Mazarine’s ancient magic relinquished me. I watched Anna Neven crumble and fall away, and she lay in fragments around me, like pieces of stained glass.

My hair was long copper waves once more. My two inches of height and my full lips and the dimples in my cheeks and my brown eyes all came back to me, just as I remembered them. And yet I could not explain why I felt like a different girl.

Until I breathed again and felt my heart struggle to beat.

The arrow had not broken the stone within me. A wound had not ushered my breaking. It had been my decision to take an arrow for Phelan. For I couldn’t imagine a world with him gone.

And the last stone of my heart turned into dust.

“Mazarine,” my father said in a ragged voice. I felt his hand touch my hair. “Mazarine, can you do something?”

Mazarine gazed down at me. I saw that her guise had started to crack as well. Half of her face was human, and half of her face was troll. She was breaking, and I wondered why. Wondered until she laid her hand upon my chest, as if sensing the state of my heart. And I knew she had come to care for me.

“Her heart is weakening,” she said. When she drew her hand back, her fingers were drenched in my blood. “And the curse still stands. Perhaps . . .”

She had no chance to finish her statement.

Phelan rose with me in his arms.

I wanted to ask him, What are you doing? But my voice . . . I couldn’t find it. Yet he seemed to know my thoughts, because he said, “I don’t want to do this without you.”

I released a tremulous breath—all right, as you wish—and he walked us to the throne.

He claimed the sovereignty with me in his arms. We sat together, as one, and the curse came undone.

A wind tore through the hall. It was violent at first, the makings of a storm, and it extinguished the fires and made the shadows twine and dance. The windows shattered one by one, raining glass and lead. The snow swept in. I thought that we would all be torn apart, blown into pieces.

But sometimes things must break before they can be made whole again, so that they can be forged into something stronger.

The wind died, escaping out the open windows, and the snow gathered on the floor.

It was a quiet, peaceful night. A night for dreams. And magic teemed, thick and cold, in the air.

I looked at Phelan only to discover he was already gazing at me.

The pain in my chest was relentless. I couldn’t draw breath, and I made a sad, gurgling sound. Blood filled my mouth, and I knew I had reached the end of myself. And yet I wasn’t afraid.