Read Online The Queen's Bastard by C. E. Murphy - Free Book Online

drew the count’s attention this morning.”
    Jealousy struggled with loyalty, thinning Viktor’s mouth to white beneath his dark beard. “I wouldn’t betray you,” she continued, voice low and beguiling. “You must know that.” She didn’t call him by name; she never called them by name. It made it easier for most things, although in moments like this it would be useful to play that card. Men—and women, too—liked little more than the sound of their own names being spoken. If only she were sure it
was
Viktor, and not Vlad, she might calculate the risk and take it. Instead she let her shift fall a little further around her breasts, clutching it loosely. “I had no choice.”
    “If he gets you with child, I’ll marry you.” The man’s words were blunt and hard in the quiet room. Belinda forgot coquettishness in astonishment and let the shift drop, only catching it at the last moment. She drew it up too late; the bruises against her throat Viktor had already seen, but the others, on her arms and breasts, she’d thought to hide until twilight dimmed to darkness. Viktor curled his lip and came forward, using both rough hands to pull the shift down. Belinda folded her arms over her breasts as he scowled and knelt, putting his palm over marks left by Gregori’s hands, without touching them. Her ribs, her hip, her thigh. The last he put his hand on, making her pull away, making her open her legs. The marks there, against the backs of her thighs and curving inward, were welts, not bruises. Viktor’s hands, usually warm, felt cool against the raised marks. “Do you like this?” There was so much anger in his voice that the words scraped from his throat. Belinda answered truthfully, surprising herself.
    “Not particularly.” It was true, although not the whole truth. Lust rode a dangerous border between pleasure and pain, and she was well-versed in giving herself over to desire. When the line blurred, she rarely minded in the moment, riding it as a kind of power of her own. Even now she could reach back to the morning and feel Gregori’s strength waning; feel it as though she drew it away like a succubus, increasing her own vigor. That was heady enough to savor, though days of soreness and bruises after made her sullen, and she never eagerly anticipated the lick of a cane or a hard hand.
    “Do you like him?”
    This time she smiled, more a sound, breath snorted out, than a curve of her lips. “Not particularly.” She unfolded one arm from over her breasts and touched Viktor’s hair. It was cleaner; he’d washed today. The realization clicked in her mind and she lifted her chin, staring sightlessly at the far wall. “You knew.”
    “Everyone always knows.” Viktor’s voice remained gruff. “So? Will you have me?”
    Gregori would never get her with child. It took a simpleton of a servant girl to not know the sharp-flavoured flowers that grew, the seeds of which could be brewed into a strong tea and prevent a child from quickening in the womb. But men didn’t like to think of such things, taking the very idea of an unrooted child as an affront to their masculinity. Belinda, touched with a rare compassion, closed her fingers in Viktor’s hair as gently as she could. “You deserve better than I can give you.” She meant the words, if not in the way the guardsman heard them. He hawked a rough sound, denial.
    “You think I don’t believe you when you say you have no choice? He’s the count. You’re nothing.”
    Anger flared up in Belinda’s chest, taking her breath with it. She was far from nothing; she was a secret weapon, a secret child, a secret truth, and for a shocking moment the impulse to lay that bare hammered within her. She subsumed it, astonished at the emotion’s violence; not in all the years since she had realised her hidden heritage had the desire to share it struck out. To do so was disaster for all; to discover that the notion to confess, or declare, lay in her thoughts astounded