The queen did not flinch.
That, more than anything, was what Malvoria hated about her. Even cornered in the ruins of her daughter's wedding, even with smoke still staining the air and blood still bright on the aisle stones, the woman held herself together like carved ice.
"I'm sure," the queen said, voice cool and perfectly measured, "that person could have been a rebel. Someone who hates the Celestians. Why are you accusing me of anything when we need to get Sarisa back? What if she is in grave danger?"
Malvoria stared at her.
Grave danger.
Well, yes, Malvoria thought, if you count being passionately adored by a feral demon woman in a hidden house full of rose petals as danger, then absolutely.
Terrible danger. Mortal peril by way of devotion and probably very little sleep.
She kept that thought to herself.
Mostly because saying it aloud would derail the entire conversation and also because Raveth was already making the sort of face that suggested she might simply bite the queen to save time.
Veylira, however, remained disturbingly calm. "A rebel," she repeated, as if tasting the lie and finding it poorly seasoned.
The queen spread one gloved hand, all patience and pale hauteur. "You heard the masked person. They cursed me. They clearly intended to disrupt the ceremony and insult the crown. This is hardly proof of some hidden guilt on my part."
"Insult the crown?" Raveth barked out a laugh that showed too many teeth for comfort. "The crown got off lightly."
The queen's gaze sharpened. "Your tone is not helping."
"No," Raveth said. "But it is entertaining me."
Malvoria would have enjoyed the exchange more if the whole place did not still smell like scorched flowers and panic.
Around them, the ceremony grounds had become a battlefield trying to pass as a garden again. Healers moved from body to body.
Guards hauled the more seriously injured away. Nobles whispered in tight little clusters, already turning disaster into gossip. The whole scene made Malvoria want a drink, a nap, and the legal right to punch a monarch.
Then Elysia arrived.
She came from the side colonnade with Aliyah in one hand and Kaelith in the other, like serenity itself had decided to walk straight into the middle of a royal disaster and see whether anyone dared raise their voice at her.
Aliyah looked bright-eyed and too alert for a child who had just watched a wedding explode.
Kaelith, in her miniature suit and tie, looked offended that no one had yet explained the tactical brilliance of the masked intruder.
Elysia stopped beside Malvoria and took in the tableau in one swift glance. The queen rigid with fury.
Raveth splattered with blood and displeasure. Veylira composed and lethal. Malvoria, no doubt, gorgeous and furious.
Then she said, in that soft, practical voice of hers that always sounded far too calm for the things it said, "Rebels? Have they not all been killed in the last raid?"
Silence.
Perfect, beautiful silence.
Malvoria turned her head just enough to look at her wife and felt something warm and violent and affectionate bloom in her chest. Gods, she loved this woman.
The queen's mouth tightened. "Well, maybe there were some left. I don't know."
That line was so weak Malvoria almost pitied her.
Almost.
Elysia's expression did not change, but there was the slightest tilt of her head, the one that meant she had identified stupidity and was deciding whether to dissect it immediately or let it continue embarrassing itself first.
The queen pressed on before she could. "You trace the magic now."
Not request. Demand disguised as practicality.
Malvoria felt the anger spark at once.
She stepped forward, black silk dragging over broken petals, and if the queen noticed the slight flare of heat that accompanied her temper, she had the decency not to mention it.
"Hey," Malvoria snapped. "Show some respect to my wife."
The nearest surviving guards visibly regretted being alive.
The queen looked at her as if reminded, unpleasantly, that demons were not decorative allies she could dismiss when useful.
Malvoria did not stop.
"And no," she went on, voice rising with sharp, furious clarity, "she can't just 'trace the magic' like that. The masked person didn't use magic, just to remind you. That was the whole fucking problem. No flare, no residue on the strikes, nothing to follow from the fighting itself. You know whose fault that is? Yours. Because your guards are apparently trained to look pretty in white and get folded like laundry the second someone competent shows up."
Several of the guards looked insulted.
Good.
Look at your Vaelen, she almost added again, but the man was currently being helped upright by two healers and looked so thoroughly concussed that even Malvoria had begun to feel a little bad for him.
Not enough to stop enjoying it. Just enough to acknowledge the feeling existed in theory.
The queen's composure cracked by a fraction. "That is enough."
"No," Malvoria said.
"You don't get enough. You get honesty. Your guards failed. Your security failed. Your ceremony failed. And now you want to stand here and act like the problem is that we are not solving your kidnapping fast enough for your convenience."
Aliyah, still holding Elysia's hand, looked up with bright interest. Kaelith whispered something to her that sounded like "my mom is winning," and Aliyah nodded solemnly.
The queen heard them too.
Her attention snapped briefly to the children, then back to Malvoria, as though adding one more line to the long list of things currently offending her.
"I will not be spoken to this way in my own palace."
Raveth laughed. "And yet here we are."
For one dangerous moment, Malvoria thought the queen might actually order guards to move against them, which would have been an excellent way to turn one ruined wedding into a diplomatic incident with fire.
The idea had barely begun to charm her when Elysia squeezed her hand once.
Just once.
Enough.
Malvoria took a slow breath through her nose and did not set anyone on fire.
Elysia stepped forward then, still holding both girls with effortless calm, and the whole tone of the scene shifted by half a degree.
Not softer. Just steadier. She had that effect. She could walk into chaos and make it feel briefly ashamed of itself.
"Can you please calm down?" she said, and somehow she managed to sound as though she was speaking to everyone and no one at once. "For the moment, it won't bring back Sarisa."
That landed.
Because for all the fury and suspicion and blame twisting through the broken garden, there was still that ugly, undeniable truth at the center of it.
Sarisa was gone.
Stolen from the aisle. Gone from the palace. Gone from her mother's reach, from Vaelen's reach, from every careful arrangement and sacred little ceremony these people had tried to build around her.
Malvoria kept her face composed with effort. She knew where Sarisa was. She knew who had her.
She knew, with increasing amusement, that Sarisa was almost certainly safer at that very moment than she had been anywhere near this palace in weeks.
But she could not say that.
So she let the silence stretch, heavy with everyone's private version of fear.
Aliyah broke it first.
"Mom will be okay," she said.
Every adult in earshot turned toward her.
She did not seem bothered by the attention in the slightest. She stood there in her little formal dress with one ribbon half undone and all the certainty of a child who knew things long before grown-ups were ready to admit them.
The queen's face did something strange at the edges.
Not softness. Never that. But strain, perhaps. Or anger trying very hard not to become something more revealing in front of witnesses.
Elysia rested her free hand lightly on Aliyah's shoulder. "We hope so."
Malvoria looked at the queen and thought, not for the first time, that the woman was losing control of the story. Not openly. Not yet. But hairline cracks had begun to spread through her perfect surface.
Rebel. Perhaps some were left. Find the princess. Trace the magic.
All of it sounded increasingly thin.
Good.
Let her work harder.
Let her scramble.
Let her spend the night trying to understand how disaster could still happen in a palace built entirely for control.
Malvoria smiled then, sharp and dangerous and not bothering to hide it.
"Well," she said, smoothing one hand over her ruined gown, "since shouting is apparently not useful, maybe we should all focus on what matters."
The queen's eyes narrowed. "And what is that?"
Malvoria held her gaze.
"Finding your daughter," she said.