Jules looks down at Marcel, then up at me.
“I know we’re not blood,” she says, voice thick. “But you three are the sisters I never had. So hell yeah, I say we trust you, Alina Fawcett.”
My throat tightens.
She shifts, wincing a little, and jerks her chin toward the crown. “Now you go do whatever you’re gonna do—for our sake, for our viyens, and for this kid’s, too.”
Clarisse steps forward, hands trembling just a little as she reaches for Marcel.
“I will stay with Lady Jules,” she says. “I will guard the young, and this chamber. If anything breaches the inner wards, the Barrow will tell me.”
Jules presses a kiss to Marcel’s forehead and smiles at Clarisse.
For a second, her hand curls in the air, empty.
Delia takes it.
Phoebe takes Delia’s other.
I step in front of them, close enough that we’re almost one cluster of hearts and fear and stubbornness.
My hands shake.
I look at the crown.
It hums louder now, responding to the bonds thrumming under our skin, like a tuning fork starting to sing.
“Okay,” I breathe. “Here’s the plan. We take the crown. We get all four Lords touching it at once, with us. We pull together. Hard. And when it cracks, we don’t let go. We shape it. We aim it at them and us, not Idris. But Jules, maybe you should stay?—”
“No. Clarisse, you’ll stay with Marcel, won’t you?”
“Yes, milady,” the older woman bows.
“Good, because I need to go fight for his future at his father’s side.”
Jules bends and kisses her son’s brow, then stands tall and strong, ignoring the tears that trail down her cheeks.
Phoebe swallows. “And if Idris feels it, too?”
“Then he can choke,” Jules says.
Delia grins, but her eyes are wet.
“Let’s move before our boys do something dumb like die heroically without backup.”
The Barrow seems to hear us.
The door’s vines slither aside, unlocking themselves.
A path unspools in my mind—down one corridor, left at the singing root, through the hall that smells like damp earth and lightning.
Straight to the chamber where Dagan keeps the crown when he’s not glaring at it.
I take a breath.
“Okay,” I say again, louder this time. “Let’s go jailbreak a magic hat.”
And together, hand in hand, we step out of the safe room and into the living heart of the Barrow—toward the crown, toward the fault line in Nightfall’s future, hoping like hell we can keep it from shattering.
