It was already night by the time Sarisa finally made it back to her room.
The whole day had felt like a procession designed by people who hated women and called it tradition.
There had been the cleansing bath first, the one with rose petals floating on warm water so heavily perfumed that by the end Sarisa thought she might drown in flowers before she ever reached the altar.
Then oils at her wrists and throat, silver dust at her collarbones, prayers murmured by old women with soft hands and sharper eyes, ribbons tied and untied, blessings spoken over her hair, her skin, her future, her supposed joy. Every part of her had been touched, arranged, polished, prepared.
By the end of it, she felt less like a bride and more like an offering.
Now the room was dim and finally quiet. The lamps had been lowered. The curtains were half drawn against the night.
The scent of roses still clung faintly to her skin despite the fresh nightgown she had put on after the rituals.
Her hair, still only half dry from the ceremonial bath, spilled loose over her shoulders and down her back. The bed was wide enough for comfort and tonight still too crowded with thoughts for peace.
Aliyah had fallen asleep almost instantly.
She was curled beside Sarisa beneath the coverlet, one hand tucked under her cheek and the other resting on Sarisa's sleeve like even asleep she wanted proof her mother was still there.
Her breathing was deep and warm and even. Every now and then she made a tiny, sleepy sound, the sort that always made Sarisa's chest soften no matter how tired she was.
Sarisa lay beside her for a while and stared into the dark.
Tomorrow.
The word moved through her like a slow blade.
Tomorrow there would be silk and vows and too many eyes and her mother's satisfied calm and Vaelen's careful smile and all the machinery of the court grinding forward as if it had not spent the last month crushing her breath out of her in perfect, polite increments.
She should have been asleep.
She was too tired not to be.
And yet her mind would not stop.
It kept circling the same things. Lara's voice in the communication device. The stupid sky-blue dress.
The way Aliyah had said when Mama Sarisa marries Mama Lara with the certainty only children could afford. The look on the queen's face after.
The terrible, aching possibility of another life always just one room away from the one Sarisa was trapped inside.
At last she gave up pretending she was going to rest on her own.
Very carefully, so as not to wake Aliyah, she reached beneath her pillow and took out the communication device.
The little silver thing glowed faintly in the dark, warm against her palm as if it had learned her already.
Sarisa held it there without calling immediately. For a few moments she just watched the soft light pulse and listened to Aliyah breathe and let the quiet settle around her.
Then she pressed her thumb over the runes.
The device warmed.
The first few seconds felt endless.
Sarisa thought, suddenly and irrationally, what if Lara is asleep. What if she doesn't answer. What if she's hurt. What if she's with the others. What if she—
Then Lara's voice came through, low and warm and so immediately familiar it almost hurt.
"Hey," Lara said softly. "How are you doing, Sarisa?"
The tenderness in the question nearly undid her.
Sarisa closed her eyes and let the sound of that voice wash over the sharpest edges of the day.
"Well," she said after a second, honest because she was too tired to be anything else, "I don't know actually. Just tired, I guess."
There was a little silence on the other end. Not empty. Just Lara listening.
"Yeah," Lara said quietly. "You sound tired."
"I am." Sarisa shifted carefully on the pillow, turning onto her side so she could face Aliyah while she spoke.
"I think I've been bathed, perfumed, blessed, braided, and turned in three circles so many times today that if one more person tells me to breathe deeply for spiritual purity, I may bite them."
Lara laughed, low and helpless. "That bad?"
"Worse." Sarisa looked at the sleeping curve of Aliyah's small face. "There were rose petals. So many rose petals. At one point I think I stopped being a person and became an expensive soup."
Lara made a sound that was definitely laughter now. "Gods, I wish I'd seen that."
"No, you don't."
"No," Lara admitted. "I wish I'd stolen you halfway through."
That made Sarisa smile into the darkness, small and unwilling and real. "That would have caused complications."
"I'm not scared of complications."
"I know."
That, more than anything, made the room feel less lonely.
They talked after that the way people talked when they had run out of strength for performance but still needed each other too much to let the night end. They spoke in smaller things.
Lara asked how Aliyah had behaved through the rituals.
"Like a tiny insult in a white ribbon," Sarisa murmured.
"That's my girl."
"She spent half the blessing ceremony whispering to me that the priest smelled like old curtains."
Lara actually choked laughing at that. Sarisa bit the inside of her cheek to keep from doing the same too loudly and waking the child between them.
Then Sarisa asked about Neris.
Lara's voice changed when she answered, softer and more thoughtful.
"He was quiet today. Less scared, though. He followed Kaelith around the garden like he was trying to understand how one child can contain that much nonsense and still stay upright."
"That sounds difficult."
"It looked exhausting."
"Did he eat?"
"Three strawberries, half a tart, and something he stole from Raveth's plate when he thought no one was looking."
Sarisa smiled. "Progress."
"Yeah."
They let that sit for a moment too.
Then Lara asked, "And you? Did you eat?"
Sarisa nearly rolled her eyes. "Are you going to bully me about food through a magical device now?"
"Yes."
"That feels controlling."
"That feels necessary."
Sarisa looked toward the little tray left untouched on the bedside table. "I ate at dinner."
"How much?"
She was too tired to lie well. "Enough."
Lara snorted softly. "That bad, then."
"Lara."
"Tomorrow you eat something before they trap you in ceremony," Lara said, and there was that note in her voice again, the one that made simple instructions sound like care so deep it had nowhere else to go. "Even if it's just bread. Promise me."
Sarisa hesitated.
Then: "Fine. Bread."
"Good."
The quiet that followed was gentler now. Sleepier. As if the conversation itself had become a blanket laid over the worst of the day.
Sarisa traced one finger lightly over the blanket near Aliyah's wrist. "I don't want tomorrow to happen."
Lara did not tell her it would be fine.
She did not tell her to be brave or patient or calm.
She only said, very softly, "I know."
And somehow that was better.
The exhaustion was dragging at Sarisa now in a different way. Heavy behind the eyes. Warm at the edges of thought. Her words came slower. Softer.
"Talk to me a little more," she murmured.
"I'm here."
So Lara did.
She told her something ridiculous Kaelith had said at lunch. Described how Malvoria nearly walked into a column because she was too busy glaring at Raveth.
Complained, with great seriousness, about the state of the pancakes that morning and how children were apparently incapable of leaving syrup in lawful places.
Sarisa listened with half a smile and the strange, sweet ache of knowing these were the sounds of another home, another version of ordinary, one she wanted with an intensity that made her chest hurt.
At some point she realized she was no longer fully holding herself awake.
Her limbs felt heavy. The room softer. Lara's voice on the device had gone slightly blurred around the edges, not because of the magic but because sleep was finally beginning to win.
"Sarisa?" Lara said gently after a pause.
"I'm listening."
"You're falling asleep."
"I'm not."
Lara laughed under her breath. "Your really just acting like Aliyah with that."
Sarisa wanted to argue. She had a feeling she even managed the beginning of one. But the words slipped away halfway through forming.
Instead she lay there with Aliyah warm beside her and the communication device resting against her cheek and let herself drift.
"I wish," she murmured, so softly she wasn't even sure she'd meant to say it out loud, "I wish you could just save me."
The words hung there.
Then Sarisa's eyes closed fully, and sleep took her at last.
On the other end of the communication device, in the dark of another castle, Lara answered in a voice low and certain and without a shred of hesitation.
"No problem."