After the bath, Neris went to find Kaelith and Aliyah.
He did it with more confidence than he had yesterday, which should not have mattered to Lara as much as it did. He stood at the doorway of the bathing room in his clean dark tunic, hair still damp, and asked if he could go to the garden now. Not demanded. Asked.
Lara told him yes, of course, and tried not to look too pleased when he ran.
Then she stood very still in the empty bathing room with a damp cloth in one hand and the scent of healing oil still in the air, and thought: what the fuck.
Because there was no version of this that was normal.
Not the child. Not the trial. Not the paternity result. Not the queen appearing in his memories.
Not the white rooms, or the white blouses, or the fact that the woman who claimed to have given birth to him had apparently been a complete stranger until the court.
None of it fit together into anything Lara wanted to believe.
Which meant it was probably worse.
She left the bathing room at once and went looking for the people she trusted most to respond correctly to impossible information.
She found Malvoria and Raveth in one of the inner training courtyards.
Of course she did.
The courtyard was open to the sky, ringed by black stone arches and lined with training weapons that looked sharp enough to be decorative and dangerous enough to be family heirlooms.
The morning had climbed fully into brightness now, and sunlight flashed across metal and black tile as Raveth drove Malvoria backward with a wooden spear and all the grim delight of a woman who believed affection should occasionally leave bruises.
Malvoria blocked high, swore, ducked, and snapped, "You're cheating."
Raveth laughed in her face. "You're losing."
Lara stopped at the edge of the sparring ring and folded her arms. "You know, some families drink tea together."
Raveth twisted the spear aside and barked out a laugh. "Weak families."
Malvoria finally kicked Raveth's ankle hard enough to create distance and lowered her practice blade.
"There she is. The woman with the thousand-yard stare of someone who has either had a breakthrough or a breakdown."
"Maybe both," Lara said.
That got their attention.
Malvoria tossed the wooden sword aside. Raveth leaned the spear over one shoulder and narrowed her eyes. "What happened?"
Lara stepped into the courtyard. The heat from the black stone rose through the soles of her boots, and for one stupid second she thought about how Sarisa would complain if asked to stand in this much sun without a parasol.
The thought made her chest ache, which was deeply inconvenient and had to be ignored.
"Neris told me something," she said.
Malvoria's expression shifted first, all humor gone. Raveth's followed more slowly, but no less sharply.
"What?" Raveth asked.
Lara ran a hand over the back of her neck, suddenly aware that saying it aloud would make it more real. "He remembers things."
"That's good," Malvoria said carefully. "Isn't it?"
"No." Lara looked between them. "Not good things."
Now both of them were fully still.
Lara told them everything. The bright rooms. The people in white blouses. The way Neris had said sometimes when she asked if they hurt him. The queen.
At that last part, Malvoria swore so viciously that two sparrows in the arch above them took off in a panic.
Raveth did not swear at all. She just went quiet in the frightening way Lara had always associated with imminent bloodshed.
"And Selene?" Malvoria asked when Lara finished.
Lara laughed once, short and ugly. "First time he ever saw her was at the trial."
For a second none of them spoke.
The courtyard felt different now. Too bright. Too exposed.
Lara could hear the fountain in the next garden and, somewhere farther off, Kaelith yelling at Aliyah that no, actually, this was not how ambushes worked.
It all sounded bizarrely normal against the shape of what they were talking about.
Raveth set the spear down with a soft click. "That's fucking too weird."
"Yes," Lara said. "Thank you. I'm delighted you agree."
Malvoria was pacing now, fast and vicious, black hair swinging behind her like a threat.
"How the fuck did they do that? How does a child with your blood and your fire appear in a court and not know the woman claiming to be his mother? What is that?"
Lara's mouth twisted. "That's what I'd like to know."
Raveth folded her arms. "Is Neris an experiment?"
The word landed like a stone dropped into deep water.
Lara stared at her.
Malvoria stopped pacing.
An experiment.
It sounded obscene. Inhuman. And yet the second it was said, too many things clicked into alignment for Lara's stomach not to turn.
The paternity test. Real blood. Real fire. The queen's involvement. White rooms. White blouses. A child who had bruises older than any court appearance and memories shaped more like procedures than a life.
"Oh, that is so fucking weird," Malvoria muttered, more to herself now than to either of them.
Lara laughed again, but there was no humor in it. "You think?"
"I'm serious." Malvoria turned sharply. "This is not some tavern one-night stand with a hidden baby. This smells like design. Deliberate design."
Raveth nodded once. "And if it was design, then it started years ago."
Years.
Lara felt the number in her chest like a bruise.
Three years old.
That was how old Neris was. Old enough for the timing to slide neatly over Aliyah's age, over Lara's history, over any rumors about who she used to be and what she might have done.
Old enough that no one would question it too hard if the evidence looked convincing enough.
Malvoria dragged both hands through her hair.
"Why would the queen do that? What was the point? To get rid of you? To destabilize Sarisa? To create some fucked-up leverage over the demon realm? All of the above?"
"Yes," Lara said flatly. "Probably."
Raveth looked toward the archway leading back into the castle. "We need Elysia."
Malvoria barked out a humorless laugh. "We needed Elysia yesterday."
"No," Raveth said. "I mean we need her brain on this now. Veylira too. If the queen built a child out of bloodline magic and whatever else she got her hands on, then we are past court scandal. This is worse."
Lara looked down at her own hands.
Bloodline magic.
She thought of Neris's face when he cried. The question he had asked her in that frightened little voice. Are you going to hit me like they did.
Her hands closed slowly into fists.
"If they made him," she said quietly, "if they did something to him just to use him against us…"
Malvoria stepped close enough to catch her shoulder before she could pace herself into violence. "Then we find out," she said. "Exactly how. Exactly who. And then we make people regret being born."
That helped, a little.
Lara lifted her gaze. "Sarisa needs to know."
"She will," Raveth said. "But not until we know enough to tell her something useful."
Malvoria nodded. "Agreed. Last thing she needs right now is another half-truth to drown in."
Lara hated that they were right.
She hated even more that Neris was not a theory while they stood here talking. He was a little boy in a garden with Aliyah and Kaelith, trying to build a fort or survive one, and somewhere in all of this there was a story of what had been done to him.
No. Not story.
History.
Damage.
Raveth looked at Lara long enough to pin her to the ground with it. "Can you keep your temper if this gets uglier?"
Lara almost said no.
Instead she said, "I can try."
Malvoria squeezed her shoulder once, hard. "Good. Because if this is what it looks like, then your life just got even stranger."
Lara looked toward the garden where the children's voices still rose and fell in bursts of sound.
Stranger, yes.
And more frightening too.
Because for the first time since the trial, the question in her mind was no longer simply What is Neris?
It was Who did this to him?
And what else had the queen been willing to build in the dark?