The Pretender's Crown by C. E. Murphy Read Free Book Online Page A

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.
    “Oh, yes.”
    Javier had never heard his uncle sound so, and turned to see calculation on his handsome face. “Oh, yes, Javier. For God, for peace, and with this magic you bear, oh, most certainly for power. I think you've named your gift poorly, nephew. I know you to be a good and godly boy, and I will not believe that this talent has been granted by the fallen one.”