The Queen's Bastard

BELINDA PRIMROSE / BEATRICE IRVINE

24 November 1587 Lutetia “Viktor.” It had become too easy to use names in the weeks-months, now-that she’d been Beatrice Irvine. It would take retraining to fall out of the habit again, though at least a servant wasn’t expected to be on personal terms with her mistress and master. Belinda whispered the guard’s name again, almost singing it, and extended witchpower through the word, drifting magic through Sandalia’s palace.

She felt him stiffen in more ways than one when her will touched his. Even from the distance his emotions surged, desire mixing with fear to make a potent cocktail. He stepped away from his posting, gaze lingering on Akilina for an instant, a moment in which Belinda thought she could see the raven-haired woman through his eyes. She was barely dressed for breakfast, wearing a shift of linen and an open robe thrown over it, and her gaze went briefly to her guard, then away again, dismissive as she turned her attention back to her meal. A thrill danced through Belinda at the possibility that another’s eyes might be used to spy in such a way, but the images faded so quickly as to have been imagination, as Viktor walked blindly through the halls, drawing closer without seeming to know where his feet took him. Lust all but rolled ahead of him, strong enough that Belinda thought she could smell it, musky and warm in the cool stone hallways. It pricked her own interest, and for a fleeting instant the idea of risking taking her onetime lover anew appealed to her.

She cut off a sharp laugh at the back of her throat, making a fist at her side. That impulse was the witchpower, not her own intellect; she’d come to recognize its base desires quickly enough to route them. Anything else would be tantamount to suicide: the prince’s soon-to-be wife could not, under any circumstances, be thought unfaithful. Even Sacha had ceased playing at that game, his obsession turned to searching for Eliza, though Belinda still waited for him to betray her to Javier. That she’d set up a defusal for his accusations was a start, but perhaps not enough, and the uncertainty rankled.

Witchpower whispered around the edges of her mind, golden and sultry, offering itself as a method of dealing with the stocky lord. Belinda set her jaw and put the temptation away: power was best used discreetly, and Asselin could be controlled through other means. She would not have wished Eliza to disappear, but it drew Asselin’s attention elsewhere, and that was a gift not to be overlooked.

She had yet to confirm a meeting betwixt Asselin and the Khazarian countess, even with Viktor’s help, nor had guarded inquiries into the young lord’s finances turned up any hint of proof to back her theory of conspiracy between the two. That, too, rankled, though with more of a challenging itch than genuine irritation. Asselin was a surprisingly worthy adversary, his skill at dissembling nearly equal to her own-equal, perhaps, had she not borne the witchpower within her as an unseen weapon. Belinda liked him for his skill and loathed him for what knowledge about her he owned; that she fully intended to bring his life to an unexpected and violent ending seemed a reasonable recourse to the dichotomy of emotion.

A new spill of laughter, less sharp, washed through her at the silent admission. She was unaccustomed to finding herself wishing personal revenge, and wondered if that, too, was the witchpower, or if it was the noblewoman’s trappings she’d worn the last few months. A serving girl manhandled by a lord had no path to reprisal, and in a decade of playing those roles Belinda could not, even with her haunting memory, recall a time when resentment had risen up against a man’s greedy hands. It was the manner of the world, and nothing was to be done about it. Sacha Asselin had come into her life at the strangest time she could remember, and it would be to his own health’s detriment.

Belinda shook herself, turning her gaze out a palace window to watch flakes of snow idle toward the earth. Asselin, half at Javier’s request and mostly at his own demand, searched for Eliza, and kept himself out of Belinda’s way. For the moment, that was enough. Until Viktor could confirm her suspicions with reports of a meeting, she would focus on tasks closer at hand.

Her thoughts conjured the guard, whose wave of lust rode her again just before he pushed aside heavy velvet curtains that protected Belinda’s alcove from the hall, and the hall from winter’s chill creeping in around the edges of lead-lined glass. Viktor let the curtain fall behind him, a questionable prudence that Belinda didn’t comment on. She could neither afford to be seen with him nor be seen pretending not to be seen with him, but this floor of the palace was poorly travelled, and the wing she’d chosen even less so. All the better to flip her skirts up and have the man on his knees before her.

Viktor’s gaze snapped up to hers as if the pulse of heady, dangerous desire she felt had leapt to him in turn. Belinda inhaled, deliberate and sharp through her nostrils, and cursed the very magic that gave her sway over the Khazarian guard. “Well?” She spoke Khazarian, keeping her voice low; the curtains would muffle anything they had to say, but Beatrice Irvine didn’t speak Khazarian.

All the more reason to go unseen. A rough guard and a noblewoman from different countries have only one obvious language in common, and Belinda doubted anyone would believe her protestations of innocence, should it come to that. Viktor takes another step toward her as she speaks his tongue, and the question comes into his voice again: “Rosa?”

“I’ll be your Rosa.” She smiled to hide irritation and walked her fingertips up his chest, feeling witchpower flex and reach for him. Marius and Nina were absurdly easy to manipulate, compared to the stubborn Khazarian guard. Whether it was his familiarity with her old self or something hewn out of dark nights and long winters, Belinda neither knew nor cared. “I’ll be your Rosa,” she promised again, “if you’ll tell me what Sandalia and Akilina discuss. They seem to never see one another. Why is that?”

Consternation creased Viktor’s brow. He folded his hand over hers, enveloping it: his hands, like the rest of him, were large. “Sandalia won’t see her,” he said heavily, then gave her a sly look so open it might have been a child’s. “Not during court, at least.”

Belinda’s heart caught and beat again more painfully, her breath hanging empty in her chest. “When do they meet?”

“While you’re spreading your legs for the count,” Viktor said nastily. “No, the prince. It’s hard to remember, Ros-ah!” His voice cracked as Belinda caught a hand between his legs, barely stopping herself from making it a blow. It required trembling concentration to turn it into a caress, anger and power sparking through her. Viktor’s eyes glazed as she stroked him, her own pulse rising and heat pooling between her thighs.

“Does it take the actual act? Is that why Marius and Nina were so easy, and you stand against me?” She whispered the questions in Aulunian as she rucked her dress up a palmful at a time. “Do you want to fuck me, Viktor?” That, she spoke in his own language, as if words were needed. He shuddered and dropped his breeches all in a single action, Belinda gasping with unexpected pleasure as he took her an instant later. Witchpower washed over her vision until she saw only gold, and with her mouth against his skin she whispered, “You do not know me, Viktor. I’m Beatrice Irvine, not your Rosa, and you must forget me and her when you walk away from this.” She sent a trickle of stillness through the power, holding him away from climax. “But first tell me when Akilina and Sandalia meet, and why.”

He groaned in protest, thrusting harder into her in search of his own pleasure. Belinda laughed, quiet liquid sound, and let her head fall back, riding his strength inside her for her own benefit. “Tell me, and I’ll let you finish,” she promised, and out of selfishness, murmured, “but keep doing that.” A woman could separate out words from pleasure; surely a man could as well. Viktor’s desperate grunts and fierce rutting seemed to belie that logic, and impatience took her. The witchpower stillness resided in him; she withdrew it and filled him instead with her own building desire. He cried out more loudly than he ought to have, strangled sound of release, and she forewent the urge for satisfaction to snap, “Now, Viktor, tell me of Sandalia and Akilina.”

And finally, in gasping words, he did.