The Queen's Mage

Allandra did not go to the eastern wing the next morning.

That was the first decision.

The only clean one.

She woke before dawn with Serali’s name already moving through her thoughts and fury sitting cold beneath her ribs, though at whom, precisely, she could not have said. Daravan, perhaps, for being right. The council, for existing. Serali, for carrying the blood of the man Allandra hated most in the world and still managing to look nothing like him when she was afraid.

Herself, most of all.

She dressed for court as if dressing for war. Deep green silk beneath a fitted coat buckled in gold, hair braided tight enough to pull at her temples, a dagger at her left hip where no one could mistake it for ornament. No crown. The Mantle did not need one.

At breakfast, Everly spoke without pause for twelve minutes about whether a treaty remained binding if both parties hated each other.

Allandra answered at the proper intervals.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Your history tutor is correct.”

“No, you may not test that theory on your uncle.”

Everly narrowed her eyes over a slice of sugared pear. “You are not listening.”

Allandra set down her cup. “I am listening.”

“Then what did I ask?”

“You asked whether a treaty is still binding if both parties hate each other.”

“No,” Everly said. “That was five questions ago.”

Allandra closed her eyes for one heartbeat.

When she opened them, her daughter was watching her with a suspicion too sharp for four years old and too familiar to be anything but blood.

“Are you ill?” Everly asked.

“No.”

“You look ill.”

“I am not.”

“You look like Uncle Hagen when he says he likes a banquet but is really counting how many people he wants to push into the fountain.”

Despite herself, Allandra almost smiled.

Almost.

“I have council,” she said, rising.

Everly leaned back in her chair, unimpressed. “That is what adults say when they are losing.”

Allandra stopped at the door.

For one dreadful, irrational heartbeat, she thought of Serali saying something nearly the same.

She did not look back.

“Finish your breakfast,” she said, and left before the child could see the fracture.

By midmorning, the palace had arranged itself around rumor.

No one spoke openly of the Night Fae prisoner. That would have been too gauche, too dangerous, and too easy to punish. But silence had its own grammar. Servants turned away a breath too quickly. Courtiers resumed conversations with such effortful smoothness that they might as well have shouted. The guard rotation outside the eastern wing had doubled, discreetly, as ordered.

Discreetly was not invisibly.

Allandra signed four decrees before the council assembled and absorbed none of them.

You said there was a ship.

There was.

By the time the council chamber doors opened, Allandra had made the second decision.

She would not speak Serali’s name.

Names were dangerous things. Once placed on the council table, they became communal property. Debated. Dissected. Turned into strategy, softened into rhetoric, sharpened into policy. Allandra had watched ministers take a dead soldier’s name and polish it into acceptable losses. She had watched her husband become a stabilizing martyr before his funeral pyre cooled.

Serali would not become language before Allandra decided what kind of truth could survive being spoken.

Hagen was already there.

Of course he was.

He stood near his chair, one hand resting on its back, posture easy enough to look uncalculated to anyone who did not know him. His coat was amber silk, immaculate, his hair bound with a narrow clasp of sunstone. He smiled when she entered.

It was the smile that concerned her.

“Sister,” he said. “We were beginning to worry.”

“No,” Allandra replied. “You were beginning to perform worry. There is a difference.”

Several councilors found reasons to look at their papers.

Hagen’s smile did not falter. “As sharp as ever.”

“As punctual as ever,” she said, taking her seat.

Daravan stood behind her left shoulder, silent and still. His presence should have steadied her.

Today, she felt him watching too carefully.

That irritated her.

Everything irritated her.

The first half of council concerned shipping tariffs, a grain report from the western estates, and a dispute between two ministers over whether the watchtowers required new mirrors or better-trained operators. Allandra approved the tariff reduction, ordered grain reserves redistributed before the complaint reached the market priests, and informed the ministers that if the northern command could not tell the difference between a cracked mirror and an incompetent signalman, she would find commanders who could.

For a while, she almost felt like herself.

Then Lord Merrow cleared his throat.

A man only cleared his throat that gently when he intended to be troublesome.

“Majesty,” he said, folding his soft hands over the table. “There remains one security concern not listed on the formal docket.”

There it was.

Daravan did not shift behind her. Allandra felt the effort of it.

She let her gaze settle on Merrow. “If it is not on the docket, there is likely a reason.”

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“Indeed,” Hagen said smoothly. “And yet some matters become more dangerous the longer they remain informal.”

Allandra turned toward him. “You have a specific concern?”

“The Night Fae mage in royal custody.”

A small stir moved around the table. Not surprise. Anticipation.

Allandra kept her hands loose on the arms of her chair.

“She remains under investigation.”

“For nearly a month now,” said Lady Verya, mistress of civic order, her voice crisp. "The city knows something happened. The market district has produced six contradictory accounts before noon, and all of them involve a Night Fae witch attacking the watch.”

“She shielded herself during an arrest,” Daravan said.

All eyes shifted toward him.

His voice remained even. “The crowd was unstable. The watch moved to contain a public magical incident. The prisoner resisted.”

“Prisoner,” Merrow said. “Then she has been charged?”

“No,” Allandra said.

The room tightened.

Hagen tilted his head. “No?”

“She has not been charged.”

“With respect, Majesty,” Verya said, in the tone of someone about to offer very little, “a foreign mage used magic in a crowded square, concealed her identity by glamour, and was discovered to be Night Fae. If this does not warrant a charge, I am curious what standard we intend to apply.”

“The correct one,” Allandra said.

Verya’s mouth closed.

Hagen watched her across the table.

Too closely.

Allandra continued, “She was not apprehended in a restricted quarter. She made no attempt on the palace. She carried no correspondence, coded dispatch, military mark, or assassin’s charm. She revealed herself while intervening in an assault the market watch failed to stop.”

That landed hard enough that several councilors shifted.

Merrow looked pained. “That detail is not confirmed.”

“It is confirmed,” Daravan said.

“By whom?”

“Three vendors, two children, and the drunkard whose teeth are currently being reset by a city surgeon.”

A few eyes dropped.

Hagen’s mouth twitched. “Thorough.”

“I dislike uncertainty,” Daravan said.

Allandra did not look at him, but gratitude moved through her like a brief touch to the spine.

Hagen noticed anyway.

Damn him.

“Even accepting that,” Hagen said, “the question remains. Who is she?”

“A Night Fae mage of unknown affiliation.”

“Unknown after weeks in your custody?”

“She has not been cooperative.”

“And yet she is in the eastern guest wing.”

The silence after that was immediate.

Allandra’s gaze moved slowly to her brother.

Hagen’s expression remained open, reasonable, perfectly fraternal.

“How curious,” she said.

He smiled faintly. “Rumor travels.”

“Rumor does not usually pass locked doors and altered guard rotations.”

“No,” he said. “But concern does.”

Daravan’s presence at her shoulder changed. Not visibly. She felt it anyway.

Allandra folded her hands on the table. “The prisoner sustained injuries during her apprehension and prior to it. The healer recommended removal from the lower cells.”

“A humanitarian decision,” Merrow said.

The phrase was not quite mocking, which made it worse.

Allandra looked at him until his color rose.

“A medical decision,” she said. “If the distinction is difficult, I can have Lia explain it to you slowly.”

Verya interceded before Merrow could swallow his own tongue. “No one objects to proper treatment, Majesty. The concern is authority. A foreign mage should be transferred to military custody pending formal review.”

“No.”

The word cracked across the room.

Hagen’s smile faded by a fraction.

Verya inhaled. “Majesty—”

“No,” Allandra repeated, quieter. “She remains where she is.”

“Why?” Hagen asked.

Too simple. Too gentle.

A brother’s question.

A courtier’s trap.

Allandra met his eyes and hated the memory that rose: Hagen at seventeen, face smudged with battlefield ash, gripping her forearm after their first real skirmish and whispering, You lived. You stupid, glorious thing, you lived.

That boy was gone.

Or perhaps he stood behind the man looking at her now, watching with wounded golden eyes and waiting for the world to admit it had wronged him.

“Because I command it,” Allandra said.

Hagen’s jaw hardened.

For a moment, they might have been alone.

Then Merrow cleared his throat again, less gently this time. “Majesty, command is not in question. The council seeks clarity.”

“The council seeks access.”

“The council has a duty to Avalusia.”

“So do I.”

“Then allow us to fulfill it beside you,” Hagen said. “No one here wishes to undermine your authority.”

Daravan made a faint sound.

It might have been a cough.

It might have been disbelief.

Allandra almost smiled.

Almost.

Hagen ignored him. “But secrecy breeds speculation. Speculation breeds fear. Fear, in a city still scarred by Xuiven assassination, becomes dangerous very quickly.”

There it was.

Her parents.

Finnian.

The nursery door.

Allandra’s hands remained still.

Hagen leaned forward, voice lowering. “You know better than anyone what one Night Fae mage can do if allowed too close.”

The words struck exactly where he had aimed them.

Daravan spoke before Allandra had to.

“The prisoner is not an assassin.”

Hagen looked at him. “You sound certain.”

“I am certain enough.”

“Based on?”

“Evidence.”

“Evidence the council has not seen.”

Allandra rose.

Everyone went silent.

The Mantle stirred beneath her skin, not summoned, not visible, but present. The old power moved through the room like heat under stone. Chairs creaked as councilors straightened. Merrow went pale. Verya’s lips pressed together.

Hagen did not move.

“I will say this once,” Allandra said. “The prisoner remains under my authority. She will not be transferred, questioned, displayed, charged, executed, traded, or otherwise converted into someone else’s solution before I have completed my investigation.”

Verya held her gaze. Admirable. Irritating.

“Then we need a timeline.”

Hagen inclined his head. “She is right.”

Allandra hated that too.

Daravan shifted at last. “One week.”

Allandra turned just enough to look at him.

His face gave away nothing.

“One week,” he repeated. “The investigation concludes. Security implications are assessed. Findings are presented to council in closed session.”

Hagen’s eyes narrowed. “Findings?”

“Appropriate findings,” Daravan said.

A lesser man would have overplayed it. Daravan did not. He gave them nothing but the shape of reason, and the council, hungry for procedure, leaned toward it.

Verya considered. “A week is longer than I would prefer.”

“Yes,” Allandra said.

The councilor’s mouth tightened.

Allandra let the silence hold.

At last, Verya inclined her head. “One week. But no longer.”

Merrow nodded quickly, relieved to have a number to hide behind.

Hagen did not nod. He looked at Allandra.

“Is it acceptable to you?” he asked.

Allandra should have refused on principle.

Instead, she saw Serali staring at the door after she left. Heard Daravan’s voice. Buy time.

“One week,” she said.

The council exhaled in pieces.

Hagen’s smile returned, but it had no warmth now.

“Then we await your judgment.”

No, Allandra thought.

You await my mistake.

The rest of council dissolved into formalities. Reports were summarized and postponed. A trade delegation was approved. A border patrol request was tabled until military review. Allandra answered when necessary, spoke when required, and heard almost nothing.

One week.

One week to decide whether Serali was prisoner, guest, hostage, secret, scandal, weapon, or wound.

One week to decide what to do with the daughter of the man who had murdered her family.

By the time the councilors rose, Allandra’s temples throbbed.

Hagen lingered.

Of course he did.

He came around the table after the others began to file out, smoothing one thumb along the clasp at his wrist. Daravan remained where he was, a shadow with a sword.

“Sister,” Hagen said softly.

“No.”

His brows lifted.

“Whatever you are about to say, no.”

“I was only going to express concern.”

“That would be the first miracle of the day.”

The corner of his mouth tightened. “You are making this difficult.”

“I am making it mine.”

“It was already yours. That is what worries me.”

Allandra looked at him then.

Hagen’s eyes flicked once toward Daravan, then back. “You are protecting her.”

“I am protecting Avalusia.”

His voice remained gentle. “I am not so sure.”

The words should not have hurt.

They did.

Allandra let the silence sit between them until Hagen bowed.

“One week,” he said.

“Yes.”

He left with the precise, unhurried grace of a man who had never once slammed a door because he preferred making other people imagine it.

Only when the chamber had emptied did Allandra speak.

“Stay.”

Daravan stopped halfway to the door.

The last secretary vanished into the corridor. The great doors closed, leaving them alone in the sunlit room with the abandoned papers and the council’s unease still warm in the chairs.

For a while, Allandra did not move.

Then she sat.

Not elegantly. Not like a queen. Like someone whose body had remembered gravity all at once.

Daravan waited.

She stared at the table. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“That was not permission to look smug.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were internally smug.”

“I was internally concerned.”

Allandra huffed a breath that had almost been a laugh and almost became something else.

Daravan’s expression softened by a degree. With most people, it would have been invisible. Allandra had known him too long to miss it.

“I have seven days,” she said.

“Yes.”

“To find a way to keep her alive, keep the council out of her room, keep Lyehira from learning she is here, and keep my brother from deciding concern is a form of governance.”

Daravan considered. “That is a fair summary.”

“You are a wellspring of comfort.”

“I have other qualities.”

“Name one.”

“I can stand quietly.”

“Then try that.”

He did.

For nearly half a minute.

It helped less than she wanted and more than she expected.

Then Daravan said, “You bought time.”

Allandra looked toward the closed council doors.

“No,” she said. “I bought a fuse.”

Outside, the palace bells began to ring the hour, bright and orderly, as if order were something the world still meant to honor.

Allandra closed her hand around the edge of the table.

“Double the eastern wing rotation again,” she said. “Discreetly.”

Daravan nodded.

“No one questions her without me present.”

“Yes, Majesty.”

“And no one speaks her name.”

Daravan’s face changed, just slightly.

He understood which name she meant.

“Not even in here?” he asked.

Allandra rose.

Especially not in here, she thought.

But what she said was, “Especially not where the walls have ears.”

Then she left the council chamber with seven days in her hand and no idea how to spend them.