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“The beast with three jaws found us before we could reach the sacred grove, which drew the hollow stag to us,” he explains, his posture tense.

The Dark guards spread out behind us, their obsidian weapons held ready as they scan the perimeter. Their movements seem sluggish here, as if they wade through invisible currents rather than air.

Thalindor remains close to Theron, silver blade gleaming in the opalescent light.

“Something dwells here,” Theron breathes.

He’s right. The grove hums with presence, its awareness reaching through every crystalline surface. Not malevolent, exactly, but patient in a way only immortal things can be.

Patient and desperate.

The sithean stone sears my skin with sudden heat. I cover it with my palm, and Elionn’s presence heightens, a Silver beacon just beyond reach.

“The court is bringing Prince Elionn,” I breathe, scanning the glade. “He’s close.”

As if in answer to my words, the ground beneath us trembles, and the crystal trees vibrate, sending musical notes cascading through the glade. The chorus builds to harmony, then fades to an expectant silence, and from between the crystal trees, the hollow stag emerges.

Massive doesn’t begin to describe it. The creature stands twice the height of a Royal fae, its skeletal frame an intricate lattice of crystal and bone that catches light and refracts it in painful bursts. Its ribs form a cage, empty save for the pulsing heart of pure Opal visible within, beating in perfect time with the fragment in my chest.

Antlers stretch from its skull, and where eyes should be, empty sockets turn toward me with unmistakable recognition. It perceives me not through sight but through an older, deeper awareness.

The Dark guards raise their weapons as one, obsidian blades catching the rippling light from above.

“Hold,” I command, raising my hand to stop them.

Through Elionn and the fragment tying me to this dying court, I understand what I could not the first time we encountered the beast.

The stag is not the answer.

It never was.

It carries the heart of the Opal Court because something had to. A vessel without thought or desire, bound to a purpose it can never question. For centuries, it has held the court’s power without possessing the will to shape it.

Opal must merge.

Elionn’s warning finally makes sense.

The heart needs more than a vessel.

It needs a willing host.

Understanding floods me. This is why the court stole healers. Why it tested them, changed them, tried to make them into something capable of holding what the stag carries. It does not need another mindless guardian.

It needs someone who can take its heart and choose what happens next.

My fragment pulses.

The stag answers.

And every crystalline surface around us answers with it.

It needs me.

A sense of inevitability settles into my bones. The court has been preparing me from the moment its fragment entered my body, reshaping flesh and magic until I could survive what comes next.

I step forward, away from Theron’s protection and the hand he extends to stop me.

“This is what I have to do,” I tell him.