The Pretender's Crown (25 page)

She'd not had the skill in Khazar to sense that focus, not in the way she could do so now. She had known then that he wanted her; now she could taste the ambition in that want, as though she were a means with which to obtain an end.

Staggering clarity told her that he, too, could be a method by which she might create her own purpose, rather than simply following the path laid out before her by Robert and Lorraine, or even Dmitri. Witchpower heat scalded her skin from within, coaxing that thought to fruition. Once, not long ago, she had been unable to turn her back on duty. Now she grasped eagerly at new possibilities flowering in her mind, then let them go again before they became whole concepts, for fear Dmitri might share her talent of stealing thoughts, and not wanting to share these.

The loose novice's robes were easy enough to shed, even holding Dmitri's throat; she rucked them over her head and flung them to the side, shaking them off her wrist as she changed hands to keep the witchlord pinned. His gaze went black as he looked on her, simple human desire unladen with complications. Belinda wet her lips and released a thread of his power as she nodded toward his injured wrist. “Heal that.”

She felt the surge a second time, felt tantalisingly close to comprehension as he mended cracked bone. Muscle flexed in his shoulders as he brought his attention back to her, minute warning that, healed, he might attempt to seize the upper hand. She hissed a warning, soft primal sound, and he stiffened, earning her quick grin. Stiff was how she wanted him, but not so much that he thought himself the master in their tête-à-tête. She leaned forward to put her mouth by his ear, shifting some of her weight on his collarbones, but leaving enough on his throat to remain a reminder that he would pay for foolishness. “Your power is mine to command, dark prince, and I am tired of teasing. I would have you please me now.”

His lashes tangled over dark eyes, a thin smile curving his mouth. “I am still clothed, my queen.”

Belinda bit his earlobe. “That should hardly stop you.”

Chagrined amusement ghosted through her on the trickle of power she allowed him access to. Then, behind the chagrin came new purpose, flavoured with the intention to overwhelm her. That near-awareness of knowledge flooded her again, though its focus seemed changed. No longer healing, but still exciting the blood, triggering changes—once again, she almost grasped the thought and the science behind what he did, and then sensation became something to ride on, making her heady and uncaring of how, so long as it was done. Heat swelled between her thighs without a touch, without caresses or soft words or hard hands, without any of those things she'd been trained to. Desire came on like a dream, intense, half-imagined, drumming an incessant beat that had no physical component and yet aroused her as thoroughly as any man's hand might.

She didn't know when clawed fingers left his throat in search of tugging open his breeches. It was witchpower, it seemed, which held him down: even freed from her grasp he stayed where he was, gaze heavy on hers even when she tilted her head back and rolled with pleasure. He remained still as she settled on him, more strength of will in that lack of motion than most men had, and it was her own sound of liquid delight that echoed in her ears as he filled her. His length curving inside her brought the finish to what magic had begun, sending spasms through her and the slightest sense of smugness through the witchpower link she shared with her lover. Had it been Javier, she might have laughed; with Dmitri it only stoked challenge and a need for further control.

It was only later, much later, as she dragged herself back to her convent cell, that she wondered if that, too, had been a lesson in her magic, or if it even mattered.

7 April 1588
†
Isidro, Essandia

Akilina Pankejeff, for that is how she still thinks of herself, and always will, hates vomiting.

Not that she is under the illusion that there are those who enjoy
it, but the roiling of her belly, the beaded sweat on lip and forehead that turns to bitter chills, the anticipation of sickness, the terrible retching sound torn from her throat when bile surges upward; these are things she loathes. Even as a child she preferred standing in the frozen outdoors, sipping tiny breaths of icy air, to curling up and letting illness take its course. Her father, in the years before he died, called her a soldier when she would do this, and she'd taken pride in that, used it to shore herself up against a twisting belly.

Her father has been dead for more than twenty years, and no tall tales of soldiers prevent sourness from poisoning her stomach and coating her teeth as they have done every morning for the past three weeks.

For some reason she has always assumed that the sickness of pregnancy was something that affected other women, and would not dare to bother her. But it began literally the morning after she was wed, a hideous rising that sent her running for a chamber pot without a chance to defeat it. Rodrigo had pushed up on an elbow and watched her shudder and gag over the pot, his handsome features arranged with a degree of surprise. When, shuddering, she fell away and wiped her mouth, he rang a bell for a servant, then, with the same mild amusement he'd shown before their wedding, asked, “Am I as bad as all that, lady?”

Akilina raised a look full of daggers to the prince lounging in her bed, and his amusement turned to a full-out laugh. He rose, damnably lithe and well-formed for a man twice her age, and pulled on a robe that gave him a bit of decency as the maids came running. “My queen is indisposed,” he said with due formality. “Attend her.”

Admiration for his virility had spread through the capital city by noon, and, Akilina imagines now, as she did then, had reached the coast and the northern mountains alike by sunfall.
She
has spent weeks feeble with sickness while
he
has accepted congratulations and hearty smiles; it is not at all how she imagined her first month as a monarch. Still, she staggers to her window and looks out over Isidro, a hand over her still-flat stomach, and she smiles. Events have spun out more rapidly than she might have expected, but not badly. Pigeons have winged back and forth between herself and Irina, and
the imperatrix is satisfied with Akilina's new position. More than satisfied: Ivanova is no longer a necessary bargaining chip, but the alliances with Essandia and therefore Gallin are now solid.

There is the matter of what is to be done about Aulun, from a Khazarian standpoint, but that is not Akilina's trouble. That's for Irina, whose backstabbing and double-crossing treaties and alliances have become difficulties, to deal with. Essandia has its own plans for Aulun, and Akilina is more concerned with them than with Khazar's. Essandia, after all, has made her a queen, and that is a title she could never have aspired to at home.

The women come to dress her and she manages that without another bout of illness; it is, for her, the worst immediately after awakening, and only triggered again by overpowering scents. Things she once enjoyed now make her nauseous, and cautious ladies-in-waiting have learned already to offer treats slowly, so Akilina might thrust them away should they unexpectedly offend. It's a delicate dance, all done in Essandian, though Akilina hopes a few of them are learning Khazarian. Once summer comes she'll send for servants of her own household to join her here in Isidro, but until then a little talk would be a welcoming gesture for the new queen.

And they are welcoming of her indeed, with pregnancy coming so soon after marriage. Akilina lets the women go and stands on her own, still fighting sickness, but one stops at the doorway to offer a shy curtsey. “Forgive me, your majesty—”

Akilina almost doesn't hear what the girl says after that; she is still too taken with hearing those words, “your majesty,” spoken to her. It's an indulgence, but one she has no intention of letting go of soon: there's nothing more worth savouring. Her thoughts catch up to the servant's question, and she nods agreement, then shoos the woman out.

Not much later, Sacha Asselin enters. Akilina is arranged at the window, much as she was when he took her from the Gallic prison, but she's forgone any pretence of embroidery and only looks out over Isidro. This, after all, is her city now, and she its queen. Sacha bows deeply and without irony; she likes that in him, that he can hide all signs of mockery as he comes to sit near her, once she's
granted leave with a wave of her fingers. “How do you find Isidro, my lord Asselin?”

“The wine is sweet, the women are willing, and I have my queen to command me,” Sacha says lightly, as he has said every day when she's put that question to him. “Though I fear I'll need to return to Lutetia soon, my lady. Javier intends war.”

“And you intend to guide him in it.”

“I'm of more use there than here,” Sacha says, which doesn't answer the implied question. “I've done my duty by you and Rod—the prince.”

There's a self-satisfied smugness in his voice, the cockiness of youth. Akilina supposes she, too, would be smug were she in his shoes, having cuckolded the prince of Essandia. Only for a few nights; what might have become a dalliance over the length of the journey to Essandia ended early, in part because Akilina is cautious. True caution would have refused Sacha her bed at all, but true caution would never have offered her the chance of a child close enough in conception to be Rodrigo's, but no part of him. Perhaps it's a woman's thought: that a child begat by a man not her husband is somehow a thing entirely of her own, but it's a thought Akilina holds to. She'll have the shaping of the babe in her womb, with its true father unacknowledged and the man who claims it not bound by blood. Women have only what they take in this world, and Akilina intends on taking all she can.

Sacha shifts, her silence going on too long, and she brings her attention back to him. The other reason she sent him from her bed is one she will never admit to: boredom. He can be creative, but he's more often coarse and hurrying for his own pleasure. Rodrigo is the better lover, for all that Akilina doubts very much that the prince bedded any women before herself. There were those he'd kept company with, and whom he'd assiduously set aside and watched over to make certain there were no by-blows. Those few women are all wealthy now, well-kept in glorious homes. Royal castoffs often do well in society, but not all of them; not each and every one with the degree of success Rodrigo's former paramours have seen. They're too talented, too witty, too wise; Akilina has met them, and they are all, to a woman, perfect consorts. No man can
choose so wisely each time his heart leads him, and so Akilina is certain Rodrigo's has never led him. These women are contrivances, selected to create a discreet reputation.

She approves, actually, not that her approval makes the slightest difference. Still, it tells her things about his cleverness, and tells her, too, that if they should find themselves on the same side, they could be a devastating force.

Akilina Pankejeff does not, for one moment, believe she and Rodrigo de Costa are on the same side.

“More than your duty” is what she murmurs aloud. Sacha suspects, but does not know, that the child she carries is his; they were not lovers long enough for him to know the march of her red army. But the chance that it might be will keep Sacha on a long string, ready to dance for her when she whistles. She'll let him wonder as long as he's useful, and will dispose of him when he ceases to be. For now, he's her nearest man to Javier de Castille's ear, and that's worth keeping him alive for.

Avarice and interest flash in his eyes at her words as he takes them to be a hint of her child's father. Akilina indulges in a dismissive thought:
Men. So easily manipulated.
That, of course, is entirely unfair: women are just as easy to shape and lead. “You have brought Khazar and Essandia together,” she says, more than a little sanctimoniously, and rather enjoying it. “You've helped forge a great alliance between the east and west, and have strengthened your faith's military arm considerably. I should think your name will be written in history books, Lord Asselin, as harbinger of a new era.”

Colour burns Sacha's cheeks, making him look younger than he is. Akilina thinks of him as a boy even without such reminders, though he's less than a decade her junior. “Word from Cordula says Javier returns to Lutetia by sea. Will he stop here?”

Still ruddy with imagined pride, Sacha shakes his head. “He spent too much time in Isidro already, and spring is all but on us. He'll need to rally an army and move on Alunaer by June, so he's got no more time to lose. He'll go straight to Lutetia.”

“There to meet his oldest friend.” Akilina lifts her fingers, a welcoming soft gesture toward the young lord, and he catches them with a light gallantry that would stand him well if he'd learn to use
it at all times. “Guide him well, Sacha,” and this she says with all seriousness, because an empty Gallic throne is not to Khazar's advantage, not with her new marriage to a Cordulan king. Rodrigo and Javier are tied by blood, and present a unified front that no other contender for Lutetia's crown could offer her. Or Khazar, she reminds herself fastidiously. After all, she does what she does for Khazar, not herself.

Irina wouldn't believe that, either, and that may well be part of why the imperatrix has permitted this marriage. Akilina sniffs, making a mockery of insult in her thoughts. She aimed for a power behind the throne by choosing a lover in Gregori Kapnist, not the throne itself. Of course, had the handsome count managed to wed Irina, then as his lover Akilina might have seen herself just one step from the imperial crown. A pity Belinda Primrose had thwarted that chain of events by murdering poor Gregori. That he most likely would have met the same end should he have taken the throne and taken Akilina to wife is utterly beside the point.

Akilina's sniff turns to a smile full of unexpected and genuine good nature. The web is a tangled one, and rarely spins in any predictable manner. Machinations for one throne have gotten her another, and when all is said and done, Akilina intends on being mistress to an empire that will rival Irina's. She turns her thoughts from conquering and her smile to Sacha, and finishes her plea to him: “Guide Javier wisely, and we'll all of us profit from Alunaer's fall.”