Belinda stood slowly, leaving her gaze on the floor until she was certain her expression could be schooled, though it was still with merriment in her eyes that she met Lorraine's pretence at irritation. Oh, but Beatrice Irvine had been bad for her. Only a handful of months earlier she would never have allowed herself so much emotion, much less the boldness of assuming that the queen's annoyance was perhaps not entirely genuine. The ability to control her own humour was still there. The stillness she had learnt as a child, and shored up with golden witchpower in the past months, would never truly desert her.

But witchpower and the stillness had their price. The latter left her untouchable, as she had taught herself to be, and the former left her greedy for power and blind with ambition. Even a lifetime's training in constraint was barely enough to master it. She would no more dare release witchpower in Lorraine's presence than she might set a wild boar free upon the unarmed queen. She was her mother's daughter, and a creature of her father's making. Loyalty defined her; duty made the boundaries of her life. It had, for nearly twenty-three years, been enough. If she could now reach back to a solitary meeting with Lorraine, more than ten years earlier, and make a small jape of it, then perhaps that was diplomacy, and its success worthy of a smile.

“Do you laugh at us, girl?” Lorraine was cool as winter winds, drawing herself up. She was tall for a woman, taller than Belinda herself, and beneath full square skirts, boxy shoes added to that imposing height. Illusion, but effective: Belinda ducked another curtsey in a show of contriteness, and when she lifted her eyes it was with no hint of merriment.

Nor did she feel it any longer, its spirit quenched beneath necessity. Beatrice Irvine might laugh too easily, but Beatrice was a construct, and as such could even yet be put away when needs be. “No, majesty. I beg forgiveness,” she said again, and this time meant it.