life in any sense that mattered, and it had seemed mere moments before she burst into her cell, breast heaving with the effort of haste.
Viktor had not been there. There had been no sign of him; there never was once he left, except perhaps a handful of thick black hairs sticking to the pillow. But it was early, earlier than a guardsman often needed to be up, and so to find her mattress cold and the blankets rucked and empty was a shock.
Belinda put it away almost instantly. All that mattered, all that truly mattered, was that he not be found in her chamber. It would be best if he were dead, his tongue silenced for good, but it was not necessary, and she had no time for unnecessary things. She loosened her corsets and stuffed partlets beneath them, needing enough to give her clothes the look of having changed without the risk of packing a bag that might draw attention. The coachman intended to leave within the hour. There might be time to find Viktor, to slip a knife into his kidney or across his throat and leave him bleeding in a streambed.
But Gregori’s death and Belinda’s disappearance, coupled with Viktor’s murder, might well shine too much light on the serving girl whom Ilyana had accused of witchery. Better to leave Viktor alive, out of the picture, than to play the dangerous game of silencing him.
A touch of sentiment made her shoulders tighten. It was not that he’d asked her to marry him, or made the offer as if it were a love match. That kind of weakness would be her undoing, and so it could bear no relevance on the decision to leave him alive. It was not that which stayed her hand, but raw practicality.
Belinda looked through the Khazarian guard now with the same brief and meaningless smile she’d offered all the guards, and told herself again that it had been the right choice, at the time, to let him live.
She did not, could not, would not, let the sickness in her stomach betray itself with her expression. She forbade a blush to rise, forbade any hint of recognition to light her eyes. Disbelief beetled Viktor’s eyebrows, the outrageous impossibility of his onetime lover being in Lutetia and on a prince’s arm doing more to maintain Belinda’s cover than any action she might take could do. It was simply not possible, and in that lay her only chance at safety. It had been wise to let him live then.
It would be suicide to do so now.
They were past the guards, bowing, curtseying to the table; Belinda brought her curtsey low to Akilina, almost as deferential to her as to Sandalia. Both women noticed, Sandalia with a quirked mouth that hinted just barely more at humour than offense, and Akilina as if it were no more, and possibly less, than she was due. They were seated, Javier at Akilina’s right and Belinda farther down the table, as benefited her lesser status. Pleasantries were exchanged, all in Gallic, Akilina complimenting Belinda on her accent, Belinda demurring and insisting it had improved greatly in the months she’d lived in Lutetia, but Akilina, to Belinda’s ear, sounded as if she’d been born to the tongue. Polite, meaningless, charming; all the things that Beatrice Irvine should be in the face of so much nobility, so much greater than her own, and all the while with the weight of Viktor’s gaze on her slender shoulders.
Akilina said something that brought Beatrice’s laugh to the fore. Too easy, too easy; Beatrice laughed too easily, and in such free emotion there was, had always been, danger. Belinda’s grace was not in her singing voice, but in her laugh, as she had once told a dark-haired courtesan in Parna. Viktor would know that laugh, impossible as it was, and yet to choke it back was unthinkably rude. Belinda quieted it as best she could, leaving merriment in her eyes and trusting without fail that her gaze and smile would bury true emotion so deep no one but she would ever find it. Akilina smiled at her, an open predatory expression that Belinda knew too well, and this time it was she, not her assumed persona, who wanted to laugh, almost in despair. There was safety in being a serving girl. No one saw her as a servant, no one cared or noticed, no one bothered. Belinda kept her smile in place and coiled stillness around herself, reaching