stepped back with a rap of his fist against his chest. Javier closed the door and turned on Belinda, who ran to him, hands against his chest as she looked up with laughter and adoration in her gaze. “I am trouble,” she whispered in delight. “And you, my lord, you are control and restraint and-”
He put his hands over hers, silencing her with the gesture. Belinda drew a sharp breath, words lost beneath Javier’s grey gaze and the things his touch told her. Even in his irritation he sparked with life, a joy unrecognizable to him after a lifetime of solitude. She had brought that to him, saving him from lonely constraint; saving him from the Hell that he was sure was his for all eternity. For a few aching seconds her heartbeat matched his, breath stolen beneath an exquisite agony that knew he could not keep her, and still found itself daring to hope he might find a way.
The strength of passion undid Belinda, leaving her gazing at Javier in astonishment. A lifetime of duty had never warned her of being needed, not for herself; only for what she could do. Hunger crawled up through Belinda’s body, claws of determination curling in her groin and stinging her breasts, a taste of ambition burning away thought. She slipped her hands from beneath Javier’s and knotted them at his hips, making a clean insatiate line of her body against his. “Look at who we are together, my lord, my love, my prince. Think of what we could do together. Think of the thrones we could hold.”
But for all that he desired her, he went still, eyes darkening to silver. “We, Beatrice?”
Rage, pure and unexpected, took Belinda’s voice and flooded her body until she felt as though heat poured off her. It captured her power, building it higher, alien and exciting. Javier had no right, no place, in questioning her use of we, not when her power was clearly as great as his. It burgeoned inside her, begging to be used. It would be easy, deliciously easy, to let that rage ignite the very air, to burn Javier where he stood for daring, daring, to question her-!
Belinda forced clenched teeth into a smile, internal struggle more violent than anything she could remember. Pushing away outrageous anger and slowing her heartbeat should be the work of a moment, the calm of stillness captured and wrapped about her. Instead witchpower flexed and fought her will, demanding Javier acknowledge her as equal, even superior: she could do what he did not, disappear from plain sight, manipulate others into acting as she desired. He could be used like any man, made to think well of himself and his cleverness while all the time doing her bidding. That he stood against her was exciting, profoundly interesting, but his gambit would ultimately fail: he was only male, slave to her will.
Belinda shuddered from her core all the way to her skin, so profound Javier caught her out of concern, despite the challenge she’d laid at his feet. Eyes closed against another surge of unaccustomed ambition, she whispered, “We both know I could never stand at your side and share power, but I might offer it to you in support, from behind those thrones you conquered. I meant nothing more, my lord. Forgive me.” She opened her eyes, procuring a weak smile that had more to do with deep-seated uncertainty about her own impulse to dominate than the sought apology Javier would see it for. “Once more I’ve failed to watch my tongue, and I’d only just promised I would do so.”
Mollified, he drew her closer again, voice dropped as he murmured, “Then perhaps I should watch it for you, Beatrice.”
Belinda trembled, subsuming the outraged witchpower as she tilted her head back and opened her mouth to the prince’s.
JAVIER, PRINCE OF GALLIN
9 November 1587 Lutetia “She isn’t your usual type, Javier.” Sandalia is watching her son, making him uncomfortable, though he doesn’t dare let that show. He left Beatrice sleeping off the aftermath of sex in his bedchambers hours ago, and he has been thinking, pacing, avoiding everyone ever since.
Even now he paces the confines of Sandalia’s chambers, reaching for wine, nibbling on sweetmeats. He isn’t hungry, but better to let his mother believe that’s the problem than delve deeper. “She’s pretty enough,” Sandalia admits, “but you’ve always had an eye for the slender blondes.” Amusement suffuses her words. He thinks of her as a happy woman, he realises. She is many things, of course-focused, intent, a queen-but in the end, to Javier, she is his mother, and she is happy. “Deliberately avoiding comparisons to your mother, I imagine. What draws you to her?”
Javier imagines, briefly, telling the truth. Daring to explain, as he has never dared, the witchpower that he thought was his burden alone. Daring to pool light in his palms and explain that his will is its source.
As always, since childhood, caution stays him. He believes, must believe, that his mother wouldn’t condemn him as a monster, but while Sandalia is earthier than her brother Rodrigo, she’s also a true Ecumenic queen, and he can’t imagine making her believe that his abilities aren’t the devil’s tricks.
Especially when he doesn’t believe it himself.
It’s easier, now that he has Beatrice. Now that he knows he’s not the only one gifted, or cursed, with the witchpower. He’s continuously surprised that a woman should share his powers, but better a woman than a man. Beatrice’s sex gives him an easy excuse to spend time with her. Should he have discovered another man with such skills, the hours they’d spend together training would have all of Echon snickering in their sleeves at Sandalia’s only heir. It’s not a path Javier has any interest in taking, all the more so given how desire helps to focus the witchpower for use.
“She’s useful, Mother” is what he allows himself to say. It’s all he can allow himself to say, even if he were to leave the question of witchpower itself behind. The pain that sears through him at the thought of losing Beatrice takes his breath, and to confess to more than her use would have Sandalia remove her from his life permanently. “The night Marius brought her to meet us-”
“You’re the only son of a royal house I know who means more than one person when he says us,” Sandalia interrupts. Javier smiles because she expects him to and waits a moment to see if she’s going to follow that familiar path of scolding before he goes on.
“That night she named me the true heir to Aulun,” he says when it’s clear he’s been given a reprieve from that particular lecture. “Even a brunette catches my attention that way.”
“Did you stop to think that might be what she wanted?”
“Mother,” he says impatiently, “I’m the prince of Gallin. I think the last time I met a woman who didn’t want to catch my attention she was ten and trying to steal pears from our gardens. Of course I did. But even if she was, if she’s bold enough to do it that way, then she may be reckless enough to help-” He breaks off, unwilling to speak specific terms, even in a room where no one is supposed to be spying. “Reckless enough to help,” he repeats, and makes it a finished sentence.
Sandalia, less paranoid or more confident than he, laughs. “Help? What would you have her do, Javier? Wrangle an introduction to the Aulunian court and slip poison into Lorraine’s tea?”
Javier exhales. “I had a different plan.” This is a moment of danger, one he barely recognizes himself for risking. It borders on sentiment, a weakness Javier never thought himself to share, with the exceptions of his childhood friends. For those three he will do anything. To find himself about to propose what he intends to, in order to retain contact with the only other witchbreed being he’s ever found-and in order to threaten the Aulunian throne, he reminds himself-speaks of something his mother might see as vulnerability.
It is never wise to show weakness to royalty.
Sandalia’s eyebrows quirk, invitation to continue. Javier puts down his wineglass and picks it up again, cursing himself for the tell even as he does so. “This is not,” he begins, “intended as a long-term arrangement.” He has to say that first, or she’ll never listen. He has to say it first, to establish to himself that it’s true. Interest and amusement light Sandalia’s eyes at that opening foray. She gestures to the wine, and he pours her a cup, brings it to her grateful for the physical distraction. “Lanyarch is without a king since Charles’s death,” he says as he does so. “Either out of respect for you or fear of Lorraine, no one has come forth to put on a pretender’s crown since you fled the country.”
“Let’s pretend respect,” Sandalia says drily. “I know this, Javier.”
“Lanyarch is still Aulun’s greatest threat as an Ecumenic neighbor to the north, contentious and chafing under Reformation rule. But the threads that tie us there are slender, Mother. You’re a widow, not a daughter of any Lanyarchan nobility, and you have no children by Charles.” He smiles suddenly, bright and disarming. “Unless
