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The voices came to Lena slowly, like over-cautious riders through a thick fog, their edges sharpening only gradually until they were upon her, a welter of sound that made little sense: she's stirring and hold her until we can be certain and no harm must come to Queen Romille.
She jerked at this last, struggling against restraining hands with limbs that felt sluggish and uncooperative, her body not quite seeming to fit together as it should, feeling distant and disjointed, as it had during and long after the days she'd spent feverish with an infected arrow wound during her first campaign.
"Where is my Lady?" she shouted, a memory coming back to her with the force of a strike from a heavy broadsword: a stooped peasant woman abruptly straightening into proper marksman's form to launch a silver dart; the barb slicing hot through the skin at the edge of her own outstretched hand before going on to pierce the delicate skin exposed by the ruffled edge of the Queen's neckline; the Queen herself giving a sharp gasp and tumbling heavily from the throne into Lena's faltering arms. The recollection sent a current of terror and failure through her, and for a moment it was so strong that she didn't hear the strangeness of her own voice until she spoke again. "Where is the Queen? Is she well?" erupted from her in a voice that was not her own, though it was one she knew with every part of herself.
"Lena?" her captain leaned into view, and she felt the pressure of a hand squeezing lightly at her shoulder. "Can you name me?" she asked anxiously. "Do you remember how much I won from you in our last card game?"
"Roysden Farrow, you've never beaten me at cards in your life, and I'll name you Rat's Meat if you don't give me news of the Queen," she said, still in that inexplicable voice.
"It's her, all right." Roy addressed her words to someone out of Lena's line of sight, and then laughed the way she might after a close call in battle: giddy with relief and not quite in control of her own volume.
The other members of the guard loosened their hold on her, allowing her to sit up and discard the linens she'd been swaddled in. Revealing the crisp white of a fine chemise, olive skin emerging from the cuffs, a stray lock of hair - dark and tightly curled - and the edges of fresh bandage peeking up from the frilled neckline of the garment.
"What the hell is going on?" Lena demanded, her throat tight in a way that distorted the Queen's rich, clear voice in her mouth.
A heavy tread that sounded like nothing so much as her own boots on the tile carried something impossible into her view: her own self, taller and broader than anyone else in the room.
"I'm afraid that's a rather long story." The deep voice sounded like Lena's, just as much as her footsteps had, but the delicate wave she offered with Lena's bandaged hand and the wry twist of her mouth - the one that usually accompanied a fond jest: "And how many dragons will you slay for me today, Good Knight?" - were entirely, impossibly, Queen Romille.
“The court magicians are studying the enchantment,” Roy continued, “but their working theory is that the charm cast on the dart was meant to allow the attacker to trade places with the Queen, with them able to act in her stead, after...” She trailed off uncomfortably.
“After I had put down the threat to the Queen,” Lena said, and found that she was also unable to complete the thought with ”and unwittingly kill Romille in her stead.” Still they all seemed to have heard it; Roy and the other guards grimaced in sympathy.
“Lucky for me, they didn't count on you,” the Queen said, perching at the edge of the bed and reaching over to squeeze her hand. Had Lena's own fingers felt so strong and calloused every time they had touched? Had the way the Queen's slender palm disappeared in Lena's grasp ever taken her Lady so much by surprise?
“They were fools, then,” she said, huskily.
“Do my magicians have a theory as to how long the spell is likely to last?” Queen Romille asked. Their hands were still intertwined atop the bedclothes.
“Mage Vanor stressed that this was only supposition,” Roy began, in her bearing-bad-news-and-hoping-very-much-not-to-be-shot-for-it voice, “but their best guess when I left them to come here was one lunar cycle.”
Lena winced, and the Queen squeezed her hand tight in something like a flinch.
“Well, Good Knight,” she said, turning to Lena and smoothing the worry off of her face, “it appears we have some strategies to discuss.”
“Permission to speak freely, my Lady?”
“Always,” the Queen said, “And, please, call me 'Millie'. After all, we could hardly be closer at the moment.”
Lena felt herself flush at that, wondered how lovely the color looked on the Queen's – Millie's – face, and blushed deeper still.
“I'm still not at all sure that this isn't a terrible idea.” Lena shifted uncomfortably in the heavily embroidered gown, skirts rustling against her legs, and pooling around her feet, bare of the ornate shoes she planned to step into only in the last possible moment.
“Then I shall have to be sure enough for the both of us,” Millie pronounced, treading easily across the room in Lena's own boots. “It won't do for the Queen to disappear completely. Word of the attack will have spread; the people need to see my face, even if I'll be ruling from behind closed doors for a while.” She reached out to straighten the ornate collar of the gown and smiled down at her, Lena's own mouth twisted into a wry smile. “You've never failed me, and I know this time will not be the first.”
Lena smiled back, “Whatever my Lady desires.”
“Only to have one so brave in my colors,” she said, and smoothed a hand down the front of Lena's tunic, plainer and more functional than the gown - easier to run and fight and breathe in - but still picked out in the same rich purple.
“Always. I'm afraid I don't know how to wear your hair, though.” She gestured hopelessly toward the Queen's mass of tight curls. As much as Lena had longed to touch that hair over the years, she found she didn't know what to do with it, her own usual practical plait - or even the crowd of intricate braids her Lady had woven into it - not seeming quite sufficient for a Queen.
“Allow me to be of service, Good Knight,” Millie said, combing fingers up from the collar of the gown and into the thick curls, a gentle tug prompting Lena to look up until she was met with the soft touch of chapped lips that she only belatedly registered as her own. The kiss was hesitant at first, but grew in confidence as she surged into the contact, the elaborate skirts crumpling between them, each heavy breath drawing the boning of the bodice tight.
Lena thought it would have left her dizzy even if she hadn't been trapped in the fine dress or caught up in the strangeness of feeling her own lips, of having this thing she'd so often imagined happen in such an impossible and backwards way.
“And after that,” the Queen said softly, their lips still grazing, “I might like to slay a dragon or two for you.”