into place. The floor beneath her feet vibrates, and she wonders if Robert Drake and Belinda Primrose can feel the shaking within their prisons.
Viktor exits with a shake of his head; Akilina nods toward the second passage. Moments later he calls, “Here,” and she walks delicately into the passage.
Drake squints up at her from the bottom of his pit, and, unexpectedly, chuckles. It looks and sounds painful, though he manages a bow as well, and says, drolly, “Lady Akilina. To what do I owe the pleasure?” He cranes his head again, peering up at her, and she feels a surge of delight at how vulnerable he seems. It’s an illusion built by their locations, but that makes it no less appealing.
“I have a proposal for you,” she says in Khazarian. Viktor she trusts, but the Gallic guard will run to his queen with word of her intentions, if she lets him. Robert flicks an eyebrow upward and spreads his hands.
“I’m listening.”
“You’re to die at dawn,” she says, which garners a nod from him. No surprise, no dismay, just agreement. She finds that she likes that in him; perhaps it’s the same quality she finds delightful in his daughter. “I can save you.”
“In exchange for?” His voice is steady; whatever he fears, it’s not the threat of being left to die. Akilina crouches, though it means more of her skirt touches the filthy floor, and smiles down at him before murmuring secrets of state and treason into the dark.
* * * *
BELINDA PRIMROSE
12 January 1588
Lutetia
She had no poison of choice. Such things couldn’t be kept in her bedchambers within the palace, and she had no time left to hurry into Lutetia and obtain arsenic or even something less subtle. It ate at her, being unable to leave that final gift in certainty; a healthy pinch would spell Sandalia’s death, and leave Belinda free to tear herself from Gallic shores.
Slipping into Sandalia’s private chambers was so easy as to bring frustrated tears to Belinda’s eyes. She remembered too clearly hours spent watching, waiting, hiding in plain sight, hoping for the chance to steal into other dignitaries’ quarters so she might fulfill her duties. A lifetime had been wasted in those petty behaviors, when she might have done what she now could, let shadow cloak her and force eyes to see through her even as she walked between armed guards and perfumed courtiers. She might have lived a life more like the one Javier had been born to, and been all the more secretive for it, as who could believe that a lady raised to the courts might have the skill or the will to thrust a dagger into a man’s ribs?
Or a queen’s. The thought whispered so softly Belinda barely let herself admit she’d thought it. Ten minutes earlier, while the queen and her courtiers ate supper, Belinda had stood at Sandalia’s side, nimble fingers unfastening the catch on the Gallic regent’s necklace, so she could slip away the keys that opened Sandalia’s twice-locked office drawers. Once more so very easy, when she let desperation drive her. Too easy: had the court not expected Belinda Primrose to be buried in an oubliette until dawn, even the call of duty and the power riding her might not have pushed her into taking the risk. If anyone had dreamed she might be free, the shadows she cast around herself might have been breachable; it was only circumstance that allowed such tactics to be put to use. Still, the ease of it all made her burn with frustration and regret for a lifetime of harder choices.
She might so easily have ended it there, taken Sandalia’s life in exchange for her own humiliation, but the tiny knife she carried no longer sat at the small of her back. For all its strength, Belinda doubted that witchpower would hide her through the process of strangling a woman with her bare hands. There were other ways to ensure Sandalia’s death, and Belinda would be far from the palace by the time they were set in motion.
There was no light beyond frail moon shadows in Sandalia’s office. Belinda moved almost blindly, using flawless memory to step around the chairs and find the desk locks in the darkness. The fall of tumblers sounded loud as waterfalls as she opened them, sliding free parchment that condemned the queen with her own hand. Not just one queen, but two: Irina would not emerge unscathed, either, even if she denied with all vehemence