Ch. 63: Royal Displeasure and Ch. 64: Kidnapped and Sewered

Chapter 63: Royal Displeasure

Lia released Serali to her rooms at sunset.

Released was generous. It would be more accurate to say transferred custody.

Mara stood beside the infirmary cot while Lia dictated instructions.

“No spellwork. No shadow practice. No political meetings.”

Serali opened her mouth.

Lia pointed at her without looking. “No.”

Serali closed it.

“Food. Water. Rest. If the headache worsens, if she becomes confused, or if her breathing changes, send for me.” Lia handed Mara a padded pouch of medicine. “This is for pain. The instructions are on the bottle.”

“I can read,” Serali said.

“Excellent. You may participate.”

Mara accepted the pouch with remarkable solemnity.

Lia considered them both. “No visitors who make her leave bed. No visitors who argue until she exhausts herself. And if a visitor arrives through a passage, hidden door, royal privilege, or emotional inevitability, you send for me if she gets worse.”

Mara said, “Yes, Mistress Lia.”

Serali lowered her head. “Thank you.”

Lia snorted. “Gratitude is not medical compliance, but it is noted.”

The walk took too long.

Mara supported her without asking whether she required support. Pell and Orran accompanied them as far as her door. Neither commented when she needed to pause.

“Thank you,” Serali said.

Pell opened the door, but Orran remained facing her.

“We were outside the workroom, my lady.”

“I know.”

“We heard something. We called to you, and you didn’t answer.”

Serali looked at him. His voice was level, but his hand had closed into a fist.

“Then Her Majesty arrived,” Pell said, “and we couldn’t tell her where you were.”

“I am sorry.”

“Please warn us,” Orran said. “Even if you think we will object.”

They would have objected, but she could not explain that without making it worse.

“I should have told you,” she said.

Pell inclined his head and stepped aside. Orran took his place beside the door. Neither looked satisfied.

Mara led Serali straight to the bedroom. “Chair first or bed?” she asked.

“I can—”

“Lia gave me authority.”

Serali stopped. Mara’s expression was dangerously calm.

“You would not abuse it.”

“I absolutely would.”

“Bed,” Serali said.

“Good choice.”

Mara helped her into a nightdress and brought broth. Serali drank because Mara watched every swallow.

“Again,” Mara said when the bowl was half-empty.

“I am full.”

“You are not full. You are tired of being watched.”

That was harder to argue with, so Serali took another spoonful.

When Mara had arranged the pillows, placed the medicine within reach, and made escape medically inconvenient with blankets, she took the chair near the door.

“You are not required to guard me,” Serali said.

“Yes, I am.”

“From what?”

Mara looked at her.

Serali looked away first.

After a moment, Mara said more quietly, “From deciding you are well because someone else needs something.”

Serali had no useful answer.

Through the bond, Allandra remained occupied. Near enough to feel. Too far away to touch.

She had a prisoner to secure, a daughter to settle, a city to reassure, and an escaped operative still somewhere within it.

Allandra should not come yet, but she would come.

Serali slept badly for perhaps an hour.

Then the bond woke her. Not with words, but with proximity.

Mara was already standing when the panel beside the wardrobe opened.

Allandra stepped through the servants’ passage in a dark robe, her hair unbound. She looked pale and furious in the low lamplight.

Mara took one look at her and chose discretion. “I will be just outside. Lia’s instructions are on the table.”

Allandra nodded without looking away from Serali.

The visible door shut. The passage panel closed.

Allandra stood still for two breaths. Then she lifted both hands as though physically holding back words.

“No,” she whispered.

Serali swallowed. “No?”

“No. You do not speak first.”

Serali closed her mouth.

Allandra crossed half the room, stopped, turned away, turned back, and gestured sharply toward the bed.

“What,” she whispered, with enormous restraint and both hands moving too much for a whisper, “in all the old crowns and buried queens did you think you were doing?”

Serali opened her mouth.

Allandra pointed at her. “Rhetorical.”

Serali closed it again.

“I felt you,” Allandra hissed. “You wrapped it in warmth. Warmth. I thought you were checking on me. I sent it back. Then you…you apologized.”

Serali looked down at the blankets. “Allandra…”

“No.” Allandra’s whisper sharpened. “I am not finished. Do you know what it felt like when the bond tore?”

Serali’s throat closed.

Allandra stopped moving.

For one moment, her face showed everything she had kept out of the entrance hall. Terror. Relief. Fear that had continued long after someone said alive.

Then she drew herself up again.

“I was in council. We were looking at routes. Properties. Trying to find the next thing that might help. And then you—” Her hands opened and closed. “I thought you were dying.”

Serali could not look away.

“No. Not even dying,” Allandra said. “Dying has a direction. This was you being ripped somewhere I could not reach.”

“I am sorry,” Serali whispered.

Allandra’s eyes flashed. “Do not apologize yet. I am still angry.”

Serali blinked.

“You may apologize when I decide I can hear it without forgiving you too quickly.”

Despite everything, Serali almost smiled, which was a terrible mistake.

Allandra saw it, and her glare became magnificent. “Do not.”

“I was not—”

“You were.”

Serali pressed her lips together.

Allandra resumed her whisper-yelling, one hand cutting the air between them. “You did not send for me. You did not warn me. You and Lia made a decision you knew I would stop because I would stop it. That was the point. Do not look innocent. You chose secrecy as a strategy.”

“Yes.”

The honest answer stopped her. For a moment, there was silence.

Allandra’s mouth tightened. “I hate that yes.”

“I know.”

“I hate that you are right to say it plainly.”

“I know.”

“I hate that part of me understands exactly why you did it.”

Serali looked at her hands.

The silver thread was gone. Lia had untied the remaining end that morning. A faint pressure mark remained where it had circled her wrist.

“They were close enough to frighten the agents,” she said. “We knew Marielle was underground. We did not know where. Daravan and Harrek had a trail, but neither of us knew how long they could follow it.”

“So you followed a connection they had put into her blood.”

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“Yes.”

“Without knowing where you would arrive.”

“Yes.”

Allandra looked at the ceiling.

“I could not promise it was the only way,” Serali said. “I thought waiting might leave us with no way at all.”

Allandra lowered her gaze. “You could have died.”

“I know.”

“Lia could have died.”

“I know.”

“Marielle could have died because you arrived.”

Serali’s fingers twisted in the blanket. She had seen the knife. She would keep seeing it. “I know.”

Allandra’s hands fell to her sides.

Serali made herself look up. “I would probably do it again.”

Allandra went utterly still.

“I am sorry,” Serali said. “I am sorry I frightened you. I am sorry I hid it. I am sorry Lia was hurt. I am sorry you had to stand there knowing something was happening and not knowing what.”

Allandra’s eyes shone.

Serali forced herself to finish. “But I do not regret going. I cannot regret reaching her.”

Allandra turned away, pressing a hand over her mouth.

Serali wanted to reach for her, but stayed still.

Then Allandra said, muffled behind her hand, “That is one of the things I love about you.”

Serali’s breath caught.

Allandra looked back, glaring through bright eyes. “And one of the things I hate about you.”

“Both?”

“Yes. Both. Do not look pleased.”

“I am mostly terrified.”

“Good.”

Then Allandra crossed the rest of the room.

Too fast.

She bent over the bed and wrapped both arms tightly around Serali, as though she had been holding the embrace in her body for hours.

Serali gasped.

Allandra loosened immediately. “Did I hurt you?”

“No.”

“Do not lie.”

“A little.”

Allandra made a broken sound and tried to pull back.

Serali caught her sleeve. “Please.”

Allandra froze.

Then carefully, carefully, she settled onto the bed and gathered Serali close again, arranging pillows and arms with the fierce precision of someone pretending this was a medical procedure.

Serali turned her face into Allandra’s shoulder.

Allandra’s breath shook against Serali’s hair, and Serali felt something damp at her temple.

“Allandra?”

“I am not crying,” Allandra said at once. “I am mad at you.”

“Yes.”

“Furious.”

“Yes.”

“This is rage.”

“Of course.”

Serali was quiet for one breath. Then, very carefully, she said, “You sound like Everly.”

Allandra pulled back just far enough to glare.

Serali looked innocent.

This failed because she was not.

“That,” Allandra whispered, “was an extremely dangerous thing to say to a queen in your sickbed.”

“I am injured.”

“You are also impossible.”

“Yes.”

“And smug.”

“A little.”

“All old crowns preserve me.”

Her glare wavered.

Serali touched her cheek with the backs of her fingers.

Allandra closed her eyes. “I thought I had lost you,” she whispered.

Serali’s hand trembled. “You did not.”

“I know that now.”

“I am here.”

Allandra leaned into her hand for a moment before pressing her forehead gently to Serali’s. “I cannot make you regret going.”

Serali closed her eyes.

“I would not want you to,” Allandra continued. “That is the worst part. I love that when there is someone trapped behind a door, you will find a way through.”

Her thumb brushed Serali’s cheek. “But I hate being the person waiting on the other side of the bond, feeling you break yourself open.”

“I did not mean to break.”

“No one ever does.”

Serali’s fingers curled in Allandra’s robe. “I am sorry,” she said again.

This time Allandra let herself hear it.

Serali felt the change through the bond. Anger remained. So did fear. But the apology found somewhere to settle among them.

“I know,” Allandra said.

For a while, neither spoke.

Beyond the door, Mara shifted once, then moved farther away.

Allandra’s fingers passed gently through Serali’s hair. “You are confined to this room tomorrow.”

Serali smiled against her shoulder. “Lia already said that.”

“I am making it royal.”

“Does that make it more binding?”

“It makes disobedience treason.”

“That seems severe.”

“I am in a severe mood.”

“You are crying.”

“I am mad at you.”

“Yes.”

Allandra kissed the top of her head.

Serali closed her eyes.

Allandra was still mad, but she was holding her.

For one breath, that was enough.

Chapter 64: Kidnapped and Sewered

Marielle opened her eyes. Morning light crossed the familiar beams. Her throat hurt with impressive specificity.

Do not speak, her memory supplied.

Lia had said that repeatedly.

She took inventory: neck bandaged, arm rebandaged, jaw sore, tongue dry, body tired in a way sleep had apparently been unable to resolve.

Her memory of the rescue was fragmented.

She remembered a blade, shadow, Daravan’s face above her. His coat beneath her fingers.

Then the bathhouse. Lia’s hands. Panic that had not listened to reason. A small glass dropper instead of cloth.

Being asked. She remembered that clearly.

Kellen Row bathhouse. Harrek outside. Serali here. Lia treating you. I am here.

Her hand had been held.

Afterward, the memories blurred: the entrance hall, Everly’s card, Verya crying in a way that seemed improbable enough to be a fever vision.

Her mother’s voice. Her father drawing up a chair.

Daravan beside her.

Still here.

Marielle moved her fingers.

The neighboring cot was empty.

Lia had released him that morning, under orders to rest in his rooms and return for treatment. She had explained this when Marielle looked toward the cot for the third time, even though looking was not a question.

Her parents were at breakfast. That had required significant negotiation, but Lia had managed to convince them that sitting at Marielle’s bedside without food or rest was doing very little for Marielle and even less for either of them. Her father had asked twice who would stay with her. Her mother had left her shawl on the back of the chair, as though to make it clear she was only going as far as breakfast.

They were both still in their traveling clothes. Her father’s coat was creased from the journey, and her mother had fastened one cuff through the wrong buttonhole. Marielle was so glad to see them that she kept looking over to make sure they were there. Every time she did, one of them was already looking back. They seemed nearly as tired as she was, which she had not expected and did not know how to help.

She hadn’t thought of them while she was taken. She’d realized that when her mother asked, very quietly, whether she had known they would come. By then her parents had probably spent the whole journey thinking of little else, and Marielle couldn’t remember thinking of them once. She wondered if there was something wrong with that.

But she remembered how much effort it had taken to listen for footsteps when she was tired, and to keep track of which doors she’d seen and who had the keys. If she’d stopped to picture her mother being told she was missing, she would only have had to find a way to stop picturing it again. It wouldn’t have helped her get home. She knew that. She still wished she had something better to tell her mother than that she was glad she’d come.

The door to the infirmary opened and Lia entered with Everly beside her.

The princess held a card almost as large as her chest. One hand gripped its bottom edge. The other was tucked behind it, and she held the card so carefully against her dress that Marielle could immediately tell she was concealing something.

Apparently, so could Lia.

“Let me see your other hand,” Lia said.

Everly froze. Then she pressed the card flat against her chest and slid her hidden hand out to one side, fingers spread.

The hand was empty.

Everly was bad at looking innocent.

“Now the card,” Lia said.

Everly caught the small wrapped pastry just before it slipped out from behind the card.

Lia held out a hand.

“It is for healing,” Everly said.

“It is pie.”

“A hand pie. It is small.”

“It could fit in a thimble and it would still be pastry.”

Everly looked to Marielle for support.

Marielle attempted to convey that she was under active medical oppression and temporarily unavailable for conspiracy.

Everly seemed to understand only the oppression part. “She wants it.”

“She can have it when I permit pastry,” Lia said.

Everly surrendered the parcel. Lia put it on a high shelf.

The princess watched with the concentration of someone developing a recovery plan.

“Ten minutes,” Lia said. “Quietly. No climbing on the cot. No making her laugh hard enough to disturb the stitches.”

Everly nodded. “I brought a card so she does not have to talk.”

“Good.”

“And questions that only need blinking.”

Lia paused.

Marielle smiled.

“We will agree what the answers mean first,” Lia said. She looked at Marielle. “One deliberate blink for yes, two for no. If neither answers the question, keep looking at us. Agreed?”

Marielle blinked once.

Everly approached the cot carefully. She studied Marielle’s face, then the dressing, as though checking what had changed since yesterday.

“You are more awake.”

An accurate observation.

Marielle blinked once.

“Good. I made another one.” Everly lifted the card.

It contained too many colors, several alarming proportions, and careful large letters:

SORRY YOU GOT KIDNAPPED AND SEWERED.

GET BETTER SOON SO WE CAN HAVE PIE.

Marielle stared. The phrasing was so precise and so incorrect that she wanted it preserved in the royal archive.

“Sewered is not a standard word,” Lia said.

“I used it because it means the exact thing.”

Marielle blinked once.

Everly beamed. “Lady Marielle agrees.”

“I noticed.”

The drawing showed a bed with four posts, two leaning in directions that required structural review. A figure beneath the blanket had short white spikes for hair, a large neck bandage, and a frowning face.

Accurate enough to be unsettling.

Beside the bed stood a taller figure. Sword. Serious eyebrows. Red lines around the eyes.

A flower in one hand.

Marielle stared at the flower, then the figure, then Everly.

She lifted a finger.

Lia sighed. “One word. Quietly.”

“Who?” Marielle rasped. It hurt.

“That is Daravan,” Everly said.

Marielle closed her eyes and reopened them only to find the artistic evidence remained unchanged.

Daravan stood beside her bed holding a flower.

Her brows lifted.

“He did a romance,” Everly explained.

Lia made a strangled sound and became interested in a tray of salve.

Everly lowered her voice. “Uncle Hagen said. Harrek said he did it badly but thoroughly.”

Several things attempted to happen in Marielle’s mind at once.

She opened her mouth.

“No,” Lia said immediately.

Marielle lifted a finger again.

“One word was the permission. Not one word at a time until you have assembled a rebuttal.”

Marielle drew a breath.

Lia narrowed her eyes. “If you insist on testing those stitches, I will have the duck basin brought back.”

Marielle went still. That basin had been removed.

Its removal had been one of the few uncontested improvements to this room.

Lia apparently considered improvement reversible.

Marielle closed her mouth for strategic reasons.

“Do not worry,” Everly said. “I understand romance.”

“You are four,” Lia said.

“Almost five.”

“That does not improve your position as much as you seem to think.”

Everly ignored her. “Romance is when people are friends but extra worried. And they bring flowers.”

Marielle looked at Lia.

Lia still refused to help.

“Also,” Everly continued, “when someone carries someone out of a sewer and then does not put them down.”

The blurred memory stirred.

Daravan carrying her.

His voice. His coat. Her hand refusing to release it.

He surely had not carried her all the way. That would be inefficient.

Excessive.

Warm.

Safe.

Marielle looked at the empty cot.

There were practical explanations. She had been unable to walk. Someone had needed to carry her. Daravan was strong and available.

The handholding was less easily categorized.

Lia had been occupied. Marielle had been frightened. Familiar contact could be useful. That did not require romance.

It did not explain why remembering it made her want to close her eyes.

“I made the flower blue,” Everly said.

Marielle looked back. The flower was very blue.

“He did not have a flower. I added it so you would know.”

A useful clarification.

Unfortunately, it clarified the drawing rather than Daravan.

Everly set the card beside yesterday’s.

Then her voice changed. “I was scared when you were gone.”

Marielle’s throat tightened.

Everly folded her hands. “Everyone was. I wanted to see you yesterday so I would know you were here.”

Marielle remembered a small voice near her bed, a card held where she could see.

Daravan’s hand beneath its edge.

Everly reached toward her, then stopped herself.

Marielle moved her uninjured hand across the blanket.

The princess placed her fingers lightly against it. “I am glad you are where I can see you.”

Marielle blinked once.

It was not enough, but she tried to make it enough anyway.

Everly squeezed gently, then let go. “Do you like the card?”

One blink.

“Is the bed wrong?”

Another blink.

Everly sighed. “I tried.”

“There she is,” Lia murmured.

A knock came at the door.

Marielle’s fingers tightened on the blanket.

“Easy,” Lia said. “No one enters unless I permit it.”

The door opened a crack.

“Lia?” Daravan’s voice.

Everly turned with scandalized delight. “You came for the romance.”

A pause.

“I came for salve application.”

“Romance salve.”

Marielle shut her eyes and immediately regretted it. Now she could not see anyone’s reaction.

“Your timing is disastrous,” Lia told him.

“I can return later.”

“No,” Everly said. “You have to see the card.”

Before Lia could stop her, she retrieved it and marched toward the door.

A silence followed.

The devastating silence of Daravan being confronted with a drawing of himself holding a blue flower.

“That is very detailed,” he said.

“It is you doing romance. Uncle Hagen said.”

“Did he?”

“Harrek said so too. He said ‘badly but thoroughly.’” Everly looked up at him and added, “I do not think you did a bad job. And thorough is a good thing.”

“Right. I will speak with them.”

Marielle opened her eyes. Daravan stood inside the doorway in clean clothes. Redness was still visible around his eyes. He looked tired.

Then he looked at her and his expression softened.

The remembered warmth returned so abruptly that she forgot, for one breath, to be embarrassed by the flower.

“Marielle. You are awake.”

She blinked once.

Obviously.

Everly looked between them, deeply satisfied.

Daravan examined the card again. “Did you draw all of this yourself, Your Highness?”

“Yes. Lady Marielle says the bedposts are wrong.”

Daravan looked at Marielle. “Would you like me to put it somewhere you can see it?”

One blink.

He propped the card against the water jug and turned it toward her. “There?”

Another blink.

Everly leaned against the edge of the bed to see it from Marielle’s side. “Maybe the next one should have pie instead.”

Marielle blinked once.

“Wise,” Daravan said.

“Visit over,” Lia announced. “Before someone laughs and undoes my stitching.”

Everly gathered herself with dignity, then leaned close to Marielle. “I have more little pies. I will keep them safe.”

“I heard that,” Lia said.

“Good. Then you know.”

An apprentice escorted her out. Everly was already explaining why hand pies might require separate rules.

Daravan remained beside the cot.

Marielle looked at him. Then at the blue flower on the card. Then back.

He followed her gaze. A faint flush rose along his cheekbones.

Interesting.

Unfortunately, investigation required speech.

Daravan moved the water glass a little farther from the cards.

“Too close,” he explained.

Obviously.

He glanced toward the door. “Would you like me to stay?”

One blink. That answer, at least, required no investigation.

Lia guarded the door. The cards stood beside her. Daravan pulled up a chair where she could see him without turning her head.

She had been kidnapped.

And sewered.

And brought home.