“Us. The day when we were us has long passed. Why are you here, telling me this?” Muscle tightened in Javier's jaw, anger fanning higher. “What good am I to you in this power play?”
“I need allies. This battle is larger than Gallin or Aulun, larger than Reformation or Ecumenic law. I might succeed in the shaping of one country, but to stand against what's coming we need a continent of a single mind. A world, if we can make it.”
“No.” Anger burst over Javier's skin, driving away the cold and leaving him staring down the Aulunian heir with fresh loathing. “This madness is of your own making. This war is of your making, in the shape of my mother's death.” He threw those words at her, claiming Sandalia as family; the ties there were far stronger than the story Belinda had spun, no matter how much truth he felt in its core. “These plots are yours to unmake, not mine. You don't need allies, not to fulfill your ambitions, not to murder this Dmitri or trick your Robert. You want friends, people to salvage whatever desperate fraction of yourself still has a conscience. I owe you nothing, least of all that. You say we've been used, but I've been used, and by you. Your nasty truths, the things you've learned, they change nothing. I'll delight in crowning myself the Aulunian king, knowing in my gut that it's no pretender's crown, and you, my enemy, will die on a hangman's tree, nothing more than a fast-fading memory.”
Honest astonishment filled Belinda's eyes, and she was silent a few seconds before saying, “But the things I've shown you-”
“Are madness. Even if they're true, they're madness, and lie so far beyond my grasp that I cannot even pretend to believe we could face them.”
“What if you're wrong? What if we can?” Belinda leaned forward as though she'd catch his hand again.
Javier pulled back, denial and rage filling his motions as he spat, “Then Belinda Primrose can save us all. You can give me nothing that makes entertaining your games worthwhile.” He climbed to his feet, all but stumbling over Marius's grave in his anger and his haste to be away.
Belinda's voice followed him, hard with desperation: “I can give you a child.”
BELINDA WALTER
This time she was prepared for the witchpower lashing that came down on her, and shielded herself from it. Disgust and fury drove that blow, and she weathered it, knowing she'd spoken so poorly as to earn the burst of temper. “I am pregnant,” she said beneath the storm of his anger. “Not by you, but by Dmitri, and so will bear a child who is fully heir to the witchpower. Eliza can't have children, Javier. If you mean to make her your bride, you'll need an heir, and she can't give you one.”
“And you would-” Javier's barrage of wrath ended in a sputter of unwelcome hope. “Why?”
Breathing hurt, as though she'd been laced into a corset tightly enough to damage her ribs. Despite that, despite too little air, her heart beat much too fast, flooding her body with heat. This was a devil's bargain she'd never dreamt of making, and it twisted tears through her, though they didn't rise so far as her eyes. No, they only reached her throat, making her voice small and tight as she answered. “Because you're still outside Robert's easy realm of influence. Because to get a controlling hand in your court, in your life, he'll have to send or become someone else, and you can sense the witchpower if it comes close. Because you need this, and it's all I have to bargain with.”
She dragged in a deep breath and felt something pop in her chest, a shard of pain that loosened a little of the tightness that bound her. Everything she'd said was true, but this last was perhaps truest of all, and most risky to admit: “Because I'm Lorraine's heir and I won't be permitted to bear a child out of wedlock. If I can only stay free long enough to bear it, this is my child's best chance to survive.”
“You would be well off a prisoner of war, then.” Scratchiness filled Javier's tone, making him sound as rough as Belinda felt. Hope lanced her, a blow so hard she folded with it before forcing herself straight to meet Javier's gaze.
“Help me orchestrate these next few days and weeks of war, and I'll come to your war camp a willing prisoner. Lorraine and Robert know by now that I've left Alunaer. They'll have some poor girl playing my part until I can be returned, and won't make a public spectacle of my being missing. It looks too clumsy as if they can't control me. You can negotiate the terms of my release under that cover, and be satisfied with them a month or two after the child is born.”
“Or I could just have you killed.” Javier sounded almost curious, so matter-of-fact as to be dismissive.
Witchpower rose in her like a tide, seeming slow but also inexorable as it turned her vision to gold. “You could try.”
Javier chuckled, though his own silver power made no effort to respond to Belinda's flat anger. He'd tested her, then, nothing more, but even knowing that, she wanted to spit fire at him, to crush him and his ambition where he stood. The impulse still rode her as he asked, “Why would I give up the Aulunian heir? Particularly when I desire her crown?”
“Because Aulun will show you no quarter if Lorraine believes me dead at your hand. We have the Khazarian alliance, and Irina's army is endless. A sweet enough bargain will have Gallin sandwiched between the army already here and a new force sweeping in from the east. You're already outnumbered. Gallin would be destroyed.” Belinda's nails cut into her palms, a luxury of reaction she once would never have allowed herself, but she no longer cared. A lifetime of stillness had done its duty, had made her invisible and had permitted her to excel at the tasks she'd been set, but she was coming into a different life now. She was no longer a secret, and should a crown be placed on her head the knack for hiding thought and feeling would be useful, even crucial, but her role would be to be seen. She could permit herself the indulgence of emotion now, and a part of her revelled in it.
“And with Gallin your child.”
Belinda's smile felt sharp enough to be a snarl. “ Your child, for all they'd know. Aulun would show grace and kindness toward the babe and toward her enemies, and rescue the wretched tot, adopt it and raise it up, and the Gallic throne would become Aulun's after all. We can do this dance all night, Javier, and I have no more patience for it. Will you take my bargain?”
“And let you walk free to sow chaos on the battlefield? You're here now. It wouldn't be my wisest move, to let you go.”
Belinda stood, finally making herself an equal to the king across the grave. “Do you think you can stop me?”
“No,” he said after a long moment. “No, I don't suppose I can. This plan of yours… needs Eliza's blessing.”
“Oh,” Belinda muttered, “this will be rich.”
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,
