dance that helped keep her enthroned. She did not, in Belinda’s estimation, need to; impossible choices could be lifted from a queen’s hands and given over to another to ease her way as easily as might happen for anyone else. More easily, perhaps: the royal name inspired a loyalty that an ordinary man might never command.
“I think you understand less than you imagine of the affairs of royalty,” Javier snapped, unmoved by her hopeful smile. “Being on my arm does not make you privy to the thoughts or means of those above you.” His witchpower was extended, an unconscious and indomitable expectation that she would acquiesce. Belinda permitted herself the luxury of imagining to grind her teeth, imagining tightening her fingers on his arm in irritation, all in a core of her so deep she barely felt relief from those internal allowances. Pride, strange thing that it was, would not allow her to actually roll beneath the prince’s will, but unlike the moment of challenge at the drinking house, she at least did not stand against it, did not meet his urge to conquer with her own untouchable centre of stillness.
“I’ll watch my tongue, my lord,” she murmured instead. “Forgive me my impertinence.”
Javier relaxed, confident of his supremacy. “It’s easy to forget your provinciality,” he offered magnanimously, then dropped his voice to add, “particularly knowing that which we share.”
Belinda deliberately dimpled, stepping ahead to twitch her skirts at him, eyes bright with mischief. “A bed, my lord?”
Javier surged toward her with a laughing growl, and she skipped out of reach with an obligatory squeal. An instant later they were running down the halls of the palace, the one after the other, given over to playfulness that different circumstances forbade both from often indulging in. “I am bored with these tricks, my lord. There must be more the power can do.” Belinda lay on her belly on Javier’s bed, shoes abandoned and her feet kicked up behind her, a palmful of witchlight glowing in her hand. It winked out as she spread her fingers, earning Javier’s scowl.
“It took me months to call the light consistently, Beatrice. You can’t abandon your practise after a few weeks because you find it dull, nor can we risk pursuing our gifts too far. You know what would happen if we were found out.”
Beatrice flung away his protest with a wave of her hand, fully aware he was right and still too impatient to bow to his will. “How old were you when you began, my lord?” she said irritably. “I’m an adult, my power matured.”
“I was ten,” Javier admitted. “But that means nothing.”
“It means everything,” Belinda said. “You flex your power, Javier, weight others with your will. I wrap myself, hide myself, in mine. I’d been practising that for years by the time I was ten, long before power woke in me.”
“Power you hid until I showed you it could be used,” Javier said shortly. “Women fear strength, Beatrice. You should see that from your own behavior. Now make the witchlight again.”
Unwilling to throw the truth in his teeth, Belinda schooled her features and called another palmful of light to her hands. She wouldn’t allow irritation to fuel the soft golden orb; that would give Javier a score in a battle she could barely define. She wanted her strength to come from the control she’d learned through a lifetime’s practise, not from raw, manipulatable emotion. She heard Javier say, “Good,” and ignored him, subsuming annoyance beneath hard-won dominance. The witchlight wavered before stillness won out, serene confidence brightening her globe to brilliance.
“Javier.” Belinda looked up, half-imagining warmth radiating from the light between her fingers. The prince turned to look at her, golden shadows warming his face and turning his eyes the shade of her magic. She sat up on her knees, cupping power, and flashed a smile. “Catch.”
The impulse to throw it overhand, as hard as she could, shot through her. Instead she underhanded it, refusing the urge to use strength. It spun through the air in a delicate fiery arc.
The air between herself and Javier flexed, Javier’s will thundering as though she’d offered an attack and he could end it by overwhelming her. Silver shot through the air, a shield of his own moonlit power. Belinda’s ball splashed against it, golden fire raining down in droplets, and she flinched back, feeling the impact as if she’d crashed against something solid herself. Javier’s eyes rounded, youthful dismay that brought forth a laugh that Belinda usually kept well under control. An external focus of power certainly had its uses, but the prince would never match her ability to hide expressions. She stretched out her hand, calling the fallen sparks of witchlight back to her, and held them against her bosom when they’d returned, her eyes bright on Javier’s. “Did you feel it?”
Javier’s slow one-sided smile answered more thoroughly than words. “Try it again.”
“And have my nose smacked up against a shield again? I think not.” Belinda rubbed her nose in offense, then lobbed her power with her free hand, deliberately winging it wide.
Javier fell into a fighting stance, eyes snapping to the golden ball even as silver creased the air again. Belinda put intensity behind the desire to stop her power’s movement, and it brushed against Javier’s shimmering shield with a tingling caress instead of painful force. He split an astonished grin and she curled her toes under herself, lower lip caught in her teeth as they both stared at aspects of magic dancing with each other in the prince’s bedchamber.
“We should stop.” Javier’s voice had no conviction. “Can you imagine what it looks like from outside? Fire darting across my room and light glowing bright and white like no torch anyone’s ever seen?”
“The curtains are drawn. There’s nothing to fear, Javier. Or will you be content with always hiding your skill, never pursuing its depths? I will not.” Belinda tossed her hair as Javier’s expression darkened.
“We dare not show it, Beatrice. Tell me you’re not that great a fool.”
“I’m not.” Belinda brought a second ball of witchlight into being, the first one flickering but holding its position as fresh light cupped itself in her palm. “But look what you’ve done here, with just a little push. Shields, Javier. What else is possible? Can you make it invisible, so it can be used in battle?” She sent her own magic rolling out of her palm, taking a slow and circuitous route toward Javier as he glanced first at her, then at his own shielding. Concentration made a line between his ginger eyebrows, and the silver sheen of power faded a little at the edges. He exploded a breath of air, nearly a laugh, and shook his head.
“I may have to claim it’s Gabriel here to protect my royal arse. I don’t know if I can take the moonlight away, Bea. It’s always been there.”
“Concentrate.” The word came hard, Belinda’s attention split three ways, but Javier gave no notice of her second attack until golden witchlight spun out behind him and wrapped itself around his eyes. He shouted, clawing at his face, and his shield failed. Belinda shot up onto her knees, hand extended to direct her first attack toward the prince, who roared in offense as witchlight invaded his chest.
Laughter burst forth from Belinda’s throat and lost her concentration in doing so, both hands clapped over her mouth. For all her complaints, Javier was right: they couldn’t afford to be found out. The witchlight blindfold she’d wrapped him with faded and he glowered at her, shooting a cautious look at the door. No one came to it, his guards on the other side evidently unconcerned with noise. Her laughter, Belinda thought, might have been the saving grace after Javier’s shout.
For a moment they faced each other, both panting with effort before Javier curled his lip as if to damn the consequences and pooled silver light in his palms. With an instant’s thought he split the ball of power into two and lobbed them, one after the other, toward Belinda. She shrieked, half startlement and half play, and flung herself across the bed, dodging physically even as she tried to focus on the idea of hardening the stillness, pushing it out of her as a force of its own.
Silver splattered against a brief golden shield, the reverberated impact less startling than her success. Javier shouted with pleasure and Belinda, half off the bed, lobbed another handful of power at him. He ducked, not bothering to shield, and power exploded behind him as it smashed into the wall, leaving a scar above unlit candles. They both gaped at the mark on the wall before Javier turned toward Belinda, censure warring with admiration.
Heavy pounding on the door startled them both badly enough to jump, and Javier’s expression shot toward anger before he swept his hand over the mark on the wall and stalked toward the door, yanking it open. “All’s well,” he said sharply to a dismayed guard. Then, unexpectedly, a snigger ran over his face and he added, “A little disagreement over how the candles ought to be arranged. They said we gingers are tempermental, but God save me from the brunette in my bedroom. You’ve heard nothing at all, of course.”
The guard looked in nervously, eyeing the scarred wall and Belinda in equal parts. She scrambled for the edge of the bed, twisting her hands behind herself guiltily, as though she might be holding one of the maligned candles. Something in the guard’s expression changed, as though he was trying not to laugh at his betters, and then he
