Lucky Rabbit

Kaden’s obvious shock at hearing the name was only slightly less than what Pandy felt. Didn’t the queen know who she had in her own dungeons? Though maybe not. Not all monarchs were hands-on, after all. Louisa didn’t strike Pandy as the fluffy, air-headed sort, but she also didn’t seem like someone who enjoyed either the nitty or the gritty of law enforcement.

“The Knights – certain Knights – have taken him into custody,” Augustus said, settling down into a chair covered in emerald-green velvet with the familiarity of long practice. How often did he come here, and why? He’d been King Fergus’s friend and cousin, not Louisa’s. Though how often did Very Expensive rooms get remodeled? Maybe his buttocks still knew the chair from Fergus’s time.

Relief flooded Louisa’s face, wiping away some of the small lines that age and responsibility were beginning to etch there. She, too, sat down, taking a seat covered in golden tapestry accented with the same emerald velvet. “Tell me everything.”

Augustus gave a small smile. “It’s not my story to tell.” He turned to look at Pandy, and the queen and Kaden followed his gaze. The prince blinked in obvious surprise, but Queen Louisa only looked thoughtful. They all waited.

Pandy cleared her throat. “I-” She looked at Augustus, who gave her a small nod. “I have a spell that allows me to take on someone else’s shape. When we realized someone was after Thaniel, I copied him, and…”

Somehow, she made it through the tale of the last week and a half without either the queen or the prince stopping her, though Kaden’s changes of expression were almost too distracting to watch. She recognized so many of them from Gacha Love, but game-Kaden had never looked either befuddled or dumbfounded. Not that he hadn’t felt those things, she was fairly certain, but he’d learned to hide them behind diplomacy and charm.

“And then Bryan stepped out of the little alcove with the flower arrangement, and said, ‘Thaniel’? And Thaniel said, ‘Daddy?’ and Bryan ran up and hugged him, and it was so nice, even though Bryan might actually be a bit of a villain. I mean, he didn’t actually hurt anyone, or at least not anyone who didn’t agree to be hurt, which is still iffy, but he was trying to help Thaniel, and I know that’s a reason, not an excuse, but-”

Only then did Queen Louisa finally raise a hand, though Pandy thought the other woman had looked a teeny bit misty-eyed at the reunion between father and son. Nodding politely to Pandy, she said, “Bryan claimed these conspirators – which might include my own brother-” Here she looked like she’d bitten into a particularly sour lime, which in Pandy’s experience was much less pleasant than biting into any lemon ever, “wished to place Duke Benedict on the throne, which would mean disinheriting Kaden and Eleanor. Does he have proof?”

Pandy glanced at Augustus, then shook her head. “I don’t think he has anything except what’s in his head. He didn’t exactly get a chance to pack.”

Louisa seemed disappointed, but Augustus spoke up.

“Lady Eurydice mentioned her evening at the Mossley home, and that Lady Mossley sent her back with some papers and an old decoding device. The Librarian has been translating those documents, and it looks like this experimentation has been going on for even longer than we’d guessed. In fact, there appear to be some irregularities in what was reported to the Registry. Duke Benedict’s entry was changed when he was about fourteen years old, though we haven’t yet been able to find out what it originally said.”

“Great-Uncle Benedict?” Kaden asked, frowning. “Why don’t we just ask him? He can’t have any idea what’s going on. He’s never even wanted to be king. After Father died, Uncle Benedict was one of the first to bow to me.”

A flicker of pain crossed Louisa’s face, but she simply said, “No ruler can afford to trust anyone utterly. I’ve told you this. Everyone has a weakness that others can play upon. Even if they love you, they can still betray you.”

Kaden’s expression shuttered, his lids dropping to half-cover his eyes, hiding his response. His lips flattened, and he rocked back on his heels, all obvious tension fleeing his body, leaving it as neutral as his expression. “Of course, Mother.”

Oh. That was why Kaden was the way he was. He’d had people fawning over him since he was born, and then his mother constantly reminded him he could never lower his guard around anyone. If his uncle, whom he apparently liked, did turn out to be conspiring against him, that would probably shatter whatever vestiges of childish innocence he had left. No wonder game-Kaden never seemed to really care about anyone – he’d learned that no one really cared about him, with the possible exception of his little sister. It was amazing he was still friends with Edgar, Dorian, and Bastian.

Regret flashed across Louisa’s face, but she drew in a breath and turned back to Augustus. “I need to speak to Bryan Conroy. Immediately.”

Augustus blinked. “I know you were friends with Grace, but the less you’re seen to be involved with him, the better-”

Louisa shook her head, a few strands of silver-gold hair escaping her tightly bound updo. She reached up and removed the heavy-looking crown, setting it carefully on the table beside her, where a green velvet pillow waited. She briefly touched a green gem set next to the central purplish one, then turned to Kaden, her jaw set and determined. “Summon Caeli. We must be certain no one can hear us.”

Kaden’s expressionless mask slipped, but he nodded and looked up, staring at the blank ceiling, which was painted in a shade of green so pale it was nearly white. “Caeli,” he called. “We have need of you.”

Almost instantly, a soft breeze began to blow through the room, tugging at the occupants’ hair and clothes. It picked up speed, but in a very localized spot, right next to Kaden. The heavy furniture shifted, then settled as a nearly colorless being stepped from empty air to stand beside the prince.

The figure was, as most elementals with a humanoid shape seemed to be, genderless to slightly feminine. It was inhumanly slim, its limbs fading to nothingness, then reforming unpredictably. Its features were little more than suggestions, and while it had something like hair, the tendrils drifted aimlessly instead of hanging down. It didn’t speak, simply stared at Prince Kaden with eyes that were pools of misty white.

“We need privacy,” Kaden said simply, and the elemental inclined its head before fading, losing cohesion as it expanded to surround the small group. Pandy could feel its power settle around them, not heavy or oppressive, but not… comfortable, either. She shifted, staring around as if she could see the magic that enveloped them. None of the other three looked surprised or discomfited, and again, Pandy had the feeling that Augustus had experienced all of this – the room, the private audience, even the elemental’s magic – many times.

Queen Louisa drew in a long, slow breath, her chest rising and falling as she closed her eyes, then opened them and said, “Some sixty or seventy years ago, my grandfather murdered his best friend, Lord Philip Avington.” She ignored her son’s shocked intake of breath, focusing on Augustus and Pandy.

“Lord Philip came to my grandfather, who had recently become the Earl of Winstanley, seeking a private audience with Queen Sibyl, who was Grandfather’s aunt, in hopes of reaching the king himself. Lord Philip had never been expected to rise to the position of head of his house, so he had never formed the connections that heirs usually do. When he discovered, to his horror, that his family had been experimenting with the manipulation of the elements within the human body, he didn’t want to speak of it in open court, but he knew there was no way he would be able to speak with King Julius privately without help.”

She shook her head, glancing at her son, her expression tired and sad. “He brought all of the materials with him: books and samples, including what he called ‘elemental stones’ that could be used to change a person’s natural element, albeit only temporarily and at great cost to them. Seeing the possibilities in it, my grandfather was overcome with greed, and struck Lord Philip down.”

Her lips quirked upwards, but there was no humor in her eyes. “When he told me this story, Grandfather said he instantly regretted his actions, but I have not believed him in quite some time. Of course, he had the body taken away and made to look like the death was an accident. Then he immediately began turning the Avington research to his own ends. Using his far-greater wealth and influence, he was able to hire real researchers, who refined the rather haphazard notes into something useful. It took years, but when King Julius had a grandson who was only a few years younger than his own little granddaughter, Grandfather was ready.”

Reaching up, the queen made a gesture with which Pandy was becoming uncomfortably familiar. She touched the center of her chest – only lightly, and someone who hadn’t seen Bryan and Thaniel make the same gesture probably would have missed it. “My mother was a Nature mage, and so was I.” The confession was little more than a whisper; the release of a secret held so long that it had festered and become painful to remove. Kaden’s face was white now.

“Air magic was rare in our family, but Grandfather wasn’t going to allow that to stop him. He would see one of his descendants on the throne, no matter what it took. He stole the magic from someone. I don’t know who, but they were strong.” She clenched her fist, then allowed the telltale hand to fall to her lap.

“I had a natural revelation at age seven. I called a Thornlark in the garden at my home and brought it to my father. But I would go to Falconet the next year, where my element would be revealed, and it had to be Air. Before I could show off my magic, or tell any of my friends, they got rid of it. It was… excruciating. I would rather that they had cut off my arm or my leg.”

Her voice shook, and even now tears stood in her eyes at the memory. “I was sick in bed for months, but when I was able to move, to think again, I was an Air mage. They found a Sprite for me to contract with, even though I was too young for such a powerful elemental. Something about forming a strong contract was supposed to make the magic last.”

That made sense at least. According to both Gacha Love and everything Pandy had learned here, people and their contracted elementals shared magic, like two pools that were connected by a stream. When one started to dry up or drain away, the other could be used to fill it. While elementals like Brook, Miss Cupcakes, and Lord Winston could choose to use their magic to help their humans, they weren’t linked in the same way. It was all purely voluntary and required effort to do, while the exchange was natural and automatic with a contracted elemental. If Louisa’s pool of borrowed magic started to run out, her Sprite’s Mana would automagically refill it with more Air magic.

“I hated it. Not Mistri, my Sprite, though I was never able to care for her as I saw my friends care for their contracted elementals. But the magic itself felt like a foreign object inside my body, even though the stone they used to impress it upon me was removed once I formed a contract.” Augustus twitched at this, but Queen Louisa hurried on, no longer even looking at her audience, focused on the words she had rarely, if ever, spoken aloud before.

“But then I met Fergus.” All tension fled from her, a smile chasing it away as the tears faded from her eyes. “I think both of us knew there was something special between us from the very first moment we met. He was younger than me, of course.” She chuckled. “But once we met at Kestrel, we became fast friends almost immediately. That friendship grew into love, and he asked me to marry him the day he graduated from Condor.”

Kaden still looked ill, but now it was for a different reason. It sounded like his parents had truly loved one another, and like all teenagers, the idea of his parents being in love was both embarrassing and uncomfortable. Of course, with his father dead, he couldn’t simply say ‘Ew, gross, Mom!’ like another teen might have done, but he still didn’t look happy with the turn the conversation had taken. That discomfort shifted entirely with Louisa’s next words.

“Then Fergus died, and Kaden very nearly did as well.” The queen reached out to take her son’s hand, and he allowed it for a moment before pulling away. “I got sick, too, but it was little more than a normal winter’s illness. A week of coughing and fever, and it was done. Except that the next time I went to summon Mistri, she didn’t come. Our contract was broken.”

Shaking her head, Louisa sighed softly. “Over the next weeks, as I dealt with my husband’s death and Kaden’s lingering malaise, the loss of my power became noticeable to everyone close to me. They urged me to pass on the role of Regent to someone who could control Caeli and the other palace elementals. Fergus’s brother Benedict was the obvious choice, and he was oh, so careful when he suggested it. It would allow me to focus on Eleanor and Kaden, give me a chance to rest, I could even retire to the country. He knew I didn’t care about being queen.”

She smiled at Kaden – a faint, bitter curve of her lips. “I refused. I didn’t even know exactly why. I truly believed you would recover fully, and when you did, you would need me. Not only as your mother, but as your Queen. Benedict still helped me, using his magic to control the Cloudmanes and other elementals, so no one knew I was… incapable. Not Caeli, though. She is contracted to the palace, and thus to West Altheric’s ruler. Placing her under the control of anyone but you would be wrong.”

Focusing on Augustus again, some genuine mirth touched her eyes. “Even you, Augustus. When you announced you were retiring, I had you travel with me, as a ‘vacation’. You could control the Cloudmanes, and you were happy enough to do it.”

Augustus looked almost embarrassed. “It’s a pleasant experience, guiding them, though it is very tiring if you’re not their contractor. I thought you were humoring me and trying to keep me out of trouble.”

Louisa actually laughed. “Well, that too. Fergus always said you would chase your own tail if you didn’t have something else to do. You always need an adventure.”

Augustus huffed a small laugh of his own. “He called me his hunting hound. The only person he trusted to flush out the rabbits without killing them.” He shot Pandy an apologetic glance, but she barely noticed.

“Does that mean you’re magicless now?” Pandy asked Louisa.

The queen shook her head. “I was, for quite a while, at least as far as I could tell, but just this spring, when I was out in the garden, I heard the Thornlarks singing for the first time in thirty years.” Holding up her hand, she said, “Elowen?”

High up on the green silk wall, another patch of green separated itself, shaking out feathers that clattered like thorns. Spreading its wings, it glided down to land on Louisa’s wrist, and the smile she gave it was as bright as the crown on the pillow beside her.