They always are, my sweet. They always are." Sandalia purses her lips, then holds out her hand for the jam jar. Javier puts it into her palm without her having to ask, and she smiles. "Let me set my spymasters to her. If she's all she seems, then I think you'd better introduce me."
"The courtiers will think you plan to marry me to her."
"A Lanyarchan provincial? Let them think it, if they're that foolish. My brother is making treatise with Khazar, Jav." Sandalia drops into her native tongue of Essandian, confident of her son's ability to follow. He speaks more languages than she does, his Khazarian fluent and his Parnan passable. She has only Gallic, Essandian, and Aulunian, though they've been enough to serve her. Nor does she think the change of language will truly hide her words from anyone determined to listen, but no one is supposed to know she's back, and the usual run of spies might only have one tongue. "With her help we might-"
"So we might," Javier murmurs. That something is in his gaze again, a far-awayness that she hasn't seen before. She knows ambition, but is hard-pressed to recognize it on her son's face; Rodrigo spoke truly when he said Javier was her first and most loyal subject. He's grown up in a shadow Sandalia has worked hard to cast long, and he has never shown resentment or hinted at plotting beyond Sandalia's own intentions. She is torn in understanding this; the idea that it's awe and respect that keeps him in line is appealing, but at desperate odds with the behavior of the men she knows. If he is finally facing his first taste of desire for a throne, Sandalia finds herself almost relieved, even as a part of her regrets the loosening of the hold she's had on him all his life.
"I have men," he says abruptly. "Friends loyal to me-"
"You have Sacha," Sandalia says, as gentle as he was abrupt. "And Marius. A lordling and a merchant boy, my prince. Will you send them into battle for you? Will you risk them that way? Is that what you want to propose to me now?"
Red flushes Javier's cheeks as it hasn't done since he was a boy. "They are, Sacha especially, ambitious, Mother. And I'm their prince. If-" He's stumbling now, eager embarrassment making for tongue-tangled frustration. "If events should move forward, and I know Sacha dreams they might, then he might earn himself a title or lands separate from his father's. How could I tell him no? And Marius-" Now colour truly curdles his face, ugly contrast with his ginger hair. "Beatrice was his," he says dully. "I owe him something."
"You're his prince," Sandalia says mildly. "You owe him nothing. Rodrigo reminds me that I have never seen war, Jav. Neither have you. Perhaps you should wait to see it before you consign your dearest friends to their glory. Besides, winter comes on and there will be no dramatics during the cold months. It'll be spring again before the ice breaks and the world moves forward again."
BELINDA PRIMROSE / BEATRICE IRVINE
19 October 1587 Lutetia, Gallin
A gong and a whimper of dismay awakened Belinda, sunlight filtering through tangled lashes and turning her vision to red in the moment she became aware. The bell sounded a second time, and so did the whimper, the latter bringing a lazy smile to Belinda's lips. She slid a hand across the sheets, encountering a curve of flesh and following it upward to find the sloppy spill of a breast. The nipple reacted as she plucked it, hardening and earning another whimper, more bewildered and shy than the first. Belinda rolled closer, setting lips and teeth to the girl's breast, eyes still closed with lazy satisfaction, and slipped her hand down the girl's body, sifting her fingers through rough curls. Dismay squeaked in the girl's throat and Belinda lifted her mouth to speak even as her fingers delved inside the young woman, seeking a moisture that had not left her in the night.
"Is it different in daylight, Nina? You seemed eager under the stars. Is it frightening now? Is it wrong?" The need for domination had left her while she slept, content filling her mind as the pool of witchpower within her replenished itself. But an edge remained, though whether it was power demanding more or simply the irresistible toy in her bed, Belinda was both uncertain and uncaring. Her dark-haired parlour maid lay bound ankle and wrist, wide open for teasing and taking, far too sweet to ignore.
A cruelty that had left her had deliberately chosen to keep Nina spread through the night, a kerchief shoved into her mouth and tied so the girl's crying wouldn't disturb Belinda's sleep. Nina's hair was still damp with tears, pincurls slick and delicate as they stood away from her temples, and marks reddened the sides of her mouth where she was gagged. Viciousness was gone, but Nina's helplessness woke pulsing hunger in Belinda's veins, strong enough to kill any impulse to release the girl. "Shall I stop, lovely child?" Her thumb worked a quick hard circle between Nina's thighs, sending a shudder of confusion through her body. The protest she'd begun was swallowed, eyes wide and uncertain. Belinda chortled, rolling her weight on top of the young woman, who exhaled sharply through her gag.
The bell sounded a third time, sparking irritation. Belinda flounced off the bed, knowing full well she behaved like a spoilt child, and snatched up a dressing robe to run down the stairs in. Being left to answer the door herself was certainly her own fault, with Nina occupied as she was.
Marius, a high-collared cravat not quite hiding bruised tooth marks on his neck, stood outside the door with eyes dark and haunted. "Beatrice..."