Morning came like an execution dressed in silk.
Sarisa felt it before she fully woke. The shift in the light behind her closed eyelids. The hush of footsteps in her chambers.
The strange, reverent quiet servants used when they were about to prepare a royal woman for something irreversible.
For one beautiful, stupid second she stayed half asleep and let herself pretend she was elsewhere. Somewhere warm. Somewhere with Lara beside her and Aliyah snoring softly in the next room. Somewhere without vows waiting like a blade.
Then a maid's voice, gentle and careful, broke the illusion.
"Your Highness. It is time to start the preparation."
Sarisa opened her eyes.
The room was pale with early morning light, all silver curtains and soft shadows, the kind of light that made everything look cleaner than it was.
Beside her, Aliyah was still asleep, curled in the blankets in a small, warm knot of child and trust, one dark curl stuck against her cheek. The sight hit Sarisa so sharply that for a moment she could not move.
Today.
The word settled in her bones like cold water.
She sat up slowly, every part of her feeling too heavy and too light at once. The maids who had come in waited with lowered eyes, carrying trays, fabrics, boxes, brushes, bowls of scented water.
Their faces were kind, nervous, too careful. They all knew what day it was. They all knew what they were helping build.
Sarisa wondered, briefly, whether any of them thought she looked like a woman about to be married.
Or only like a woman about to be arranged.
Aliyah stirred just as Sarisa slipped from the bed. Her daughter blinked once, then twice, and immediately looked offended by the existence of morning.
"Is it time?"
Sarisa crossed back to her and brushed the hair from her face. "Almost."
Aliyah frowned, sleepy and serious. "I don't like today."
The honesty of it nearly took the breath from her.
Sarisa smiled anyway, because mothers were expected to know how to smile through impossible things. "I know."
Aliyah reached for her hand, squeezed it once, and then allowed one of the kinder maids to lead her away to be dressed separately.
She looked back twice before disappearing through the side door, each glance a silent check to make sure Sarisa was still there.
She was.
For now.
The morning unfolded in stages after that, each one precise and polished and exhausting. First the warm water and cloths over her skin, wiping away the last traces of sleep and replacing them with ritual cleanliness.
Then the breakfast tray brought in on silver, all soft bread, honey, fruit, tea fragrant with herbs meant to soothe nerves. Sarisa ate because Lara had asked her to. That thought alone was enough to make her obey. Bread, then fruit, then a little tea. Not much, but enough that the maids looked relieved.
After breakfast, they began in earnest.
Her hair first.
Always her hair first.
It took three women to manage it. One brushed. One braided. One threaded tiny pearls and silver pins through the pale lengths with painstaking care.
Sarisa sat before the mirror and watched her own reflection become more distant with every touch. The woman in the glass grew lovelier by the minute, and with each layer of beauty Sarisa felt further from herself.
Then the skin oils. The soft powder at her throat and wrists. The shimmer dusted so lightly over her collarbones that it only caught when she moved. A white underlayer tied close. Stockings. Slippers. The long, terrible pause before the dress itself.
No one spoke much.
They did not need to.
The whole room felt reverent, almost sacred, and Sarisa wanted to laugh at it. Sacred. As if the gods had anything to do with what was happening in this palace. As if white silk could make the wrong future holy simply by being expensive enough.
When they finally lifted the gown from its stand, the room seemed to inhale.
It was still simple. Still quiet in its elegance. White silk falling in smooth lines, sleeves fitted close, no violent clutter of jewels or embroidery to weigh it down.
It looked innocent. That was what unsettled her. Not the beauty of it, but the innocence. The lie of it.
They dressed her carefully, fingers everywhere and nowhere, lacing, smoothing, fastening, adjusting the fall of the skirt and the line of the sleeves until there was nothing left to do but step back.
Sarisa rose.
The gown settled around her like still water.
The mirror showed her a bride.
She hated that the image was convincing.
For one long second no one spoke. Then one of the younger maids let out a shaky breath.
"You look…" she whispered, and then stopped as if the rest of the sentence was too dangerous to say.
Like what? Sarisa wondered. Like a queen? Like a sacrifice? Like a woman they should envy or pity?
Instead another maid murmured, "Beautiful."
The word passed softly through the room, echoed by one or two others, and Sarisa stood there inside it feeling as if she had been wrapped in someone else's skin.
Her mind was a complete mess.
It would not stay in one place. It went to Lara's voice in the dark, saying no problem with that dangerous certainty that meant everything and promised nothing she could yet hold.
It went to Neris, to laboratories, to white blouses and forbidden magic and questions with no answers.
It went to Aliyah saying when Mama Sarisa marries Mama Lara as if the truth were simple and the adults had all simply gone stupid.
Most of all, it kept circling the same brutal fact:
This was really happening.
Today there would be music and guests and vows and flowers and all the machinery of the court grinding into motion around her, and unless something shattered first, she would be expected to walk straight into it.
One of the maids adjusted the veil, though it would not be lowered until later. Another smoothed the train a final time.
A third pressed a trembling hand briefly to her own chest and looked as though she might cry from the beauty of the scene.
Sarisa wanted to tell her not to.
Beauty had very little to do with it.
The door opened.
No one had to announce her.
The queen entered with the measured calm of someone stepping into a room she already owned. She wore silver again, of course, pale and immaculate, her expression unreadable for the first breath she stood there taking in the sight of Sarisa in the finished dress.
Then something in her face softened.
Not enough to make Sarisa trust it. Not enough to erase anything. But enough to be seen.
The queen came a little farther into the room, her gaze moving over the silk, the pearls, the veil, the final shape of the daughter she had been preparing for this day longer than Sarisa wanted to think about.
Then she smiled, and in a voice touched with pride and something almost like wonder, she said,
"Wow. You look beautiful and ready."