Help! My Moms Are Overpowered Tyrants, and I’m Stuck as Their Baby!

The world, I decided, always looked a little different after you'd bet your heart. The orchard sky had been the same blue it was every morning, the palace the same combination of marble, banners, and voices but inside me, some fulcrum had shifted, letting in a slant of gold I hadn't noticed was absent. Maybe that's what it was to become an adult: the world didn't really change much, but you kept discovering new fissures of light.

Velka and I walked back to the palace slowly, both of us pretending not to notice my mothers waiting on the balcony. Every time I caught Velka glancing up with the tiniest hint of a smile, I tried to suppress my own smile and could not. We must have looked so odd two ten-year-old girls, one with a grass-stained uniform, one clutching a suspiciously empty pastry basket, both a little too quiet, a little too excited to be returning from "a long educational walk."

The corridors inside were a whirlwind of activity servants and advisors and the odd court wizard all rush­ing to and fro, presumably cleaning up after yesterday's revelry, or preparing for tomorrow's council, or simply escaping whatever chaos Mara was currently causing in the kitchens. The aftermath of revolution, it seemed, looked very much like a rather disorganized spring housecleaning.

"Should we… tell them anything?" I whispered as we skirted around the grand staircase, trying not to get caught by any adults who would demand explanations.

"About what?" Velka's eyes widened in practiced innocence. "That you bribed me with scones? Or that I lost at cards and must be your devoted servant forever now?"

I laughed, clinging more tightly to the basket. "You lost on purpose!"

She rolled her eyes. "You're fortunate I'm fond of you. Otherwise, I would have let the gnomes win."

My smile faltered somewhat as we reached the school wing. "Do you think they'll let us do this again? I mean be together, and not just as study partners or… co-conspirators?"

Velka shrugged, dragging her hand along the cool stone of the wall. "They'll adapt. And if they try to stop us, we'll just run away and become famous outlaws."

"Would we hold up carriages or just pastry shops?" She teased me, my voice barely above a whisper.

"Both," she ruled. "And we'd never get caught. You'd distract everyone with orations on the strength of friendship and I'd manage the escape routes."

My "Both" came out a startled laugh.

A laugh welled up too bright, too real. For a second, the future was a broad, hopeful map.

Then, as we turned into my rooms, real life reasserted itself with all the subtlety of a thunderclap. My system, quiescent for hours, came alive, lines of type crawling across my vision.

[Congratulations. You have completed Quest: 'Survive an Impossible Morning Without Catastrophe.' Bonus: +1 Relationship (Velka). New Quest: 'Navigate Parental Diplomacy Without Becoming a Bakery Fugitive.']

I rolled my eyes. "Thank you, so helpful."

[You're welcome. Do you want a tutorial on emotional conversations with authority figures?]

Velka gave me a sidelong look. "You're making that face again."

"What face?

"The one that means you're arguing with your invisible friend. Don't worry. I won't tell anyone."

I stuck out my tongue, but the tension dissolved. We fell onto my bed, shoes discarded, crumbs spilling from my pockets. For a while, we just lay there, staring up at the canopy a faded constellation of old stitches and half-remembered lullabies. My nerves still hummed, but with Velka next to me, the world's sharpest edges felt blunted.

A rap on the door. Mara's voice, muffled but unmistakable: "If you two aren't up and dressed for lunch in three minutes, I'm releasing the hedgehogs."

Velka sat up, grinning. "She wouldn't dare."

"Don't tempt her," I said, bounding to my feet. The legendary hedgehogs were not to be underestimated. Last spring, they'd devoured all of Riven's socks and barricaded the east staircase for a week.

We washed up a good enough, at least and went into the hall. The lunchroom was chaos: Aeris and Arion waving banners ("Elyzara the Brave!" and "Victory to the Pastry Rebellion!"), Elira trying to mediate a debate between two professors on whether or not magical croissants qualified as magical artifacts, and Riven shouting at the top of his lungs that he'd invented a new sandwich, "The Peace Accord" (it appeared to be bread, cheese, and diplomatic immunity).

It ought to have been stifling, but I felt instead a sense of lightness, as if the whole school was buoyed on the same absurd, hopeful current. Maybe yesterday's speech, awkward though it had been, had stirred something in more people than me.

Velka and I took seats with the twins, who immediately launched into a dramatic retelling of the morning's adventures. "And then Elyzara saved an entire nation with breakfast!" Aeris finished, jam in her mouth.

"And don't forget the treaty dance," Arion added, waving a fork dangerously close to his eye.

Elira rolled her eyes across the table. "You two are impossible."

Velka nudged me, whispering. "Is it always like this?"

"More or less," I replied, stealing a strawberry from her plate.

Lunch dissolved into a game of dares who could eat the most pickled radishes (Mara, gobbling them with ease), who could recite backwards the school anthem (Riven, not successfully, but with great creativity), who could balance the most spoons on his or her nose (Aeris and Arion, who tied at seven each). I gazed at them all, my odd, beautiful band of allies and family, and something in me settled. The fear that had haunted me of never belonging, of never being enough dissipated, burned away by a slow-burning pride.

My parents requested a walk in the palace gardens after dinner. I braced myself for the questions I could tell were on their minds about Velka, about the speech, about the future I'd dared to speak aloud.

As we strolled beneath the wisteria, my mothers on either side of me, Velka a pace or two behind, I regained my voice.

"I know things are changing," I said quietly, "and that it's scary. For all of us. But I don't want to be scared to hope, or to love people who matter to me. Not anymore."

Sylvithra caught my shoulder. Verania's expression was unreadable, but there was softness there a grudging acceptance, maybe even pride.

"You're growing up," Verania said, "and you're doing it on your own terms."

"Not entirely by myself," I said, turning to look back over my shoulder at Velka.

My mothers exchanged a glance. "We'll trust you to find your path," Sylvithra said at last, "and to let us know when you need guidance. That's what family does."

For a little while, I was the youngest in the world and the bravest too.

When we returned to the palace, Velka reached out and took my hand in hers. "Not so bad, was it?" she whispered.

"No," I said, "not bad at all."

Velka's hand stayed in mine as we walked back into the palace, sunshine at our backs and the tinkling of laughing voices from the dining hall echoing behind us. My whole self felt both feather-light and impossible grounded, as if I'd merged with the room around me in ways I never could have imagined. I wanted to shout through the halls, "I survived!

but even I recognized some decorum had to be maintained following a speech, a date, and lunch on a sandwich called the Peace Accord.".

We walked instead through the less-used halls, our footsteps almost silent on the mosaic floors. Velka didn't release my hand, and I didn't want her to. Outside, the far bell in the palace tower rang the hour, a reminder that the world just kept going no matter how much you wished that time would stop.

Do you ever think," Velka breathed, her voice barely louder than a whisper, "that maybe all of this is sort of. impossible?"

I considered it, and all the me's I'd been: lost girl, good daughter, accidental tyrant, would-be peacemaker, nervous friend, scone-maker, and now something else. "Every day," I answered. "But maybe the impossible bits are the best ones. The ones that make it real.".

She smiled, squeezing my fingers tight. "I like impossible, then. As long as it's with you."

It did some strange and fizzy thing to my heart. I stared up, attempting to come up with words to match her courage, but my head just managed flaccid metaphors about jam and sunlight. So I just smiled back and hoped she'd understand.

Just around the corner, Mara was in the middle of a dramatic negotiation between the gnomes of the pantry and the mice of the kitchen, mediated with a soup ladle by Elira. Riven zoomed past her with Aeris and Arion in tow, shouting about "emergency cookie rations!" and organizing a new club, The Scone Defenders.

Velka and I exchanged a look. "Do you suppose we should interfere?" she asked, her voice the very essence of despairing hope.

"Or sabotage," I said, and she smiled. We plunged into the chaos together, sleeves rolled high, laughter ringing off the old stones. For a fleeting instant, the kingdom's ailments were forgotten. There were only friends and family, allies and misfits, and the persistent, quotidian magic of a life reconstituted out of confusion and hope.