"Wake the queen," Maximus said. "And then the others. All of them."
The night guard took one look at the child in his arms and ran.
Within minutes the castle was waking. Lamps flared in corridors. A servant girl took one look at Maximus's face and fled for the healers' wing without being asked. Doors opened, voices called, boots hurried on stone — the whole great machine of the castle grinding into motion in the dark hours.
They put the boy in the infirmary, in a narrow bed under a wool blanket, and Seraphina came down in her robe with her hair unbound and her healer's face on — the one that meant she was already three steps into the problem.
She checked his pulse. His breathing. She held a glow-crystal near his eyes and watched the light move through them. She pressed her palm to his forehead and went very still.
"Well?" Maximus asked.
"Cold," Seraphina said. "His body temperature was dangerously low. Frost-burn on the soles of his feet." She drew the blanket back over him. "And there was something behind his eyes when I first looked. Green. Faint. It's fading as I watch."
"Morikk."
"Was." She sat back. "There's nothing left in him now. Whatever wore him, it's gone." She looked at Maximus. "He'll wake by midday. He won't remember any of it."
"You're sure."
"He should be okay." She said it the way healers do — a promise with a crack in it. "I'll keep him under watch until he wakes."
Lyra arrived then — no crown, hair loose, a robe thrown over her nightclothes, and fury in her eyes like a banked fire. Kael came behind her, already in his armor. Maximus didn't ask. Kael probably slept in it.
Pip flew in last, rubbing her eyes, landing hard on the infirmary table. "This better be important, I was dreaming about cake—" She saw the boy. Saw Maximus's face. The sleep left her all at once. "Oh no."
Maelik arrived with two of his elves and took one look at the room's faces. "I'll post guards at the doors," he said quietly, and went.
When they were alone, Lyra said: "Tell us."
So Maximus told them. All of it. The garden. The footsteps, too even, too light. The boy stepping out of the hedges, moving like a thing that had studied walking from a description. The lamplight sliding off him. The two voices, half a beat out of sync. The frost. The demands — the Old King's Fall, all of them, or Veyloria burns. The hints: You don't remember me yet. You will.
No one interrupted. Lyra's hands folded tighter with every sentence. Kael's jaw worked. Pip went pale and very small on the table.
When he finished, the infirmary was silent except for the boy's thin breathing.
Seraphina said quietly: "He said you don't remember him. What do you think he meant?"
"I don't know." Maximus looked at his hands. "That's the worst part. I don't know."
Kael spoke first. "It's a trap."
"Obviously it's a trap," Pip said.
"It's a trap we walk into anyway," Kael said. "If he can wear a child inside the castle grounds, there is no wall that keeps him out. We can't fortify against that." He looked at Lyra. "Majesty. We have to go."
"I know." Lyra's hands were folded so tightly the knuckles were white. "We go. All of us — Maximus, Seraphina, Pip, and I."
The silence that followed had edges.
Kael said, very carefully, "Majesty."
"Kael stays." Lyra met his eyes. "You hold Veyloria."
"My place is beside you."
"Your place is where I put you, Commander."
The formality landed like a slap. Kael actually flinched.
"He demanded the commander," Kael said. "His words. If I'm not there—"
"If the city falls because its commander walked into a trap, that's on me." Lyra's voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. "I won't carry that, Kael. I carry enough."
"He said if even one is missing—"
"Then he'll do what he was going to do anyway." Her eyes were ice over iron now. "Don't you see? The threat was leverage, not a promise. If we all walk into his trap and die, Veyloria has no one — and he burns it regardless. I'm not handing him everything he asked for and leaving my city defenseless. That's how you lose both."
She stood. "He doesn't get to arrange my pieces, Kael. You stay. Maelik stays. The vanguard and the watch hold the walls, the tunnel mouths, the water shafts — everything he named, you double. If we don't come back—" She stopped. Started again. "The city keeps its commander."
Kael stared at her for a long moment. Then he bowed — stiff, formal, wrong. "As my queen commands."
Maelik, who had said nothing through all of it, spoke from the doorway. "The vanguard takes the tunnel mouths. The watch takes the walls." He looked at Kael. "Nothing moves in the dark without us knowing, Commander. I swear it."
Pip said quietly, "She's right and I hate it."
Seraphina had been silent through the exchange, her healer's face gone and her scholar's face in its place. Now she said: "The Old King's Fall. I know the stories."
"Tell us," Lyra said.
"Older than Veyloria. Older than the dark elf kingdoms. The histories say the first king fell there — which first king, no one agrees, and the surface folk won't go near it." She folded her arms. "It's a ruin. A dead place. Which makes it exactly the kind of place something like Morikk would choose to be seen."
"Can you protect us?" Maximus asked. "Against... what he did to the boy."
"I can ward minds against intrusion." Seraphina's mouth thinned. "It won't stop him. But it'll slow him down — and I'll know the moment he tries."
"Do it," Lyra said.
Pip had been very quiet. Now she lifted her chin. "Well. I've always wanted to see the surface."
No one laughed. Lyra reached over and took her hand, and Pip held on like a drowning thing.
Maximus looked at his own hands. "He wants me to bring you. Those were his words. 'I want what you bring.' That's the part I'll chew on."
"Then we go with open eyes," Lyra said. "He doesn't get to use you against us, Maximus. We're not cargo. We're choosing."
Kael cleared his throat. "One more thing. We're not leaving at dawn."
Lyra frowned. "The threat—"
"Is urgent, not immediate. He said don't keep him waiting, not come tonight." Kael's soldier face was on now, practical as stone. "We march tired, we die tired. Maximus has had no sleep. None of us have. One day. We sleep, we prepare, Seraphina works her wards — and we leave at dawn tomorrow."
Lyra looked at Maximus — at the hollows under his eyes she hadn't noticed until now. She nodded slowly. "One day."
Orders went out like ripples. Maelik and Kael would set the city's defenses at first light. Seraphina would begin the wards at midday, after rest. Supplies would be packed, weapons checked, horses made ready — for the surface road was long, and they would not all be walking it.
One by one, they left the infirmary. Pip curled up on the foot of the boy's bed and refused to move — "Someone should be here when he wakes up" — and Seraphina let her stay.
In the corridor, Kael stopped Maximus.
"Bring her back."
Maximus met his eyes. "I will."
He paused. "Hold the city."
"The city will stand when you return."
They clasped wrists — warrior to warrior — and went their separate ways into the waking castle.
Maximus didn't go to bed. He went back to the infirmary doorway, and stood there a while, looking in.
Pip was asleep at the foot of the boy's bed, curled around her lute like a pillow. The boy slept on, oblivious, his breathing steady now. And Lyra stood beside the bed in her robe, watching them both, her fury gone and something else in its place — something tired and unguarded.
She saw Maximus in the doorway. "He's just a child," she said quietly. "Whatever Morikk is — he wore a child to threaten us."
"I know."
"When this is over," she said, "remind me to be angry about that, too. I haven't got room for it tonight."
He nodded. There was nothing else to say.
Outside, beyond the stone, the city's light began its slow climb toward morning. Inside, for the first time in hours, there was nothing left to do but sleep.