offered sweetness. He ached, cock swollen as though he'd stroked and teased himself, not Eliza, but one thought clawed its way to coherency and remained with him: he could do damage so easily with his powers; to give pleasure with them, and them alone, surely made a weight against the horror of what he could too easily become.
And if there was another gift to himself in giving Eliza all she could desire without ever touching her, it was in seeing her body so clearly as she gasped and shuddered under his magic's touch. Her knees were spread wide, hips rising to meet magic and falling again when he eased off, unwilling to bring her to a final climax so soon. Her stomach clenched and trembled with little deaths, and her hands fisted in the covers as she flung her head back, making her throat long and beautiful. Witchpower traced the delicate hollow there, plucked at her nipples and found the tender spots behind her ears. Kissed her thighs and licked her mound, and spread her with finger's- width touches, all at once. There was beauty in that, in the overwhelming sensation he could offer with the touch of his witchpower, and the high flushed colour in Eliza's cheeks, the unexpected whimpers and soft keens that she kept clenched behind her teeth, told him that there was wonder in being so inundated.
When he finally took her it was with magic still, her body softening and accepting him as though he lay above her. Heat washed back to him, surrounded him as it rode the witchpower, and filled him with the same base pleasure that drew a groan from between Eliza's teeth. She drove herself toward the power he filled her with, and gave over to an incredulous cry as, heaving for concentration, he turned the magic to all the same sweet points of bliss he'd learned on her already.
The wave that swept her took him along with her, no surprise but for his inability, in its wake, to retain any grip at all on the witchpower. Eliza let go a tiny sound of dismay while Javier fell at the bed's foot, silent laughter of chagrin shaking his body. “Forgive me, Liz,” he finally mumbled from his lowly place. “I had no idea it would all fall apart at the end.”
She appeared above him, flushed and bright-eyed, and put out a hand to him for the third time. Finally, he accepted it, and let her draw him into the bed, the better to explore possibility and passion as one.
ROBERT, LORD DRAKE
2 April 1588 † Aria Magli
Power has burned through Aria Magli since the afternoon, so strong, so flavoured, that Robert Drake could follow it to its source with his eyes closed. He has chosen not to, for two reasons. One, he has tasted this particular talent before, and knows, even if rumour were not aswirl in the island-built city, that it belongs to Javier de Castille, young king of Gallin and unexpected heir to a skill not of this world.
Two, to follow it would be to show himself, and there are better things to do than give his hand away. Javier plays his own hand loudly, all unknowing: if he can pour magic into the air the way he has done today, then he is fully grown in confidence, and there is only one end to be expected now.
Aria Magli is rarely a silent city, with traffic on its canals at all hours, voices lifted in song and praise and anger echoing off the water and the homes that line it. Rather than hunt down Javier de Castille, Robert has sought and paid for a room with no windows overlooking the canals, paid a dear price, for tonight he has need of what quietude he can get.
There are so many things that can be done with what Belinda calls the witchpower. It's as good a name as any; his people would call it no more than language or physicality its presence so integral a part of them that words failed it. But here, bound by humanity, it's an unnatural thing, separate and apart from what ordinary people might do. So it is the witchpower, and there are so many things that can be done with it that he almost no longer remembers them all. It has been a mortal lifetime and more since he's given up the boundless power and ease of use that came with his other form. Then, he might have reached halfway around a world with no more effort than the thought; might have touched his queen's mind and sought her direction. But that was long ago, and the body into which he has been born anew is so much weaker in its capabilities. To do what once would have been of no import he now needs silence and hours of preparation.
The room is warm, a fire built higher than most people would find comfortable. That, too, is expensive in this city: there is little enough to burn here, and what there is must be brought in from Parna's mainland. But heat helps to remind him of what he was, and to loosen his muscles, loosen his mind, so that he can gather his focus over the long hours.
He imagines it as a stream of sunlight punching through the clouds, one brilliant streak of gold against grey and black and white. The clouds are the distance of minds on this blue planet, murky and thick and roiling with solitude even as each one brushes up against another in physical form; sunlight is the power that can separate them and illuminate the relevant, if only briefly. It's a pretty picture in his mind, and he wonders if once upon a time he would have been so poetic, or if that's the human nature that's become so fundamental to him.
In time, that thought, like all others, drifts away. Robert Drake is not like the daughter he fathered: calling witchlight is not especially natural to him, or indeed of any importance at all, but in the silence he's created in this room, in his mind, the sunlight he imagines manifests in his hands, a warm glow that steadily builds in strength. His eyes are closed and he does not see it, and fortunately for him, very few people are awake at this hour to study the brightness that leaks from beneath his door, or to note how its brilliance becomes too much to look upon.
To Robert, it is a weight in his mind, gathering the critical mass to slam through clouds. It's closer to dawn than he might like when it has finally grown strong enough, and to his way of thinking it becomes an arrow, shooting across a continent in search of the rare mind capable of receiving it.
To the handful who are awake in Aria Magli, it is a falling star that flies in reverse, one brilliant streak that races away to the west and fades so quickly it might never have been there at all. They will speak of it, and wonder at it, but as for Robert Drake, weary from his efforts and unaware of the spectacle he has created, he will sleep where he sits, in front of a fire finally ebbing with the dawn.
BELINDA PRIMROSE
2 April 1588 † Alunaer
Her father's voice awakened her, so loud and unexpectedly clear that she jolted to her elbows, staring around her cell in heart-racing anticipation.
It was empty, as it had to be, nothing more than herself and a sliver of moonlight to occupy it. But Robert's voice lingered, reverberating from the walls. She could smell chypre, the cologne he always wore, and slowly she realised that the scent lit flares of witchpower in her mind. Chypre had haunted her when Javier had helped to waken her witchpower, too, its familiar scent part of the barrier that had been erected to keep her magic caged.
She whispered “Robert,” but by then she knew he wasn't there, and that his voice had only spoken within her mind.
Prepare, the echoes said again. Prepare, my Primrose. Prepare for war.
C.E. Murphy
The Pretender's Crown
It wasn't done for a bastard daughter to demand to see her mother. The audacity would have driven Belinda from comfortable thoughts, had her thoughts not already been so badly disrupted by Robert's missive. She had left the convent with Dmitri, meek and pious as always, and between a corner and a straight place had called the stillness to her, wrapping herself in it more swiftly than she'd ever done before. Shadows had flooded from sunlit places, drawn to her, and though Dmitri, attuned to her use of power, had whirled, it had been too late.
She had run full speed through Alunaer, had stolen quill and paper from a scribe within the palace, and, too frantic to waste time trying to explain to Cortes how she'd come by her information, had left an imperious note on his desk: there was word from dearest Jayne, and it must be imparted to the queen at once. Her majesty would know the meeting place.
