Lara stayed quiet for a moment after Sarisa's last words, the communication device warm in her hand and the night stretched soft and silver around her room.
If the day ever comes when I can run, you had better ask me again.
The promise sat in her chest like a live thing.
She leaned back against the headboard, one knee drawn up, and let herself smile into the darkness like an idiot. There was no one here to see it, which was fortunate, because it was not a dignified expression.
It was the sort of look a woman wore when the person she loved had just handed her a future she was not allowed to touch yet and still somehow made it feel real.
Sarisa's breathing rustled softly through the device.
Lara could picture her too easily. Curled into that chair by the window, night robe loose around her, moonlight on her face, too stubborn to admit how wrecked she was.
The ache in Lara's chest eased just enough for teasing to return.
"So," she said lightly, "big dick energy, right?"
There was a second of silence.
Then Sarisa made the most offended sound Lara had heard all day.
"Oh my gods."
Lara laughed, low and delighted. "What? You started that the moment you didn't deny it."
"I did deny it."
"You absolutely did not."
"I refused to discuss it."
"That is not the same thing."
Sarisa muttered something into the device that sounded suspiciously like "this is why princes get better reputations."
Lara grinned. "No, this is why princes get stabbed less often."
That got a tired little laugh out of her, exactly what Lara had wanted.
"Honestly," Sarisa said after a moment, trying and failing to recover her dignity, "I cannot believe that is what you choose to talk about after everything else."
Lara looked up at the canopy of her bed, at the shadows moving faintly there, and let her voice soften around the edges. "I can. You've had enough heavy things for one day."
The silence that followed wasn't awkward. It was the kind that settled when the truth landed cleanly.
Then Sarisa said, quieter now, "You're being unfairly sweet."
"I contain multitudes."
"You contain problems."
"Also true."
Lara shifted on the bed, letting the blanket fall more comfortably over her legs. In the room beyond her door, the castle had gone almost entirely still.
Somewhere down the corridor a servant walked past, the sound brief and soft. Farther away, she could just barely hear the wind pressing at the shutters.
"Tell me something useless," she said.
Sarisa hummed. "Useless?"
"Entirely. No queens. No exile. No laboratories. No children appearing out of courtrooms. Just something stupid."
Sarisa seemed to think about it.
Then: "I hate the sky-blue dress."
Lara laughed at once. "That's not useless. That's vital."
"It looked beautiful."
"Yes."
"I hated that."
"Yes."
"It was manipulative."
"Yes."
Lara could almost hear the glare in Sarisa's silence.
"You're agreeing too much," Sarisa said.
"I know. It's suspicious."
Sarisa let out a breath that sounded halfway to a laugh again. "It really was awful."
"Did you at least look better than everyone else in the room?"
"I always look better than everyone else in the room."
Lara closed her eyes, smiling. "There she is."
That got another one of those pleased little pauses. The kind that felt like Sarisa sitting straighter without meaning to.
"Fine," Lara said. "My useless fact."
"I'm listening."
"I found out this morning that Neris hates lace almost as much as I do."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. Apparently no blue either."
Sarisa made a soft sound of interest. "That's… strangely specific."
"He's a tiny, traumatized old man."
"That sounds familiar."
Lara barked out a laugh. "You're evil."
"You love me."
"Yes," Lara said, too easily to pretend otherwise.
There was a little pause after that, warm and shy and impossible, even now.
Then Sarisa said, with deliberate calm, "Good."
Lara let herself sit in that for a beat before asking, "How bad was the dinner really?"
"Oh, unbearable," Sarisa said instantly. "Aliyah improved it."
"Improved it?"
"Yes. It would have been intolerable without her."
Lara shook her head, smiling into the dark. "I'm buying her a ridiculous present."
"No."
"Yes."
"Lara."
"She defended my honor. I have standards."
"She insulted a prince at the dinner table."
"Again," Lara said, "standards."
Sarisa made that little exasperated sound she did when she was too fond to be properly annoyed. Lara loved that sound so much it felt unfair.
They kept talking after that. About smaller things. About how Kaelith was almost certainly teaching Neris crimes disguised as games.
About what kind of breakfast would cause the most chaos if all three children were left unsupervised.
By the time the conversation circled its way back toward quiet, Lara could hear the change in Sarisa's voice.
It was subtle, but there. Softer around the edges. Slower to rise. The kind of tiredness that crept in when a person had been holding themselves together for too long and had finally found one safe place to unravel.
Lara waited until Sarisa yawned halfway through the phrase "I am absolutely not tired" before she pounced.
"Go to sleep now," Lara said.
"I'm not falling asleep."
"You just yawned."
"That was not a real yawn."
"Mm-hmm."
"It wasn't."
Lara smiled. "Sarisa."
"No."
"You're exhausted."
"I'm not."
Lara tilted her head back against the headboard, the smile growing helpless now. "Now I know where Aliyah got her stubbornness."
There was a beat.
Then Sarisa, with offended dignity: "Excuse me?"
"You."
"I am not stubborn."
"You teleported across realms in the middle of the night to argue with me and then refused to leave my bed."
"That is not stubborn. That is commitment."
"That is absolutely stubborn."
Sarisa sighed into the device, which only proved Lara right more thoroughly.
"I'm just saying," Lara went on, enjoying herself now, "Aliyah does that thing where she insists she isn't sleepy while actively falling sideways. You do the exact same thing, only with better vocabulary."
"I hate you."
Lara let the warmth of that settle through her before lowering her voice, gentling it on purpose. "Please, love. Go to sleep."
The endearment landed the way it always did now, in a little silence, in a breath that caught and then eased.
Sarisa did not answer right away.
When she did, her voice was very soft. "Okay."
Lara closed her eyes. "Good."
Another pause.
Then, because she could not not say it, because if the night ended here she wanted the last thing Sarisa carried into sleep to be this and not all the rest, Lara said, "Sleep well. I love you."
The answer came like a whisper laid carefully into her hands.
"I love you too."
Then the line went quiet.
Not dead, exactly. Just ended. The faint silver warmth in the device dimmed until it was only metal again.
Lara sat there for a little while longer with it in her palm, staring at nothing, feeling too full and too empty at once.
Then someone knocked.
Three short raps. Not a servant.
Malvoria.
Lara exhaled once and set the device carefully on the bedside table. "Come in."
Malvoria pushed the door open without waiting, because of course she did. She was still dressed for the day, black silk and gold, but her hair had come half loose and there was a hard brightness in her eyes that killed any joke before it could form.
"Well," she said, stepping into the room, "I got a bit of info."
Lara straightened at once. "About the lab?"
Malvoria nodded and shut the door behind her. "My clones found one."
Something cold moved through Lara's stomach.
"One?" she repeated. "So it's real."
"Oh, it's real." Malvoria crossed the room and leaned one hip against the table, all humor stripped away now.
"But it was empty. Cleared out. Too clean in the obvious places, which is always suspicious." Her mouth twisted.
"They need more time. More searching. There's not enough yet to point cleanly at what was happening inside."
Lara's jaw tightened. "But?"
Malvoria looked at her directly.
"But it's full of traces." Her voice lowered. "Faint magic everywhere. Layered over itself. Old work. Heavy work. And demonic magic too."
Lara held still.
Malvoria didn't look away.
"Well," she said quietly, "yours, Lara."