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.
DMITRI, IN ALUNAER; AND ROBERT, IN GALLIN
Two witchlords lift their gazes to the horizon, one looking south and the other north. They see power flaring: no, not flaring. Erupting, sustaining itself, boiling through storm clouds, announcing itself as a presence not to be contained, nor to be denied. Dmitri, in Alunaer, folds long fingers in front of his lips and wonders if the woman who bears such magic is his to persuade; Robert, twenty miles and a world away, smiles, certain that the woman who bears that magic is his to control.
Javier staggers to his feet among a white-faced crew and stares into the storm as though he can see a face in it; this is what the survivors will say, that the young king of Gallin's grey eyes were possessed, his face grim, and they will say that he, graced by God, looked on the fallen one himself…
… and then threw himself forward with a howl that cut above even the sound of rain and wind and lashing water. Threw himself into the eye of it and from the bow of the ship slammed his hands together and sent forth a terrible lance of God's own strength, so brilliant it turned black clouds to silver and ripped a rainbow across the sheeting rain. Some will say he shouted his mother's name; others that he called on God's son to guide him. They will all say he faced down the devil to save this crew, and much later, when he's come to his senses, Javier won't find it in his heart to deny them.
The truth is that as he surges forward to reclaim his place at the prow and to meet magic with magic against Belinda Primrose a second time, the ship pitches just so, and he's flung fifteen feet forward, as ignominious an approach as his retreat was seconds earlier. The truth is that the bolt of witchpower that crashes from him is little more than a desperate attempt to keep from flying overboard.
It does, however, do the things they later claim it did: it sears moon-coloured light through the storm, cuts rainbows across a landscape that has recently been a second cousin to Hell. It's good that others appreciate it: Javier himself is in no shape to.
He can't see Belinda, but he can feel her, a source of golden burning power in his mind. She might lie beneath him again as she did in his gardens, coaxing her first witchlight to life: that is the closeness he feels to her. She's not part of the Aulunian navy; there's a sense of solidity to her presence that even his own can't match, not while he rides the tempest-torn sea. He won't be able to drown her with her failing ships, but he knows now that she's near, and only has to reach land to find her and take a knife to her wrists and ankles and body before finally drawing a red weeping line across her throat. She will lie insensible, awaiting him; of that much he is certain. She fell once beneath his will, and he is stronger now.
BELINDA PRIMROSE
Witchpower surges at her, a lance flung through the tempest. It flies straight and true, and the woman she was six months ago would have fallen beneath it.
Today it might be a bit of straw, and she a kitten at play: she bats it away, and her own magic pounces after it, rolling it in her own will and bending it back toward Javier de Castille. She bent Dmitri; it is no great thing, now, to deny the red-haired Gallic king.
But she cannot simply cut him off from his power the way she did Dmitri: his awareness of the Cordulan armada is too useful if she wishes to drown those ships. So she falters, drawing the image in her mind: Javier standing above her, a spear in hand, thrusting down, and her own hands reaching to catch its haft in a desperate attempt to save herself. She twists silver power to one side, sending Javier stumbling; he recovers, and jabs again, and she flinches aside herself, letting magic slam into the earth around her. None of this happens on the physical plane: it's all within her mind, pictures to help her guide the play.
She split her willpower once while exploring talent with Javier, and he failed to see her attack until it was too late. It's more difficult to do that now: the battle they fight for dominance is much more deadly than that game had been. But then, she's stronger than she was, and so a part of her mind goes to wrestling Javier while another leaks out along the latticework of conjoined sailing vessels.
The harshest part of the storm is over the greatest number of ships now, battering not just the armada but Aulun's own navy. She's lost ships while fighting Javier, the storm's uncaring hunger content with Aulunian sailors. Belinda splits her attention a third way, sending out tendrils of witchpower meant to discourage the high winds from smashing her ships.
