Well, one kiss should have been enough, but it was not.
Sarisa had barely turned back toward Lara after Elysia's interruption when all the careful sense she had been trying to stitch back together simply gave up and died.
Lara was still standing by the window, still warm from breakfast and truth and all the impossible things she had just said, and Sarisa looked at her and thought no, absolutely not, I am not leaving on one kiss like some restrained, tragic heroine in a poem.
She crossed the space between them in two quick steps, caught Lara by the front of her shirt, and kissed her before Lara could even finish blinking.
Lara made a startled sound against her mouth, one hand landing automatically at Sarisa's waist.
"Sarisa," she murmured when the kiss broke for air.
"One more," Sarisa said.
"That was definitely more than one."
"Another one."
Lara laughed softly, which was a mistake because Sarisa kissed her again immediately, slower this time, taking her time with it like she meant to store the taste of her for the entire miserable journey back. Lara's fingers tightened at her waist.
For one dangerous second, she kissed back with enough heat to make Sarisa consider pretending the teleportation device had broken.
Then Lara tried, weakly, "Stop."
Sarisa drew back just enough to look at her. "No."
"That is not how stopping works."
"You can explain it to me later." She tilted her head and kissed her again.
Lara actually groaned into the kiss this time, half defeated, half delighted, and Sarisa felt a wicked little thrill run through her. There. That was better.
Much better than leaving like a reasonable woman. Reasonable women, she had decided, were probably much less happy.
When Lara finally managed to pull her back by sheer force of both hands on her shoulders, Sarisa's lips curved in helpless satisfaction.
"You are impossible," Lara said, though her own mouth was smiling.
"I know."
"You're supposed to be going home."
"I'm aware."
"And yet."
Sarisa leaned in until their noses almost brushed. "Another one."
Lara narrowed her eyes. "You're doing this on purpose now."
"Yes."
That got her exactly half a second of exasperation before Lara kissed her anyway, because Lara was weak where Sarisa was concerned and they both knew it.
Sarisa immediately melted into it, sliding one hand up into her hair, holding her there with a sort of greedy tenderness that felt too honest to be embarrassing anymore.
By the time the door opened again, Sarisa had lost track of whether they were on kiss five or kiss fifteen.
Elysia stopped in the doorway, looked at them, and closed her eyes.
"No," she said.
Sarisa did not let go of Lara.
Lara, to her credit, looked at Elysia over Sarisa's shoulder with the expression of a woman who had definitely tried to be sensible and had clearly been overruled by superior force.
"I told her to stop," Lara offered.
"I did not believe you," Elysia said.
"That is fair."
Sarisa kissed the corner of Lara's mouth one last time out of principle and then finally turned, though she kept one hand in Lara's.
Elysia crossed the room with all the calm patience of someone who had shepherded too many emotionally compromised people through too many disasters. She took Sarisa very gently by the arm.
"Yes," she said, "I know you are in love and all that, but you need to go back home."
The words should have annoyed Sarisa. Instead, because they were spoken with kindness and only a little mockery, they almost made her laugh.
Sarisa sighed, long and unwilling. "I know."
"Good. Then come on before I have to physically separate you, and trust me, I will. I am stronger than I look."
Lara snorted.
Elysia looked over her shoulder. "You are not helping."
"I'm enjoying myself."
"Yes, I can tell."
She managed, with more effort than dignity, to steer Sarisa out into the corridor. Sarisa twisted once just long enough to catch Lara's face between both hands and kiss her again anyway.
Elysia made a sound of deep personal suffering. "Gods above."
Lara, breathless and now openly amused, touched Sarisa's wrist. "Go."
Sarisa pointed at her. "You are not allowed to say emotional things and then expect me to leave elegantly."
"That seems like a design flaw on your part."
"Your face is a design flaw on my part."
"That sentence didn't make any sense."
"It didn't need to."
Elysia finally succeeded in dragging Sarisa into the next room and shut the door behind them with a firmness that suggested experience.
Sarisa immediately exhaled and leaned back against it, half laughing, half aching.
Elysia folded her arms and gave her a look at once affectionate and merciless. "You are both unbearable."
"That is not news."
"No. It is a chronic condition."
Sarisa tipped her head back against the wood. The brief, foolish joy of the kisses was already being swallowed by the reality waiting at the end of the hallway, beyond the teleportation jump, back in the palace where every room came with a duty attached.
Elysia's expression softened.
For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Elysia reached into the sleeve of her robe and drew out a small silver device, hardly larger than a pendant, etched with delicate moonlike runes. It glowed faintly in her palm.
"By the way," she said, holding it out, "here."
Sarisa straightened. "What is it?"
"A communication device. It's directly connected to Lara's." Elysia's smile turned gentler. "A little gift from me, so you can talk whenever you want to your Lara."
Your Lara.
The words landed somewhere deep and tender.
Sarisa took the device carefully. It was warm to the touch, as though it had been waiting for her hand specifically. "Elysia…"
"Yes, yes, you love me, I'm wonderful, try not to cry on the magic."
Sarisa laughed despite herself. Then, more quietly, "Thank you."
Elysia stepped forward and kissed her forehead like an older sister might. "Go before Malvoria comes back and encourages more bad decisions."
"She already did."
"Yes, but I'm trying to maintain standards."
They said goodbye there, in the quiet corridor outside Lara's room, with the castle still half asleep around them and morning already slipping toward something harsher.
Sarisa looked once toward the closed door, felt the pull of it like a living thing, and forced herself not to go back.
Then she used the teleportation device.
The world twisted.
Her room rose around her exactly as she had left it.
The fake sleeping shape still lay beneath the blankets. The curtains still half drawn. The air still carrying the faintest trace of the perfume she had worn the day before.
For one strange second, standing there with another woman's magic in her hand and Lara's taste still on her mouth, the whole thing felt absurd enough to be funny.
Sarisa moved quickly then. She dissolved the glamour, changed her clothes, and went straight into the bathing room.
The shower was fast and much too cool, but she needed it. Needed to wash off the scent of another castle, another bed, another version of herself that only existed in Lara's arms.
When she came back out, toweling the damp from her hair, there were guards outside her door.
She tensed immediately.
One of them bowed at once. "Your Highness. As you instructed, no one entered your chambers."
Sarisa stilled.
"No one?" she repeated.
"No, Your Highness."
Relief came sharp and suspicious. She had expected at least one maid, one inquiry, one disaster waiting like a trap. Instead the corridor looked normal. Empty, almost. As though the palace had politely agreed to overlook her disappearance for one more hour.
The guard continued, "Her Majesty is in the meeting room with the wedding planner."
Of course she was.
Sarisa closed her eyes briefly, the fresh sting of reality settling back over her shoulders like a cloak she despised.
Then she opened them, slipped the communication device into the hidden pocket of her robe, and lifted her chin.
"Good," she said. "Then she's occupied."