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I hesitated.

"It is yours," she said simply. "It always was. What he did to it does not change that."

I took the pendant back. The metal was warm now—warm like skin, like life, like something that had finally been allowed to rest. I did not put it on. Not yet. But I closed my fingers around it and held on.

I was free of corruption. Free of Father's hand on my throat. Free to walk my own path with my own magic flowing through a bond I had chosen, with a woman I loved.

I pulled Lily against me and held her until her breathing became my breathing. Her arms came around me in return. The bond between us pulsed—recognition, certainty, and the simple truth that whatever came next, we would face it as ourselves.

"Can you walk?" she asked quietly.

She stood first and helped me up. I tested my legs. They answered too easily—lighter, unencumbered. I'd been wearing armor so long I'd forgotten what freedom felt like.

"Yes," I said.

Beth approached, expression careful. "How do you feel?"

How did I feel? Free. Terrified. Exhausted. Alive in a way I had not been in months.

"Whole," I said.

Beth nodded. "Good. Because your father would have felt it the moment the corruption died."

The euphoria drained. Of course Father would know. The corruption had been his, woven by his hands, maintained by his will. Its death would have reached him like a severed nerve.

"Then we prepare," Beatrice said. "We choose where. We choose how. And we choose together."

The other Weavers murmured agreement.

Lily's hand tightened in mine. Through the bond, I felt her determination. Her fear. Her absolute refusal to run.

"Together," I echoed.

The moon climbed higher. The fire burned to embers. The ancient trees held their silence.

We had won one battle.

But the war was just beginning.

CHAPTER 24

LILY

No one wanted to leave the alcove. The stone circle still glowed faintly where our bond had burned itself into the earth. The ancient oaks stood sentinel around us, branches bare against a sky thick with stars. The fire had been rebuilt—larger now, brighter—and someone had sent word back to the farmhouse.

Within the hour, supplies began arriving. Blankets. Bread still warm from Diana's oven. Cheese wrapped in cloth. Bottles of something amber that burned going down and spread warmth through exhausted limbs.

I sat on a moss-covered stone near the fire, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders, and watched the gathering happen. The relief was finding its shape in shared food and quiet laughter.

August was there. A second heartbeat in my chest. Not intrusive—just there. Constant in a way that should have felt strange, but instead felt like something I'd been missing my whole life without knowing it.

He sat beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched. The pendant rested in his pocket rather than around his neck. He hadn't put it back on. I didn't ask why.

Some things didn't need words.

A commotion at the edge of the clearing drew my attention. Voices raised in protest—Diana's sharp tone cutting through, and beneath it, Mira's quieter objections.

Then Garrick emerged from the trees, supported between two Weavers, pale and grinning like a fool.