A few minutes after Sarisa left, Lara still felt unsteady.
Not in the ordinary way. Not in the bruised, sleep-short, emotionally mauled way she had been feeling for days. This was different. Sharper. Stranger.
As if Sarisa had walked out of the room and taken some necessary, irritatingly vital piece of Lara with her.
The air felt emptier. The bed looked too large. Even the light in the room seemed flatter without silver hair catching it and a royal menace stealing one last impossible kiss on the way to disaster.
Lara stood by the window for a while after the teleportation magic faded, one hand braced against the frame, staring out at the dark gardens below.
Somewhere in the castle, servants were beginning to move more quickly. Somewhere farther off, a child laughed in their sleep or a door shut too hard. The world, rude and determined, kept going.
She hated that.
There was still a warmth on her mouth that memory insisted on keeping, and her body had not yet forgiven her for letting Sarisa leave instead of pinning her back into the bed and telling the whole realm to go rot. Very mature. Very helpful. Deeply impractical.
A knock sounded behind her.
Lara did not turn. "If that's Malvoria, I'm not discussing the condoms count."
"It isn't," Veylira said dryly.
Lara looked back then.
Her mother stood in the doorway with that same composed, slightly lethal elegance she carried even this early in the day.
There was something softer in her eyes, though. Not much. Just enough to tell Lara that she had taken one look at her daughter's face and decided to spare her any elegant cruelty for at least the next ten minutes.
"Well," Veylira said, stepping inside, "the children are going to wake up soon. Go have breakfast with them."
Lara made a face. "Commanding."
"Yes." Veylira folded her hands loosely before her. "And maybe try to talk to Neris. I have a feeling there is more to his story. And he looks more confortable with you"
That pulled Lara fully back into herself.
Neris.
The little boy with her eyes. Her fire. His careful quiet. The way he had asked if she was going to hit him.
The way he had finally fallen asleep with one hand curled near her thigh like he did not trust the night to keep her there unless he could almost feel her.
Lara dragged a hand over the back of her neck. "You think so too?"
"I do." Veylira's expression sharpened. "Children do not become that guarded by accident. Nor do they learn to make themselves small unless someone has taught them."
The words landed heavily.
Lara nodded once. "Yeah."
Veylira watched her another second, then crossed the room and straightened the collar of Lara's shirt with quiet irritation. "And you still look like a woman who got kissed stupid."
Lara barked out a laugh before she could stop herself. "That's because I did."
"Tragic." Veylira brushed imaginary lint from her sleeve. "Breakfast. Now. Before Aliyah decides to come looking for you and finds you staring dramatically out windows like a widow."
That image was offensive enough to get Lara moving.
She followed her mother down the corridor and toward the family dining room, trying to force her mind into a shape children could survive.
By the time she reached the door, she could already hear voices inside.
Kaelith's first, because of course it was. Loud, excited, and fully convinced that every sentence she said should matter more than anyone else's.
Aliyah's came next, sharper and faster, trying to outtalk her. Neris's voice was quieter, but there, woven underneath theirs now rather than absent from the room entirely.
Lara stepped inside.
The table had been transformed for children. Plates already half-full, syrup in little silver pitchers, bowls of fruit, butter, cream, and an entire mountain of pancakes stacked so high it looked like the kitchen had either misunderstood the assignment or understood it too well.
Sunlight poured through the tall windows and laid warm gold over everything, including the three children clustered near the middle of the table.
Aliyah spotted her first.
Her whole face lit up.
Lara's chest eased at once.
"Lara!"
Kaelith turned too, mouth already sticky with syrup. "You're late. We almost started a rebellion."
Neris looked up more slowly. He did not smile immediately, but his eyes followed Lara in that careful, measuring way.
Lara crossed to the table and dropped a kiss onto the top of Aliyah's head, ruffled Kaelith's wild hair, and then looked at Neris long enough to give him the chance to decide what kind of morning this was going to be.
He held her gaze for a beat.
Then gave the tiniest nod.
Lara took that as victory.
She pulled out her chair and sat. "Hi. How was your pyjama party?"
"It was nice," Aliyah said immediately.
"We built a nest," Kaelith announced.
"And Kaelith snores," Neris said quietly.
Kaelith gasped so dramatically she nearly dropped her fork. "Traitor."
Lara laughed. "Good. Sounds successful."
A servant appeared at her elbow and set down a plate, but before Lara could reach for the coffee, Aliyah narrowed her eyes at her with the intensity of a very small investigator who had just found a clue.
"Why do you smell like Mama Sarisa?"
Lara nearly inhaled syrup.
Kaelith went still.
Neris looked between them, instantly alert in the way children did when adults suddenly started lying.
Lara picked up her cup with studied calm. "No, I don't. Maybe it's your imagination."
Aliyah looked offended by the idea. "No. You have her scent, Mom. I know it too well."
That made Neris blink.
Lara wished, briefly and sincerely, for death.
She set the cup back down very carefully. "Well. I don't know what to tell you."
Aliyah leaned across the table, suspicious to her bones. "You smell like her room and her hair and when she hugs me ."
Lara could actually feel herself blushing, which was humiliating and should not have been possible for a woman with her life experience.
Kaelith, saint that she apparently was not, stepped in before the interrogation could get more lethal.
"Let's just eat, Aliyah. They made our favorite pancakes."
Aliyah did not take her eyes off Lara. "This is not over."
"I'm sure it isn't," Lara muttered.
Kaelith, determined to save breakfast from itself, shoved the syrup toward Aliyah. "If you don't stop being weird, I'll take your extra pancake."
That got her attention.
Children, Lara thought, could be steered from almost any emotional catastrophe by carbohydrates.
Aliyah sat back down with a huff and began aggressively buttering her stack as if she were taking revenge on breakfast itself.
Kaelith followed suit. Neris, after one last uncertain glance at Lara, reached for a slice of fruit and then for the pancakes too, copying the others with the cautious ease of someone learning the shape of normal in real time.
Lara let out a breath so quiet no one noticed.
Then she looked at them all together.
Aliyah, fierce and bright and still trying to pretend she hadn't just nearly exposed Lara's whole morning in one sentence.
Kaelith, all sunlight and syrup and chaos. Neris, smaller, quieter, but here. Eating. Watching. Beginning, maybe, to understand that some tables were safer than others.
Veylira had been right.
There was more to his story.
Lara could feel it sitting just beneath the surface, waiting. In the way he flinched at sudden movements.
In how quickly he denied being hurt. In how relieved he had looked when someone simply believed he didn't want lace.
She reached for the syrup and, without making it a question, set it within his reach.
Neris looked at it. Then at her.
Then, softly enough that only Lara really caught it, he said, "Thanks."
Lara smiled a little, rough around the edges but real. "Yeah. Anytime."