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“What did she say?” Elias asked.

“Only my name.”

He looked away. Grief pulled at the lines around his mouth.

“She came to me twice,” he said. “The second time, she told me the Crown could stop her hands but couldn’t stop her knowing what they had done. I believed she was warning me about madness.”

“She was still present,” Bryony said.

“Yes.”

“Did she ask you to help her die?” I asked.

“She asked me to help her remove the Crown. I failed. Don’t turn my failure into proof that she wanted death.”

“I won’t.”

“What you saw belongs to the last seconds. Keep it there.”

Elias had known Cecily as patient and queen. His warning carried its own guilt, and I accepted it.

Elias’s answer broke slightly. He cleared his throat and reached for his case. “I’ll return after I’ve checked the people injured in the hall. You need rest, Bryony. Stellan, keep listening to her heart.”

“I haven’t stopped.”

“I know. Try not to frighten it into better behaviour.”

He left us with the door half open.

Bryony waited until his steps faded. “Does knowing help?”

“It changes the last few seconds. It doesn’t change the months that led to them.”

“Then don’t make it erase either part. You failed her. She still chose how the failure ended.”

The truth hurt without crushing me.

“I thought you’d offer absolution,” I said.

“You would’ve hated it.”

“Eventually.”

“And I don’t have the right to give it for Cecily.”

I stared at our joined hands. “For a century, I thought the last thing Cecily knew was that I had decided to kill her.”

“Now you know she saw the decision coming.”

“That isn’t much kinder.”

“It isn’t supposed to be kind. It’s true.”

The grief remained. The Crown had simply lost the right to shape it. Cecily wasn’t the accusation the curse put in Bryony’s mouth. She was the woman who had sworn at freezing water, mocked my ceremonial coat and fought for one last movement when nearly every other choice was gone.

“I wish I’d seen her,” I said.

“You see her now.”