Lara stayed on the floor.
She just sat there on the cool stone with one knee bent, one arm resting loosely across it, and looked at Neris as though the room belonged to him and she was only borrowing a corner.
For a second, it almost worked.
Then she shifted forward the smallest amount, intending only to reach the overturned chair and set it upright, and Neris's whole body locked.
"Get away from me!"
The words cracked out of him sharp and high with panic. Yellow fire burst at once over his small hands, just pure fear taking shape in the only language his body had apparently been taught to trust.
The flames licked up his fingers and around his wrists, brighter this time than in the court, a wild, flickering gold that looked too large on someone so little.
Lara moved on instinct.
Toward the fire.
She held out her own hand, palm open, and drew the magic away from him the way one might coax a frightened animal out of a corner. Yellow flame answered yellow flame.
It leapt to her fingers, rolled over her skin, and then died with a hiss as she closed her fist around it and snuffed it out.
The room went quiet again.
Neris stared at her.
Lara exhaled slowly and said, very carefully, "Calm down."
His lower lip tremble. She could see him hating it, fighting it, trying to shove all that fear back down where it had clearly been living a long time.
"Adults are liars," he said suddenly, voice small and vicious all at once. "All you do is lie."
Lara sat with that for a second.
There were a hundred things she could have said. No, not all adults. Not me.
Instead she said, "Yeah. That's true."
Neris blinked.
The answer had not gone where he expected it to.
Lara rubbed her palms slowly against her trousers, more to keep from doing anything stupid than because she needed to.
"Adults lie all the time. Sometimes because they're selfish. Sometimes because they're cowards. Sometimes because they think they're helping when they're actually making everything worse."
He looked at her with deep suspicion.
Lara gave him the tiniest shrug. "I'm not saying I'm some magical exception. I'm saying I'm a bit different from the people who scared you." She tilted her head. "See? I didn't hurt you. I'm not going to."
He did not answer. But he also did not reignite the fire.
That was something.
Lara let the silence stretch a little, then looked pointedly at the half-burned folded clothes on the chair. "All right. Start over. What kind of clothes do you want? We'll go get them."
Neris frowned. "What?"
"You heard me." Lara leaned back on one hand, making herself look almost lazy. "The servant brought those. You hated them. Fine. So tell me what you want instead."
He looked openly wrong-footed now. "You can't."
"Why not?"
"Because…" He seemed to search for the rule. "Because grown-ups pick."
"Terrible system," Lara said. "Would not recommend."
Something almost like confusion crossed his face again.
Lara pressed while the opening was there. "So. What do you like? Soft things? Dark colors? No collars? Boots? No boots? We can probably bully a servant into finding anything."
At the word bully, his mouth twitched. It wasn't a smile. More like his face had almost forgotten how and was trying to remember.
He folded his arms, defensive. "I don't need anything."
"That sounds fake."
"It's not fake."
"It is absolutely fake." Lara lifted one brow. "You're standing in burned clothes in a room full of broken dishes pretending you don't need anything. I admire the performance, but I'm not buying tickets."
Neris's chin jutted out. "I'm not hungry either."
Lara glanced at the broken tray. Bread mashed into the carpet. Fruit split open on the floor. Something sweet dripping down the leg of a table.
"You are so obviously hungry it's offensive," she said.
"I'm not."
"You're small enough that if you lie much more, you'll vanish entirely."
That got her a real reaction: a glare so fierce it would have been impressive on Raveth, let alone a three-year-old.
"I won't vanish," he snapped.
"No," Lara agreed, and softened her voice a fraction. "No, I don't think you will."
He looked away first.
Lara let him.
She knew something about children and pride. Not much, but enough to know they hated being seen too clearly. Enough to know hunger could become a kind of armor if no one had ever reliably answered it.
"Look," she said after a moment. "I can sit here all day while you insist you don't need food or clothes or anything else. But eventually your stomach's going to betray you, and then we'll both feel stupid."
He pressed his lips together so hard they nearly disappeared.
Lara did not push. She looked around instead, taking in the room. Someone had decorated it with careful taste, all warm colors and carved furniture and thick carpets soft enough for children to play on.
She thought of Aliyah at that age. Angry at the world one minute, asleep face-down in frosting the next.
Aliyah had cried loudly, dramatically, with every expectation that someone would come fix it. Neris, by contrast, looked like the kind of child who had learned not to cry until there was absolutely nowhere left to hide it.
That thought made Lara's chest feel strange.
"All right," she said lightly. "New deal. I'll go get food. You don't have to eat it. It can sit there looking decorative while you continue being stubborn."
His eyes flicked back to her. "You'd do that?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Lara opened her mouth and then closed it again.
Because apparently you're mine in some terrible, complicated way.
Because no child should look this thin and this scared.
Because you asked me if I was going to hit you, and I have not known peace since.
She settled on, "Because I want lunch, and it seems rude to eat in front of you."
That, finally, made him snort.
It was tiny. Involuntary. It vanished almost at once, but Lara heard it and filed the sound away like treasure.
"There," she said. "I knew there was a person in there."
His face closed again immediately. "I'm still not hungry."
"Mm-hmm."
"And I don't want weird clothes."
"Excellent. We're making progress. What kind of clothes aren't weird?"
He hesitated.
Then, very quietly: "No lace."
Lara stared at him.
Then she laughed.
Not meanly. Not because it was ridiculous, though it was a little. Just because the sheer seriousness of it, the fierce little dignity in the request, hit her right where her humor lived.
"No lace," she said solemnly. "Done. I swear on all things unholy and badly made."
Neris's eyes narrowed. "Don't swear weird things."
"Fine. I swear on…" Lara glanced around and picked the first absurdity she could think of. "Malvoria's pride."
He blinked. "What's that?"
"Exactly." Lara pushed herself up slowly, giving him plenty of time to object. When he didn't, she crossed to the bell pull by the wall and gave it one hard tug. "No lace. Clothes that don't itch. Food that isn't terrifying. Anything else?"
He said nothing.
Then, almost mutinously, "No fish."
Lara turned and put a hand over her heart. "Kid, you just became my favorite person in this castle."
The words slipped out before she could stop them.
Neris went very still.
Lara did too.
For one strange, fragile second they simply looked at each other.
Then his face crumpled.
It happened so fast Lara barely had time to register the warning signs. The stubborn mouth shook. His eyes went wet and huge and furious all at once. He looked like he was trying with every ounce of will in his tiny body not to let it happen.
And then he cried.
Not politely. Not delicately. Not even loudly at first. Just one broken little sound ripped out of him as if he had held too much in for too long and something finally snapped.
"Oh, shit," Lara said instantly, and then winced. "Sorry. Bad word."
Neris cried harder.
He swiped furiously at his face with both fists like that might erase it. It only made everything messier. H
e looked so angry with himself for breaking that Lara's heart did something painful and unfamiliar in her chest.
Lara took one cautious step forward. "Hey."
He shook his head.
Another step. "Hey, no, come on."
He backed away and bumped into the chair.
Lara stopped at once, hands lifted. "Okay. Fine. Not closer. Got it." She lowered herself back down into a crouch, trying to look like the least threatening large demon woman in existence. "You can cry. I won't tell anyone."
That did not help.
He burst properly then, full-body sobbing now, shoulders shaking, every bit of fear and rage and confusion pouring out at once.
Lara sat there feeling utterly useless and also fiercely, murderously angry at whoever had made this child think tears were something shameful to fight like an enemy.
The servant knocked timidly then, clearly summoned by the bell, and froze at the sight of the room.
Lara did not turn.
"Get food," she said. "Warm. No fish. And clothes with no lace."
A pause.
"Yes, my lady."
The door shut again.
Lara looked back at Neris, still crying hard, still trying and failing to stop.
Very gently, she said, "All right. You can hate me later. For now just… cry, I guess." She grimaced. "Gods, I'm bad at this."