Malvoria held Lara's gaze for one more heavy second, then pushed herself off the table with a small sigh.
"We'll talk more about it tomorrow morning," she said. Her voice had softened, though not by much. "Just go to sleep now. Don't worry. We'll get through this."
Lara almost laughed at that.
Don't worry.
As if worry were a coat she could set down beside the bed and choose not to wear until breakfast.
As if there were not a laboratory somewhere under the Celestian palace smelling faintly of her own magic.
As if the little boy sleeping a few corridors away had not looked at her with her own eyes and asked questions no child should know how to ask.
Still, she nodded.
Because Malvoria was trying. Because there was nothing more they could do tonight. Because if she let herself start pacing, she would not stop until dawn.
Malvoria lingered in the doorway just long enough to add, in a much lighter tone, "And if you start staring dramatically out the window again, I'm telling the entire castle you've become a poet."
"That's cruel," Lara muttered.
"That's family."
Then she was gone.
The room felt too quiet afterward.
Lara stayed where she was for a little while, sitting on the edge of the bed with the blanket pooled around her legs, staring at the place Malvoria had stood.
The communication device still rested on the bedside table, dim now, harmless-looking. She reached for it once, then stopped. Sarisa was asleep.
Or at least Lara hoped she was. Gods knew she needed it.
So Lara lay down instead.
That should have helped. It didn't.
The ceiling above her looked different at night, shadows stretching along the carved beams in shapes her tired mind kept trying to turn into meanings. Every time she closed her eyes, another thought rose to replace the one before it.
The laboratory.
White rooms.
White blouses.
Neris saying Selene was a stranger.
Sarisa's voice through the device, quiet and honest and a little frayed at the edges.
If I could, I would run away with you.
That one hurt most.
Because Lara believed her.
Because part of her wanted to get up right then, take the communication device, wake Sarisa with another call, and say do it. Say the word. I'll come get you now.
But the same part of her knew what stood between wanting and doing. Aliyah. Neris. A queen with too many secrets.
A realm built on appearances and bloodline and control. Running would not erase any of that. It would only leave the fire behind them to spread on its own.
Lara turned onto her side and pressed one hand over her eyes.
She was full of doubts.
Not about Sarisa. Never about that now. That had been burned clean at last.
But everything else? Gods.
Was Neris truly hers? If he was, then what had been taken from her to make him? How had she not known? What kind of monster built a child for leverage and then threw him into court like a knife?
If he was not truly hers in the ordinary sense, then what was he? And how much of her own magic had been carved into him in some white room under a palace that smiled politely in daylight?
The questions came in circles until the edges of them blurred.
At some point exhaustion won the argument her mind kept trying to have with itself. Her breathing slowed. Her body softened into the mattress.
And despite everything, despite the doubts and the ache and the too many things waiting for morning, Lara fell asleep quickly in the end, dragged under by the sort of weariness that reached all the way into the bones.
---
The next thing she knew, someone was crushing her.
Lara woke with a violent jolt and an undignified noise.
"Ouch!"
Kaelith, apparently unconcerned by the concept of waking people gently, had launched herself directly onto Lara's stomach with the accuracy of a trained assassin and the enthusiasm of a small disaster.
She now sat triumphantly on top of the blanket, grinning down at Lara like she'd just won a war.
Beside the bed stood Neris, clutching the edge of the mattress with one hand, watching with bright-eyed interest.
The pain in Lara's midsection was real, but so was the absurdity of the scene.
Kaelith burst into laughter first.
It was bright and wild and impossible not to answer, especially when Neris, after one startled blink, laughed too.
The sound of it hit Lara harder than the jump had.
Neris's laugh was smaller than Kaelith's, a little rusty around the edges as if he hadn't used it often enough yet, but it was there.
Real. Easy. For that one moment, he looked exactly like what he was supposed to be: a child waking another child's favorite adult for breakfast.
Lara lay there blinking up at the ceiling, her hair in her face, her dignity in ruins.
"You two are menaces," she informed them.
Kaelith beamed. "Thank you."
"That was not a compliment."
"It sounded like one."
Neris, still smiling a little, shifted his weight from one foot to the other and said, "You made a funny sound."
Lara looked at him.
Then, because there was no surviving this with grace, she pointed at Kaelith. "She attacked me."
Kaelith gasped. "No. I woke you."
"With violence."
"With love," Kaelith corrected.
That nearly broke her. Lara scrubbed a hand over her face and sat up slowly, making a great show of groaning as Kaelith slid off her stomach onto the bed beside her.
"Why," she asked the universe in general, "do I deserve mornings like this?"
"Because it's breakfast time now," Kaelith said, as if that answered anything. Then she leaned in and whispered, loudly enough to wake the dead, "There is pancakes and strawberries."
Lara stopped mid-groan.
"Well," she said after a beat, "that does change things."
Kaelith nodded with terrible seriousness. "I know."
Neris was watching her carefully now, the laughter mostly faded but not the looseness left behind by it.
He looked different in morning light. Softer somehow. Less like a child bracing for impact and more like one still deciding whether this place could really stay kind when the sun came up.
Lara swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat there for a second, elbows on her knees, gathering herself.
The room was washed in pale morning gold. One curtain had been tugged halfway open, and cool air moved lazily through the gap. Somewhere beyond the door she could already smell something sweet and warm drifting up from the lower floor.
Pancakes.
Strawberries.
A dangerously effective strategy, really.
She looked automatically for Aliyah before remembering.
The absence hit softly but cleanly. No dark curls bouncing in the doorway. No immediate demand for a cuddle or a story or justice against whoever had wronged breakfast. No little voice accusing Lara of smelling like Sarisa before coffee.
Aliyah had slept at the Celestian castle with Sarisa.
Lara's chest tightened for exactly one second.
Then Kaelith grabbed her wrist and yanked with all the strength of a tiny tyrant. "Come on. If we're late, mama Elysia will make us eat the healthy fruit first."
That was enough to restore priorities.
Lara rose, caught Neris's eye for a brief moment, and said, "Did you brush your teeth before committing assault?"
Kaelith answered for him. "No."
Neris nodded solemnly. "She said there wasn't time."
"Excellent." Lara dragged a hand through her hair and headed for the washstand. "So I'm being murdered by unbrushed chaos before breakfast now."
Kaelith climbed onto a chair by the window and kicked her feet. "You're too dramatic in the morning."
"That's because I know Malvoria."
"That's fair," Neris said.
Lara turned and stared at him.
He froze for one second, clearly unsure whether he'd overstepped.
Then Lara smiled. "Good. You're learning."
Something cautious and pleased flickered across his face, gone almost as soon as it appeared.
By the time Lara had splashed water on her face, found a shirt, and tugged her hair back into some approximation of order, both children were vibrating with breakfast urgency.
Kaelith kept listing everything she hoped was downstairs. Neris added observations only when necessary, but he stayed close, and that mattered.
Lara took a breath, looked at the two of them waiting by the door, and thought that maybe the world was still a disaster, yes.
Maybe she still had too many doubts, a queen to destroy, a mystery to solve, and a woman in another castle she missed with alarming force.
But right now there were pancakes.
And strawberries.
And two children laughing at her before sunrise.
That would do.
"All right," she said, opening the door. "Let's go before Kaelith starts eating the furniture."