Sarisa stood in the middle of the little house in all her white silk and ruined ceremony, looking at Lara and feeling as if her body had not yet decided which emotion to obey first.
Relief still trembled through her in aftershocks. So did fury. So did something lighter and more absurd that felt suspiciously like laughter trying to survive inside the wreckage.
Her heart had not settled. Her hands had not settled. Even the dress felt wrong now in a new way, too formal for this room, too pure for the mess they had made, too bridal for a wedding that had just exploded behind them.
Lara was still watching her.
There was blood dried at the split in her lip, and the bruise near her jaw had darkened enough that Sarisa wanted to touch it and insult her for getting hit in the same breath.
Her hair was a little wild. Her shirt was open at the throat. She looked exactly like the sort of woman who would destroy an entire royal ceremony and then stand in a warm little house waiting to see if the bride would scream at her or kiss her again.
Sarisa considered both.
Instead she said, because apparently her mind had given up on elegance altogether, "So what now, hm?"
Lara blinked once, as though she had expected something more dramatic.
Then, with all the seriousness of a woman proposing a military response to catastrophe, she said, "Are you hungry? I could cook for you."
Sarisa stared at her.
Of all the possibilities in the world, that had not been one of them.
Lara, misreading the silence in the most Lara way possible, rubbed the back of her neck and nodded toward what Sarisa now noticed was, in fact, a small kitchen at the far end of the room.
"I mean, not anything fancy. But edible. Probably."
The absurdity of it almost sent Sarisa into hysterics.
"Lara."
"What?"
"I just got kidnapped out of my own wedding."
"Yes."
"By a masked demon nightmare with murderous intent."
"That was me, yes."
"And your first instinct after teleporting me into some hidden house is to ask if I want breakfast?"
Lara frowned faintly. "Second instinct. First instinct was checking if you were going to hit me again."
That did it.
Sarisa laughed.
Not prettily. Not like a rescued princess. Just a real, helpless sound that escaped before she could stop it, warm and slightly cracked around the edges.
Lara looked startled for a second, then laughed too, and suddenly the room felt less like the aftermath of a disaster and more like something almost survivable.
"I already had breakfast earlier," Sarisa managed.
"Right." Lara nodded once. "Of course. Wedding breakfast."
"Yes."
"Was it terrible?"
"It was bread and despair."
"That sounds very Celestian."
Sarisa laughed again, quieter this time, and then, because all the adrenaline was beginning to settle in strange places, she leaned back against the edge of the table and looked at Lara properly.
At the bruise, the cut lip, the real scent of her replacing the false horror that had cloaked her in the garden.
A silence opened between them.
Not hostile. Not heavy exactly. Just awkward in that delicate, unexpected way that sometimes happened after too much feeling had already burned through a room.
Both of them standing there in the aftermath, breathless in different ways, with the whole world rearranged and no script left for what came next.
Sarisa folded her hands in the skirt of the dress, then immediately unfolded them again. "Why are we bad at this?"
Lara let out a soft, incredulous laugh. "Bad at what?"
"This."
Sarisa gestured helplessly between them, at the room, at the silk, at the fact that she was technically a bride who had just been stolen and they were now standing in a beautiful house discussing breakfast like slightly concussed lovers in a farce.
"All of it."
Lara's mouth twitched. "I don't know. We're very good at dramatic declarations and terrible timing."
"That is not the same as being competent."
"No," Lara admitted. "But it is memorable."
Sarisa looked down at herself, at the white gown spilling in immaculate folds over the wooden floor, and let out a long breath. "I can't believe I was really about to marry him."
Lara's expression changed at once. The laughter softened out of it, leaving something more tender and more dangerous in its place.
"You didn't," she said quietly.
The words landed somewhere deep.
No, Sarisa thought. She hadn't.
The priest hadn't spoken. The vows hadn't been said. The ring hadn't touched her hand.
Somewhere behind them, the palace and the court and her mother were almost certainly tearing themselves into pieces trying to understand what had happened, but the simple truth remained: she had not done it.
She looked back up at Lara and felt the strange, trembling edge of that reality again. Not freedom exactly. Not yet. But an interruption. A break in the machinery.
"Thank you," she said, so softly it almost didn't sound like her own voice.
Lara seemed startled by that. Then she stepped closer, one slow step at a time, as if giving Sarisa room to stop her and already knowing she wouldn't.
"You don't have to thank me for stealing you out of a disaster."
"I think I do."
"Well, don't get used to it." Lara stopped just in front of her, close enough that Sarisa could feel the heat of her body through all that ridiculous white silk. "It'll ruin my image."
Sarisa's mouth curved helplessly. "Your image is beyond saving."
"True."
The silence that followed was different now.
Closer.
The kind that shimmered.
Sarisa became suddenly and acutely aware of everything at once: the veil still half pinned in her hair, the pearls at her throat, the stiffness of the formal bodice, the way the dress still made her feel like someone else's version of a bride.
And Lara, standing there in front of her, looking at all of it with dark, steady eyes that were no longer amused in the least.
That look made warmth begin low in Sarisa's stomach and spread outward, slow and treacherous.
Lara noticed.
Of course she noticed.
Her gaze dropped from Sarisa's face to the line of the gown, the sleeves, the veil, and then slowly rose again. By the time her eyes met Sarisa's once more, there was a smirk at the corner of her mouth.
Not a cruel one.
Worse.
One of those slow, wicked, knowing Lara smiles that promised trouble and patience and exactly the wrong kind of ideas.
Sarisa felt the heat rise into her face and hated how quickly her body remembered itself around this woman. "Don't."
Lara tilted her head. "Don't what?"
"Look at me like that."
"Like what?"
"You know exactly like what."
Lara stepped even closer. Close enough now that the silk of the gown brushed against her trousers, close enough that Sarisa could smell soap and sweat and the faint metallic trace of battle still clinging to her skin.
She lifted one hand, not touching yet, just letting her fingers hover near the edge of Sarisa's veil.
"I do know," Lara said, voice lower now, roughened by too much adrenaline and too little restraint.
Sarisa's breath caught.
The house had gone impossibly quiet around them.
Just the soft tick of cooling wood in the hearth and the sound of both of them breathing in the same small room, with the world held back for once by distance and smoke and chaos.
Lara's smirk deepened, beautifully indecent and entirely too calm for a woman who had just kidnapped a bride from her own ceremony.
"Let's get you out of this wedding dress," she said.