The dining room felt too large for only three places set.
That was Sarisa's first thought when she stepped inside with Aliyah's hand in hers.
Three settings. Three goblets. Three perfectly folded napkins. The crystal lights overhead had been lowered to a warm glow, but there was nothing warm in the room.
Aliyah, oblivious to all of that, tugged Sarisa forward and immediately climbed into the chair at her right.
"I'm hungry," she announced to the nearest servant with the dignity of a conquering warlord. "Very hungry. Bring the fast food."
The maid, who was perhaps too tired to laugh properly, hid a smile behind her hand and hurried off.
Sarisa sat beside her daughter and looked at the empty chairs across from them.
One for the queen.
One for Vaelen.
Her mouth thinned.
Good. Let them be late.
Aliyah had no such bitterness. She drummed her fingers on the table and swung her feet impatiently until the first course arrived.
The moment the bowls were placed in front of them, she attacked her soup with alarming enthusiasm, then moved on to bread, then fruit, then half of the honey-glazed vegetables intended for Sarisa's plate as though theft were a sacred childhood right.
Sarisa barely touched her own meal. Her fork moved because habit demanded it, but the anger still lodged under her ribs made every bite taste dull. Aliyah, meanwhile, ate as if she had a personal grudge against dinner and intended to win.
"Mama," she said around a mouthful of bread, "if Aunt Malvoria lived here, would she punch Grandma?"
Sarisa nearly inhaled water. "Aliyah."
"What? I'm just asking."
"You are asking a deeply inappropriate question."
Aliyah considered that, then shrugged. "Okay. Would she want to?"
Sarisa set down her cup. "Yes."
That seemed to satisfy her.
By the time the candles had burned another inch, Aliyah had finished everything placed before her, stolen one of Sarisa's pears, and begun constructing a tiny tower from butter dishes and rolled napkins. The queen and Vaelen still had not arrived.
That, too, felt deliberate.
Of course it did. Her mother had a talent for turning lateness into power, for making people wait until the waiting itself felt like proof of inferiority.
Sarisa knew the game. She had grown up inside it. Normally she would have held still and let it pass over her like bad weather.
Tonight she was too fucking angry.
The room felt charged, brittle. The servants sensed it too. They moved more quietly than usual, eyes lowered, as if one wrong glance might earn them collateral damage.
Aliyah yawned, then immediately denied it by yawning a second time.
Sarisa looked down at her and softened despite herself. Her daughter's hair had come half loose, curling around her face. Her eyes were still bright, but her little body had begun to slump in that stubborn pre-sleep way children did when they wanted to keep fighting the day.
"Enough," Sarisa said gently. "You're exhausted."
"I'm not."
"You just yawned twice."
"That was on purpose."
Sarisa almost smiled. "Of course it was."
Aliyah leaned against her shoulder. "I want to wait for Lara."
The words landed exactly where everything hurt.
Sarisa pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "I know."
A maid hovered nearby, waiting for a signal.
Sarisa looked up at her. "Take Aliyah to bed, please. I'll come later."
Aliyah made a noise of protest, but it dissolved into another yawn before it could become an actual argument. The maid approached carefully, and Aliyah let herself be lifted after only minimal dramatics.
"Don't stay too long," Aliyah mumbled, already heavy with sleep. "And if Grandma is mean, bite her."
The maid choked.
Sarisa, to her eternal shame, found herself considering it.
"I'll keep it in mind," she said.
Aliyah nodded solemnly, then laid her cheek on the maid's shoulder and was carried from the room still clutching a dinner roll like loot from a successful campaign.
The door closed behind them.
Silence rushed in at once.
Sarisa sat very still in the now half-empty room, one hand resting beside her untouched plate.
The absence of Aliyah's chatter made the room feel colder. Cleaner. More dangerous. She could almost hear her own pulse in the quiet.
Then, finally, footsteps.
Measured. Deliberate. Two sets.
The doors opened.
The queen entered first, as if she had orchestrated even the air around her.
Vaelen followed a pace behind, his face still marked from Lara's punch despite what looked like careful attempts to soften the damage.
The bruising suited him poorly. It made him look fragile in a way that irritated Sarisa on sight.
The queen took one look at the table, then at the empty chair where Aliyah had been, and said, with mild displeasure, "Oh. You didn't wait for us."
Sarisa turned her head slowly.
"No," she said. "I didn't."
The queen's brows rose very slightly, likely expecting apology to follow.
It did not.
Sarisa folded her napkin with careful precision and laid it beside her plate. "But then," she added, her voice cool enough to frost glass, "you didn't wait for me to get Lara banned."
The room went dead still.
Vaelen froze halfway to his chair.
The queen's expression did not crack, but something behind her eyes hardened at once. "Mind your tone."
Sarisa laughed, short and ugly.
"My tone?" She stood, the chair scraping back over the floor.
"You drugged me, chained my bodyguard, staged a court hearing, exiled her from the realm, and dragged a child into it for spectacle. And you want to talk about my tone?"
A servant at the far wall visibly forgot how to breathe.
The queen moved to her seat with maddening calm, as though this were a temporary inconvenience rather than the splintering of what remained between mother and daughter.
"Sit down, Sarisa."
"No."
Vaelen finally found his voice. "Sarisa, please. This isn't helping."
She turned on him so fast that even he stepped back. "You don't get to 'please' me tonight."
His face tightened. "I came here because I thought—"
"You thought what?" Sarisa cut in. "That bruises and soft words would make you look noble? That sitting at this table would somehow wash what happened clean?"
His jaw flexed. "I was the one attacked."
"And you are enjoying every second of being the injured prince."
That hit. Good.
The queen set down her gloves one finger at a time. "Enough. I will not have hysteria at my table."
Sarisa looked at her and, for perhaps the first time in her life, allowed herself to feel the full, unsoftened shape of her anger toward the woman who had raised her.
"Hysteria?" she repeated softly. "No. Don't flatter yourself. This is clarity."
The queen's eyes narrowed. "Everything I have done, I have done for you."
There it was. The old lie. Polished. Practiced. Poisonous.
"For me?" Sarisa's voice sharpened. "You banished the mother of my child for me?"
"I protected your future."
"You protected your image."
The queen's hand flattened against the table. "Do not mistake sentiment for truth. Lara is reckless. Dangerous. Unstable. Today proved that for all to see."
"No," Sarisa said. "Today proved what you are willing to do when something threatens your control."
Vaelen tried again, too earnest by half. "Sarisa, your mother is only trying to preserve the realm."
She turned to him and smiled without warmth. "And you're only trying to preserve your place in it."
His face flushed. "That's unfair."
"No," Sarisa said. "What's unfair is watching a woman you claim to respect be torn apart in public and saying nothing because the result benefits you."
The words landed. She saw them land. Vaelen's mouth opened, then closed.
Good. Let him feel speechless for once.
The queen rose then, no longer willing to pretend this was a family dinner and not a battlefield. "You will regret speaking to me like this."
Sarisa took one step forward.
"Maybe," she said. "But not tonight."
Her mother looked at her as if seeing someone she had not expected to exist. Not the obedient daughter.
Not the future queen molded by pressure and polished by duty. Something rougher. Colder. A woman whose love had finally become more frightening than her fear.
And for one wild, savage moment, Sarisa almost pitied her.
Almost.
Then the moment passed, and the room was still only a dining room, only a palace, only a cage lined in silver.
Sarisa looked from her mother to Vaelen and felt tired all the way down to her bones.
"I hope the two of you enjoy dinner," she said.
Then, before either of them could speak again, she turned and walked out.