Breakfast ended in the way breakfasts with children always did: suddenly, loudly, and with crumbs everywhere.
Aliyah and Kaelith were out of their chairs before the last plates were even fully cleared, both of them talking over each other about some important mission involving the garden, three sticks, a ribbon, and what Kaelith insisted was "a military-level fairy trap."
Lara did not ask. Experience had taught her that when children explained games in detail, adults only suffered.
Aliyah slid from her chair, already halfway toward the door before she remembered that other people existed. "Lara, come with us."
Kaelith spun too, hair flying. "Yes, come now. It's urgent."
Lara looked across the table at Neris.
He had gone a little still again, one small hand resting on the edge of his plate, the other in his lap. Not upset. Not exactly. Just watchful.
Measuring what he was supposed to do when the room split into familiar people and children who ran toward chaos without him.
Lara pushed back her chair and stood. "Neris will join you later, he needs a bath first."
Kaelith sighed as though this were a personal betrayal. "Baths are tyranny."
Aliyah nodded solemnly. "True."
"You both had baths last night," Lara said.
"That's different," Kaelith replied.
"It always is with you," Lara muttered.
Aliyah looked at Neris, then at Lara, clearly deciding whether to complain or be noble. Her face did a little war with itself before she said, with surprising seriousness, "Okay. But don't take forever."
Kaelith pointed at Neris like a tiny general. "We'll save the dragon fort for you."
That earned them a flicker of something from him. Not quite a smile, but close enough that Lara noticed.
"Go," she told the girls. "And if you set anything alive on fire, I'll know."
"Rude," Kaelith said, already running.
Aliyah blew Lara a kiss and then chased after her, the two of them disappearing down the corridor in a burst of feet and noise and sunlight.
Silence settled in their wake.
Lara looked back at Neris.
He looked back at her.
For a second, neither moved.
Then Lara held out her hand. "Come on, little guy. Bath time."
He slid off his chair without argument, which already told Lara something was different today. Last month, everything had been tension and flinching and waiting for the worst.
This morning there was still caution in him, yes, but not the sharp-edged panic of before. He took her hand after only the smallest hesitation.
His hand was warm and dry and very small.
They walked in silence through the corridor toward the bathing room closest to the family wing. Lara did not rush him.
She'd learned quickly that Neris went quiet when he was thinking, and whatever he was thinking about now had curled deep enough into him that questions too early might only make him retreat.
So she let the silence breathe.
The bathing room was warm already, one of the servants having clearly prepared it after breakfast. Steam curled over the tub.
Towels were folded neatly in a stack. A change of clothes had been left on the bench, simple and soft and very definitely lace-free.
Lara closed the door behind them.
Neris looked at the water and then at her, a faint line appearing between his brows. "Do I have to?"
Lara leaned one shoulder against the wall. "Yes."
He sighed, which on a child his size sounded absurdly old. "Okay."
She almost smiled.
It went easier than last time. He undressed with less stiffness, climbed into the tub with only a little muttering about the water being too hot, and let Lara wash his hair without watching her hands the whole time.
That was something.
When she reached for the bottle of soap, she kept her voice easy. "So. How was your childhood?"
The question was clumsy the second it left her mouth.
Neris blinked up at her, wet hair slicked back from his face, looking exactly like a tiny suspicious prince someone had dropped into the wrong life. "That's a weird question."
"Yeah," Lara admitted. "I'm bad at this."
He considered that. "I know."
That got an actual snort out of her.
She worked soap gently through his hair and tried again, a little softer. "I just mean… do you remember much?"
Neris went quiet.
Lara kept her hands moving, slow and careful, not looking directly at him for a moment because children sometimes spoke easier when they weren't being watched too closely.
"A little," he said at last.
"What kind of little?"
He looked down at the water. His fingers made tiny ripples across the surface. "Flashes."
The word sat strangely in such a small voice.
Lara rinsed the soap from his hair. "Flashes of what?"
Another pause.
Then Neris said, "Rooms."
Lara's hand still touched the back of his head, anchoring him there while the last of the water ran clear. "What kind of rooms?"
"White ones."
A cold line moved down Lara's spine.
Neris frowned, trying to reach for pieces that clearly didn't like being reached for. "Not like here. Not warm. Bright. Too bright."
Lara took a cloth and began washing the soap from his shoulders. "Anything else?"
He nodded once, slowly. "People."
"What people?"
He shrugged, but there was tension in it. "People in white clothes."
Lara's mind sharpened all at once.
White clothes. Bright rooms. Celestian paternity magic. The queen.
She kept her voice careful. "Like healers?"
Neris seemed to search for the right word and then said, "Blouses."
Lara looked at him properly then.
His face had gone distant in that frightening way memory sometimes pulled children too far inside themselves.
She knew that look from soldiers and from trauma and from things no child should have needed to practice surviving.
"People in white blouses," she repeated.
He nodded.
"And they were with you?"
"Yes."
"Did they hurt you?"
Neris's mouth tightened. "Sometimes."
The answer came too easily.
Lara had to force herself not to grip the cloth harder.
She reached instead for the little bottle of oil Elysia had left by the basin and uncorked it, letting the familiar scent of rosemary and bitter herbs fill the space between them.
"What else do you remember?"
Neris looked at the wall, not at her. "The queen."
That froze Lara in place.
For one full heartbeat she forgot the bath, the oil, the room, all of it.
"What?"
Neris looked back at her then, as if surprised by how much that one word had changed her face. "The queen," he repeated quietly. "The Celestian queen."
Lara set the oil bottle down because suddenly her hands felt too full of violence to trust.
"You remember seeing her?"
He nodded.
"How many times?"
He shrugged. "I don't know."
"Was she kind to you?"
The look he gave her at that was answer enough.
No.
Not kindness, then.
Lara sat back on her heels beside the tub and made herself breathe before asking the next question. "And Selene?"
At that, something changed again.
Neris's face did not harden exactly. It emptied. Like he had reached the edge of something and could only stand there looking at it from a distance.
"Selene," Lara said more gently, "the woman from the trial."
He was quiet so long that Lara thought he might not answer at all.
Then, finally, he looked at her and said, very simply:
"That was the first time I was seeing Selene."