My knees threaten to buckle.
The crown is ancient.
Sentient.
A relic of a Prime who is gone.
And it does not want to be broken.
“Hold,” Delia bites out, voice tight. “Hold, Alina!”
“I’m holding,” I gasp, though sweat breaks along my spine.
“No,” Jules says, voice suddenly calm in that way some women get right before they do something insane and brave. “Not like that.”
She shifts, presses her palm to the crown—then closes her eyes and reaches for Alaric through the bond like she’s grabbing him by the soul.
Her gaze snaps open, silver-gray and blazing.
“You want a Prime?” she murmurs to the crown like it can hear her. “Fine. But you don’t get one anymore.”
Phoebe’s hand tightens on mine.
“I’m so over monarchy,” she mutters, and somehow the sarcasm makes me breathe easier.
Delia’s laugh is a rough, breathless thing. “Same.”
I swallow hard.
My mind flashes—earth science, fracture planes, stress lines, controlled breaks.
A geode doesn’t shatter at random.
A fault doesn’t split wherever it feels like.
It breaks where the lines already exist.
And when I look at the crown—really look—I see them.
Natural seams.
Hairline fractures.
Ancient stress marks that have been there all along, hidden beneath the shine.
The crown isn’t a single piece.
It never was.
It was held as one.
By will.
By tradition.
By a story someone insisted had to be true.
My hands stop shaking.
