and rattling her thoughts. He was stronger than Marius, more delicious to dominate, harder to break, but he had gotten down on his knees to make a match with her and he could not, would not, deny her will. Belinda drew herself closer, putting her teeth over the heartbeat beneath his jaw, and bit hard enough to draw a strangled sound of mixed desire and resistance.
“Love me.” The command sank into his skin with a golden glow, stronger than the shields or witchlight she’d built as weapons. “Worship me.” Viktor croaked agreement, shuddering beneath her mouth. “I am your queen,” Belinda breathed. “You will serve me or you will die.”
His acquiescing nod sent pleasure so strong it became weakness over her, and she sagged against him. His arms closed around her, solid and strong. For an instant intellect clawed through passion, leaving Belinda gasping and chilled. Stillness felt an impossible distance away, unreachable, untouchable, alien to her. In a moment of clarity she understood that it was using the witchpower that turned her into a creature of raw desire and rough lust, endangering everything that she was and everything that she worked for. It cannot be found out. Robert’s concern made sense for a few burning seconds: if this was what she became when she touched the magic within her, she could not, should not, be trusted. Locking it behind a chypre-scented wall had been wise.
And arrogant. Fury shattered understanding. She was not a tool to be meddled with and played by the likes of Robert Drake. That was something he would come to understand; she would make certain of it. Belinda shoved back from Viktor’s warm strength, lip curled in disdain as she studied the paroxysm of agonized need stretching his face. Less out of sympathy than the cold thrill of power, she slid her hand over the front of his breeches, felt his hardness through cloth and curled her fingers around him. One vicious jerk sent a spasm over him, heat seeping against her wrist.
Unkind delight curled her mouth again and she pushed him away, standing up in the same smooth motion. “Watch Akilina. Remember when she meets Sandalia and what they discuss. I’ll come to you when I have need of you.” She stood outside Javier’s door a long time, flanked by guards whose gazes looked politely through her. She did not look at them, not trusting the witchpower to lie dormant if she did. Not trusting it to not flare up and demand tribute from the unfortunate men who guarded the prince that night. They would die if she met their eyes; they would die because she would take them sexually, fully, and the noise of it would bring Javier to the door, and to hold her position in his bed she would cry rape and the guards would die.
The urge to use that power tickled the centre of her palms and itched at her until as little as she dared step into Javier’s chambers so uncontrolled, she dared stay out even less.
Javier sprawled before the fire, linen nightdress falling around his knees, moon-pale legs stuck out in an ungainly fashion toward the fire. Belinda closed the door behind herself and locked it, hands tight on the bar as she leaned and stared at the casually bedecked prince. He looked up with a grin, wobbling a wine flask at her. “Akilina kept you longer than I expected. You did well, Beatrice. Even that crack about pigs fucking got a laugh. Here.” He sat up, taking her in. “You look a bit disheveled. Did the Khazarian ambassador have her way with you?” He gave her a raucous leer that was better suited to Sacha’s face. “I miss all the fun.”
“My lord, what do you feel when you use the witchpower?” Belinda’s voice came beneath his, soft with something she was reluctant to call fear, but could see no other name for. Javier’s drunk faded with her question, his eyebrows drawing down.
“Feel? What do you mean? Did you feel something from Akilina?” He bounded to his feet, enthusiasm suddenly rampant. “Is she one of us?”
“No.” Regret’s thin edge slashed through her at the disappointment in Javier’s eyes, though he recovered instantly.
“No,” he agreed. “It would be too much, for two women to come into my life so quickly, both bearing such power. Perhaps we’re the only ones, Beatrice. But that’s not so bad. At least we’ve found each other.”
“Yes, my lord.” Beatrice remained at the door, watching Javier as though he were an unfamiliar creature. “Do you feel anything?” she asked again, almost diffidently. “Do you feel…desire, the wish to…dominate?” She remembered, abruptly, the way he’d sculpted her body the first time they’d lain together, and thought that perhaps he did.
His expression, though, gave no hint of anything beyond bewilderment. “Do you?” Amusement cleared befuddlement away and he sauntered to her, deliberately leading with his hips. “Aah,” he murmured. “A woman given power finds herself in the unfamiliar position of wishing to flex it, is that it? Does it excite you, Beatrice?” He crossed his wrists, laughter sparkling through his eyes. “Shall you be my cruel mistress?”
“Please.” Belinda spoke the word carefully, turning her face away in order to make herself more vulnerable. She was too aware that the power running through her blood would make her words a command if she were not purposefully cautious. Javier’s laughter would disappear into offense in an instant should she be that bold, and she couldn’t afford to lose his attention now. Not with Viktor in the palace; not with Akilina and her unknown schedule to consider. “Please, do not mock me, my lord. This is not an easy thing to ask.”
Javier uncrossed his wrists and touched Belinda’s jaw, turning her face back toward his. “No,” he said a few seconds later. “I can see that it isn’t. I’m a man, and a prince,” he added after a moment’s thought. “It’s natural that I should be in control, Bea. The witchpower helps to impress that on people, but…no. It doesn’t waken in me a need to lord myself above others. But our stations are very different, and I think I can understand why you might chafe at the bounds of yours, when you and I both know what power you might command.”
Belinda nodded, small motion, barely trusting herself to even that. Javier’s fingertips felt cool against her face, as if her warmth might rise up and swallow him whole. She had let slip an opportunity to control his mother’s court once this evening, shaping that chance into something new and, she hoped, something worth the risk of letting Viktor live. She could not afford to give in to hungry power and try to overwhelm Javier, not now. There would be other chances to wrest control in the court, but not if she pushed the prince so far as to fall out of his favour, even despite the witchpower.
A fleeting note of cool white slipped through golden magic, then spilled over it, the ordinary strength of her childhood stillness finally hers to command again. Witchpower faded beneath it and Belinda let it go gratefully, no longer hungry for the reading of emotions or the attempt to steal thoughts. It was a gift, for a precious few moments, to be unweighted by that power and its desires. Belinda let her head turn heavily against Javier’s fingers, let herself sag against the door, and closed her eyes.
“What would you say,” Javier asked in a low voice, “if I were to offer you the station that would allow you command?”
Belinda opened her eyes, bemused. Javier’s hair flamed over his shoulders, firelight behind him lending it warmth that cast a golden glow to his skin. Shadows darkened his eyes to nearly black, devastating in the paleness of his face. His expression held cautious hope, so unexpected Belinda found a soft laugh to voice. “What, my lord?”
“I could offer you a duchy.” Javier took a breath and held it, then exhaled. “I could offer you a crown.”
Amusement burgeoned and Belinda straightened, a full smile on her lips. “Your mother would have a fit, Javier.” Her smile edged its way toward a grin, a broad expression unfamiliar to her, but welcome as she reached for his wine flask. “She’d have apoplexy just at hearing you tease me with the idea. Give me that. Whatever you’re drinking is fine stuff indeed. I want to try it.”
Javier stepped back, holding the flask out of reach with what looked like a childish pout, though there was too much astonishment in his gaze for it to work. “I’ve already spoken to her, Beatrice.”
“And I’m the queen of Cor…” Humour drained from her voice as surely as blood drained from her face as she took in Javier’s growing insult. “Holy Maire, Mother of God. Javier, you’re not-Javier?” Witchpower lay out of reach, dormant beneath the cloak of stillness that wrapped her mind. That habit had won over power was a relief now, for her untouchable core seemed shaken, doing nothing to slow her racing heart or the colour that reversed itself and began to climb her cheeks. Something was wrong with her hands: they trembled with cold emotion that strove to take her breath away. Tears stung at her throat and eyes, bewilderingly at odds with a fierce hope that burned her. Tears did not belong in the height of an emotion so extreme she was at a loss to name it. Neither excitement nor happiness went far enough; it harkened back to childhood and the moments of believing that Robert, in hosting Lorraine’s court for a month, would introduce young Belinda to the queen. She had known the name of that emotion once; it had, perhaps, been joy. Surely tears didn’t belong to joy, no more than such violent jubilation should belong to Belinda at all. Her heart’s beat filled her chest too fully, taking her breath and threatening to knock itself out of her body. “Javier?”
“For all that Mother’s the queen of the country, Lanyarchan lands are hard to offer you. They would be best,
