The candles in Victoria's private solar had burned low, casting long shadows across the tapestries and the heavy brocade bed curtains. She stood alone before the gilded mirror, the small glass vial in her palm catching the dying light like a drop of black blood.
She uncorked it. The scent hit her first bitter herbs, something metallic, a faint rot beneath the sweetness. Her father's gift. Stronger, he had promised. One dose before the new moon. One chance to kindle what five years of royal fucking had failed to ignite.
She tilted her head back and drank it in a single swallow. The liquid burned down her throat like molten lead, spreading heat through her chest, her belly, pooling low between her hips. She pressed a hand to her abdomen, feeling the strange warmth bloom there, invasive and insistent.
Good.
She set the empty vial on the dressing table, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and rang the small silver bell beside the bed.
A maid Catherine this time appeared almost instantly, eyes downcast.
"Summon the king," Victoria said, voice smooth as silk. "Tell him his queen requires his company tonight. Immediately."
Catherine curtsied and vanished.
Victoria moved to the wardrobe, selecting a night-rail of sheerest black silk cut low enough to bare the swell of her breasts, slit high on both thighs. She let it slide over her skin like cool water, the fabric clinging to every curve, leaving nothing truly hidden. She unbound her hair, letting the dark waves fall to her waist, and touched rouge to her lips and nipples until they stood out like fresh berries against pale flesh.
Not for love.
Never for love.
She despised Stephen his earnest eyes, his gentle hands, the way he still looked at her as though she were something precious rather than a weapon he had foolishly married. She had endured his touch for years, faked every moan, every shudder, every whispered "I love you" while her mind tallied the estates she had quietly claimed in her own name: the gold mines in the western hills, the fertile farms along the river valley, the coastal salt works that filled her private coffers. Lands. Wealth. Power.
All of it hers already, secured behind his trusting back.
But without a child, it was all fragile. A queen without an heir was a queen on borrowed time. Eleanor would push for annulment. The council would whisper of barrenness as a sign of divine displeasure. Stephen fool that he was might even resist, but the throne would force his hand eventually.
And then she would be nothing.
She would not be nothing.
She paced to the bed, arranged herself against the pillows legs slightly parted, silk riding up to expose the smooth length of her thighs, one hand trailing idly over her breast as though lost in thought.
The door opened.
Stephen entered, still in his court doublet, the day's weariness etched around his eyes. He stopped when he saw her saw the sheer gown, the invitation in her pose, the slow smile curving her lips.
"Victoria…" His voice was rough, already thickening with want.
She crooked a finger. "Come to bed, husband. The court has had enough of us today. Tonight I want only you."
He crossed the room in three strides, shedding doublet and shirt as he came. She rose to her knees on the mattress, meeting him halfway, pulling him down into a kiss that was all teeth and hunger nothing soft, nothing tender. She bit his lower lip hard enough to draw a hiss; he groaned and shoved her back against the pillows, covering her body with his.
She wrapped her legs around his waist, grinding up against the hard ridge of him through his breeches. "Take me," she whispered against his ear. "Hard. Deep. All night if you must. Give me everything."
He needed no further urging.
He tore the thin silk down the front exposing her breasts, her belly, the dark triangle between her thighs. His mouth descended, sucking one nipple roughly while his hand plunged between her legs. She was wet artificially so from the draught's heat, but he didn't know that. He thought it was desire. He always thought it was desire.
She arched, faking a gasp, letting him believe she burned for him.
He stripped the rest of his clothes, cock springing free thick, flushed, already leaking at the tip. She reached down, wrapped her fingers around him, stroking once, twice, guiding him to her entrance.
"Inside me," she commanded. "Now."
He thrust in hard one brutal stroke that seated him to the root. She cried out—part performance, part genuine discomfort from the force but she locked her ankles behind his back and rolled her hips, urging him on.
He fucked her like a man possessed long, punishing strokes that slapped against her, bed creaking, headboard thudding. She clawed his back, drew blood, whispered filth in his ear: "Deeper… harder… fill me… breed me…"
He flipped her onto her stomach, yanked her hips up, entered her from behind deeper still, pounding into her with relentless rhythm. She buried her face in the pillow to muffle the sounds she no longer needed to fake entirely; the draught had made her body hypersensitive, every thrust sending unwanted sparks through her core.
She hated it. Hated him. Hated the way her body responded anyway.
He pulled out only long enough to flip her again, hook her legs over his shoulders, and drive back in folding her nearly double, hitting that spot inside her over and over until she shattered not from love, not from pleasure she wanted, but from the sheer mechanical force of it. She clenched around him, milking him, drawing a guttural groan from his throat as he followed spilling hot and deep, hips jerking with every pulse.
He collapsed over her, breathing ragged, pressing soft kisses to her throat, her temple.
"I love you," he murmured against her skin, voice wrecked. "We'll have our child. I know it."
She stroked his hair gentle, soothing, the perfect lie.
"Yes, my love," she whispered. "Soon."
He drifted into exhausted sleep beside her, arm draped across her waist.
Victoria stared at the canopy overhead, feeling his seed leak slowly from between her thighs.
She felt nothing but cold satisfaction.
Once the child came if it came she would be untouchable. Regent in all but name. And when the time was right, when the child gets old enough to sit the throne under her guidance…
A quiet accident. A fever. A fall from the battlements.
Stephen would die.
And she would rule.
With her father at her side.
She closed her eyes, the taste of the draught still bitter on her tongue.
Time was running out.