It was worth it to them, and it was worth it to me. Even if the scars on Stag Court never healed, at least Stag Court would still live. There's no shame in wearing scars.

I crashed again in the late evening, passing the torch to one of the ladies of the advisory council, a woman who had walked the shores of Italy before the founding of Rome. Lady Yllatris had an iron spine (a compliment I kept behind my teeth, imagining it wouldn't go over well with the fae) and she was both wickedly intelligent and as determined as me to keep the people of Stag Court alive and safe.

I considered canceling open court the next morning, and decided not to. We'd gotten a good rhythm going in the war room, and at this moment in time most everything was monitoring and directing supplies, as we waited for Dain to be able to try and break the back of the dead army. The First Army was retreating and leaving traps and sabotage in their wake, and I trusted Alluin to do his job well. I'd seen him in that room, heard his confidence and grim determination, and I believed that he could do what he needed to, and slow the dead army until Dain could engage.

Six hours until moonrise, I thought as I took Dain's throne in front of all those people, dressed like a princess and wearing an iron crown. While I listened to frightened people and gave them the best justice I could, Dain would be engaging an army of the dead, and taking apart monstrosities built with blood and bodies.

If he failed, the armies would be here within two days, and there would be many, many dead.

I took a working lunch, as I so often had when deep into a thorny programming problem, eating while I listened to desperate people. There was no reason to turn anyone away. I held open court until after it got dark, and opened the doors of the Antlered Palace to all comers.

Two hours later, I listened to the reports from the battlefield. Dain had engaged the dead army, and was doing significant damage, but the blood mage was still with their constructs. He had to make the awful choice between protecting the army, or trying to find the blood mage when the field was saturated with blood, rot, and the scent of burned flesh. In a brutal compromise, he'd decided to allow the foot troops forward and engage the largest and most dangerous of the constructs, hoping that he would get lucky and encounter the blood mage within one of them.