Time is a fucking bitch.
That was Lara's first thought when she finally stopped pacing long enough to realize she had worn an actual path into the carpet between her bed and the window.
One day.
One fucking day before the wedding.
Tomorrow Sarisa would be dressed in white and polished and beautiful and furious and trapped, and all the plans Lara had lived on for the past weeks now sat in pieces around the room like broken weapons.
Time had not bent. Time had not cared. It had gone on with the same cold, idiot certainty it always had, dragging them all toward the edge whether they were ready or not.
Lara had been in her room for hours. Pacing. Sitting for two minutes. Standing again. Running a hand through her hair until it stood up in wild black spikes. Looking at the communication device. Not touching it. Touching it. Putting it down again.
Thinking of Sarisa in the palace. Thinking of Aliyah asleep there tonight because the queen insisted it was proper for mother and daughter to spend the night before the ceremony under the same roof.
Thinking of Neris. Thinking of white rooms and white blouses and blood and fire and documents and not enough.
Never enough.
At some point even pacing had stopped helping.
So Lara left her room and went to the meeting room, because if she stayed alone one moment longer, she might actually bite through her own hand just for something useful to do.
The little war room was already occupied when she entered.
Raveth stood near the table with both palms braced against it, her head bent over a spread of maps and copied documents.
Veylira sat at the far end, one leg crossed over the other, every line of her body composed despite the hard glitter in her eyes.
Malvoria was pacing now, which somehow looked worse on her than on Lara because Malvoria paced like she was already halfway through setting a kingdom on fire.
Elysia sat with papers arranged in front of her in perfect stacks, which meant the situation was bad enough that she had resorted to order as a weapon.
All four of them looked up when Lara came in.
No one smiled.
That was answer enough.
Lara shut the door behind her harder than necessary. "Tell me."
Malvoria blew out a breath and stopped pacing only because there was no more room for it. "We got things."
"Not enough things," Raveth corrected.
Lara crossed to the table and planted both hands on the wood. "I figured that out from your faces."
Veylira slid one of the papers toward her. "My daughter, welcome to the part where evil people are clever enough not to label their crimes."
Lara looked down.
The paper was a copy, transcribed in Elysia's neat hand from whatever original Malvoria's clones had managed to steal or memorize before fleeing.
It was full of construction approvals, inventory requests, coded terminology, authorizations for restricted staff, magical reagent quantities, blood storage specifications, and enough clinical language to make Lara want to tear the page in half with her teeth.
She read the same three lines twice before the meaning settled.
"They found more than one lab," she said.
Malvoria nodded. "Two others."
Lara looked up sharply.
"They're too far from the Celestian castle," Elysia said before she could ask the next question. "Much too far to use as immediate proof against the queen in relation to Neris. But they exist. They are real. And they were doing very specific work."
Lara's jaw clenched. "What kind of work?"
Malvoria reached over and tapped a section of another document with one black-painted nail. "Experimentation involving the creation of life through bloodline material and magic."
The room went still around the sentence.
Lara had known it. Somewhere deep down, she had known the theory was no longer a theory the moment Malvoria's clones found the first hidden space under the palace. But hearing it said plain still made something inside her go cold and then blindingly hot.
Creating life.
Not conceiving. Not birthing. Creating.
A child reduced to process. To method. To notes on paper in someone else's hand.
Lara lifted her eyes slowly. "So Neris…"
"We still cannot prove that specific connection," Elysia said quietly. "Not on paper. Not yet."
Raveth straightened and folded her arms. "But if someone wanted to make a child using your blood and demonic magic, they had the means."
Lara laughed once, harsh and joyless. "That's comforting."
"No," Veylira said. "It isn't."
Lara dropped her gaze back to the documents. There were diagrams there too, half-finished and annoyingly abstract. Growth stages.
Magical stabilization. Notes on host compatibility. Words like viable, unstable, infusion threshold. Some of the script had been crossed out. Some of it annotated in a different hand. None of it had the queen's name on it.
That was the problem.
There was rot everywhere, but no single blade sharp enough to hold at a throat tomorrow morning and stop a wedding.
"She's careful," Lara said.
Elysia nodded. "Very."
Malvoria swore and resumed pacing. "We found documents linked to the research. Funding records too. Enough to show that the queen approved construction and authorized money for the sites." She turned, throwing one hand toward the stacks.
"But nothing says: Hello, I personally ordered illegal life experiments and built a child to ruin my daughter's life."
Raveth muttered, "Cowardly bitch."
"Yes," Malvoria snapped. "Obviously. But still annoyingly competent."
Lara felt the anger building again, old and familiar now, like another organ in her body. "So what exactly do we have?"
Veylira answered this time, calm as winter.
"We have proof of illegal laboratories under crown authority. We have evidence of research into life creation using blood and magic. We have trace resonance linking one hidden chamber beneath the palace to your demonic signature. We have a child who remembers the queen, white rooms, and white-clothed staff. We have enough to know the truth is monstrous."
"But not enough to stop the wedding," Lara said.
Silence.
That was the answer.
Lara pushed away from the table and took two steps back before turning again, as if motion might keep her from exploding. "Tomorrow," she said. "It's tomorrow."
"We know," Elysia said gently.
"No, I don't think any of you actually understand how much I know that." Lara dragged both hands through her hair and laughed at nothing.
"Tomorrow she puts on that dress and walks down whatever cursed aisle they've built for her and smiles for all those people while we sit here with papers and guesses."
Malvoria stopped pacing. "We are not sitting here."
Lara looked at her.
Good, Malvoria thought. Anger was useful. Better than despair.
But even now it wasn't enough. Not without shape. Not without a plan.
Raveth came around the table and leaned her hip against it. "We could expose the labs later."
"Later doesn't save Sarisa tomorrow," Lara snapped.
"No," Raveth agreed. "It doesn't."
The honesty of that landed harder than comfort would have.
Elysia, who had been reading through the same document for the last ten minutes as if staring at it long enough might produce one final miracle, finally set it down.
"If we move with only what we have now, the queen will deny everything. She will bury the labs, burn the staff, blame rogue researchers, and call us desperate demons trying to sabotage a royal wedding."
"She'll do that anyway," Malvoria said.
"Yes," Elysia replied. "But right now she would win."
That shut the room up for a second.
Because she was right. Because all of them knew she was right. The truth existed, but truth and proof were different beasts in royal politics, and the queen had spent a lifetime learning how to keep one from becoming the other.
Lara looked at the table again, at the copied documents and marks and lines and pieces of a horror too cautious to be caught cleanly. Then she thought of Sarisa saying if the day ever comes when I can run, ask again.
One day.
Tomorrow.
Enough.
Her voice, when she spoke, was very calm.
"So we don't stop the wedding with evidence."
All four of them looked at her.
Lara met their eyes one by one.
"We stop it another way. Plan B"