The Pretender's Crown Read Online Free Page A

nearly allowed herself the luxury of throwing her hands up in exasperation. Perhaps it was the intimacy; perhaps it was witchpower daring to put herself on the same level as the queen in small but noticeable ways. Whichever,
whatever
, drove her to those tiny indiscretions, they would cost her her life if she didn't regain control and become once more what she had always been: meek, modest, unremarkable. “I can't imagine a world in which that would have been permitted. The engagement was a ploy to see if wedding a Lanyarchan noble to the prince of Gallin might frighten the Aulunian throne into foolish action; you must know that as clearly as I did. Sandalia would have had me killed before she would allow me to marry Javier, though I should think I might have escaped that fate through my own wits, if not Javier's—” For the second time she found herself verging on dangerous language, and ended with “fancy” rather than words with more emotional weight.
    “And Javier? Would he have pursued the union?”
    Might he yet?
underlay the question, and Belinda permitted herself a rough chuckle. “He would have, but no longer. I should think myself his enemy from ten days ago until the end of time.”
    “Youth,” Lorraine said, “is much given to dramatics. Enemies are a luxury we indulge in from time to time, and make bedfellows of when a new one comes along.”
    Belinda, daring, asked, “Sandalia?” and Lorraine gave her another steady look that turned to a soft answer Belinda knew she had no right to expect.
    “We did not dislike her. We might once have been friends.”
    “If the world had been other than it is.”
    Lorraine nodded once. “But it is not, and we are pleased, girl, to know that you do not look for it to be.”
    “Never,” Belinda whispered, and crushed the flare of witch-power in her mind.
L ORRAINE W ALTER , Q UEEN OF A ULUN
    The girl is not what she expected.
    She has been dismissed, has left the private chamber in a flurry of ridiculous pink skirts and soft feminine foolishness, and has left Lorraine more alone than usual in a room meant for secrets. More alone than usual: that, for a queen, is a thought of some weight. Were she to give in to it, it might be a thought of some despair.
    Lorraine Walter, queen of all Aulun, is fifty-five years old, and that frothy child is the only heir she will ever have.
    When Belinda is well and truly gone, not just from the window-less chamber but has left Lorraine's rooms through other secret passageways, Lorraine exits her cold tower room and enters her own apartments again. They're warm, which she's glad of, though she would no more admit to cold than she might admit to loneliness or fear. Those are things to be acknowledged only in the deepest and most private part of her: to the world, she must be untouchable, unaffected: the virgin queen.
    Belinda, Lorraine fancies, has a hint of that same cool core to her. Women require it, if they are to succeed in a world shaped by men. Women must become masculine, and yet make eyes at their men, play both sides and hold a place in the middle. Lorraine has worked at that game for a lifetime. So, too, she thinks, has Belinda Primrose.
    There is wine, set well away from the fire that it might retain its coolness. Lorraine, not wishing to be disturbed by servants, pours a glass herself, and takes a box of sweets to the fire with her. She believes chewing them improves her breath, but for the moment they're merely an indulgence. No more than two: even at fifty-five, she has her figure to maintain, especially if she intends to continue the endless rounds of marriage negotiations with Essandia's Rodrigo.
    A brief smile curves her lips as she taps a marzipan treat against them. Neither she nor Rodrigo has any interest in marriage. How much easier it might have been for both of them if they could have set that absurd dance aside decades ago and instead turned their might and ambition toward other lands. But that is not, has