By the time Fia remembers how to breathe properly, the sun is already high.
Her first clear sensation is weight.
A lot of it.
Something heavy and warm has her pinned at the waist.
Something else is draped over her legs.
There's a hand on her stomach.
A face tucked under her chin.
Her body aches in ways even the altar didn't manage.
The good kind of ache.
The kind that makes her blush before she even opens her eyes.
"…ow," she croaks, very quietly.
A muffled voice answers somewhere near her collarbone.
"Good 'ow' or bad 'ow'?"
Mira.
Of course it's Mira.
The healer's hair is tickling Fia's skin, soft and loose, smelling faintly of herbal oil and the rose soap from last night's bath.
Fia risks moving her head.
A small, exhausted kingdom of women comes into focus.
They're on the palace's private summer bed—one of Seraphine's "it's not technically royal property if I bought it myself" indulgences. The mattress is absurdly wide; it still isn't quite enough.
Mira is curled half across Fia's chest, arm flung around her ribs, cheek resting just below Fia's throat.
Seraphine is behind Fia, her body pressed along Fia's back, one leg hooked possessively over Fia's hip, chin tucked into Fia's hair like she intends to guard it with her life.
Elira is sprawled over Fia's thighs like a particularly smug cat, face turned to the side, lips parted in light snoring that she will vehemently deny later.
Lyriel has somehow ended up diagonally across everyone's feet, like she fell asleep halfway through rearranging them and gave up, a notebook still open and stuck to her stomach.
The room is a quiet mess.
Pillows everywhere.
Blankets half kicked off.
A trail of clothes that starts at the door and gets progressively less dignified as it approaches the bed.
The low table in the corner is scattered with the remains of last night's "we earned this" feast—fruit rinds, empty wine glasses, a plate that once held something decadent and chocolate that Elira had, at some point, fed Fia with absolutely no shame.
Fia's face heats as flashes of memory slot back into place.
Hands.
Mouths.
Laughter that dissolved into breathless, tangled sounds she'd never made in either life.
Seraphine's crown abandoned on a chair in favour of fingers tangling in Fia's hair.
Lyriel's glasses carefully put aside before she'd kissed Fia like a thesis she'd finally solved.
Mira's voice, low and coaxing and just this side of bossy, telling Fia to relax for once.
Elira's shameless, delighted commentary that had made everyone blush at least once.
They'd kept it private.
Door warded.
Staff explicitly ordered not to exist for the night.
War pushed back out of their heads by a combination of wine, relief, and the dizzying, terrifying realization that Fia wasn't dying tomorrow.
They'd celebrated that the most practical way five exhausted, very in-love idiots could.
And now…now they were paying for it.
Fia tries to move her left leg.
It responds with a complaint that probably has a political treaty named after it somewhere.
"Definitely…good 'ow'," she manages.
Mira smiles against her skin.
"Good," she mumbles. "I'd be very offended if it was the other kind after the amount of effort I put into…that."
Her cheeks flush even as she says it.
She's Mira; she can talk ruthlessly about blood and surgery, but give her half a memory of last night and she goes pink.
Fia kind of loves that.
Seraphine makes a small, sleepy sound behind Fia and tightens her arm.
"No getting up," she mutters. "Royal decree. The bed is now sovereign territory. All wars are suspended. Anyone who wants you has to get through three queens and a very angry healer."
"I'm not a queen," Mira protests automatically, eyes still closed.
"Fine," Seraphine says. "Two queens, one terrifying war mage, and a healer with a scalpel."
"Plus one extremely pretty sword disaster," Elira says into Fia's thigh, voice muffled.
They all jump.
Fia hadn't realized she was awake.
Elira rolls onto her back so she can squint up at Fia.
She looks thoroughly ruined.
Hair everywhere.
Neck blooming with marks that definitely weren't there yesterday.
Smile smug and lazy.
"You sound proud of yourself," Fia says weakly.
"Oh, Fia," Elira sighs. "If you remembered half the noises you made last night, you'd be proud of me too."
Mira kicks her lightly in the shoulder without lifting her head.
"Do not make her pass out from embarrassment again," she murmurs. "Her blood pressure does not need the help."
Lyriel groans near the foot of the bed and drapes an arm over her eyes.
"If anyone is going to catalog noises, it will be me," she says. "For research."
"Absolutely not," three voices say at once.
Fia wheezes a laugh that turns into a wince.
Her chest is…fine.
Sore, but not in the frightening, tearing way it had been.
Mira must feel her flinch; her hand slides from Fia's ribs to her sternum, checking automatically.
"Pain level?" she asks, instinct kicking in even now.
"Three," Fia says. "Maybe four in the shoulders. My sanity is at a solid…two."
"Out of?" Elira asks.
"Out of ten," Fia groans.
Elira beams.
"Perfect," she says. "Plenty of room to ruin it more."
Seraphine snorts softly.
"Later," she says. "Today, we are all pretending we are very fragile, very responsible adults who did not nearly break the bed frame last night."
Lyriel peeks between her fingers.
"Technically," she says, "it wasn't the frame. It was the left support beam."
Fia's eyes widen.
"We broke the bed?"
Four expressions shift.
Guilty.
Pleased.
Faintly horrified.
"…we will not be telling the palace carpenters why they need to reinforce it," Seraphine says with the long-suffering air of someone who has already mentally drafted the repair request and crossed out four versions.
Elira starts laughing.
Mira groans and hides her face again.
Fia makes a helpless little noise that might be her soul leaving her body from mortification.
Lyriel, traitor that she is, grabs her notebook and scribbles something.
"That better not be a diagram," Fia says weakly.
"It's a structural integrity note," Lyriel lies. "Completely unrelated."
Seraphine's hand strokes lazily up and down Fia's arm.
The touch is slow.
Absent-minded.
Possessive.
"How are you really?" she asks, low.
Fia closes her eyes for a moment.
She checks.
Lungs: sore, but even.
Hearts: beating quietly, not slamming against her ribs like panicked drums.
Dragon: a low, content purr under everything, occasionally sending up a flicker of heat like a satisfied cat flexing its claws.
"Better," she says honestly. "Tired. Sore. But…better."
Mira's fingers tap lightly over her chest, counting.
"The altar's backlash is settling," she agrees. "Your threads are less frayed. I still want to keep you on light magic only for a few days, but…you're mending."
Elira props her chin on Fia's stomach.
"See?" she says. "Reckless, terrifying, infuriating, and recovering. It's almost like you're good at this living thing."
Fia huffs.
"I had help," she mutters.
Lyriel smiles faintly behind her arm.
"Yes," she says. "From four extremely irritated women who fully intend to make sure you don't get any more self-sacrificial ideas. Consider this…continued intervention."
She lifts her head just enough to meet Fia's eyes.
"And for the record," she adds, "last night was not a reward for fighting altars. It was…because we love you. The timing is coincidental. Do not attempt to use this as precedent."
Elira looks offended.
"I mean, it can be a reward," she says.
Mira kicks her again.
"Stop talking," Mira says.
Elira grins and blows Fia a kiss instead.
Fia's face somehow finds a new shade of red.
Seraphine watches it all with that quiet, intent expression that says she is memorizing this—every tangle of limbs, every joke, every blush—for the days when war will try to convince her it was a dream.
"How's the war?" Fia asks eventually, because the part of her that has been braced for the next blow for months won't stop twitching.
"We are deliberately ignoring it for another three hours," Seraphine says immediately.
Fia twists a little, enough to glance back over her shoulder.
Seraphine's eyes soften.
"The altar is still crippled," the queen says more gently. "Our scouts say their camp is…chaos. The Iron Circle is arguing with their general. Their towers are stalled. For once, the world has decided to pause."
Lyriel nods.
"The lattice around Vyrn is stable," she says. "I left three failsafes in place. If anything changes, the wards will scream at me long before any messenger makes it up the stairs."
Mira taps Fia's sternum again.
"And even then," she warns, "you're not going anywhere today. If I so much as see you look at a teleport sigil, I'm sedating you and your dragon."
Ardentis rumbles, faint and amused.
She is very fierce for something so small, he notes.
Fia smothers a smile.
"She can hear you, you know," she thinks back.
Good, he says. She should know I respect her.
Fia opens her eyes again.
The room is warm.
The light is soft.
For once, the great machinery of the world is not grinding her bones to turn its gears.
She lets her body relax into the bed.
Into all of them.
Her free hand finds Lyriel's ankle under the blankets and hooks around it.
Elira shifts to pillow her head more carefully on Fia's stomach, muttering something about "good dragon mattress."
Mira, finally satisfied with her checks, sighs and lets herself collapse fully against Fia again, cheek pressed to her heartbeat.
Seraphine's breath stirs Fia's hair as she presses the lightest of kisses to the crown of her head.
It's…a ridiculous pile.
Too many people for one bed.
Too much warmth in one place.
Too much love for a girl who once thought she would die as a plot device.
Fia closes her eyes.
"Hey," she says softly.
Four voices hum in question.
"Thank you," she says. "For yelling. For…staying. For last night. For pushing back when I try to jump off metaphorical cliffs."
Mira huffs a little laugh against her skin.
"Get used to it," Mira says. "We're very stubborn."
Elira grins.
"Besides," she adds, "who else is going to brag that they wrestled a dragon and a death curse into a bed and won?"
Lyriel groans.
"I am putting that on your tombstone," she says. "'Here lies Elira. She talked too much.'"
Seraphine squeezes Fia's hand.
"No tombstones," she says quietly. "Not for a very long time."
Fia lets the words sink into her bones.
No tombstones.
Not yet.
She is still sick.
The illness is still there, coiled with the dragon.
The war is still out there, rebuilding its weapons.
The system is still suspended, sulking in whatever corner of reality it retreated to.
But right now, in this room, on this ridiculous bed, with four women pressed to her like the world finally understood she was not meant to be alone—
Fia feels something she hasn't let herself feel in years.
Safe.
Not forever.
Not in some naive, storybook way.
Just…for this morning.
For this breath.
For these hours.
She curls her fingers tighter around Seraphine's.
Presses her heel lightly to Lyriel's ankle.
Lets Mira listen to her heart.
Laughs quietly when Elira starts snoring again, this time on purpose.
"Okay," she whispers, mostly to herself.
She lets herself drift, not into the hard, ugly sleep of exhaustion, but into the soft, floating kind that comes when your body finally understands that for once, nobody is going to drag you out of bed to bleed.
Outside, the war waits.
Inside, for a little while longer, there is only warmth, quiet, and the steady, overlapping heartbeats of four women who have decided that if the world wants its villainess back, it can knock and make an appointment.
They're busy.