The Queen Has Misplaced My Curse

How it begins

The curse was addressed to the queen. Galen Voss opened it and began laughing.

Alya took three steps back.

The royal intelligence chief had not laughed in any room whose occupants were later willing to admit it. His reputation depended on silence, exact questions and the belief that he already knew the answer.

Now he held a small black envelope and laughed until he had to sit down.

“Are you in pain?” Alya asked.

“No.”

“Are you certain?”

“I had forgotten that chair.”

She looked at it.

One carved lion had a face of extraordinary resentment.

Alya had passed it a hundred times without noticing.

Galen wiped his eyes.

Then he became still.

“What was in this?”

“A royal punishment.”

“For whom?”

She pointed to the address.

His face changed.

Outside the office, clerks moved along the gallery carrying messages no one would read without calculating their consequences. Alya knew the routes, the seals and which doors opened more easily if a courier pretended not to hear.

She did not know why the queen had ordered her own punishment.

Galen set the envelope on the desk.

Inside lay a small gold thread.

He touched it without lifting.

“This is mine.”

Alya checked the delivery book.

The thread's number appeared beside a date from twelve years earlier. Recipient: the crown. Contents: excess susceptibility to joy.

She looked at the man opposite her.

“You gave it away?”

“I was told the work required it.”

For a moment she saw the cost beneath the reputation: not a secret softness waiting to be admired, but a choice made under terms he might never have examined.

The palace bell rang.

A new instruction appeared on her delivery slate.

Recover the misplaced item immediately.

Galen read it over her shoulder.

His hand remained open beside the thread.

Alya closed the book.

“Before I collect anything,” she said, “I would like the recipient to tell me whether he is actually offering it.”