Lara had imagined a hundred different endings to this.
Most of them were violent.
A few were pathetic.
Almost none of them had looked like Sarisa standing in front of her with tears on her face, her hands trembling, her breath unsteady, after hearing the words Lara had been too much of a coward to say for five long years.
I fucking love you.
Now that they were out in the open, the room felt smaller, thinner, as if the walls themselves had drawn back in horror at the mess of them.
Lara stood where she was, every muscle tight, every wound in her body suddenly unimportant next to the raw, unbearable ache in her chest.
Sarisa was crying.
There were tears in her eyes and on her cheeks, and she looked angry about them, which only made Lara's own vision burn harder.
And then, to Lara's private horror, she realized Sarisa was looking at her the same way.
Lara lifted a hand, touched her own face, and found it wet.
"Oh," she said stupidly.
Sarisa laughed once through the tears, a broken little sound that somehow made everything worse. "Oh?"
"I didn't know I was…" Lara swallowed hard. "Right. Great. Fantastic."
For one cracked second, they simply stared at each other, two exhausted idiots standing in the wreckage of every bad decision they had ever made.
Lara had always thought if she cried in front of Sarisa, it would happen under different circumstances. Maybe in grief. Maybe in rage.
Not like this.
Not because Sarisa had heard the truth and had not stepped back from it.
She looked terrible, Lara thought wildly. Bruised, hollow-eyed, thrown half out of the realm she had built half her life around.
A criminal in plain clothes. A fool in love. And still Sarisa was standing there looking at her as though she saw all of it and could not decide whether to kiss her or throttle her.
That, at least, felt familiar.
"I didn't mean to say it like that," Lara said at last, voice rough enough to scrape. "I mean, I meant it. Obviously. I just didn't plan to sound like I was declaring war on your entire bloodline."
Sarisa wiped at one cheek angrily. "You did sort of do that."
"Yeah." Lara gave a helpless little shrug. "Sorry."
Sarisa made a face that should not have been so beautiful while she was crying. "That is not the part you should be apologizing for."
No.
Lara knew exactly which part deserved that.
She looked down once, hard, then back up at Sarisa. "I made your life harder."
It was not a question.
Sarisa did not answer immediately, which was answer enough.
Lara laughed under her breath, bitter and tired. "Gods. Listen to me. I love you, and somehow that came with years of making everything around you worse."
"That's not fair," Sarisa said, but her voice was gentle now, frayed around the edges.
"It is, actually." Lara dragged a hand over her mouth and paced one step away before forcing herself to stop. There was nowhere to go.
"The gossip. The fights. Aliyah having to grow up in this ridiculous half-life because I couldn't decide whether to stay or run. You trying to hold a kingdom together while I was…" She gave a raw, humorless smile. "What was I, exactly? Lurking around your palace making your mother homicidal?"
Sarisa's mouth trembled. "You were raising our daughter with me."
"And falling in love with you without the spine to say it."
"You just said it."
"A bit fucking late, don't you think?"
The words dropped between them, and this time neither of them could pretend otherwise.
Sarisa looked away first, toward the narrow window, toward the last strip of fading light. "It might be a bit too late," she said softly. "Fuck, Lara, you've been exiled."
There it was. The shape of reality, ugly and impossible to ignore.
Exiled.
The word had sat inside Lara all hearing, heavy and poisonous, but hearing it in Sarisa's voice did something different. It made the loss concrete.
Borders. Distance. Permission asked and denied. Aliyah in one realm. Lara in another. Sarisa here, trapped inside duty and wedding silks and a mother who thought love was a flaw to be corrected.
Lara closed her eyes for one second too long. "I know."
Sarisa let out a shaky breath. "And there's the boy."
That part still had no shape in her head, only shock and static and the sick certainty that she did not know her own past as well as she had believed. She hated that it existed between them now, another uncertainty, another crack running under their feet.
"I don't know what that is," Lara said. "I know that's a pathetic answer, but it's the only one I have right now."
Sarisa nodded once. "I know."
It should have comforted her. It didn't. Not enough.
Lara looked at her and saw every sleepless night of the last week in the set of her shoulders. The weight of the court on her. The weight of Aliyah.
The wedding, still hanging over them like a blade. And now this too. A child. A paternity test. A scandal wide enough to swallow everything else.
Something in Lara twisted into a shape that looked suspiciously like surrender.
"Maybe I should let you go," she said.
Sarisa went still.
Lara laughed once, low and miserable. "Don't look at me like that. I know how it sounds."
"It sounds stupid."
"Yeah." Lara nodded. "I'm stupid. You know that already."
"Lara—"
"No, listen." Lara stepped closer, because if she was going to say this she wanted to say it looking at her.
"Maybe I was too late. Maybe I should've said it when we were younger and dumber and before your mother started planning your whole life around people like Vaelen. Maybe I should have looked at you five years ago and told you I was already gone for you instead of making you drag it out of me one disaster at a time."
Sarisa's eyes filled again.
Lara kept going because stopping now would kill her.
"And maybe now you need someone safe. Someone easy. Someone who doesn't come with exile orders and broken walls and children appearing out of nowhere." Her mouth twisted. "Maybe what I love about you is exactly why I should stop making your life impossible."
Sarisa stared at her for one long, wounded second. Then she crossed the space between them and hit her in the chest.
Not hard.
Just enough to make Lara shut up.
"You idiot," Sarisa whispered.
Lara looked down at her hand still fisted in her shirt. "Probably."
"You do not get to decide that for me."
Lara's throat tightened. "Sarisa—"
"No." Sarisa's chin lifted, and there was the future queen again, burning right through the tears.
"No, you do not get to tell me who is safe enough or easy enough or good enough for me. I am the one who has to live inside this life. I am the one who has to stand there while they hand pieces of me away and call it duty. If I choose badly, then let me choose badly."
Lara felt the words like heat against cold skin.
"You make me furious," Sarisa said, voice shaking now. "You make everything harder. You vanish when things are difficult and then come back looking at me like I hung the moon and expect that not to ruin me. You are selfish and reckless and impossible to explain to anyone who has not seen you when you are trying so hard to care that it makes you cruel with it but I wouldn't want it any other way."
Lara actually smiled, faint and wrecked. "That sounded almost complimentary."
Sarisa's mouth trembled. "Shut up."
"Yes, Your Highness."
Sarisa gave a watery, furious laugh and then kissed her.
There was no hesitation in it this time.
No pause for doubt. No room for courts or queens or children or exiles. Just Sarisa's hands gripping Lara's face like she was trying to keep it there, and Sarisa's mouth on hers, warm and desperate and grieving all at once.
Lara kissed her back with everything she had left.
It was not a graceful kiss. They were both crying, both exhausted, both too angry and hurt to make it pretty.
Lara tasted salt and breath and the last shred of the world she wanted. Her hands slid around Sarisa's waist and held on too tight, as if she could stop the next hour from happening by force alone.
Sarisa kissed like a woman standing at the edge of loss and refusing to go quietly.
Lara answered like a fool who had realized far too late that this was what home had always been.
When they broke apart, it was only because breathing had become impossible.
Sarisa pressed her forehead to Lara's mouth, then her cheek, then rested there, shaking.
Neither of them spoke for a while.
There was nothing left that words could fix.
Eventually Lara said, very softly, "I'm sorry."
Sarisa's fingers curled harder into the fabric at Lara's side. "I know."
"For all of it."
"I know."
Lara closed her eyes. "I wish I had said it sooner."
"Me too."
That hurt in a clean, awful way.
A knock sounded at the door.
Neither of them moved.
Another knock, sharper this time.
Then the door opened without waiting for permission, and Malvoria stepped inside.
She took in the scene at a glance, Sarisa too close, Lara's hands still on her waist, both of them obviously wrecked. For the briefest second, something like pity crossed her face. Then it was gone, replaced by practical urgency.
"Lara," she said, voice rougher than usual, "let's go. We are going back to my castle."