Aliyah came back into the pavilion with damp hands, a triumphant expression, and one ribbon missing from her hair.
Sarisa noticed the ribbon immediately because she was a mother and because small absences felt louder lately. Before she could ask, Aliyah announced, "The maid said I wash like a princess."
Malvoria arched one brow. "That maid has a very flexible understanding of royalty."
"I did wash," Aliyah said with great dignity. "I just also splashed."
"Ah," Malvoria said. "Then yes. Like a princess."
Sarisa held out one arm, and Aliyah came to her at once, climbing halfway into her lap before remembering she was supposedly too grown for that.
She settled against Sarisa's side instead, warm and slightly sleepy, and glanced around the table as if checking whether Vaelen might reappear if she was not vigilant enough.
"He left," Aliyah said, sounding pleased with herself.
"Yes," Sarisa answered. "I noticed."
"Did I ruin it?"
The question came with too much innocence to be entirely innocent.
Sarisa looked down at her daughter and saw the bright satisfaction in her eyes, the tiny spark of mischief inherited from Lara and made somehow more dangerous by childhood honesty.
She should have corrected her. Should have said no, darling, dinners are not things we ruin on purpose, even when they deserve it.
Should have been a proper mother and a proper princess and all the other proper things this palace kept trying to make of her.
Instead she brushed a thumb over Aliyah's cheek and said, "You were very… memorable."
Aliyah grinned. "That means yes."
Malvoria laughed into her wine. "Your child is magnificent."
"She is trouble," Sarisa said.
"Both can be true."
The candlelight had gone softer now, turning the pavilion into something almost gentle. The music was gone entirely.
Outside, the gardens shimmered under the first real silver of night, pale flowers glowing along the paths like tiny moons.
For one impossible second, with Aliyah tucked against her and Malvoria lounging across the table looking more amused than murderous, Sarisa almost forgot the palace itself still existed around them.
Then Malvoria rose.
"Well," she said, smoothing one hand over her gown, "I am going back to my own castle. I still have my wife to take care of."
She said it with a wink so shameless that Sarisa nearly hid her face.
"Please never say anything like that to me again," Sarisa muttered.
Malvoria only smiled wider. "No promises."
Aliyah looked up at her at once. "Can I come?"
"Not tonight, little menace." Malvoria bent and pressed a kiss to the top of Aliyah's head. "Your mother still needs you to behave badly here."
Aliyah considered this, then nodded. "Okay."
Malvoria straightened and looked at Sarisa. The teasing remained in her mouth, but something warmer and more serious lived in her eyes.
"Try to sleep," she said quietly.
Sarisa almost laughed at the absurdity of the instruction. Sleep felt like a thing that happened to other women. Women with less complicated mothers. Less complicated futures. Less complicated feelings.
Still, she nodded. "I'll try."
Malvoria gave her one last look, all fire and fondness and warning somehow mixed together, and then stepped backward into a flicker of black-orange flame. The air bent. Heat snapped once against the stone. And then she was gone.
The pavilion felt larger after that.
Too large.
Aliyah yawned so hard her whole body curled with it. Sarisa looked down and smiled despite herself. The child looked scandalized by her own exhaustion.
"No," Aliyah said before Sarisa could say anything. "That wasn't a real yawn."
"Of course not."
"I am not sleepy."
"Then you won't mind a bath."
Aliyah narrowed her eyes in immediate suspicion. "That sounds like a trap."
Sarisa stood and gathered her into her arms before she could protest more. Aliyah came willingly enough, wrapping her arms around Sarisa's neck with the limp, warm trust only children managed so naturally.
"Let's have a bath and go to sleep," Sarisa said, brushing her lips over her daughter's hair.
Aliyah laid her cheek on Sarisa's shoulder. "Can we use the soap that smells like oranges?"
"Yes."
"And the fluffy towel?"
"Yes."
"And can you tell me a story?"
Sarisa started toward the door. "Yes."
Aliyah went quiet for a few steps, and Sarisa thought perhaps the evening had finally worn her down. Then, very softly against her ear, Aliyah asked, "Do you think Lara misses me already ?"
The question hit with terrible precision.
Sarisa tightened her hold on her daughter just a little. "Yes," she said at once. "Very much."
Aliyah seemed to think about that.
Then: "Do you think she misses you too?"
Sarisa's steps almost faltered.
Children, she thought, should not be allowed to ask questions while half-asleep. It was deeply unfair. They slipped past all the defenses adults spent years building.
"Yes," she said at last, and was startled by how steady the truth sounded in her own voice. "I think she does."
Aliyah made a little humming sound of satisfaction and then said no more.
The bath went the way baths with tired children always went: with warm water, endless negotiations about how many times hair truly needed rinsing, and at least one very serious argument over whether floating soap bubbles counted as "magic friends."
By the time Aliyah was in bed, clean and pink-cheeked and wrapped in a nightgown soft enough to make even Sarisa jealous, the night had deepened into full quiet.
Sarisa told her a story too. Not a very good one. Something about a moon fox and a stubborn star that refused to fall, improvised and a little ridiculous, but Aliyah listened with the heavy-lidded concentration of a child already sliding toward sleep.
Halfway through, she reached for Sarisa's fingers and held them through the blanket.
By the end, she was asleep.
Sarisa sat there a while after that, in the dim light of the bedside lamp, listening to her daughter breathe.
The palace beyond the room had gone hushed. Somewhere far away, a door closed softly. Somewhere else, wind moved against the shutters.
The whole place felt suspended, as if waiting for tomorrow to decide what sort of pain it would bring.
Sarisa bent and kissed Aliyah's forehead.
Then she rose and crossed slowly into her sitting room.
The silence met her there like water.
No voices. No candles beyond the two she lit herself. No one to laugh at how hateful the sky-blue dress still looked draped across the chaise.
No one to call her overdramatic for standing in the middle of the room as though she had forgotten what she meant to do.
For one second, she just stood there with her hands empty at her sides and let the loneliness rise.
Then she reached into the hidden fold of her sleeve.
The communication device rested warm against her palm, as if it had been waiting. A small silver shape, simple and impossible. Lara's line to her. Her line to Lara. Proof that distance, however cruel, had not fully won.
Sarisa stared at it for a breath longer than necessary.
Then, slowly, she sat by the window, drew her knees in close beneath her night robe, and curled her fingers around the device.
Outside, the moonlight spilled across the gardens in pale silver paths.
Inside, her heart began to beat a little faster.
And with the room quiet around her and Aliyah sleeping in the next chamber, Sarisa lifted the communication device and called Lara.