Alder tilts his head, studying me as if sensing the shift, as if seeing my strength rekindle, the moment everything changes.
“Sweetheart,” he drawls, “are you about to dosomething reckless?”
I meet his gaze, smile, and the Tower answers.
A crack splits the air. A sound older than time itself. A sound like stone breaking, like history unraveling, like a god exhaling after centuries of holding its breath.
The Tower doors—doors that had vanished from maps, from the island, from the Kingdom of Cups itself—open.
This ancient chamber appears only for three people: me, Alderic, and Alder. But we’re already inside. And now, it’s appeared to and is opening for someone else, not with force but with invitation.
A breath of air rushes into the chamber, swirling around me, rustling the hem of my gown, curling through my bloodstained fingers. The iron shackles rub my wrists raw and hold me in place, but I don’t feel trapped anymore. Because I know, in the marrow of my bones, in the deepest part of my soul, the truth Alder and Delphara never saw coming.
The Tower, this machine, was never meant to serve them.
Alder turns. His smirk falters, and his fingers twitch at his sides, but there’s no escaping what’s coming.
Footsteps echo beyond the entrance. A whisper of sound slithers through the chamber—the soft shuffle of leather on stone, the shifting of bodies in the growing gloom. Shadows stretch across the floor. The flicker of torchlight catches on steel. Then, a flood of movement, and they’re here. A surge of bodies storming the Tower.
A sea of women spills through the entrance of the ancient chamber that should not exist, that they should not have been able to find. Their fury is a tempest, ahurricane. They are a force of nature, their battle cries filling the air.
The guards barely have time to react before the first strike lands and chaos erupts.
A blur of action—steel flashing, skirts whipping as women who have been overlooked, dismissed, silenced for too long fight back.
Bernice, her skirts hitched up, brandishes a kitchen knife like she’s been waiting her whole life for this moment.
Sylvie, her face grim, eyes blazing like embers in the dark, swings a stolen sword, cutting through the ranks of guards.
The noblewomen—the same women in the hidden cellar beneath the kitchens—fight alongside them, wielding daggers, broken chair legs, whatever they could find. One swings a dented candelabra straight into the temple of a guard, another ducks low, slicing at the back of a knee with a piece of metal, sending her opponent sprawling.
Steel clashes. Boots scrape against stone. Women emit war cries. And the Tower trembles beneath the force of a battle decades in the making.
Alder’s smirk shatters, jagged and frantic. He reaches out, fingers grasping the air like he can regain control, twist this moment into something that still belongs to him.
Delphara’s lips peel back in a snarl, her regal composure cracking at the edges. She clutches her heavy skirts as she scrambles back, a cornered animal seeking an exit that no longer exists.
Alder doesn’t run—not at first. No, that would meanadmitting defeat, admitting failure. And Alder doesn’t lose. Not him. Not ever.
A guard collapses at his feet, blood staining his blue robes, a dagger buried in his ribs. And suddenly, there is no denying it. If this ever was Alder’s kingdom, it’s not anymore.
His chest heaves as he turns on his heel, his white robes lashing the air as he searches for an escape. But there’s nowhere to go but through.
Bernice slashes at a guard, her knife flashing. Sylvie advances, blade slick with blood. Noblewomen and maids stand shoulder to shoulder at the entrance, driving back the last of the Masked guard.
Delphara’s breath comes too fast, her hands shaking as she grips her skirts and shoves past a wounded guard, her pinched face twisting with disdain, with desperation.
Through the fight, Bernice’s voice rings out. “Gemma!”
Sylvie stands beside her, panting, her sword slick with blood. Her red hair is half torn from its braid, wild around her face, and her gaze burns with something between fury and triumph.
A cry bursts from my lips—relief and disbelief in one breath. They came. They came for me. They came for themselves.
“They were counting on us not to fight,” Sylvie shouts, whirling as a guard lunges toward her. She pivots, drives her sword deep into his gut. He lets out a strangled gasp, his body crumpling to the floor. She doesn’t flinch. She yanks the blade free and calls out, “The Tower appeared out of nowhere as if from—”
“Magick!” Bernice bellows, hacking at a soldier’sarm with the same kitchen knife she’s wielded like a warrior’s blade. The guard stumbles back, clutching the wound, but Bernice is already closing in.
I press my lips together, swallowing against the burn in my throat as hope ignites in my chest, bright and impossible to contain.
