The Queen's Mage

Everly found her in the western solar, which meant someone had either failed to stop her or wisely decided survival mattered more than protocol.

Allandra looked up from a half-finished security report to find her daughter standing in the doorway with both hands planted on her hips.

That was never a good sign.

Everly wore a yellow day dress with ink on one sleeve, jam on the other, and a green ribbon tied lopsidedly through her hair. There was a smear of charcoal on her cheek. One of her shoes was missing. Behind her, a nursemaid hovered in the corridor with the pale, pleading look of a woman who had chased a princess through three halls and lost both the child and the will to live.

Allandra set down her pen.

“Everly.”

“Mother.”

The nursemaid winced.

Allandra’s gaze flicked past her daughter. “You may go.”

The woman bobbed a grateful curtsy and vanished with impressive speed.

Everly marched into the room.

Not walked. Marched.

She had inherited that from Allandra, unfortunately. Finnian had moved like water. Everly moved like an invading army with hair ribbons.

Allandra folded her hands atop the report. “Where is your other shoe?”

Everly looked down as if betrayed by her own foot.

“Oh.”

“Everly.”

“It was slow.”

“Your shoe was slow?”

“It kept falling off.”

“So you abandoned it.”

Everly nodded, pleased that her reasoning had been understood. “It was not helping.”

Allandra closed her eyes briefly.

When she opened them, Everly had already climbed into the chair opposite her. Sideways. Like a cat. Her skirt was bunched under one knee, and she had both hands braced on the armrest as if preparing to launch herself.

“I want to see Serali,” she announced.

Allandra’s hand went still.

There it was.

She should have expected it. In fact, she had expected it. She had prepared seven measured replies, each calmer and more motherly than the last.

All seven fled her mind at once.

“No.”

Everly frowned. “You said that too fast.”

“Because the answer is simple.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, because if it was simple, you would say more words.”

Allandra stared at her.

Finnian, she thought, with a sudden sharp ache, would have laughed until he cried.

Allandra did not.

“Serali is not receiving visitors.”

“She gets Mara.”

“Mara is not a visitor.”

“She gets Lia.”

“Lia is her healer.”

“She gets you.”

Allandra’s jaw tightened.

Everly pointed at her, triumphant. “That is visitors.”

“I am the queen.”

“I am the princess.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“It is close.”

“No.”

“It is in the same family.”

“Everly.”

Her daughter’s mouth pressed into a mutinous line.

Allandra had seen grown generals make that face immediately before losing arguments and sometimes limbs.

“Serali is dangerous,” Allandra said.

Everly rolled her eyes.

Rolled them.

At her.

It was so outrageous that Allandra nearly forgot to be stern.

“Do not do that.”

“She is not dangerous to me.”

“You cannot know that.”

“Yes, I can.”

“You met her once.”

“She hid in my playroom and did not bite me.”

Allandra paused.

“That is not the standard.”

“It is a good standard.”

“No.”

“She didn’t hit me either.”

“Also not the standard.”

“She said not to look.”

Allandra’s expression changed despite herself.

“She did?”

“Yes. She said it was going to be ugly.”

Allandra’s throat tightened.

Everly nodded solemnly. “It was very ugly. You were being very loud.”

“I was trying to get into the room.”

“You were yelling.”

“I was afraid.”

Everly stopped kicking her feet.

That, at least, landed.

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Her small face shifted, the stubbornness easing into something more observant. Too observant. Allandra had been hoping she would grow into that later, preferably after Allandra was dead.

“Were you afraid of her?” Everly asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you still?”

Allandra looked at the papers on her desk.

The report beneath her hand concerned guard rotations in the eastern wing. Daravan’s handwriting marked the margins. No transfer. No additional attendants. Lamps maintained. All food checked. No iron escalation without direct order.

Allandra folded the corner of the parchment flat.

“Yes,” she said, because lying to Everly had always felt like putting dust over a mirror and calling it a wall.

Everly considered this with the grave seriousness of a child deciding whether a beetle was dead or only pretending.

“Then why are you sad?”

The room went very quiet.

Allandra looked up.

Everly was not trying to wound her. That was the worst part. She was only watching. Watching with Finnian’s directness and Allandra’s refusal to look away.

“I am not sad.”

Everly gave her a look of such deep skepticism that several councilors, had they been present, might have reconsidered their careers.

“You do the line,” she said.

“What line?”

Everly put one sticky finger between her brows and pushed hard enough to wrinkle her whole face. “This one.”

Allandra stared.

“And you look at doors.”

“People come through doors.”

“Not when you look.”

Allandra sat back.

This conversation was becoming less manageable by the second.

“Serali is complicated,” she said.

Everly brightened with outrage. “No.”

“No?”

“No complicated.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Everly slapped both hands on the desk. “You say complicated when you don’t want to tell me.”

“That is because some things are complicated.”

“Then make them simple.”

“I cannot always do that.”

“You are queen.”

“That does not help as often as you think.”

Everly looked personally offended by this failure of monarchy.

Allandra pinched the bridge of her nose. “Who taught you to say complicated like that?”

“Uncle Hagen.”

Of course.

“What did Uncle Hagen say?”

Everly sat up very straight and lowered her voice into a truly terrible imitation of Hagen. “‘Grown-ups say complicated when they mean no but feel guilty.’”

Allandra stared at her daughter.

Everly stared back, unrepentant.

A laugh rose in Allandra’s chest before she could stop it.

It escaped as a breath first, then a sound, small and incredulous. Everly’s face changed instantly, triumph blooming there like sunrise.

“You laughed,” she said.

“I noticed.”

“You were not laughing before.”

“I have had a difficult few days.”

“So has Serali.”

The laughter died.

Everly did not look away.

There it was again. The blade inside the child’s bluntness. No cruelty. Just truth, unpolished and therefore nearly impossible to parry.

“Yes,” Allandra said quietly. “She has.”

“Because you locked her up.”

Allandra’s throat tightened.

“Yes.”

Everly swung her legs once, heel thumping against the chair. “Was she bad?”

“She broke several laws.”

“Which laws?”

“Entering the city under glamour. Using foreign magic in public. Resisting arrest.”

“She was helping the girl.”

“Yes.”

“Is helping bad?”

“No.”

“Then the laws are being silly.”

Allandra looked toward the window.

Outside, the sun was sinking toward the harbor, touching the city’s glass roofs with gold. Somewhere in the eastern wing, Serali would be watching the same light from a window she could not open.

“Sometimes,” Allandra said, “laws are too slow to catch up with mercy.”

Everly frowned. “Tell them hurry up.”

A second laugh threatened.

This one hurt.

“I am trying.”

Everly studied her face.

Then, more softly, “Can I see her?”

“No.”

The answer came gently this time.

Everly’s brows drew together. “Why?”

“Because she is frightened, injured, and under guard. Because there are things happening that you do not understand yet. Because I cannot allow you near a prisoner whose presence may put you in danger.”

Everly absorbed perhaps a quarter of that.

Maybe half. She was inconveniently bright.

“Is she sick?”

“No.”

“Hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Lonely?”

Allandra looked down.

Everly nodded, as if this confirmed what she had already suspected.

“Then I should see her.”

“You cannot.”

“Because I am important?”

“Yes.”

“Because she is important?”

Allandra stilled.

Everly watched her.

“Yes,” Allandra said at last. “Because she is important.”

Everly seemed satisfied by that, though not pleased.

She slid off the chair and stood very straight.

“If I cannot see her,” she said, with the air of a monarch making a grave concession, “then I will send a card.”

Allandra blinked. “A card.”

“A get-better card.”

“Serali is not ill.”

“She is hurt. And lonely. That counts.”

Allandra opened her mouth.

Closed it.

There were battles not worth fighting, and then there were battles already lost before one found the field.

“A card,” Allandra said.

Everly nodded. “With a drawing.”

“I see.”

“And you will bring it.”

Allandra’s brows rose. “I will?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because Mara is busy.”

“Mara would not forget.”

“Because guards read things.”

“Possibly.”

“Because you make the line when you say her name.”

Allandra went very still.

Everly looked back with devastating innocence.

The child knew nothing.

Probably.

“All right,” Allandra said, because there was no safe reply to any of that. “I will deliver your card.”

Everly nodded once, briskly. “Good.”

Then she turned and marched to Allandra’s side cabinet, opened the second drawer, and began removing paper.

Allandra stared at her. “You know where I keep my private stationery.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It is shiny.”

“That is not permission to use it.”

“It is for diplomacy.”

Allandra closed her eyes. “Hagen taught you that word.”

“At the festival. I said diplo-magic first.”

“I remember.”

“He said diplomacy is when people are cross but do not bite yet.”

“I am going to have words with your uncle.”

“That sounds diplomatic.”

“It will not be.”

Everly settled on the rug with her stolen royal stationery, a charcoal pencil, three colored chalks, and a pot of green ink she had absolutely not been granted permission to open. She spread everything across the floor with the confidence of a general deploying troops.

For several minutes, there was silence except for the scratch of charcoal and Everly’s small, decisive hums.

Allandra tried to return to her report.

She read the same sentence twice.

Then Everly said, “How do you spell Serali?”

Allandra’s pen stopped.

“S-e-r-a-l-i.”

Everly repeated the letters under her breath, tongue poking out between her teeth as she formed them in large, uneven strokes across the top of the paper.

A blot of green ink spread over the S.

Everly frowned at it. “That is fine. It is a leaf now.”

“Of course.”

“How do you spell sorry?”

Allandra looked up.

Everly did not. She was bent over the card, hair falling into her face.

“S-o-r-r-y,” Allandra said, quieter.

Everly wrote this with great effort, then sat back on her heels. “How do you spell complicated?”

Allandra’s throat tightened.

“C-O-M-P-L-I-C-A-T-E-D.”

Everly looked suspicious. “That seems too many letters.”

“It is the correct number.”

“If you say so.”

More scratching.

Then: “How do you spell locked?”

Allandra closed her eyes.

“Everly.”

“What?”

“Why do you need locked?”

“For the sentence.”

“What sentence?”

Everly covered the card with both hands. “It is private diplomacy.”

Allandra rose.

Everly shrieked and hunched over the paper like a dragon over treasure. “No looking!”

“I am required to know what messages leave my solar.”

“It is not leaving. You are bringing it.”

“That is still leaving.”

Everly considered this, then reluctantly lifted one hand. “Only a little looking.”

Allandra stepped around the desk and looked down.

The card was folded crookedly. On the front, Everly had drawn what appeared to be a stick figure lying in a very large bed, surrounded by enormous lamps. Beside the bed stood another figure with wings, a frown, and hair represented by violent yellow spikes. Near the bottom was a creature that might have been a horse, except it had claws.

“What is that?” Allandra asked.

“A dragon.”

“Of course.”

“It was going to be Uncle Hagen, but dragons are nicer.”

Allandra pressed her lips together.

Inside the card, in uneven green letters, Everly had written:

Dear Serali,

I am sorry you are hurt and locked.

Mama is being complicated.

I made you a dragon because dragons are not complicated.

They bite.

Everly

Allandra stared at it.

The words blurred slightly.

Everly looked up. “Is it good?”

Allandra swallowed.

“It is very direct.”

Everly beamed.

Allandra looked down at her daughter.

Everly looked back with Finnian’s eyes and her own stubborn mouth. Then she took the card back and added several more green marks around the dragon.

“Those are flowers,” she announced.

“They look like arrows.”

“They are angry flowers.”

“I see.”

When the ink finally dried, Everly folded the card with great ceremony and sealed it with a smear of wax she pressed with her thumb before Allandra could locate the proper seal. The result looked less like royal correspondence and more like evidence of a kitchen accident.

Everly held it out.

Allandra took it.

The paper felt impossibly heavy.

“You will give it to her now,” Everly said.

“I will give it to her soon.”

Everly frowned. “Now soon?”

“Everly.”

“She is lonely now.”

Allandra had no answer to that.

Her daughter reached up and patted her hand with sticky fingers.

It was such a Finnian gesture, small, earnest, devastating, that Allandra nearly lost the thread of herself entirely.

“Don’t make the line at her,” Everly said.

Allandra looked down.

Everly pointed between her brows again. “It makes you look stabby.”

Despite herself, Allandra laughed.

Everly smiled, pleased, then immediately became solemn. “And tell her the dragon is not Uncle Hagen.”

“I will be sure to clarify.”

“And tell her I am not scared.”

Allandra’s smile faded.

Everly’s chin lifted. “Because I am not.”

Allandra knelt before she thought better of it, bringing herself level with her daughter’s fierce little face.

“I know,” she said. “But I am.”

Everly studied her.

Then she wrapped both arms around Allandra’s neck with sudden, crushing force.

“You can be scared,” she said into Allandra’s hair. “But you still have to be nice.”

Allandra closed her eyes.

Four years old, and already merciless.

“Yes,” she whispered, holding her daughter carefully. “I know.”

Everly pulled back, satisfied, and patted Allandra’s cheek.

“Good. Go do that.”

Then she slid off the chair, retrieved one shoe from beneath the desk, apparently not the lost one, meaning Allandra had no idea where that shoe had come from, and marched out of the solar with all the gravity of a princess who had successfully concluded negotiations.

Allandra remained kneeling on the rug, the crooked card in her hand.

Through the open door, Everly’s voice rang down the corridor.

“Find my slow shoe!”

Allandra bowed her head and laughed until it almost became weeping.