Sarisa sat alone in her office and stared at a page without seeing a single word.
The afternoon light spilled across the desk in pale strips, turning the neat stacks of reports and invitations into something almost beautiful. Almost. Nothing in this room was beautiful anymore. Not the silver inkstand. Not the velvet chairs. Not the carved shelves.
Not even the scent of jasmine drifting in from the half-open window. It all felt stale now, as if the air itself had grown tired of pretending this palace was a home and not a cage lined with polished stone.
One month.
Only one month had passed, and yet it felt like years had been shoved down her throat one after another until she could no longer tell where one miserable day ended and the next began.
One month of wedding fabric dragged across her skin.
One month of her mother speaking of guest lists, alliances, music, flowers, jewels, vows, and the thousand mechanical details of a ceremony Sarisa no longer had the strength to hate properly because the hatred had become part of her blood.
One month of Vaelen trying, every single day, to become someone she could not refuse.
He had been patient. Kind. Deliberate. He never pushed hard enough to be cruel, which somehow made it worse.
A hand at her elbow when they walked through the gardens. A quiet question about whether she had slept well. Small gifts left where she would find them. Tea in the afternoon.
A book he thought she might enjoy. His closeness had begun to feel less like affection and more like weather: constant, unavoidable, wearing away stone little by little.
And the worst part, the part Sarisa could barely admit to herself, was that it worked a little.
Not because she wanted him.
Never that.
But because loneliness made traitors of people.
Because there were evenings when Aliyah had finally fallen asleep, one hand tucked beneath her cheek, and the room would go so quiet that Sarisa thought she might stop breathing in it.
Because she would sit there on the edge of the bed with the moonlight on the floor and realize there was no one to look at her and know exactly what kind of hell she had walked through that day. No one to call her a stubborn menace.
No one to laugh at the absurdity of courtly misery. No one to lean over and steal the bitterness out of her mouth with a kiss that felt like defiance.
On those nights, when Aliyah slept and the palace hushed itself into hypocrisy, Sarisa cried.
She had not meant to. The first time it happened, she had been furious with herself. The second time, she had bitten her own wrist to keep the sound in.
After that, she stopped trying to pretend it was some singular weakness. It was loneliness. It was grief. It was the shape of Lara missing from the world around her.
Now Aliyah was not even here.
The thought was another small cut in a body already flayed raw. Her daughter was at Malvoria's castle, where she had begged to go, at least there, Aliyah laughed again.
At least there she had Lara. Kaelith. Noise. Disorder. Love not dressed in silk and obligation.
Sarisa looked down at the document in front of her.
It was a seating proposal for the western delegation.
She almost laughed.
Her fingers loosened, and the page slid quietly back onto the desk. She leaned into the chair instead, closing her eyes for a moment and letting the memories she had been fighting all day finally come.
This office.
Gods.
This office remembered too much.
The desk at which she sat now, trying and failing to be a future queen, was the same desk Lara had sat behind while pretending to read reports.
The same desk where Sarisa had gone around the side, pulse too fast, mouth already hot with daring, and dropped to her knees because she had not wanted to wait.
It still made her stomach twist, thinking of it.
The room had smelled of paper and ink and Lara's skin warmed by the late afternoon sun.
Lara had looked infuriatingly broad in that chair, sleeves rolled up, pretending she could still think straight while Sarisa unfastened her belt with fingers that were a little too eager to qualify as dignified.
Even now, seated in the same place, Sarisa could remember the exact way Lara had looked at her afterward. Wrecked. Smug. Adoring. As if Sarisa had somehow become the most dangerous and precious thing in the room.
Her throat tightened.
It would have been easier if the memory were only lust.
It was not.
It was tenderness in the middle of recklessness. It was hunger threaded through trust. It was Lara's hand settling at the small of her back as if the whole world began and ended there.
Sarisa opened her eyes again too quickly and pushed back from the desk.
The room suddenly felt smaller, as though the very walls were laughing at her.
"Pathetic," she muttered to herself.
She went to the window and stood there, arms folded, staring out over the palace gardens. Below, the afternoon moved on without mercy.
Maids crossed the paths with baskets over their arms. A pair of junior guards changed posts. Somewhere beyond the rose hedges she could hear faint voices from the lower courtyard, distant and harmless and part of a life she no longer felt she was fully living.
She wondered what Lara was doing now.
It was a dangerous habit, wondering.
Was she with Aliyah? With the little boy? Was she eating properly? Sleeping? Brooding in doorways with that ruined expression she got when she was trying to act like nothing mattered and failing so badly it almost became charming?
Did she still think of this room too, or had the pain of the last month burned all those older memories to ash?
Sarisa pressed two fingers to her lips, furious with herself for how quickly they could still remember.
The door opened without warning.
She turned sharply, every thought scattering at once.
Her mother stood in the doorway, immaculate as ever, the silver of her gown severe enough to look ceremonial even in daylight.
There was no apology in her entrance, no pause to ask whether Sarisa wished to be disturbed. Of course not. The queen entered every room as though its purpose had always been to receive her.
For one ugly second, Sarisa hated her so much she thought it might show on her face.
If it did, the queen ignored it.
"Are you coming?" she asked, as if they had been discussing something minor and not dragging Sarisa by the throat toward a life she did not want. "We have to choose the rings for the wedding."