Kaelith got halfway down the corridor before the full weight of what she had just done hit her.
What the fuck was that.
She kept walking anyway.
Fast.
Not running, obviously.
Kaelith did not run from anything.
She simply moved with uncommon purpose while her pulse tried to climb out of her throat and her brain replayed the last thirty seconds in vicious, glittering detail.
Irielle on the ground.
Ruby above her.
Too close.
Far too fucking close.
And then Kaelith, without a single useful thought in her head, had launched a purple flame arrow across the training room like some deranged, possessive lunatic from a melodrama.
Excellent.
Very subtle behavior from a woman who had spent the last week insisting she wanted distance.
She turned a corner too sharply and nearly collided with someone solid enough to stop her outright.
A hand caught her upper arm before she could swear properly.
Kaelith looked up.
Malvoria.
Her mouth curved the moment she saw Kaelith’s face.
That was immediately suspicious.
“I thought you had disappeared from the castle,” Malvoria said.
Kaelith pulled her arm free and tried for dignity.
“Ha ha.
Really funny.”
“It was a little funny.”
“It was not.”
Malvoria leaned one shoulder against the wall, blocking the corridor with the ease of a woman who assumed space would obey her.
Which, to be fair, it usually did.
“Where are you running?”
“I am not running.”
“No?” Malvoria tilted her head.
“Then who are you running away from?”
Kaelith crossed her arms.
“No one.”
Malvoria’s grey eyes sharpened with interest.
“Is it your wife?”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Kaelith stared at her.
“You cannot ask a question and answer it yourself.”
“I can when the answer is obvious.”
“It is not obvious.”
“It is very obvious.”
Kaelith hated this conversation already.
The corridor around them was warm with late afternoon light filtering through the high windows, all polished stone and gold-edged shadows.
Malvoria watched her in silence for one beat too long.
That was what made it dangerous.
Malvoria did not need noise to be unbearable.
She simply looked, and somehow looking from her felt like being slowly dismantled by a beautiful predator with excellent posture.
Kaelith lifted her chin.
“I said no.”
Malvoria smiled faintly.
“And yet you look like a woman who just committed an act of emotional stupidity.”
“That is a very broad category in this family.”
“Yes,” Malvoria said.
“Which is why I recognize it so quickly.”
Kaelith opened her mouth, closed it again, then scowled harder because arguing with that felt structurally difficult.
Malvoria’s gaze dropped briefly to Kaelith’s hands.
“Still hot.”
Kaelith blinked.
Then looked down.
There were in fact faint traces of purple magic still licking along her fingers, almost gone now but visible enough if one knew what to look for.
Wonderful.
“Residual flare,” Kaelith said.
Malvoria’s expression did not change.
“You shot something.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Kaelith exhaled sharply.
“Why are you like this?”
“Because you are my daughter,” Malvoria replied, as if that explained everything.
“And because you are about as subtle as a torch thrown through silk.”
Kaelith leaned back against the opposite wall and dragged a hand down her face.
“It wasn’t a big deal.” This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
Malvoria waited.
That was somehow worse than interruption.
Kaelith groaned.
“Ruby pinned her in sparring.”
“And?”
“And Ruby was too close.”
Malvoria’s brows rose.
Kaelith heard the sentence herself and instantly regretted all literacy.
“It was the angle,” she said quickly.
“Looked wrong.”
“Mm.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make that sound like you know things.”
Malvoria’s mouth curved again, not quite kind, not quite cruel.
Something much more maternal and much more dangerous.
“I do know things.”
Kaelith pushed off the wall and tried to walk past her.
Malvoria stopped her with one sentence.
“You know what.
Can you stop ignoring her?”
Kaelith stopped dead and turned back slowly.
“Hell no.”
Malvoria folded her arms now, red hair spilling over one shoulder like a warning.
“This has gone on for a week.”
“I have been busy.”
“With what?” Malvoria asked.
“Terrible sex and avoidance?”
Kaelith stared at her in betrayal.
“That was cruelly specific.”
“Was I wrong?”
The awful thing was that she was not.
Kaelith looked away first, which was always a mistake with Malvoria because she noticed the surrender immediately.
“I am handling it,” Kaelith muttered.
“No,” Malvoria said.
“You are circling it like a cat that knocked over a vase and is now pretending not to hear the crash.”
“I am not pretending not to hear anything.”
“You fired a flame arrow because Ruby was too close to Irielle.”
Kaelith felt heat climb her neck.
“It was a reflex.”
Malvoria’s gaze went almost lazy.
“A possessive reflex.”
“Mother.”
“A jealous reflex.”
“Mother.”
“A very stupid reflex.”
Kaelith pointed at her.
“That one, at least, was fair.”
Malvoria laughed softly then, low and rich and far too entertained for Kaelith’s comfort.
It was one of the rare moments she looked younger, less like a queen carved from threat and more like the woman who had once, apparently, wrecked her own life beautifully enough to marry Elysia.
That thought annoyed Kaelith too.
She narrowed her eyes.
“Why do you care so much?”
Malvoria considered her for a second.
Then she said, more quietly, “Because your version of not caring tends to leave damage behind.”
That landed harder than Kaelith wanted it to.
She looked away toward the nearest window, toward the fading light over the inner courtyard.
Guards changing post.
A servant carrying flowers.
Life continuing with obscene stability while her own emotions behaved like drunk nobles.
“I’m not going to be nice to her,” Kaelith said at last.
“I didn’t ask you to be nice.”
“What then?”
“Be present.”
Kaelith laughed without humor.
“That sounds worse.”
“It’s not.”
“It is for me.”
Malvoria uncrossed her arms and stepped closer, enough that Kaelith could smell smoke and expensive spice on her coat.
Grey eyes, sharp as old steel, held hers with unnerving steadiness.
“You don’t have to forgive her,” Malvoria said.
“You don’t have to trust her.
But stop acting like disappearing makes you safe.”
Kaelith’s jaw tightened.
Safe.
That was not the word she would have used, which probably meant it was the correct one.
“I am not threatened by her.”
“No?” Malvoria asked softly.
“Then why have you spent a week behaving like a woman who’d rather sleep in every other bed in the kingdom than in her own castle?”
Kaelith said nothing.
Because there was no answer that did not sound either pathetic or revealing.
Malvoria watched the silence settle over her daughter and did not soften.
She almost never softened first.
That was Elysia’s territory.
Malvoria cared in a different language, one made of sharp truths and the occasional hand offered only after she was sure you would still stand if it was withdrawn.
“She is alone here,” Malvoria said.
Kaelith looked at her again, instantly defensive.
“She has Ruby and Violet hanging off her every hour.”
“That is not the same.”
“No,” Kaelith snapped.
“It is not my fault she’s here.”
Malvoria’s face changed then.
Not much.
Just enough.
“No,” she said.
“But it is your marriage.”
The words sat between them, heavier than Kaelith expected.
Not your responsibility.
Not your punishment.
Your marriage.
A fact.
Ugly, bright, legally cursed, and impossible to shrug off.
Kaelith hated facts.
She folded her arms again because the posture at least felt familiar.
“You are all very invested in me behaving better than I want to.”
Malvoria gave a small shrug.
“I had hoped you would at least behave interestingly.”
Kaelith snorted.
“Avoidance is interesting.”
“It is if you are sixteen and melodramatic.”
“I am twenty-six and still melodramatic.”
“That, unfortunately, is true.”
There was a beat of silence.
Then Kaelith said, much lower, “I don’t know what to do with her.”
It came out before she could stop it.
Malvoria heard the honesty in it at once.
Of course she did.
She always did.
Something like understanding moved through her face, quiet and brief.
Then it was replaced by dry amusement.
“You really take from me.”
Kaelith blinked.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Malvoria’s smile turned slow and wicked.
“The instinct to turn one interesting woman into a personal crisis.”
Kaelith stared at her.
Then, despite herself, barked out a laugh.
One short, helpless laugh.
Malvoria looked pleased.
“There she is.”
Kaelith shook her head.
“You are impossible.”
“And yet your other mother still married me.”
“That does not reassure me.”
“It shouldn’t.”
Kaelith pushed off the wall at last, some of the wild sharpness gone from her pulse, though not all of it.
Malvoria stepped aside this time, letting the corridor open.
Kaelith hesitated.
Then said, with deep reluctance, “Fine.
I’ll stop ignoring her.”
Malvoria’s brow rose.
“Will you?”
Kaelith started walking again, brushing past her mother with the dignity of a woman who had been personally oppressed into minimal maturity.
“No,” she said.
“But I’ll do it slightly less.”