The Pretender's Crown

BELINDA WALTER

“Do more than bend an ear.” For the second time, Belinda extended a hand. “I'm speaking in riddles, not to confound you, but because the truth I've had from Robert's mind is beyond my comprehension. Spoken aloud it'll only sound like dreams. Take my hand, please, king of Gallin. Without witchpower sharing none of this will make sense.”

“Here?” Javier made a short gesture toward Marius's grave. “Should this not be done in private?”

“You would bring the Aulunian heir back to your own quarters?” Belinda asked, exasperated. “Here your people will give you privacy to mourn. Back in your tent you resume your duties. Thought shared with witchpower is the work of a moment.” More softly, she said, “Take my hand, Javier.”

Javier scowled, then set his jaw and seized her hand all in one swift motion, clearly belying his instincts in doing so.

Static shot through the touch, witchpower flaring in a burst that lifted hairs on Belinda's arms and sent a thrill of excitement through her. Too familiar, that taste of desire. Javier jerked back, but Belinda knotted her fingers around his, refusing to let him go as she grated, “This is how we know each other. You woke my power with passion. If we're to win over this thing we must learn each other again, go beyond this already-known need and find another path.”

“You're a witch, you've done this deliberately, you-” Javier broke off with a strangled sound, one too close to release for Belinda's liking. Fire sizzled through her, golden power bubbling and surging until her body ached and heat melted the core of her.

Sex isn't power. Dmitri's words came back to her, an unlikely source of salvation. He'd been both wrong and right, but now she snatched at the ways in which he'd been wrong. Commanding the storm hadn't been born of sensuality, nor did she any longer require that sexual pulse to steal emotion and thought from those around her. Sex and power could be divorced: for the sake of her soul, they must be divorced.

She'd drawn on rage and on raw determination to power the magic in the past; now panic proved a new and capable way to feed it. She had always claimed more faith in Lorraine than the Reformation God, and yet faced with knowingly surrendering to desire in the arms of a man she'd learned was her brother, Belinda found she had a little faith after all: faith that God would not forgive a passion so unholy. It seemed she wanted a chance at salvation, if a life such as hers might be forgiven.

Need burned out under that panic, witchpower steady and bright within her. Belinda shuddered and dared lift her gaze to Javier's. The silver-eyed king looked back at her with a mix of revulsion and loss that sent Belinda's vision hot and swimming. She whispered, “It isn't fair,” then laughed at herself, rough sound of pathos. The world had never been fair, and yet hers had shifted so dramatically that such protestations seemed in order. And those changes hadn't yet come to an end; she must, indeed, pursue them with all diligence, make certain they came to pass.

Javier gave her a thin smile in return, his emotion more controlled than her own. At its core was confusion and hatred: he had no call to love her, and every reason not to. But the edge had gone, even when he thought of his mother. His world had, perhaps, also changed too greatly to let old anger hold sway, at least in this moment. Where rage once burned, sorrow now lay: sorrow for Sandalia, and more freshly, for Marius. Guilt, too, guilt so deep it coloured everything, even his command of the magic inherent to his soul. He feared the witchpower in a way Belinda didn't, saw it as condemnation even when the Pappas, the father of his church, had named it God's gift. He had stolen free will from too many men, and saw that as an unforgiveable crime, as deadly as the one he and Belinda had shared, to ever be comfortable with his magic.

“Enough.” The sharpness of his tone caught her out: her feelings would be as clear to him as his were to her. Discomfited, she wondered what she'd betrayed in those few seconds, but he cast off her concerns with an angry burst of words: “Show me this stuff of dreams. Show me the enemy you say we have.”

The demand shaped her thoughts, spilling them into as near a semblance of sense as she could manage. A hint of resentment splashed after it and she bared her teeth, not liking that his command could get such a ready response from her. They had to be equals in this, or fail.

Then there was no more time for petty resentment, the fractured images she'd stolen from Robert washing through witchpower and sharing themselves with Javier de Castille.