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The stillness and the silence held for just long enough that everyone in the ballroom heard the demon’s last breath rattle out ofit.

Then chaos descended from all sides. Kat and Emory were nearly trampled by the surge of soldiers rushing in to help confirm that the massive, slumped corpse was well and truly dead.

As they staggered clear of the tumult, a knot of golden-haired, well-dressed nobility followed in a second wave that crashed headlong into Giselle, who looked disconcerted but not at all surprised by the people clutching at her dress uniform and weeping at her feet.

Emory hitched forward like there was something his bruised, battered ass could do to defend his protégée, but Kat stopped him with a hand on his chest. “Guess there’s our answer,” she said, nodding to the older woman with three Aurean tokens in her array who had clasped both hands around Giselle’s skull, shrieked in disbelief, and then promptly pulled the girl, demon blood and all, into her bosom.

“Secret nobility,” he replied. “Who could have guessed?”

Kat snorted, but the surge of relief she felt nearly took her own shaking legs out from underneath her. If Emory was well enough to deadpan, he was going to be okay.

Her gaze slid inevitably to Adrien, who was helping his mother to her feet and blinking as if a bright light had been flashed in his eyes.

The royal family hadn’t cleared the splash zone, and their ostentatious finery was spattered with blackened blood that looked like it might be tricky to scour.

It was the kind of mess that would have sent anyone spiraling under normal conditions, but the conditions were decidedly not normal.

Underscoring that point, the prince hadn’t taken his eyes off Giselle once—not even when his mother produced a handkerchief from somewhere and began scrubbing aggressively at the blood splattered over his face.

Maybe there was something to Bronwyn’s shadow plays after all.

“I take it the family’s important?” Emory asked. He, too, was staring at his protégée, less in unvarnished admiration and more like he wasn’t sure if the people currently swarming her needed to be beaten off with a stick or not.

Kat had the stick in question but was reserving judgment. “From the gold alone, they’ve gotta be,” she said. Most of the people fussing over Giselle were decorated in tokens and only slightly less well dressed than the royal family themselves.

“Oh shit, Giselle’s a princess?” Carrick said, startling Kat as he rounded out on her unoccupied side.

“No, that’s a ducal signet,” Sawyer replied, clapping a hand on Emory’s shoulder and nodding to the livery of the servant hovering nervously behind the large man who’d folded both Giselle and the weeping woman who had to be her mother into a crushing hug.

“Called it,” Ziva said, squeezing between Carrick and Kat.

“You called secret royalty. No one called secret duchess. Or duchess-to-be. However it is in their family,” Kat countered.

“Hear that, Carrick? It’s the sweet, sweet sound of someone who owes me money but doesn’t want to admit it.”

“She’s going to be okay,” Emory muttered under his breath. Kat squeezed the arm she had around him and felt him lean just a little bit more into her.

They were all going to be okay. The Final Lord—and this had better be the final one—lay cooling in the heart of the ballroom.

The antigold medallion’s smothering power had released with its death, proved well enough by the lights Kat called with barely more than a thought.

The road was complete, the prince safely escorted to his capital.

The world had needed them one last time, one more time than any of them had expected, and they’d answered the call.

If it dared ask anything more from them, Kat would give it a piece of her mind.

As if the angels had heard her vow and decided to test the premise immediately, Adrien Augustine staggered off the dais, heading straight for her. “Katrien!” he called, waving a hand.

Her decade contracted instinctively around her, but Kat shrugged herself free from their protection.

“Your Highness,” she said, snapping her heels together so neatly that she desperately wished Mira had noticed, even if the affect of a soldier looked slightly ridiculous in her ostentatious dress with a bloodied, broken table leg in her hand instead of her usual weapon.

“I was wondering if I could have a word with you in confidence,” the prince said. “If you’re not too busy.”

Kat cast her gaze helplessly about the debris of the ballroom, but no prior commitments reared their heads—only the worried furrow between Emory’s brows. She leaned, knocking her shoulder into his, their old battle-worn reassurance. I’ll be fine, she willed him to understand.

He pressed right back into her, his chin jerking in an almost imperceptible nod.

There wasn’t much “confidence” to be found in the aftermath of a full-blown national security crisis, but Kat followed Adrien to one of the grand pillars that supported the now-ruined ceiling and nodded along when he proclaimed, “Well, this’ll have to do.”

“So,” Kat said. “Daya.”

The prince grimaced. “There was evidence ! You should have seen how furious she was when I took the couriers away from her. I would have explained it better, only then the ceiling came down and it turns out that…”

Both of them cast a somber look to the knot of people who had gathered around where Faye Laurent fell.

“I messed up too,” Kat offered. “I did my best, but—”

Adrien flapped a dismissive hand. “You couldn’t have done anything. Anything at all, really. Not when the monster had antigold. I appreciate the effort, of course,” he added, seemingly sensing that Kat’s grace was starting to wear thin. “But look, something’s come up.”

“Something,” she said flatly.

“Now I know we had previously discussed some ideas for your future,” Adrien hedged. “And while they were ambitious, perhaps they were a little too forward-looking. It’s my turn to apologize—sincerely, truly sincerely—for getting your hopes up.”

Kat tried to rearrange her features to reflect a disappointment she was nowhere near feeling. “You don’t mean…”

“I’m afraid that I might have overpromised on some things.”

“Some things being specifically the part where you pro—”

“Proposed a fruitful future partnership,” Adrien interjected with a nervous glance at the bystanders.

“Now obviously this isn’t to say that I don’t want to work with you in the future.

I value your insight immensely, and I don’t think I’ll be half the kind of king I want to be without your input.

That being said, the method by which you give your input might not be, shall we say, exactly what we discussed previously. ”

“So we’re calling it off, then?”

“Well—”

“Your Highness,” Kat said, drawing a pained look from Adrien. “I understand the effort to spare my feelings, but I’m afraid I need you to be direct about this.”

“Well, it’s just that my priorities were rearranged. Rather recently, in fact.” Adrien rubbed his nose nervously, glancing back at the dais as if to make sure Giselle hadn’t vanished into the ether. “So the position we previously discussed might not be as available as originally thought.”

“That position being…”

“Katrien, I know you know exactly what I mean,” the prince snapped.

“Us lowborn infantry types are a little slow on the uptake, you know? I wanted to be sure.”

Adrien gave her a sly look. “You would have been a troublesome queen, let’s face it. Maybe the good kind of troublesome. But the realm’s had enough trouble to last a generation, and you’ll be just as adequate a thorn in my side as an adviser, I think.”

Kat gave him a gracious curtsy, one Mira had drilled her on with the intensity she normally reserved for spear exercises. “I appreciate the wisdom of my future ruler.”

“Yes, it is wise, isn’t it?” Adrien said, stroking his chin. “Now, as your future ruler, I have only one command. Would you…mind telling me that girl’s name?”

Kat barked a sharp, bright laugh and every head in the vicinity turned.

Once she’d extricated herself from Adrien’s overeager questioning, Kat went in search of Emory.

She didn’t have to look far. Despite the stiff way he’d moved that seemed to suggest he’d broken at least a couple of his ribs in the Final Lord’s attack, he’d joined in with a small cluster of soldiers who’d taken it upon themselves to help clear the jagged chunks of glass still scattering the ballroom.

Every sweep of the broom in his hand looked painful, but she got the feeling it would take nothing less than a direct order from a commanding officer to get him to stop.

“Hey,” she said, laying a hand on his shoulder. He startled, then winced, and she immediately regretted sneaking up on him. “They’ve got more than enough people helping out with this. Mind if we talk?”

The ballroom’s far end played host to a balcony that looked out over the flickering lights of Rusta and the glorious sprawl of the stars overhead.

It wasn’t the most private place for a conversation, as roughly half the partygoers had decided they needed some air after the demon attack, but there was an opening along the balcony’s edge where the two of them could fit, shoulder to shoulder, and lean out into the night.

“You saw Giselle coming, right?” Emory asked.

“Saw…”

“When you covered me instead of the prince. I assume that’s what you had to clear up with him?”

Kat snorted.

“What’s so funny?”

“I hope you realize the only reason I’m not shaking you by the shoulders right now is that you’re grievously injured.”

“I don’t understand.”

That only made Kat laugh harder.

“Are you saying that wasn’t a feint?” Emory asked. “But that makes no sense. You’d have to be an absolute idiot…You…He’s the prince. You deliberately covered me over the prince? The prince who’s about to—well, you know.”

“He’s not.”

Emory blinked.

“He just told me. It’s off. He’s not going to.”

“But that’s ridiculous.”