Lara turned, still breathing like she had just come out of a battlefield, and saw Sarisa standing at the far end of the corridor.
She was not alone.
Half a dozen women stood with her, all in expensive silk and pearls, their faces frozen somewhere between horror and fascination. Cousins. Noblewomen.
Whatever ridiculous little meeting Sarisa had just been trapped in, it had spilled straight into this mess. For one sick, impossible second, Lara wished the floor would crack open and swallow the entire palace whole.
Sarisa's face had gone white.
Then she moved.
She ran past Lara without hesitation and dropped to her knees beside Vaelen, who was half-buried in broken stone and plaster. Blood ran from a cut at his brow and from the corner of his mouth, staining the blue of his collar. He looked dazed, furious, and humiliated all at once.
"Vaelen," Sarisa said sharply, one hand hovering at his shoulder before carefully touching him. "Are you hurt badly?"
Lara hated the way that made her chest twist.
Vaelen made a pained sound and looked up at her through the dust, his expression already rearranging itself into something wounded and noble.
"What happened?" Sarisa demanded, looking from the blood on him to the shattered wall to Lara, who still stood there with one fist clenched and her pulse roaring in her ears.
Vaelen swallowed, then said, with infuriating clarity, "As you can see, your bodyguard hit me."
Lara barked out a humorless laugh. "He started it."
Every head turned toward her.
Sarisa stared. "Started it?"
Before Lara could force a better answer out, another voice cut in.
One of the corridor guards had arrived at a run, pale-faced and breathless. He looked from the ruined wall to Vaelen to Lara and then squared himself, clearly realizing he was now a witness to something he absolutely did not want to be involved in.
"I saw it," the guard said.
Lara's stomach dropped.
The guard bowed quickly to Sarisa and then to the women gathered behind her. "General Lara bumped into His Highness first. He fell. And then…" The man swallowed. "Instead of apologizing, she struck him."
Silence dropped over the corridor like a blade.
Lara stared at the guard. "Oh, fuck off."
The words echoed much louder than she intended.
Sarisa rose slowly to her feet. Dust clung to the hem of her dress, and there was blood on the edge of her sleeve where she had touched Vaelen. Her expression was unreadable now, which was somehow worse than anger.
"Lara," she said, very carefully, "is that true?"
Lara looked at her and wanted, absurdly, to tell the truth.
Not all of it. Not the queen's insult. Not Vaelen's smug face. Not those filthy words he had thrown into the corridor like a challenge.
She could not stand in front of Sarisa, her cousins, half the damned court, and say: I hit him because he said he couldn't wait to marry you so he could fuck you.
It sounded ridiculous even in her own head. Not ridiculous to her. Not with the rage still burning under her skin. But ridiculous out loud. Possessive. Animal.
Exactly the kind of thing her enemies would seize and use to make her seem like some unhinged brute who did not know the difference between duty and desire.
So she did the only thing she could.
"Yes," Lara snapped. "I hit him. What with that?"
A collective gasp rippled through the women.
Sarisa closed her eyes for one brief second. When she opened them again, Lara could not read what was in them. Shock. Anger. Fear. Maybe all three.
Vaelen, still on the floor, chose that moment to groan dramatically and touch the blood at his mouth.
One of the women behind Sarisa whispered, "Gods."
The guard who had spoken first looked like he regretted ever being born. Two more soldiers came running up the corridor now, drawn by the noise and the collapse of part of the wall. They took in the scene at a glance and then looked to Sarisa for orders.
Lara took one step back.
Not because she was afraid.
Because suddenly, very clearly, she understood how this would look.
A demon bodyguard. A bleeding prince. A shattered wall. Noblewomen as witnesses.
Perfect.
One of the newly arrived guards moved toward her with a pair of binding chains in his hands.
Lara's eyes narrowed. "What the fuck are you doing?"
The man hesitated. "General…"
"Don't call me that if you're about to put chains on me."
He swallowed hard but did not stop advancing.
Sarisa's voice cut across the corridor. "Wait."
Everyone froze.
For one heartbeat, Lara thought Sarisa might stop it. That she might cut through the performance and ask the right question.
That she might look at Lara and know that something had happened before the punch, something ugly enough to make restraint impossible.
But before Sarisa could say anything else, another presence entered the corridor.
The queen.
Of course.
She appeared flanked by two senior attendants, silver-clad and perfectly composed, as if she had stepped out of the palace walls themselves.
Her gaze swept the destruction, the blood, the women, Sarisa, Lara, and finally settled with cold satisfaction on Vaelen.
"Well," she said. "This is exactly the sort of disgrace I feared."
Lara's lip curled.
The queen came to a stop several feet away, not deigning to look at Lara first. She addressed Sarisa instead, as if Lara were already beneath consideration.
"Is His Highness seriously injured?"
"No," Sarisa said tightly. "I don't think so. But he's bleeding."
Vaelen, to his credit or perhaps his stupidity, tried to stand. One of the guards helped him.
He swayed, looked miserable, and still somehow managed to look smug for half a second when his eyes flicked toward Lara.
The queen finally turned to her.
"You hit a prince," she said, every syllable precise. "Of course there are consequences."
Lara let out a short, sharp laugh. "That depends on whether you ask why."
"I do not care why." The queen's voice remained calm, which made it worse.
"You struck a member of the royal family in my palace. In a public corridor. In front of witnesses. You embarrassed this house, endangered a political alliance, and confirmed every ugly assumption ever made about your nature."
The chains glinted in the guard's hands.
Lara looked at Sarisa.
Sarisa was looking at her too, but the distance between them had never felt greater.
One guard took another cautious step forward.
Lara's shoulders went rigid. "Don't."
The queen did not even blink. "Restrain her."