My earth wants to harden, to become a wall, to stop the sound from reaching my heart.
Oona won’t let it.
She presses into my side, warm and stubborn, and I learn—again—that love is not softness.
It is endurance.
When the last mass is said—when the last prayer thread is tied to the elder tree’s lower bough and the last ember dims into a bed of pale coals—we do what rulers have always had to do.
We stop bleeding in public.
And we plan.
The council is held in The Barrow’s deepest hall, the one built into the cliff face where the stone sweats cool and the roots braid the ceiling like ribs.
A table of living rock rises from the floor at my will, circular and heavy and honest.
No thrones.
No dais.
No one sits above the others.
That matters.
My brothers arrive with their viyellas at their sides, as it should be now—Jules with Marcel tucked close, Phoebe’s hand resting possessively over Kael’s wrist, Delia standing at Thorne’s shoulder like she was forged there.
And Alina.
My Oona steps into the circle, and the Marches themselves seem to settle, pleased.
We begin with silence.
Not because we have nothing to say.
Because Nightfall is listening, and for the first time in an age, it does not sound desperate.
It sounds steadier.
Less volatile.
As if the realm has finally stopped searching the sky for one missing star.
Alaric breaks the quiet first, voice rough with exhaustion and something like awe.
“What was the crown,” he says, flexing his fingers where the new piece rests against his skin. “It’s quieter now. Not dead. Not silent in the way it used to be. It’s satisfied.”
Kael’s gaze flicks up, sharp. “Because it isn’t bottlenecked anymore.”
He speaks like water does when it finally finds the path of least resistance—simple truth cutting clean.
“Power was never meant to funnel through one throat,” he continues. “One mind. One failure point.”
Thorne lets out a low, humorless laugh.
“A single Prime was a blade pointed at the realm’s own heart. All Idris had to do was reach for it.”
My jaw tightens at the memory—at the way Nightfall panicked without a Prime, the way it flailed and fractured and begged for leadership like a starving animal.
