It was a few hours after the carriage ride, and Sarisa was still furious enough to feel it in her teeth.
She had returned to her rooms with her cheek burning and her heart full of something so sharp it no longer fit inside ordinary words.
She had dismissed everyone. Maids, guards, attendants, even the poor servant who had only come to ask whether Her Highness wished for tea. No. No tea. No supper. No conversation. No one.
She wanted silence.
Instead she got her own mind.
That was worse.
She lay on top of her bed at first, still in the gown she had worn to the city, staring up at the canopy while the room darkened around her.
The palace at night usually soothed her. The hush of the corridors, the distant murmur of torches, the soft weight of moonlight on stone. Tonight it all felt wrong. Like the whole place was holding its breath and waiting for her to break.
Her mother's hand. Her mother's voice. Would it not be better.
Aliyah's face when she asked if Lara liked the little boy more.
Lara in that small consultation room, tears on her face, voice wrecked and honest and too late all at once.
I fucking love you.
Sarisa turned onto her side and pressed her fist against her mouth.
She had tried, for a month, to be sensible. To endure. To move through each day as if the shape of her life had not been broken open.
To tell herself there was still time to think, to plan, to survive this with dignity. But the carriage ride had burned away the last of that illusion. Her mother would not stop.
She would keep cutting and arranging and deciding until there was nothing left of Sarisa but a title in a dress.
No.
A cold sort of clarity came with that thought.
Sarisa sat up.
The room swayed once as blood rushed too quickly through anger and exhaustion, but she ignored it.
She crossed to the wardrobe, changed into something dark and easier to move in, and then went to the back of the lowest drawer in her dressing table.
The teleportation device lay where she had hidden it weeks ago.
A small thing. Smooth, silver, warm to the touch in a way no ordinary object should be. Elysia had pressed it into her palm in a corridor and whispered, Use it only if you truly need to. Sarisa had never touched it again.
Until now.
She looked down at it and thought, once, very clearly: there will be consequences.
Then she laughed under her breath.
As if there weren't already.
She crossed to the bed, summoned a glamour thin but convincing enough in dim light, and shaped the blankets into the outline of a sleeping body.
It would not hold up to close inspection. But if no one was supposed to disturb her, perhaps that would be enough for an hour. Perhaps for less. She no longer cared.
Her fingers tightened around the device.
A pulse of silver light answered.
The room vanished.
Teleportation always stole one clean breath from the body. Sarisa arrived in darkness and heat and the faint scent of smoke, cedar, and someone she knew as well as her own skin.
Lara's room.
For one beat the chamber was all shadow and moonlight through half-drawn curtains, the bed a darker shape against the wall, the outline of a chair, a discarded shirt over the back of it.
Then Lara moved, half-risen from the edge of the bed, hair loose, face startled.
"Sarisa—"
"Where is Aliyah?"
The question came out too fast, too hard. It cracked through the room before Lara could even fully stand.
Lara blinked, clearly startled by both the question and the fact of Sarisa standing there at all, and then answered at once. "She's having a sleepover with Neris and Kaelith."
The moment the words were out, Sarisa crossed the room and kissed her.
There was nothing gentle in it.
No easing in. No explanation. Just fury and loneliness and a month of missing her crashing together in one reckless movement.
Lara made a startled sound against her mouth, stumbled back half a step, and then Sarisa had both hands on her, kissing her like she meant to erase every hour they had lost.
Lara tasted of warmth and sleep and the last traces of wine. Her hands came up on instinct, catching Sarisa by the waist, and for one dangerous second she kissed her back with just as much hunger.
Sarisa's fingers found the hem of Lara's shirt. She pushed it up, impatient, desperate, and then higher, tugging until fabric strained beneath her hands.
"Hey," Lara managed against her mouth, trying to catch breath and words at once. "Hey—"
Sarisa kissed her harder.
The shirt tore under her grip with a sharp rip.
Lara caught both her wrists.
"Hey." Her voice had gone rough now, but firm. "We are not having angry sex."
Sarisa yanked once against her hold. "I don't care."
"I do."
"Fuck off."
She leaned in again, catching Lara's mouth, biting lightly at her lip this time, one hand slipping free long enough to shove what remained of the torn shirt off her shoulder. Lara swore into the kiss, the sound half frustration, half desire.
Sarisa pressed closer, all heat and sharp edges. "I don't care," she said again against her mouth. "I don't care, I don't care, I don't care—"
Lara kissed her back once, hard enough to make her head spin, then broke away with visible effort and put space between them by the simple, infuriating act of refusing to be moved.
"No, Sarisa." She still had one hand around her wrist, not hurting, just holding. "Calm down first."
Sarisa laughed, furious and on the edge of shaking. "Calm down?"
"Yes."
"No."
She tried to go back to Lara, but Lara caught her by both shoulders this time and held her there. Close enough to feel her breath. Too close for comfort, too far for what Sarisa wanted.
"Look at you," Lara said, voice low and steady in that way that made Sarisa want to scream. "You're angry. You're hurt. You came here to burn something down, not because this is what you want right now."
"This is exactly what I want."
"No." Lara's jaw tightened. "What you want is to stop feeling like you're going to crawl out of your skin."
Sarisa's throat burned.
"Fuck off," she said again, but softer this time, because Lara had seen too much.
Lara's expression changed then, just slightly. Less resistance. More grief.
"I know," she said.
That made everything worse.
Sarisa kissed her again anyway. Furious, desperate, one hand fisting in Lara's hair, the other gripping her shoulder hard enough to feel muscle and warmth and reality under her palm.
Lara answered for three aching seconds before stopping her again, pressing his forehead to hers.
"No, Sarisa. Calm down first."
Sarisa closed her eyes and hated how close tears already were.
Then the door opened.
"I want—" Malvoria's voice stopped dead.