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My magic lesson ended with me in a bush.
“Jack!”
“Your Highness!”
The first person had been my mother, the queen and my spellcasting tutor. The second had been my personal guard, Lucas. Both voices were muffled by the dense shrubbery around me.
“Here!” I yelled back. Moving on my own did little good. I was half in the bush, legs flailing wildly in the open air. A branch poked my back, and another scratched my cheek. Something tore when I wiggled, and I sighed. Mother would not be happy if I’d ruined another pair of pants.
Hands wrapped around my ankles. “Don’t worry, your Highness, I’ve got you,” Lucas said.
“Wait a moment,” Mother said.
The leaves rustled and shifted around me, creating a gap Lucas could drag me out of. When I was back on the ground, Mother released her spell and the branches shifted back to their natural state. There was no evidence I’d just been part of the hedge that surrounded the garden. We were in the center of a small maze of hedges and flower beds, one of the most private spots on the palace grounds, and therefore ideal for learning secret magic.
Mother appeared in front of me, hands on my face, on my shoulders, over my front. “Are you alright? Where are you hurt?”
Lucas and my mother’s two guards were close at hand, but they relaxed when they saw no injuries.
“I’m fine,” I laughed, pushing her hands away. “Just scratches, I promise.”
“You don’t feel dizzy? No aftereffects from the spell going wrong?” she questioned. Her eyes scrunched in doubt, and she cocked her head. Her red hair stayed perfectly around her face, not a strand out of place.
“Nothing,” I promised. The spell hadn’t gone that wrong. I just...overshot my target, a little. Instead of transporting to the edge of the clearing, I’d ended up in the surrounding hedge. I doublechecked my pocket watch, brushing off some dirt from the palladium plating and flipping open the case. There was only one hand, pointing to the three. A typical position for the end of my magic lessons.
Mother breathed a sigh of relief and her shoulders sagged. She was a worrier. The slightest hint of danger to me had her overreacting.
“Maybe we should push back your trip tomorrow, just in case,” she said.
“What?” Now I felt sick to my stomach. Snapping the watch cover shut, I shoved it back in my pocket. “No, I’m fine, please don’t do that.” I’d been looking forward to going to town for weeks.
“Your Majesty,” Lucas intervened, putting a hand on my shoulder. Lucas was almost a full head taller than me, and about as thick as a wall. He was also a man of few words, and he didn’t have to say anything else to get his point across to my mother.
She twisted the ring on the index finger of her right hand. It felt like she twisted my own insides with it. “I’m doing it again, I know.”
Her paranoia was understandable. I used to have a twin brother, but he’d been stolen from our nursery when we were infants. She never recovered from it.
It was why she learned magic, despite the dangers. It was a secret ability passed down through our family, but my ancestors hadn’t learned much beyond the basics of protecting the Kingdom for centuries. Not since the Exodus.
“Very well. You can still go,” she allowed. She continued twisting the silver ring, and her mouth twisted in a frown.
I sighed in relief. “Thank you.”
She half smiled for a brief moment, and then her gaze wandered to the tops of the hedges. “I think we’re done for tonight. Get some rest. You don’t want to fall asleep tomorrow.”
I nodded. “Yes, of course.”
Lucas and I headed out of the Royal Gardens. I looked back at my mother’s face, still staring off into the distance.
I frowned, knowing exactly what was going through her head. I’d scared her tonight. It didn’t matter that it had been only a few moments. That was all it could take for me to be ripped away from her forever, as she liked to remind me.
“She’ll be fine,” Lucas said.
“I hope so.” I ran a hand through my black hair, straightening it as best I could without a mirror.
I’d taken after my father in terms of looks. His skin was several shades browner than my mother’s pale hue, and his hair was pitch black. My skin was somewhere in the middle of them, but my hair was all my father. My eyes, though, were the same grayish-blue almond shape as my mother’s.
I often wondered what my brother would have looked like. They told me he had mom’s red hair, but no one could accurately predict who he’d have taken after. Would he have the same hooked nose as dad? Or would his slope more like mom’s?
“Your Highness?” Lucas asked.
I came out of my daydream to find we were already in my sitting room. I must have been standing here for a while; the lamps already glowed brightly. “Sorry, Lucas. Just thinking, is all. You can go as soon as the night guards are here.”
He nodded, and I retreated into the bedroom. I yanked off layers of clothes as I went, tossing my tie over the bedside clock and throwing my ruined jacket to the foot of my bed. It missed and landed on the floor, and I toed off my shoes to join it. One went too far and hit the copper pipes lining the baseboards of the room. I walked to my window while unbuttoning the top of my shirt and pushed the wired glass open. My rooms overlooked the eastern courtyard, where guards practiced their drills and trained new recruits.
The sun was almost gone, but I could still make out my mother’s figure walking the outer perimeter of the courtyard. She paused at certain intervals, placing her hand on the stone wall that surrounded the entire palace.
I knew she’d be checking the barrier tonight.
The barrier was a magical shield protecting the palace from outside magic. It did nothing against typical human attacks, and it was powerless to stop magic that was already inside the perimeter. The original spell had been laid into the very foundations of the palace when it was built, using runes and spellwork that had been forgotten over the centuries. Only the basic upkeep was passed down through my family now. Mother had taught me how to manage it years ago.
It really only needed to be checked once a year. Mother checked it at least once a month, if not more. She had been as long as I could remember. Dad said she used to barely ever check it, and he’d often had to remind her in the early days of their marriage. Her frequent checks now were a method of coping after my brother was taken, especially since the man responsible was never caught. My brother was never found, either, so my mother never stopped.
His kidnapping had prompted her and my father to learn more about our family magic, because his kidnapper had used it to steal him away, and they’d sworn they would be ready to face him again, only that day never came.
She moved on from the courtyard, and I crossed my arms over the window sill and let the night air wash over me. I didn’t know if she ever honestly expected that man to come back, or if this had simply turned into a nervous tick, like twisting her ring.
I viciously hoped that man was as dead as my brother probably was.