Morning arrived slowly, like it was reluctant to disturb them.
Lara woke to warmth, softness, and the kind of stillness that only existed after a long night and too little sleep. For a few dazed seconds, she did not move.
She simply lay there with one arm around Sarisa, feeling the bare weight of her against her body, the tangled sheets low around their hips, the quiet rise and fall of Sarisa's breathing against her chest.
It took Lara a moment to remember where they were.
Malvoria's castle. Her room. Her bed. The room still smelled faintly of candlewax, warm skin, and the last traces of the magic condoms Malvoria and Elysia treated like a public service.
The curtains had not been fully closed, so morning light poured through in soft silver-gold bands, cutting across the dark floor and the edge of the blankets.
Sarisa was still asleep.
That alone felt like a miracle.
Usually Sarisa slept like someone negotiating with the world, never quite surrendering to it fully, always poised half a step from waking.
But now she was heavy with real rest, one leg tangled with Lara's, one hand spread over Lara's waist as if even in sleep she refused to let distance exist between them.
Lara looked at her for a long time.
She let herself have that.
The loose spill of silver hair across the pillow and over Lara's shoulder. The faint crease at the corner of Sarisa's mouth from where she'd pressed into the bedding.
The softness in her face when she wasn't bracing herself against grief, duty, anger, or the weight of everyone else's expectations. Like this, Sarisa looked younger. Not childish, never that. Just unarmored. Tender in a way the court had no right to ever see.
Lara lifted a hand and brushed a strand of hair away from Sarisa's cheek with careful fingers.
Then, because she could and because the urge was too strong to resist, she bent and pressed a kiss to the top of Sarisa's head.
Sarisa made a sleepy sound at once and moved closer, which nearly made Lara laugh. Her whole body shifted in slow, warm instinct.
One arm tightened around Lara's middle, and then Sarisa burrowed farther in, sliding down just enough to press her face into the side of Lara's neck as if that were the most natural place in the world to wake.
Lara's breath caught.
Gods.
Morning was dangerous too, apparently.
Sarisa's lips brushed the skin of her throat in the half-asleep way of someone not fully aware of what she was doing and yet somehow still devastatingly precise.
She nuzzled there once, softer than a kiss but warm enough to make Lara's pulse kick a little harder.
Then Sarisa stirred properly.
There was that slow moment where sleep peeled away from her in layers. Her breathing changed. Her fingers flexed once against Lara's side.
Her lashes fluttered and then lifted. Her eyes, still blurred with sleep, found the light beyond the bed and widened a little.
"Oh," she murmured, voice wrecked. "It's already morning."
Lara smiled and kept one hand low on Sarisa's bare back, thumb moving in lazy circles there. "Looks that way."
Sarisa blinked once, as though trying to catch up to time itself, and then frowned very slightly. "When did we even fall asleep?"
That did it.
Lara let out a low laugh, rough with sleep and satisfaction both. "You're asking me?"
Sarisa tilted her head just enough to look up at her, one brow lifting despite the fact that she still looked gloriously ruined. "Yes. I am."
Lara leaned down until her mouth hovered close to Sarisa's ear. "Funny. You were the one who kept telling me to continue."
The flush that rose over Sarisa's throat and cheeks was immediate and beautiful.
Lara felt unbearably fond of her.
Sarisa narrowed her eyes, but there was no real threat in it. "You are insufferable in the morning."
"I'm delightful in the morning."
"You're smug."
"You say that like I didn't earn it."
Sarisa actually huffed out a laugh at that and, instead of answering with words, bit lightly at the side of Lara's neck.
Lara jerked a little. "Oh, so violence."
"Correct," Sarisa murmured against her skin, not sounding sorry at all.
The sheets shifted with the small movement of them.
Beneath the blanket, they were still tangled bare from the night before, all warm skin and sleepy limbs and the very dangerous reminder that there was nothing at all between Lara's hand and the curve of Sarisa's waist except her own rapidly thinning self-control.
She slid her hand a little lower before she could stop herself.
Sarisa looked up at once, eyes darkening in a way that had nothing to do with sleep now.
"No," Lara said immediately, because she knew that look and exactly where it led. "Do not start."
Sarisa's mouth curved. "Start?"
"You know what I mean."
"I don't know," Sarisa said, voice soft and wicked in equal measure. "Maybe I need clarification."
Lara groaned and dropped her head back against the pillow. "You are a menace."
"Yes," Sarisa said. "But I'm your menace."
That shut Lara up for a second.
Because there it was again, that impossible thing. The sweetness hidden inside the heat. The way Sarisa could make her feel wrecked and wanted and absurdly hopeful all in one breath.
Lara turned her head back toward her and touched her face, thumb brushing over the line of her cheek. There was no mark there now from the slap.
The anger remained, yes, and the ache of everything waiting outside this room, but the bruise itself was gone. Lara found herself grateful for that in a quiet, fierce way.
Sarisa's eyes softened as if she knew what Lara was thinking.
Neither of them said the queen's name.
Instead Sarisa leaned up and kissed her.
This kiss was nothing like last night. No desperation. No fury. Just warmth and sleep and tenderness edged with the memory of how easily tenderness between them could still become fire.
Lara kissed her back slowly, one hand at the nape of her neck, the other flattening against the small of her back as if to keep her there.
Sarisa made a quiet sound against her mouth that went straight through Lara.
When they broke apart, it was only enough to breathe.
Lara rested her forehead against Sarisa's and closed her eyes for one useless, perfect second.
"This is dangerous," she murmured.
Sarisa smiled against her lips. "Everything with you is dangerous."
"True."
"And yet," Sarisa said, pressing one last soft kiss to the corner of her mouth, "here I am."
Lara opened her eyes and looked at her.
At the woman who had crossed a realm in the middle of the night with fury in her blood and love on her mouth.
At the woman who looked half-asleep and half-satisfied and entirely too good wrapped around Lara's body.
Something warm and unguarded moved through her chest.
"Good," Lara said quietly. "Stay a little longer."
Sarisa's answer was not verbal.
She just tucked herself closer again, one leg sliding over Lara's, her head settling back into the curve of Lara's neck as if she belonged there.