Vaeloria had worn a path across the same stretch of floor without leaving a mark on it.
She noticed the repetition when she reached the window again. Turn, inspect the courtyard below, return to the bed. Each circuit brought her past the young man held upright by the circles she had placed around him.
He had not woken.
Pink ice petals gathered above her fingers. She closed her hand, crushing them into a cold dust that disappeared before it reached the carpet.
For hours, every report had returned to Derpy.
The pursuit. The dolls. The empty offices. The visitors arriving at a palace whose authority had changed more in a day than some ministers would have permitted in a decade.
She had offered him protection. She had refused the transfer order in front of witnesses. She had allowed him to remain under her roof after he disabled its defenses.
And he had tried to leave.
Vaeloria stopped beside the bed and looked at him.
She could no longer decide which parts of his apparent uncertainty were genuine and which had helped him move through the empire without anyone understanding how much he could change. He had let others believe they were managing him. Now the War Council and War Office were gone from the board, and she was left holding the consequences.
He would not be allowed to vanish before she understood them.
The collar at his throat remained inactive. Beneath his boots, one circle held his weight while another kept his shoulders aligned. Smaller markings fixed the position of his wrists. She had arranged the restraint carefully enough that no guard needed to remain in the room.
In the far corner, Riven lay where the guards had placed her after bringing her from containment at Vaeloria’s order. The other dolls remained confined. Only this one had been returned to the chambers.
Derpy had called her family.
Vaeloria intended to find out what that meant.
A knock interrupted her inspection.
“Enter.”
Lieam stepped inside, then slowed when she saw the circles.
Her gaze moved from Derpy’s wrists to the collar. She bowed to her mother without quite taking her eyes off him.
“We have another problem.”
Vaeloria let the last flecks of ice fade from her hand.
“Tell me.”
“The Queen of Faydurne has arrived. She is asking to see you.”
“Then have her received properly.”
“Mother, she is not behaving like someone who intends to wait quietly.”
Derpy stirred.
The words had reached him before the room made sense. Faydurne. A queen waiting outside. For a moment, he could not place how long he had been asleep or how much had happened since the window.
Seraphine was here.
He opened his eyes and tried to turn toward Lieam.
The circle around his shoulders brightened.
His movement stopped so abruptly that the collar pressed beneath his jaw. He looked down and saw the markings holding him, the edge of the bed beside his legs, and the distance between his feet and the position they should have occupied on the floor.
Vaeloria noticed him testing the restraint.
“Tell the Queen of Faydurne I will meet her in an hour,” she said. “I have matters to finish here.”
Lieam looked at Derpy.
He could not tell what answer she wanted from him. Reassurance, perhaps. An explanation for why waking had put him back inside another arrangement he had not chosen.
He had neither ready.
“Yes, Mother,” Lieam said.
She left more slowly than she had entered. The door closed behind her with a soft click.
Derpy watched it until Vaeloria stepped into his line of sight.
“I do not know everything that happened in that place you entered,” she said. “Your mindscape, Celica’s domain, whatever it truly is.”
Derpy looked at the circle nearest his hand.
“And this was going to help you understand it?”
“It prevents you from leaving before we speak.”
“I noticed.”
Vaeloria’s fingers tightened. Ice formed along two knuckles, cooling the air between them.
“I have accounts from other people. I have damage in my corridors. I have Riven and the remaining units acting on instructions none of my officers can explain. What I do not have is an answer from you.”
“Then ask me a question.”
“Why did you try to flee?”
Derpy let his hand stop pressing against the invisible edge of the restraint.
“I wanted to get away from the pressure.”
“You were given space in the courtyard.”
“And when I tried to choose somewhere else, it became a pursuit.”
The temperature fell another degree.
Vaeloria studied his face. He was awake enough now to watch her carefully, but the exhaustion remained visible around his eyes.
“I was hurt,” she said.
Derpy glanced toward the door through which Lieam had gone.
“During the chase?”
“By your decision.”
Before he could answer, she stepped close and embraced him.
The restraint gave him no room to return it or move away. Her arms settled around him, and her cheek touched his chest as though they had arrived at a quiet moment together rather than at opposite sides of a binding spell.
He remained still.
“I hate when people try to leave me,” she said. “Especially people I have made room for. People who matter.”
“People who are useful?”
She drew back enough to look at him.
“That too.”
Vaeloria released him and sat on the edge of the bed. The circles remained between them, steady and bright.
“You may not understand it yet,” she said, “but you are mine.”
Derpy stared at her.
The directness was almost a relief. There was no longer any need to guess which part of the protection came with an unspoken condition.
“I am my own person,” he said. “And I already have a partner.”
“You are under my protection.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It becomes the same thing when every decision you make threatens the place protecting you.”
He looked down at the circles again.
“You should have put that in the invitation.”
Vaeloria rose.
Pink cold touched his back before her hand did. A shape began to form against his skin, its lines spreading with the precise intent of a crest.
Derpy stiffened.
The mark vanished before it could settle.
A wolf crest appeared on his left hand instead.
Both of them looked at it.
Vaeloria reached toward his wrist, stopping just short of touching the new light.
“Someone has already claimed you.”
Derpy turned his hand as far as the circle allowed.
“I belong to a pack. I earned that place.”
“Someone gave you the mark.”
“That does not mean they own me.” He looked back at her. “Belonging with people is different from belonging to them.”
Vaeloria withdrew her hand.
For several breaths, the wolf crest remained the brightest thing near his wrist. Then its light eased, leaving her studying the place where her own mark had failed.
“You are full of surprises.”
“That one should not have been a surprise.”
She returned to the bed, crossing one leg over the other with deliberate composure.
“Then explain another. Why does the Ruin Series follow you?”
Derpy’s eyes moved toward the room beyond her.
“Where is Riven?”
“Answer the question.”
“Tell me where she is first.”
Vaeloria watched him long enough to make the delay felt. Then she pointed toward the corner.
Derpy followed her hand.
Riven lay on a folded cloth beside a low cabinet.
He had not recognized the shape when he first woke. Her damaged limbs were drawn too close, and the torn seams interrupted the familiar outline of her body. Char marked the places where his electricity had entered her. A thin trace of smoke still escaped from one split seam.
Derpy leaned toward her.
The circles tightened.
Pain caught across his shoulders, stopping him before his feet could move.
“She absorbed the discharge when you tried to escape,” Vaeloria said. “Your new magic responds badly when you are distressed.”
He barely heard the explanation. He remembered Riven meeting him at the window and the current leaving his body. He had not remained conscious long enough to see what it had done to hers.
“Let me go to her.”
Vaeloria watched his hands flex inside the restraints.
“Are you going to listen now?”
“Let me go to her.”
One snap of the queen’s fingers changed the circles.
The support beneath his boots lowered. The bindings around his wrists opened enough to allow movement, sinking toward the floor until their light remained only at the edges of his path.
Derpy’s weight returned to his legs all at once.
He swayed and caught himself against the bedpost.
“Stand,” Vaeloria said. “Then walk.”
He looked at her.
“You are moving because I have allowed it,” she added. “Remember that.”
His jaw tightened, but he turned toward Riven instead of answering.
The first few steps were stiff. He took them slowly, aware of the collar and the waiting circles, unwilling to give either a reason to stop him before he reached her.
He knelt beside the cloth.
Up close, the damage was worse. He held his hands over her for a moment, searching for a safe place to touch. The torn seams made even lifting her look like something that required more care than he knew how to give.
Riven’s eyes flickered.
She looked at him without seeming to register the rest of the room.
“Is friend okay?”
Derpy’s throat tightened.
“I am here.”
Her gaze shifted toward the collar, then back to his face. Whatever she made of it, she did not have the strength to ask.
Vaeloria came to stand behind him.
“Why does she obey you?”
Derpy rested two fingers against an undamaged part of Riven’s hand.
“They are changing. Rewriting their own coding.”
“To follow your instructions.”
“To make choices.”
“They tried to prevent you leaving.”
He looked at the blackened seam along Riven’s shoulder.
“I know what they did.”
“That does not sound like independence.”
“It does not sound like what I wanted either.” He lifted his eyes toward the queen. “I see her as family. A little sister. That is where I started. Not with how to make her obey.”
Vaeloria studied the contact between his fingers and Riven’s hand.
“And the others?”
“They remind me of her. So I treat them the same way.”
“Even after what they did at the offices?”
Derpy’s attention returned to Riven.
“What happened there does not turn her into an object.”
He had questions of his own about the instructions he had given and what the dolls had understood. None of them would be answered by pretending that family stopped being family when its actions became difficult to look at.
“The empire calls them weapons when they are useful and defects when they are inconvenient,” he said. “I see people.”
Vaeloria stood quietly behind him.
“My kingdom could learn from that.”
Derpy glanced at the collar’s shadow against his chest.
He did not answer.
The vial appeared beside his shoulder.
Its contents were red, held in a narrow container small enough to fit easily in Vaeloria’s hand.
“This will restore your magic,” she said. “I prepared it for you.”
Derpy took it without opening it.
The queen looked from the vial to his face, then briefly toward his throat.
“I want a promise.”
He waited.
“You will not try to escape like that again. If you do, I will come after you myself.”
The quietness of the threat did not improve it.
Derpy looked at the waiting circles along the floor. Then he tucked the unopened vial away, freeing his hands for Riven.
Vaeloria received no promise.
Before she could press him, Riven shifted.
The effort pulled a faint sound from the damaged parts of her body. Derpy moved closer, supporting her arm as she reached for the grimoire slipping free beside her.
“Take the book,” she said. “Until I am fixed.”
“You do not have to—”
She pushed it into his hands.
Her eyes dimmed before he could finish.
The larger shape folded inward, leaving a small torn doll on the cloth. The damage remained, reduced with her, every split and scorched edge made more delicate by the change.
Derpy caught her before she could roll against the cabinet.
For a moment, he could do nothing except hold her.
The grimoire warmed in his other hand.
He looked down.
Celica’s power answered it.
Light spread across the blackened cover. Its surface shifted beneath his fingers, one side paling toward white while the other deepened into purple. The division held as the binding changed, drawing the two powers together with a force he could feel through his wrist.
Vaeloria stepped closer.
Derpy adjusted his hold on Riven without taking his eyes from the book.
The title moved.
Letters broke apart and re-formed, settling into a name that had not been there when Riven gave it to him.
Celica’s Phantasm.
He ran a thumb near the edge of the new cover without touching the lettering.
Celica’s Embers and Phantasm had become one grimoire in his hand.
For a moment, the room’s restraints seemed less immediate than the weight of what he was holding. Celica had spoken about gathering the books. Pyro had come looking for Lenora. Now another change had happened while Derpy was trying to keep a torn doll from slipping through his fingers.
He had no room left for wonder that did not come with a question.
Vaeloria laid a hand on his shoulder.
“You can repair her later.”
His body went still beneath the touch.
“I need to find out how.”
“And you will. For now, the Queen of Faydurne is waiting.”
Derpy looked up.
Seraphine. In the first moments after waking, the name had been a fear without a clear shape. Now it belonged to a meeting Vaeloria intended him to attend while wearing her collar.
“I need you beside me in the throne room,” she said.
“As your guest?”
Vaeloria’s hand remained on his shoulder.
“As someone whose presence has become important to this empire.”
He looked at Riven.
The doll was small enough to hold against his chest. He arranged her carefully inside the support of his arm, keeping the torn seams clear of the book’s edge.
He could argue now. He could reach for a power that had already injured her once. He could make everyone in the palace turn toward another struggle while she lay damaged in his hands.
Or he could walk far enough to keep her with him and choose the next moment himself.
Derpy rose.
Vaeloria removed her hand and gestured toward the doors.
“Walk.”
He went with her.
The circles receded as they passed, allowing the route she had chosen. Derpy kept half a step behind the queen, Celica’s Phantasm in one hand and Riven held close with the other.
The collar remained quiet at his throat.
Vaeloria had her companion for the meeting.
She still did not have his promise.