Hours passed.
That was the irritating thing about royal crises. No matter how dramatic the explosion, how satisfying the panic, how much blood had hit the white stones of the ceremony court, eventually it all curdled into meetings.
By the time evening drew down over the Celestian palace, every corridor smelled of wax, herbs, and tension.
Guards had searched the outer walls, the carriage houses, the southern gardens, the servants' quarters, the lower vaults, and half the godsforsaken decorative pavilions.
Healers had finished patching up the worst of the injuries. Nobles had either been escorted home or had barricaded themselves into guest suites with enough wine to turn trauma into scandal by morning.
And still, according to the official line, they had found nothing.
No trace.
No lead.
No sign of the princess.
Malvoria sat through the last of it in the meeting room with all the patience of a woman being asked not to bite furniture.
The queen sat at one end, composed in the way only very dangerous women and very dead women ever managed.
Vaelen, cleaned up now but still visibly battered, held himself together with a kind of princely stiffness Malvoria found impressive on a purely anthropological level.
Raveth lounged in her chair like violence waiting for paperwork to finish. Veylira looked as if she had been carved from polished judgment. Elysia sat at Malvoria's side, one hand folded over the other, the very picture of calm competence.
Aliyah, blessedly, had not been made to sit through all of it. She had spent the last stretch of the evening in a smaller side salon with Kaelith and two maids under strict instructions not to let either child near anything that could become a weapon, ladder, or political incident.
Malvoria, for her part, had stopped listening at least ten minutes ago.
"…no magical residue beyond the initial detonation," one of the captains was saying, pale-faced and tired.
Another added, "No witnesses able to describe a direction after teleportation."
Of course not, Malvoria thought. That was rather the point.
The queen steepled her fingers. "Then you are telling me my daughter has vanished from the center of my own palace grounds and none of you can offer me a single useful answer."
No one was foolish enough to respond immediately.
Good.
Fear remained one of the few virtues the Celestian military reliably maintained.
Malvoria let the silence stretch just long enough to become uncomfortable and then said, "If it helps, your guards are consistently useless. That kind of reliability can be reassuring."
Vaelen closed his eyes briefly.
The queen turned her head toward Malvoria with glacial precision. "This is not the time."
"That's where we differ," Malvoria said.
Elysia touched her wrist under the table. Not hard. Just enough to remind her that while setting the queen on fire would be emotionally satisfying, it would complicate dinner.
Malvoria did not set the queen on fire.
This, she felt, was a mark of extraordinary maturity.
The reports continued. None of them said anything new. Nothing found. No trail. No clues. No suspicious movement beyond the obvious catastrophe everyone had already witnessed.
The story the palace would tell by morning was already beginning to form in the room around them: a violent intruder, a princess stolen, a realm insulted, a search ongoing.
It would hold.
For tonight, at least.
Finally, when the last captain had finished admitting failure in a variety of elegant phrases, Malvoria leaned back in her chair and crossed one leg over the other.
"Well," she said, "since we are all enjoying this so much, I should inform you that I'm taking Aliyah with me to my realm."
The room stilled.
She loved that part.
The queen's gaze sharpened at once. "You are doing what?"
Malvoria smiled pleasantly. "Taking my niece home with me."
"She stays here."
"No."
It was wonderful, how much fury one syllable could buy.
The queen's expression hardened. "Aliyah belongs with her mother."
"Her mother," Malvoria said, all sweetness gone now, "has just been abducted from the middle of a royal ceremony while your guards performed interpretive incompetence around her. I do not particularly care what she 'belongs' with tonight."
Vaelen shifted, clearly recognizing a disaster when he heard one. "Surely there is no need to escalate—"
Malvoria turned to look at him. "Prince, with all due respect, you were folded like fresh linen this afternoon. I am not currently taking security advice from you."
Raveth made a noise suspiciously close to laughter.
The queen's hand flattened against the table. "The Celestian castle is perfectly secure."
Malvoria stared at her.
Then, slowly, she said, "Your daughter was kidnapped from the aisle."
No one spoke.
Excellent.
Malvoria rose from her chair in one fluid movement, silk whispering against stone. "I don't want anything happening to my niece because I feel like the Celestian castle is not enough protected."
The grammar was not ideal. The sentiment, however, was flawless.
The queen stood too. "You are overstepping."
"I am compensating."
"You do not have the authority—"
"I am the Demon Queen." Malvoria's smile sharpened into something with teeth. "Authority is one of the few things I never seem to lack."
Elysia rose beside her then, graceful as moonlight and twice as dangerous for it. "Aliyah will be safer with us tonight."
That ended the argument far more efficiently than Malvoria's threats had. The queen did not fear Malvoria's temper half so much as she feared Elysia's reason. One sounded like war. The other sounded like witnesses.
Veylira added, in her cool, elegant voice, "I agree."
The queen's mouth tightened.
Of course she wanted to refuse. Of course she wanted to keep Aliyah within these walls where every breathing thing could be arranged and observed and used.
But to deny Malvoria publicly, after the wedding catastrophe, after the failed search, after the whispers already moving through every noble corridor? That risked looking careless with the child's safety.
And tonight, of all nights, she could not afford one more visible failure.
"Very well," she said at last, each word iced to perfection. "For one night."
Malvoria's smile returned at once, bright and victorious. "Wonderful."
She did not wait for further permission. She turned, let black-orange fire gather low around her fingers, and gestured for Elysia to go fetch the children.
Ten minutes later they were in the lower receiving chamber with Aliyah bundled sleepily into Malvoria's arms, Kaelith still indignant about having to leave behind the remaining pastries, and enough luggage for a small exile.
The queen did not come to see them off.
A pity.
Malvoria would have enjoyed her expression one last time.
Instead she opened the portal herself, flame curling wide and dark, and stepped through with Elysia, Aliyah, Kaelith, and a small mountain of unnecessary child possessions.
The shift in air hit first. Then warmth. Then home.
The reception hall of their own castle rose around them in black stone and gold firelight and the familiar, blessed scent of a place where no one pretended silk made them morally superior. For one suspended heartbeat no one moved.
Then the portal snapped shut behind them.
And all at once the tension broke.
Everyone took a breath.
A real one. Deep. Full. Free.
Kaelith flung her arms out wide. "We're alive."
Aliyah, still half-asleep against Malvoria's shoulder, lifted her head just enough to mumble, "The old palace smells so much better."
Elysia laughed first.
It was soft at first, then helpless, then bright enough to echo off the high arches. Raveth, who had returned before them via other means, leaned against the nearest pillar and scrubbed both hands over her face before saying, "Wow. The plan was successful."
Malvoria handed Aliyah off to a waiting servant and rolled one aching shoulder. "Damn. I almost punched the queen myself."
"You nearly did twice," Elysia said.
"Self-restraint is exhausting."
Veylira descended the stairs from the upper gallery then, elegant and perfectly composed, and took one look at the lot of them still flushed with performance and adrenaline.
"Well?" she asked.
Malvoria spread her arms grandly. "The bride is gone. The child is safe. The queen is furious. I'd call that a productive evening."
Raveth grinned. "And now?"
Malvoria looked around at her family, at the children wilting with sleep, at Elysia still smiling, at the firelit calm of her own realm.
Then she said, with all the gravity of a woman who had just survived diplomacy by the skin of her teeth:
"Let's go eat now."