C. Murphy - The Pretender_s Crown

“Jav.” Marius turned his face against Javier's chest with a weary smile, then stiffened and pushed away, memory all too obviously coming back to him. Javier knotted his hands, trying not to reach out in supplication and a hope of forgiveness. The air in the room went still, not just with Marius's sudden wariness, but with Rodrigo's tense anticipation as he turned his attention from the priest to the two wakeful young men. Javier recognised the flavour of waiting: it tasted of the moments before a fencing bout was met; tasted, he thought, of what the seconds before war broke out must taste of. Danger lay all around them, a presence of its own. Shielding magic surged, briefly illuminating the room in witchpower, and for that moment, Javier understood.

Rodrigo was afraid. Afraid on more than one level: afraid of Javier's inexplicable magic, afraid of the priest's death, afraid of Marius's response. Afraid, at the end, of losing a nephew as well as a sister, and so each of those fears mounted the other until the last was all-consuming. There would be a price to pay later: the narrow hard lines around his uncle's mouth told Javier that much, but for now, the Essandian prince would neither show fear nor allow harm to come to the young Gallic king.

“Javier,” Marius said again, but this time the name was a question, edged on desperate. He had pulled away, but his hand made a fist of itself in Javier's shirt. Rough loose wool, that shirt, not the fine stuff that befitted a prince, not at all. Witchlight twisted, giving him leave to step outside himself and see himself as clearly as he saw others. Narrow-cut black pants, the wide leather belt, the tall sturdy boots: they had suited him on the sea. He looked the part of a brigand, not a prince, and wondered that the guards had opened the gates to him, despite his raging command. Marius's hand, by comparison to the weathered fabric it gripped, seemed clean and soft and cultured.

Javier closed his own hand over Marius's, struggling to call on ordinary human strength and not the silver power that lit everything he saw. He had little doubt he could allay any fear Marius felt or frighten him further into pretending that nothing was wrong. The idea soured in his mind, liquid silver turning black and poisonous as mercury at the thought. They had spent a lifetime together, he and Marius and Eliza and Sacha, and ever since Javier had recognised that his friends didn't share his magic, he had reined in every impulse, stepped on every opportunity, to influence them with his will. He could, if he so desired; he had learned only lately that he had, whether he willed it or no, but he would not deliberately subsume Marius's impulses, even if the cost should be scored on his own skin. Rodrigo, yes: he would do whatever necessary to survive his uncle's fears, but not Marius. Never Marius.

“What is it?” The question was softer than the echo of his name had been, Marius's gaze and grip tight on Javier's. His voice shook as though exhaustion or pain had come to bed down with dread, leaving him nothing to control himself with. “Javier, what is it that you do to us?”

“I call it witchpower.” Javier lowered his head over Marius's, more afraid to look away than to continue meeting the merchant lad's eyes. “When I was young I thought everyone had it. When I realised I was the only one… I've never meant to hurt you, Marius. I've tried so hard to not influence you with it. Any of you. My friends. My family.”

“Witchpower.” Marius and Rodrigo both echoed the word, and it was Marius who continued as Rodrigo fell silent. “Witchery is the devil's work, Jav.”

“I know.” Javier kept his gaze on Marius, trusting he would find censure in Rodrigo's face and hoping against all wisdom that there might be some hint of forgiveness in Marius's. “So perhaps I'm Hell-born, for neither my uncle nor my mother carried this power in their blood. Did my father?” He glanced up with a sharp look, and saw instantly from Rodrigo's expression that Louis of Gallin had been as ordinary a man as any. Resignation drooped his shoulders and brought regret to his voice. “I thought not.”

“Beatrice had this power.” Comprehension was worse than condemnation, Marius's whisper knifing through Javier with its weight of pity and absolution. “That first night when I brought her to meet you, something passed between you. She defied you, Jav No one defies you.” By the time he finished, bewilderment had replaced pity, and Marius's brown eyes were wide. “My God, Javier, why didn't you just tell me? I would have understood.”

“Would you?” Savagery drove Javier to his feet, sent him pacing away from the three men on the floor. The priest hadn't roused yet, as much cause for relief as alarm: Javier's family of blood and friendship might yet forgive his damnable magic, but a man of the cloth would do no other than call for a green oak stake and thick chains to bind him with. “Would you have understood if I said I carry power within me that forbids men to deny my will? Would you have ever trusted your thoughts with me again? You have been my friend all my life, Marius. You, Liz, Sacha. I couldn't risk that. I'd have been alone.”

Marius rubbed his shoulder as he sat up, then dropped his head, strong fingers lacing through his dark hair. “It's easy to say I would've understood, Jav. Maybe I wouldn't have, but I knew the boy you were and the man you are. You're a prince, my lord. A king, now.” His voice shook with the recollection, but he freed his hands and looked up at Javier. “Even as children we all knew who we played with. It didn't matter that much, not to me, because I was still stronger than you, and you never cried mercy on your rank when we wrestled. It was only as we got older that I realised I should have let you win.” A fragile smile skirted his mouth, then fell away again. “I thought no one stood in your path because you were heir to the throne, Jav. That was mystical enough for me. You've had a lifetime in which you could have used this witchpower to be cruel, and you've never done it.” Hesitation followed the last words, highlighted by a blanch Marius failed to hide.

“Except to you,” Javier said softly, putting voice to the thought he knew had burdened Marius's mind. “Except to you, in the matter of Beatrice.”

“Aye, my prince. But I think I would have understood.”

The fire left Javier as suddenly as it had come on, leaving him drained all over again. It was no longer witchpower, he thought, plying his emotions, but simple human fear and misery. His mother was dead, his friends scattered, his uncle wisely wary of him. Even a man accustomed to heavy burdens would buckle under such a weight, and for a bitter instant, Javier recognised that he was not at all accustomed to bearing difficulties on his princely shoulders. “You might have,” he whispered. “Perhaps I've done even more badly by you than I knew, my friend, and I have known that I have done badly by you indeed. But without you I'm alone. You three, my only true friends. And then Beatrice… Belinda,” he corrected himself wearily. “Belinda came to you, to me, to us all, with her own power, and I was no longer lonely in spirit or in body. I had thought to give up the throne.”

He lifted his gaze beyond the palace walls, turning it north, toward Gallin; toward, in the end, Aulun, the country of Belinda's birth and heart. “I must have seemed very foolish to her,” he said quietly “So eager to give up so much, all so I would no longer be alone.”

“It is not a choice we are given, Javier.” Rodrigo rose from beside the fallen priest. “We who are born to these families are born to serve, not to choose selfishly. Your mother knew that, and married twice for God and peace and power, and it is your duty now to follow her.”

“For God and peace and power?” Iron: the words were iron in his mouth, flat and hideous on his tongue.