sharp as they had been a decade earlier. She recognized in him now what she’d been too young to see before: he was, if not handsome, at least deeply compelling. His features might never grace the classic busts of ancient Cordulan emperors, but they would damn a woman’s heart to break. He had, even in repose, what du Roz had lacked: passion.
And he was not now in repose. Irritation turned his eyes from hazel to murky black as he slid his hand behind her neck, pulling her head back another degree or two. His hands were unexpectedly soft, though the touch was not; the hands of a man who had never done heavy work or held a sword. Belinda’s stomach tightened and she pressed her back against the wall, feeling her dagger dig against her skin.
“I think you do,” Dmitri breathed, still in Aulunian. His accent, which had marked him as Khazarian in Belinda’s childhood, was gone, words untainted by any other language. He pressed his mouth against the pulse in her throat, leaning his body into hers. His clothes were still cold from the outdoors. Belinda’s flesh went to goose bumps against the chilly fabric. There was no extra padding to the man, not in body nor in garment; his thighs, slender and muscular, trapped one of Belinda’s between them, his sex hard against her hip bone. Belinda ghosted her fingers at his hip, rather than reach for her dagger. A man’s own weapons were the best ones to use against him.
“You are Belinda Primrose,” Dmitri rumbled against her skin, so quietly that a passerby would hear nothing at all. “Adopted daughter of Robert, Lord Drake, favoured of Lorraine, queen of Aulun, and you are here to see to the death of Gregori, favoured of Irina, imperatrix of all Khazar. I am here to tell you that time is shorter than we believed, and the thing must be done now.” The words vibrated through her skin, leaving warmth that spread as surely as chill from his clothes had. The spice that lingered on his skin was cloves, fresh and clean. Belinda willed herself to loosen her jaw, trying to fight off the heady pulses of desire that were too poorly denied, in light of the words he said. She didn’t know him, other than a moment’s encounter in her childhood; he could be a spy, a test, a trap. Belinda dared not risk that he might be otherwise.
“My lord-”
Dmitri snarled and struck her, a backhanded blow that caught her cheek and knocked her to the floor. Belinda crumpled, lifting the back of her hand to her cheek and injured eyes to the dark-dressed man above her. Her dressing gown had come open; through flashes of pain she hoped it had done so artfully, for her own vanity’s sake. Men, in her experience, rarely cared for art, so long as a breast was bared or a thigh exposed.
Dmitri seemed no different. He took her in, the tears tracking down her cheeks and falling to follow the curve of a breast. Under the trickle of dampness her nipple hardened, and even through a blur of tears Belinda saw his gaze darken. He crouched, mouth pressed thin, to lift her breast and close his fingers over the nipple. She caught her breath, lips parting, and he knotted his other hand in her hair again.
“If there were time,” he said through compressed lips, voice thick with desire and anger, “if it were not so urgent that I be far gone at dawn’s coming.” He pinched her nipple again, making her stomach jump with distress and want, then yanked her dressing gown closed and stood up. His eyes were black and furious, his cheeks flushed. “Within the week, Belinda. We have no time. Ill winds ride in Gallin.”
He turned on his heel and stalked back down the corridors, leaving Belinda on the floor, cold and afraid. It was because he hadn’t taken her that she was convinced it wasn’t a trap. That, and her childhood recollection of him; that, and the itch of warning that had sent her from her bed faded as she watched him ride away. She had climbed to a palace turret to watch him leave, a place where serving girls were certainly not supposed to be, but it wasn’t fear of discovery that made a thick pulse of nausea pound in her stomach. It was malevolence, some small degree of it directed at Dmitri as the dawn took him away, but most directed at the count whose life she held in her hands. They conspired between them to take away the elegance of her assignment, Dmitri by insisting on speed and Gregori by his too slowly declining health.
For weeks she had slipped tasteless, colourless arsenic into Gregori’s drinks and onto his foods. It was a slow death, meandering from illness to madness to the grave, but discretion had been more important than speed. Now, if the thing had to be done with all haste, other poisons would do, but they left their mark in discoloured skin, in distorted features, in distended tongues, no more subtle than the cut of a knife. That was arsenic’s beauty as an assassin’s tool: it left no traceable sign. With large enough doses she could have him dead in a week, but the necessity of forcing her hand where time had only lately been a friend rankled in her.
Belinda curled her hands in front of her stomach as if she could take the sickness she felt there and turn it into a weapon itself, forcing it upon the count. As if it were a canker that could be put on another.
A tremble of sweat dampened her upper lip and her temples despite the cool summer morning as the bellyful of illness broke and passed from her, leaving her momentarily light-headed and disoriented. Then sense returned, sharp and clear: she ought to return to her room, ought to convince Viktor the bruise on her cheek was his fault, and ought to do it all before guards came to find her on the palace turrets where she should not be. It would be job enough to blame Viktor without having to worry about another man or two to fuck or leave for dead.
She pressed her fingertips against her cheek gingerly, wondering if the bruise might be used to her favour. Belinda drew her gown around herself again and hurried back to her tiny room. Viktor was a lout, but not cruel. She could see in his eyes that he didn’t remember the night, and took no pains to ease his fear. He rushed on the errand to fetch cosmetics that would disguise the mark on her cheek.
Disguise, but not entirely hide. Belinda stood in shadow, her head deliberately lowered for the morning inspection. The palace’s castellan looked twice, but not closely, and gave her the typical morning approval for dress and demeanor before the day began. Once the castellan was gone she tucked her breasts higher, fetched a tea tray, and went to wait on her master.
His morning rooms were already too hot, low fires built at either end, drapes drawn closed against morning light. Belinda inhaled the warm air deeply, setting her tray against her hip as she pulled the door closed. There was a faint scent of sickness in the air, unexpected. Gregori should show signs of arsenic poisoning soon, but for the smell to linger already in his private rooms gave her odd heart: perhaps the smooth workings of her plan would be less disrupted than she’d thought.
The drapes needed opening; the room needed light and air to clear away that telltale scent. Better for her, if worse for Gregori, if no one noticed the count’s illness in such early days, and besides, the scullery maids ought to have their ears bent for leaving their lord and master’s rooms in the dark. Tray balanced on her hip, Belinda stalked to the windows, yanking a handful of heavy curtain back.
“Leave them.”
Twice in a single morning she’d been taken off-guard. Belinda, facing the curtains, allowed herself to press her eyes closed, nostrils flaring. The cut of discovery ran deeper within herself, a tightening in her stomach and groin. Not panic, but something akin to desire.
“My lord,” she said in a low voice, curtsying even as she turned toward the voice. “I’m sorry, my lord. I didn’t see you.” She kept her eyes lowered, more to hide her irritation with herself than out of deference to the count.
“You’re injured,” he said.
Belinda lifted a hand to her cheek, then twitched it away again as if aware she’d betrayed herself with the gesture. “It’s nothing, my lord.” Now her eyes were downcast to hide the light of success: she’d read him correctly. He noticed what his castellan had not.
“Come here.”
Now she dared glance up through her eyelashes, if only to gauge the distance.
Gregori languished on a divan, startlingly pale against the heavy greens and golds. He was dressed loosely in sleeping gowns under a brocaded robe; his hair, usually swept back and tidy, was in disarray. Belinda was surprised to see how much curl, and how much grey, it had. His eyes were unnaturally bright, reflecting more light than the room had to offer.
Belinda came forward, setting his breakfast tray on a small table, and knotted her hands together below her waist. The stance bespoke fear and respect, and protecting herself; it also drew his gaze to her hips, where it lingered a few moments. “They call you Rosa, do they not?” he asked without lifting his eyes. She tightened her fingers in front of her groin, knowing he saw her knuckles whiten.
“Yes, my lord.” The name was a safe one, part of her own and repeated in one version or another in nearly every Echonian language, and oft-used in Khazar as well. “My lord, are you well?” She whispered the words, hearing a quaver in her own voice, and nearly believed her own performance. A serving girl had no right to ask after her master’s health.
