I felt the momentary pressure and sudden give as the crown broke through her skin, and the edge of the coronet slammed into my skull with bruising force. The power of my movement threw us back against the throne, Dain's mother staggering, her cold blood pouring onto me as she choked on it. Her dagger clattered to the floor, the sound ringing through the throne room, and I scrambled off of her, stumbling away with my hand to my bleeding throat.

"Love doesn't make me weak," I said, my voice shaking from sorrow and rage, watching her die. "Love doesn't make him weak. It didn't have to be like this."

She looked at me, her silver eyes full of hatred before her lashes fluttered and her expression softened, into something like relief. "Yes," she gasped out through the blood bubbling in her throat. "It—did."

The Stag Queen, Nephinae Ronelis, who had been betrayed by her own god, reached up to the iron impaling her throat with both her hands, one that of a corpse and one that of a woman, and pulled it free. Her blood rushed out, pooling on the throne, and with a soft smile, she closed her eyes and died.

I... felt it. It was like the whole ground shivered beneath me, as if the Antlered Palace was a living creature, lifting its head and looking at me—and then for one heart-stopping moment, I was the palace. Every room, every person, every corpse, every breath of air. My lungs moved, and I was me again, but the sense of the living creature beneath my feet stayed with me, the beating heart of Stag Court.

The Queen was dead. Long live the King.

Behind me, Dain's voice lifted, singing up into a soaring howl and then into his belling roar. Into the echoes, I felt as much as heard the voices of the army raised in an answering howl, all of our people answering their King as he broke his mother's blood magic and laid the dead to rest.

The sound died, and then the echoes. For one more long moment, I looked at the body of a woman who had wanted to destroy her own nation to spite her god, then at the blade she had once offered me, a beautiful one, made of iron and chased with gold. Then, slowly, I turned to face Dain.