offered a razor smile. “Perhaps his highness would lend you an already-bloodied sword, and you might end Robert Drake’s life to show your loyalty to your affianced and his kingdom.”
Honest astonishment dropped Belinda’s jaw, though it was Beatrice’s horror that whispered, “You want me to…kill a man?”
“You’re eager to bring down the Red Bitch’s throne, aren’t you?” Akilina asked gleefully. “Kill her favourite, prove your loyalty to Javier, and force Lorraine to overextend herself into an attack on Gallin in one smooth blow.”
Sandalia stepped forward, exchanging a brief glance with Javier as Belinda turned to them, heartbeat high in her throat. “My lord, my lady, I…I can’t-”
“It’s a dangerous game you play, Akilina.” Sandalia spoke thoughtfully, watching Drake and the Khazarian woman in equal parts. “You stand in our court and suggest a ploy that would have our country invaded by another. You must be very confident indeed of your resources.”
Akilina, with wonderful precision, said, “As confident of the breath I draw, Your Majesty. There is no need to fear it will not come.”
Sandalia turned her head, minute movement, to examine the raven-haired countess. “We are pleased to hear your sureness. We extend to you an invitation to remain safely within these walls until your confidence is borne out.”
Muscle tightened in Akilina’s jaw, the tension vanishing into a smile an instant later. “I’m honoured by your concern for my safety, Your Majesty, and delighted to accept.”
“Very well.” Sandalia turned her attention to Belinda with a familiar flickering of her fingers. “Proceed.”
Thickness seized Belinda’s throat, making her suddenly, itchingly aware of the gold-threaded lace scratching against the silk wrap. “What?” Her bluntness had charmed the queen in the past, but it was simple disbelief, not artifice, that forced the question.
“Marius’s sword will serve,” Sandalia said. “We do not care for the idea of Drake’s blood staining our son’s weapon.”
“Your…Majesty…cannot expect me to…” Beatrice’s faintness was Belinda’s own, though the reasons were different. Sandalia arched an eyebrow sharply.
“Our Majesty can and does. Prove yourself, Irvine, or we will have you stripped and searched as threatened. Are you ours, or are you his?”
“Your Majesty, I cannot…I cannot…kill a man-”
“Do it!” Sandalia’s command lashed out with a strength bordering on the witchpower’s.
Golden rage swept Belinda’s vision and she lurched forward a step, the “No!” that tore from her throat a memory before she heard herself speak it. Sandalia, only inches away, drew herself taut with fury-better fury than fear; so much as that, Belinda could still sense even in the midst of pounding, hungry power growing in her-and lifted a hand.
Belinda screamed, aborted sound of terror as guards closed around her, reaching for the torn places on her dress and shredding the fabric from her body even as she writhed and fought against them. A roaring cheer filled her ears, ugly thrills and delight from the courtiers, and she felt a dagger split the laces of her corset, bindings springing wide.
She caught it as it fell forward, clutching it to her chest and gasping for air, half astounded at the ease of breathing. Another pair of hands caught her underskirt, tearing its seam, and it fell away to expose her backside. A gasp of disappointment ran through those closest to her as it became clear no betraying knife pressed against her skin. She lifted her eyes as the guards parted, searching for Javier and trusting her fear and pathos to soften his heart.
There was kindness in his eyes. “You ought to have acted, Beatrice, but perhaps a woman’s weakness is too much to overcome. Let me do it for you. You will respond, sir,” Javier said with simple arrogance. “Confirm the duchess’s accusations or refute them, but you will share with us your answers.” He extended a hand, princely gesture, and with it Belinda felt inexorable willpower come forth from him.
She lifted her head, turning it toward Robert: a mistake, for it warned those eyes that knew to look that she had an expectation of what would happen. Only Javier himself might have those eyes, but of everyone in the courtroom, his were the ones she could least afford to betray herself to.
And his power bludgeoned into Robert’s like a toy knight playing at siege against Lutetia’s great walls. The scent of chypre filled Belinda’s nose again, stinging her eyes to unplanned tears. Javier made no audible sound, but surprise lanced through him like a weapon itself, and he redoubled the effort, pouring a lifetime of easy command into the expectation that Robert would fold beneath his will.
Drake chuckled beneath his breath, the softest surprise in the sound, so muted that only one who knew him might recognize it. Agony lanced Belinda’s heart, tearing her breath away as she saw, too clearly, the houses that would fall with her father’s response. Deception upon deception, so tangled and twisted together she could no longer determine where to begin or end. Who, who, who was the Gallic prince’s father, if not Dmitri, whose look was not at all stamped on him; if not Robert, whose surprise answered any doubt that might have lingered within Belinda. There had been secrets hidden in Javier’s parentage, secrets revealed by his use of power; and now, unstoppable, came the last act of treachery that would undo her in his eyes forever.
Because her father had put a binding on her mind, and whispered it is too soon, it cannot be found out, and today, here, in this place, he had no idea that his daughter had come into her power, and that Javier de Castille had trained her in it, and that to fight the prince in the battleground of the mind was to condemn Belinda to death.
Knowing none of this, Robert lifted his gaze to Javier’s, thin bloody smile cracking a mustache and beard that had grown too long under Akilina’s tender care. He shook his head, clucked his tongue in disapproval, and pushed back, such a flexing of strength that it seemed the whole room moved beneath it. Javier staggered, his hand dropping, and then rage came into his face as he turned toward Belinda. Every aspect of his emotions were threaded with betrayal, truth brought to light by Robert’s easy hand with the witchpower. Belinda knotted her hands in her corset, holding it against herself as if it made a shield, and wrapped stillness hard as iron around herself.
Javier’s anger came down on her with the weight of anvils, fury lending its silver sheen more power than she’d ever felt in him before. It wasn’t the playful jousts with witchlight; there was nothing visible in this attack, only wordless, silent will bearing down against Belinda’s shields. Javier searched for weaknesses, believing her, as a woman, to inevitably have them. To her pride, he found none, his power rebuffed.
Pride lasted barely an instant. She might be his equal in raw strength, but the Gallic prince had a decade of training with his gifts that she did not share. A fresh onslaught rushed her, no longer searching for weakness, but simply crushing: that Belinda’s power had been locked behind a wall in her mind was something not only she remembered, and with inexorable force, he squashed and contained that power again, pushing it back to where it had once been.
Belinda held a pinprick of light against him, struggling to keep it alive within her mind. They had practised shields and throwing blasts of power, but her gift was an internal one, safety from the outside world making an impenetrable cloak around her. It was not made to defend against a comer that pressed against it relentlessly from all sides; its instinct was to make itself smaller, hide in the shadows, go unseen.
Silence came, and the light winked into blackness.
Peculiarly, it was the gown’s destruction that stung her first upon awakening.
A chill had already set in, making her aware of her bones in a distant, aching way long before consciousness was reached. It was dull discomfort, the sort of thing she had so long held herself against that it barely seemed worth considering; certainly it was unworthy of disturbing her rest. Later, when some of the blackness had retreated, she became equally aware of the temperature of her flesh: not so cold as to freeze, but far below what it should normally be, as though she’d kicked off covers as she slept and left a shoulder bared to the night air. She reached for the duvet and found nothing, its lack too removed to be meaningful to her. She drew in on herself, making herself a small curled thing against her hard bed without reaching awareness.
In time, sensibility began to creep back into her: the vague realization that her bed was made of stone; nothing else was so hard, nor pulled the heat from her body even when it felt warmer than the floor around her. Neither words nor clear thought conveyed that to her, merely a recognition of fact as deep as the cold in her
