The guard who had come with Malvoria did not speak to Lara at all.
He spoke only to Sarisa, with the strained politeness of a man who knew he had been given an ugly task and would rather be anywhere else. He bowed, kept his eyes carefully lowered, and said that Her Highness was expected back in the upper wing immediately.
Sarisa did not move at first.
She stood close enough to Lara that the warmth of her was still there, still real, still impossible to bear now that it had to be given up again.
Her face had gone quiet in that terrible way Lara hated, all the storm forced behind her eyes because there were witnesses and rank and mothers and guards and duties pressing in on every side.
Malvoria, for once, did not rush her. She just stood near the door with her arms crossed, jaw tight, looking every inch the Demon Queen who had already decided exactly how many people she would kill if anyone tried to stop her from taking her sister home.
Sarisa's fingers slipped from Lara's waist one by one.
That hurt more than the chains had.
"I'll find a way," Sarisa said softly, and even with the guard in the room and the whole palace waiting outside that still sounded like a vow.
Lara wanted to answer with something strong. Something useful. Something that did not sound like the inside of her chest had been hollowed out.
Instead, what came out was rough and embarrassingly human. "Don't do anything stupid."
Sarisa gave her the ghost of a smile, wet with tears and anger and too much love. "That is an unreasonable request."
"Yeah," Lara said, trying and failing to smile back. "I know."
The guard shifted uneasily.
Sarisa drew in one shaky breath, then another, and made herself step away. She did not look at Malvoria as she passed. She looked only at Lara, as if memorizing her, as if distance could be defeated by sheer force of attention.
Then she was gone.
The door closed behind her.
For a moment the room was very quiet.
Too quiet.
Too empty.
Lara stood where Sarisa had left her and stared at the wood grain of the door as if she could still see through it, still catch one last glimpse of silver hair or moon-pale hands or the stubborn line of Sarisa's shoulders.
Malvoria let the silence sit for exactly three seconds before she said, with immense satisfaction, "Are you really ugly crying?"
Lara turned on her so fast it should have been dramatic, but unfortunately her face was still wet and her nose probably looked ridiculous, which ruined the effect.
"Shut up."
Malvoria took one look at her and lost the battle not to laugh. It came out as a strangled sound somewhere between a cough and a cackle. "Gods, you are. This is incredible. Horrifying, but incredible."
"I mean it," Lara snapped, wiping viciously at her face. "Shut. Up."
"Oh, I will. In a minute." Malvoria pushed away from the door and strolled farther into the room, hands on hips, eyes sparkling with the most offensive blend of sympathy and delight.
"I just didn't think I'd live long enough to see it. Lara Valthorne, terror of the north, breaker of bones, scourge of training grounds, reduced to…" She waved both hands. "This."
Lara glared at her with all the force she had left. It would have been more convincing if her mouth had not trembled at the exact wrong moment.
Malvoria's expression softened a fraction. "Okay. Maybe I'm mostly joking."
"You're a bad person."
"That has never been in question."
Before Lara could think of a better insult, the door opened again.
Veylira entered first.
Raveth came right behind her.
The mood in the room changed at once, not because either of them said anything immediately, but because mothers carried a different kind of gravity when they walked into a room where one of their children was breaking.
Veylira took in Lara's face in a single glance and all the carefully controlled elegance in her posture vanished.
"Oh, my baby," she said, and crossed the room at once.
Lara had just enough time to think absolutely not before Veylira reached her, cupped the back of her head, and dragged her into a hug so fierce it was practically an attack.
"My baby just had her first heartbreak," Veylira said into Lara's hair, voice thick with outrage and something dangerously close to tears of her own. "Don't worry. We have ice cream at home."
That should not have been the thing that broke her.
The dungeon, the court, the child, the exile, Sarisa walking out that door, all of it apparently could be endured.
But one sentence from Veylira, absurd and soft and maternal in a way Lara had never quite learned how to handle, and suddenly Lara was crying so hard she had to grab the front of Veylira's gown like she was drowning.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Malvoria muttered, though her own voice had gone suspiciously gentle. "Now she's doing the full thing."
Raveth snorted. "You mocked her too early. Rookie mistake."
Lara laughed through the tears, which only made the whole thing worse. It came out broken and ugly and humiliating.
She wanted to stop. Wanted to pull herself together and become hard again, sharp again, like the version of herself that knew how to survive.
Instead she stood there in her mother's arms and cried like someone had finally driven a blade all the way through the armor.
Veylira held her without flinching. One hand moved slowly through Lara's hair. "Let it out," she murmured. "You've been acting like you were made of stone for years. It was never true."
Lara shook her head against her shoulder. "I fucked everything up."
Raveth, leaning against the table with her arms folded, let out a low breath. "That is unfortunately not specific enough."
Lara made a miserable sound.
Veylira pulled back just enough to look at her properly, hands framing her face now. "Talk."
Lara wanted to say there was nothing to tell. That it had all happened too fast. That no one could have untangled this mess. But that was cowardice too, and she was suddenly very tired of cowardice.
So she said the thing that had been chewing through her ribs for hours.
"I only made her life worse."
The room went still.
Lara dragged in a shaky breath and wiped at her face again, but it was useless.
"Since the beginning. Since the moment I got dragged into her life. Every time things got complicated, I made them harder. Every time she needed stability, I brought chaos. I gave her Aliyah, which should have been beautiful and somehow still became another thing she had to defend. Her mother hates her because of me. The court hates her because of me. She has a wedding in three months and I still couldn't stop myself from…" She swallowed hard. "From wanting everything I had no right to want."
Veylira's gaze sharpened. "You think Sarisa's life was peaceful before you?"
Lara let out a rough laugh. "No. But I sure as hell didn't help."
Raveth pushed off the table. "You loved her badly. That's not the same as ruining her."
Lara looked at her. "Isn't it?"
"No," Raveth said flatly. "Ruining someone means taking from them. Breaking them down until there's less of them left. That girl has more fire in her now than she did five years ago, and half of that is because she had to learn how to stand up to you, around you, with you." Her mouth twitched. "Annoying as it is to admit."
Malvoria nodded. "She's right. You made things messy, sure. But Sarisa was already trapped. All you did was give her something worth wanting outside the cage."
That hurt too, in a different way.
Lara laughed wetly and looked down at her hands. "And now I'm exiled and apparently maybe have a three-year-old I've never seen before."
"That part," Malvoria said, "is still insane, for the record."
"Thank you," Lara muttered.
"No, really. We're not done with that. Not even close." Malvoria came closer, leaning one hip against the table. "I don't like it. The timing's wrong. The woman's wrong. The whole thing smells rotten."
Raveth nodded once. "Same."
Veylira's thumb brushed the dampness from Lara's cheekbone. "And even if the child is yours, that does not make this acceptable. He was used. You were used. We will deal with it."
Lara closed her eyes. She wanted to believe that. She wanted to believe there was still something left to fight for here besides dignity and the right not to be remembered as a villain in someone else's story.
But Sarisa's face kept rising in her mind. Sarisa crying. Sarisa saying it might be too late. Sarisa walking away because they had no choice.
"I love her," Lara said, quieter now, almost to herself.
Veylira's face softened. "I know."
"I know," Malvoria echoed, with far less restraint. "The entire palace knows. Half the city probably knows. Aliyah definitely knows."
Lara huffed a laugh that turned into another shaky breath. "Great."
Raveth stepped closer and clapped one broad hand onto Lara's shoulder. "For what it's worth, I still think you should have told her sooner."
"That is not worth much right now."
"No, but I enjoy being right."
Malvoria rolled her eyes. "Can we save the emotional autopsy for later? I would like to get my sister out of enemy territory before the queen changes her mind and has us all drugged."
That, finally, got Veylira to let Lara go.
She did not release her completely. One hand lingered at Lara's jaw for another second, steadying. "Come home," she said. "Break down there. We have better alcohol."
"And ice cream," Malvoria added, deadly serious.
Raveth snorted. "This family solves everything with either violence or sugar."
"Correct," Malvoria said. "Now move."
Lara stood in the middle of the room for one more breath, trying to gather all the broken pieces of herself into something that could walk. She still felt raw. Hollowed.
But there were hands waiting if she fell, and apparently several forms of dairy-based consolation prepared at home.
It should not have helped.
It did.
So she scrubbed the last of the tears from her face, straightened as much as heartbreak allowed, and nodded once.
"All right," she said, voice wrecked but steady enough. "Let's go."