The Queen's Mage

Lia made them wait outside the room. That, more than anything, told Allandra the healer was angry. Lia had never been a woman prone to dramatics.

She did not storm, did not shout, did not withhold answers for effect. If she wanted someone to feel foolish, she usually accomplished it with a raised eyebrow and a question no one wished to answer. But after Serali had been carried from the vault, wrapped in three blankets and still unnaturally limp from Lia’s spell, the healer had ordered Allandra and Daravan into the corridor with the same tone she might have used on particularly stupid apprentices. Wait.

So Allandra waited.

The room chosen for Serali was in the eastern wing, far from the dungeons but not so near the royal apartments that anyone could pretend the arrangement was innocent.

It had once housed visiting minor cousins and unfashionable diplomats: large enough to be comfortable, plain enough to avoid favor, and easy to guard. The windows faced the inner garden. The door had already been warded. Two guards stood at the corridor’s end, carefully looking anywhere except at their queen. Inside, servants moved quietly under Lia’s direction. Water was brought. Bloodied cloth was removed. Lamps were lit and ordered to remain lit.

Allandra stood with her back to the wall and listened to the muted sounds through the door.

Water poured into a basin. Lia’s low voice. A maid’s murmured answer. A hiss of pain or breath from someone inside, too soft to be identified and therefore impossible to endure. Daravan stood three paces away, hands clasped behind his back, his face arranged into the blankness he used when a situation had become too delicate to survive expression. Allandra hated that face. She also needed it.

“Say it,” she said.

Daravan did not look at her. “Say what, Majesty?”

“Whatever you have been not saying for the past half hour.”

He was silent a moment. Then, carefully, “She remains a security risk.”

Allandra closed her eyes. Of course. Of course that was the shape he would give the moment. Not because he was wrong. That was the worst of it. Daravan was rarely wrong when it came to risk. He could look at a room and find every exit, every weak hinge, every person carrying a knife badly concealed beneath silk.

“Yes,” Allandra said. “She is injured. Exhausted. Underfed. That does not erase what she is.” Allandra opened her eyes and looked at him.

His expression did not change. “A Night Fae mage,” he said. “Strong enough to shield without preparation. Strong enough to kill trained agents at the border, if the reports are accurate. Desperate enough to escape once already.”

“To escape a dungeon,” Allandra said.

“To escape custody.”

Her jaw tightened. Daravan inclined his head, accepting the correction and refusing to yield the point. “Both can be true.”

The door opened before Allandra could answer. Lia stepped into the corridor and shut it behind her. She had washed her hands, but dampness still clung to the cuffs of her sleeves. Her braid had come loose from its tie, and a strand of white hair stuck to her cheek. She looked tired. Not old, never that. Lia had outlived too many kings to be reduced by a long night and one wounded prisoner. But tired in the way healers became tired when a body told them a story they had heard too often and hated no less for the repetition.

Allandra pushed away from the wall.

Lia looked between her and Daravan. Then she said, “She is alive.”

The words struck with humiliating force. Allandra had not known she had been waiting for them. Daravan’s shoulders lowered by the smallest degree. Lia saw that too.

“She will likely remain that way,” Lia continued, “if no one does anything else idiotic.”

Daravan looked faintly injured. Allandra did not defend him.

Lia opened the notebook in her hand. “I will not repeat what I said in the vault. The scars on her back are real. The labor damage is real. The ticket is real. If either of you need those facts explained again, find someone with a gentler disposition.”

Allandra said nothing. Daravan wisely did the same.

Lia turned a page. “There are additional scars.” Allandra’s hand curled once at her side. “Not as dense as the back,” Lia said. “But enough. Hips, thighs, upper arms, ribs. Some concealed by older healing, some by where clothing would cover them. The pattern is consistent with restraint, punishment, and neglect. The brands near the ribs are old. Xuiven script. The clearest one translates, roughly, to rebellion.”

Daravan’s jaw tightened. Allandra looked toward the closed door. Rebellion. Of course. Of course they would carve that into a woman who survived them.

Lia’s voice remained brisk. “There is also evidence of old malnutrition and growth stunting.”

Allandra looked back at her. “Growth stunting?”

“Yes.”

“She is small because—”

“Because she was young when the damage started,” Lia said. “And because it did not stop.”

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Something cold moved through Allandra’s chest. “How young?”

Lia’s mouth flattened. “I cannot tell you exactly when the abuse began. But I can estimate age.”

Daravan’s attention sharpened.

Allandra felt herself go still.

“She is not a girl,” Lia said. “Not despite her size. Not despite how fragile she looks when unconscious. That is damage, not youth.”

Allandra’s throat tightened.

Lia continued, “Based on bone density, dentition, magical maturity, and the way malnutrition affected her development, I would place her at approximately one hundred and fifty.”

For a moment, Allandra heard nothing. One hundred and fifty. Not a child. Not a raw young thing barely out of adolescence by fae reckoning. Not a tragic girl dragged into politics too early. A woman. A contemporary. Allandra was one hundred and fifty-six. Serali was near enough to her own age that the difference vanished into the larger arithmetic of fae lives. While Allandra had trained in courtyards, ridden to war, married Finnian, borne Everly, taken the Mantle, and spent two years proving to a kingdom that the crown had not chosen wrong, Serali had been somewhere in the north, scrubbing floors with lye-damaged hands. Being punished. Being hidden. Being kept.

Allandra had imagined a great deal about the prisoner in her custody. She had not imagined a life running parallel to her own, year after year, on the other side of the war.

Daravan’s voice came quietly. “You are certain?”

“As certain as age can be in someone whose body has been forced to negotiate with hunger for over a century,” Lia said. “But yes. Near one hundred and fifty.”

Allandra looked at the closed door. Behind it, Serali slept. Not dissociated. Not trapped inside some crack in the wall. Asleep, because Lia had decided her body could not bear waking yet.

“The calming spell has done what it needed to do. If she wakes frightened, call me. If she wakes angry, let her be angry. If she wakes and asks questions, answer carefully. If anyone wakes her for convenience, I will become inconvenient in return,” Lia said.

Daravan said, “We still need containment.”

Lia’s eyes moved to him. “No iron,” she said.

“A dampening anklet,” Daravan replied. “Thin. Smooth. Padded beneath. Not the wrists. Not enough weight to impair movement. But enough to suppress active casting.”

“No.”

“She is still a mage.”

“She is still injured.”

“She is both.”

Lia’s nostrils flared.

Allandra watched them across the narrow corridor: her oldest healer and her captain, both right in incompatible ways.

Daravan looked to Allandra. “Majesty, she has escaped once. She used magic in public before capture. If she wakes with full access to shadow magic, frightened and disoriented, she could hurt herself or others before she understands where she is.”

Lia’s voice cut cold. “Then have fewer armed strangers standing around her bed.”

“That is not a security plan.”

“It is a medical recommendation.”

“It is insufficient.”

“It is humane.”

“It may also be dead.”

The silence after that was sharp. Allandra held up one hand. Both stopped. The decision settled on her with the old, familiar cruelty of command: no answer without cost. No mercy unshadowed by risk. No risk unshadowed by consequence.

She wanted to say no iron. She wanted it with a force that felt almost physical. But she saw again Serali in the market report, shield flaring. Serali at the border, if the evidence was true, leaving trained agents dead. Serali in Everly’s playroom, cornered and desperate enough to consider a window. She saw Everly. Then she saw Serali’s wrists.

“Not the wrists,” Allandra said.

Lia looked at her.

Allandra forced herself to continue. “A thin anklet. Padded. Checked twice daily by Lia. Removed at once if it damages the skin or worsens her condition.”

Daravan inclined his head. “Majesty.”

Lia did not. “All iron damages,” Lia said.

“I know.”

“No,” Lia said. “You do not. But you may yet learn.”

Allandra took the blow in silence.

Lia snapped the notebook shut. “I will fit it myself if I cannot prevent it.”

Daravan’s brows lifted slightly, but he did not object. Wise man.

“And no one else touches her ankle,” Lia added. “No guards adjusting it, no curious clerks, no apprentices who want to see Night Fae magic contained up close. If the anklet exists, it exists under my supervision.”

“All right,” Allandra said.

Lia studied her face for a long moment. Then nodded once, as if dissatisfied but not surprised. “She should sleep several more hours,” the healer said. “Possibly until morning. Her body has been running on fear and spite. Now that both have been interrupted, it may remember it is exhausted.”

Despite herself, Allandra almost smiled. Almost.

“Fear and spite,” Daravan murmured.

Lia looked at him. “Do not sound impressed.”

“I was not.”

“You were considering it.”

Daravan wisely said nothing.

Lia tucked the notebook under her arm. “One more thing.” Allandra braced herself. “When she wakes, she will need someone competent near her. Not a guard. Not a man with a sword trying to look harmless and failing. Someone who can help her drink, help her sit up, keep the lamps lit, and send for me if her fever rises. Someone with sense.”

Allandra thought for one moment.

Then she turned to the nearest guard. “Find Mara,” she said.

The guard straightened. “Majesty?”

“My attendant Mara. Wake her if necessary. Bring her here quietly.” He bowed and went. Daravan looked at her.

“Mara?”

“She is discreet,” Allandra said. “And competent.”

“She is your attendant.”

“Yes.” He seemed to weigh the implication of that. Allandra did not help him.

Lia, however, looked faintly satisfied. “Good. Tell her she answers to me where the patient is concerned.”

“Allandra lifted an eyebrow. “Does she?”

“Yes.” The answer was so dry that Daravan looked at the floor. Almost smiling. Traitor.

Lia continued, “No one else touches the girl unless I approve it. No one wakes her. No questioning. No testing whether she can hear you. No standing beside her bed whispering apologies she is not conscious enough to accept.”

Allandra flinched. Lia’s gaze remained merciless. “When she wakes, it will be because her body can bear it.”

Allandra swallowed. “Yes,” she said.

Lia opened the door quietly. The room beyond glowed with lamplight, soft and gold. For one moment, Allandra saw only the edge of the bed, the white linens, the dark spill of Serali’s hair against the pillow. Then Lia stepped inside, and the door closed again. Allandra remained in the corridor.

Daravan stood beside her, silent as stone. After a while, he said, “Majesty?” Allandra did not look at him.

“One hundred and fifty,” she said.

“Yes.”

“She is barely younger than I am.”

Daravan was quiet for a moment. Then, carefully, “Yes.”

Allandra thought of the ticket. The scars. The lye-burned hands. The way Serali had said fine.

Not a girl. Not an agent. Not yet an answer.

A woman, roughly her own age, asleep behind a guarded door because Allandra had finally been shown the history written into her skin and could no longer pretend not to read it.

“Post the quietest guards we have,” Allandra said.

Daravan nodded. “Already done.”

“Of course you did.” A pause. Then, softer, “No one enters without Lia’s approval.”

“Understood.”

Allandra drew a breath. The corridor air still smelled faintly of medicine, lamp oil, and the ghost of the vault below. “Captain.”

“Yes, Majesty?”

“If the anklet hurts her—”

“I will remove it myself.” Allandra looked at him then. Daravan’s face was still composed. Still professional. Still almost impossible to read. Almost. But not quite. The ticket had changed something in him too.

“Good,” Allandra said. Then she turned away from the door before she could do something foolish, like open it.