Briar took a step closer to Phillip, then another, with Maleficent merely watching the door. Briar walked more confidently until she reached out and touched Phillip’s shoulder.

He flinched, blinking quickly, and something shifted in his gaze, the hardened wall of focus softening as he saw her.

“Briar,” he gasped. “Are you all right?”

She nodded. And, just as important, he was all right. He was afraid, yes; but he was standing, and there was a clarity in his eyes that lifted a weight from Briar’s chest.

This realization happened in a flash, and Briar had barely managed to squeeze his shoulder when a flurry of movement crowded through the door. Frieda and Ben were just beyond the threshold, but pushing past them came Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather to enter the cottage.

The three of them stopped yards back from Maleficent, the whole of their small cottage between them.

Maleficent’s grin was all levels of darkly unamused. For a moment, her hands twitched at her sides, and Briar wondered if she might try to run or fight back.

But all she did was look one more time at Briar.

“I know it will be you,” she said, a threat and a promise.

Then she faced the fairies again and, her arms out in surrender, walked toward them.

The moment they were within feet of each other, the air in the cottage flipped inside out, a great void.

Briar shouted, her body ripping toward the force, Phillip’s sword clattering to the floor in his scramble to grab her. Frieda and Ben dropped to the dirt outside the cottage. Wind whipped in torrents through the open door, blasting so hard against the windows that they burst inward; screaming gusts whistled down through the chimney, billowing the flames hotter, scattering embers and ash. That debris built, built, coalescing with starbursts of glitter and sizzles of flame, and it was magic, magic cleaving the air, all of it gathering and knotting around Maleficent, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather.

The force of it grew and grew, a hum building, and some pitch of the whine served as warning—Briar and Phillip dropped into a huddled crouch as the rising shriek of magic and wind hit its peak in a percussive explosion that knocked them both to the side.

As quickly as it had come, it stopped, and only dead silence remained.

Briar twisted, hand a shield, muscles knotted against the need to run either for cover or into whatever fight might await.

But there was a deeper sense of calm.

What had happened was not a threat.

Indeed, as the dust settled from the now absent wind, the cottage was gone. The garden stretched around Briar, hedges and flowers washed gray under the midnight sky. Off to the side, Ben and Frieda were rising from where they had fallen, their faces shades of hesitant and wondrous.

At Briar’s feet, bent over in a trembling, panting ball, was a woman.

She looked up at Briar slowly. In the dimness of the moonlit garden, Briar had to squint to focus her eyes.

The woman was Flora. No, Fauna. No—those were Merryweather’s eyes. Fauna’s smile. Flora’s brow.

Maleficent, too. Her chin, her hair, pieces of them re-formed now.

Briar stood over the woman. She opened her mouth but nothing came out, nothing that would encompass all the questions she had, the realizations she had come to.

The woman stood, too. She was in a simple black gown, her long dark hair tumbling to the middle of her back, and as she inclined her head at Briar, her eyes sparked with something so close to regret that Briar’s shoulders bowed.

“You are whole now?” Briar asked, hesitant.

The woman’s lips quirked in a sad smile. “It would seem so.” Her gaze drifted out, seeing something in the ether, memories congealing, perhaps, pieces of all the fairies and Maleficent at long last reconnecting.

“I owe you an apology, it would seem,” the woman finally whispered.

“Only me?”

The woman’s eyes met hers. She frowned.

And that confusion broke through Briar’s mask of calmness.

She moved around the woman, and Phillip came to his feet behind her, giving the woman a wide berth as Briar crossed the garden stones to Frieda.

Briar stopped next to Frieda but faced the woman. “You owe us both an apology.”

The woman’s eyes flicked between the two of them. “Yes. I suppose I do.” She brushed her hands down her skirt, and Briar caught the shake of her fingers, the nervousness and discomfort in her stance.

Without looking away from the woman, Frieda leaned toward Briar. “What is going on?”

Briar quickly explained what Maleficent had told her when they had been alone, about the prophecy of an empress who ushered in an era of peace. About how that prophecy changed and warped so much that it broke the magical force connected to it, the Queen’s Council, and created four separate entities all driven to see that prophecy fulfilled, albeit it in their own misguided, incomplete ways.

As Briar spoke, she watched the woman. So much about her was familiar, yet so much was strange, and Briar realized that the twist of pain in her chest was because her aunts were gone. But they were also here, in this new person. Or sorceress? Or fairy?

This Queen’s Council.

Frieda shook her head at the end of Briar’s explanation. “Maleficent wanted us to kill each other?”

She didn’t ask Briar maliciously—she was curious, confused. Heartbroken.

Briar felt her lips form a soft smile. “She would have been disappointed.”

And Briar was relieved to see that echoed in Frieda’s eyes.

After all she had gone through—the curse, Matilda’s influence—Frieda was still here.

“But we both had an equal chance of the prophecy being about us,” Briar said as she turned back to the woman. “Why me? Why did the three of you protect me but abandon Frieda?”

When the woman looked at her again, she was more Merryweather than anyone else. “Because you are compassionate and bring people together. You are precisely the type of person who could beget peace.”

“And Frieda isn’t?” Briar’s voice was hard.

The woman glanced at Frieda. Uncertainty tinged her face. “We thought—I thought of her as brash and military-minded. Not someone who would bring about peace.”

Frieda’s expression was of barely restrained hurt. Her jaw worked and she dropped her eyes.

Likely she had heard that daily since becoming Matilda’s daughter again. And all those things were part of her, Briar knew; even before their lives had been upended, Frieda had been passionate, but that came from her unwavering sense of right and wrong, and her eagerness to see those wrongs corrected.

“To expect peace to come without conflict is shortsighted,” Briar said. “I see that now, too. I see a great many things now, first among them being how this prophecy will come to pass. And you helped me with that, actually.”

The woman’s eyes widened slightly. Cautious wonder.

Briar stepped closer to her. “As Maleficent, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, you were disjointed. You—all four of you—were singularly driven. But seeing you come together now—you were always meant to be this, weren’t you? You were always meant to be one. United. Together.”

Her eyes shot toward Phillip on that word. He smiled at her.

“But that is how I’ve been seeing myself, too.” Briar faced Frieda. “Disjointed. Each part of me kept separate.”

She held out her hand to her friend.

“Somehow, Briar Rose the peasant bard has the capacity to make this empire a better place,” Briar said, lips quaking as she tried to smile, tried even harder not to cry. “Somehow, I can stand here and honestly say that I do want to be empress, if only because I see the injustices that others overlook. And I know you do, too. I know you want to be empress to help this land and its people. So why can’t we both do it?”

Frieda’s eyes held on Briar’s, face breaking with—

Hope.

It was hope.

Briar lifted her extended hand, making it an offering. She hoped, too, hoped so hard her fingers trembled.

“Why can’t we rule together? Jointly?” Briar smiled on a huff of suppressed tears. “The prophecy showed the two of us ruling, didn’t it? That was why it was so hard to interpret—because it wasn’t talking about one ruler. It was talking about two. You and me, together.”

Frieda didn’t appear to be breathing. Briar wasn’t, either. Her eyes teared up and she smiled again and she kept her hand out. In this moment she wasn’t a woman standing in a castle’s garden; she was a child, and she was lonely and scared and hungry, and she wanted her friend to come play with her in the woods so they could chase away their loneliness together.

On a shaky exhalation, Frieda lifted her hand and pressed it into Briar’s.

They were each alone in their own way, thrown unmoored into a vast, wide world, two little girls making flower crowns and coming up with nonsensical songs. The fact that they had met had been fate and it had been magic, and Briar didn’t need a Queen’s Council to tell her that. Because from this, she had found Ben, and Phillip, and now Frieda was holding her hand again, and nothing had felt this right and whole since the night before her sixteenth birthday.

“All right,” Frieda said with a startled laugh. “Empresses.”

While Briar and Frieda had forged unity out in the gardens, those in the banquet room had not.

Matilda’s anger had spilled over. Bavarian soldiers filled half the room, their weapons drawn; the other half was given over to soldiers of the Prince Electors and Austria. Eckhardt appeared to have vanished entirely, and while Matilda stood in the center of the room, at the head of her contingent, the Prince Electors were huddled by the rear wall of windows, shouting their disdain to her from behind their protectors.

Matilda held a sword aloft. Still dressed in her banquet gown, she made a fearsome sight, a warrior-queen demanding the throne. “—as it should have been all along,” she was shouting over the Prince Elector’s objections, over the clank of shifting armor on both sides. “Name Bavaria the victor and be done!”

The swirl of tension was a similar building force as the magic in the garden. Only this force was driven by revenge and bloodlust and power-hunger, which after Maleficent’s vileness was almost a relief.

This, Briar knew how to deal with. Or rather not deal with, because she was fully done with the games and lies and coercion. Even the similarity of facing a battle-ready Matilda in a grand room did nothing to discomfit Briar—she saw only vengeance, the opportunity to right another wrong that had sent her off on this path.

No one would die by Matilda of Bavaria’s hand this time.

The woman had opted to stay in the garden, or rather, Briar and Frieda had told her to stay, to allow the two of them to take the first step toward their joint rule. No magic, no manipulation. Just the two of them.

As the prophecy had foretold.

Briar walked straight up the split that the soldiers made of the room. Matilda alone stood in that empty space, and when she saw Briar approaching—with Frieda at her side, Ben and Phillip behind them—she lowered her sword a fraction.

“Daughter.” Matilda held out a hand and smiled in a way that was more a scowl. “You have brought the Austrian queen to surrender? We will take our victory to—”

The Prince Electors shouted in outrage.

“There is no need of surrender!”

“We will not name Clara empress!”

“This behavior is—”

“The only surrender,” Briar said, her voice hard and loud, “will be yours, Matilda.”

It cracked over the room.

Frieda gave a sudden roaring laugh that seemed to catch her off guard. She gaped at Briar and slapped a hand over her mouth. “You have stayed the same in many ways,” she murmured.

“Clara,” Matilda said immediately. “Come away from her. You are empress now, and I won’t—”

“Yes,” Frieda said with a flat smile. “I am empress. And Briar will be as well.”

That silenced the room even more effectively, until one Elector cleared his throat.

They were still behind their cluster of soldiers, but the Elector pushed through, armor and weapons jangling until he stumbled free, dabbing at sweat with a handkerchief.

“That is—I don’t—What do you mean, Your Highness?”

Briar tried for a cordial smile. How she hated these damned cordial smiles.

“The campaign is over,” she said. “Princess Clara—”

“Princess Frieda,” Frieda corrected her.

Briar grinned and looped their arms together. “Princess Frieda and I have agreed to jointly rule the Holy Roman Empire. Provided this decision pleases the Prince Electors—but I think you will come to realize such an arrangement is the only possible solution. The strengths both Frieda and I possess complement each other’s weaknesses, and together, we will unify two of the most fractured and warring kingdoms in the empire.”

“This is—” the Elector babbled. Others joined him, equally stunned. “This is highly irregular—”

“Frieda and I both grew up at the very bottom of the system that we have been campaigning to rule,” Briar cut in. “We have both experienced the worst of this empire’s inequities. You have seen our abilities over this campaign. You have placed us already at the forefront. You only have things to gain by allowing us both to rule.”

The Electors eyed one another, quietly whispering among themselves.

When their whispers stilled, and an air of acceptance permeated, Briar wanted to smile—but her attention was on Matilda of Bavaria, who was seething, her sword still gripped relentlessly in one hand.

Frieda let go of Briar’s arm and stepped forward. “Mother, this is for the best. For Bavaria’s sake, and the empire’s.”

“She has manipulated you,” Matilda spat, glaring ferociously at Briar. “She has corrupted you—the throne is Bavaria’s! The throne is mine!”

She lunged.

Briar barely had time to exhale in shock, let alone move, as the sword reared back.

Phillip dove, naked blade before him, poised to intercept.

But Frieda moved, too. She threw herself not just in front of Briar, but at Matilda, and grabbed her mother’s hands around the hilt of the sword. She shoved them both backward, back again, until they careened into the slack-jawed group of soldiers.

“Stop!” Frieda commanded. She shoved again, and the sword broke from Matilda’s grip, clattering across the stone floor. “Stop. I will only do this with Briar. I will only—”

“Then you are not my daughter,” Matilda snapped, and pushed her away.

Frieda’s face, red with exertion, hollowed briefly. “That does not stop me from being princess of Bavaria. And you have attacked my joint empress in broad view of the Prince Electors after Bavaria extended promises of co-rule and peace.”

“You have no right to speak in this manner.” Matilda was fuming. “You are nothing, no better than a peasant. You should be grateful for everything I have given you. You would bring us to ruin, you conniving rat!”

Briar’s whole body went red-hot with anger.

But she didn’t have to intervene—because she hadn’t even seen Ben move. Suddenly, he was there, and Briar gave a startled shriek as she watched King Phillip of Austria’s squire slap Queen Matilda of Bavaria.

The crack of Ben’s palm on Matilda’s cheek echoed through the perfectly silent banquet room. It stunned Matilda enough that she went immobile, head thrown to the side, arms stiff.

Ben, twisted in the motion of having smacked one of the most powerful people in the empire, stumbled back and coughed roughly to clear his throat.

“Well.” He tugged down his tunic and nodded at Frieda. “I’ve had quite enough of her.”

Frieda, eyes wide with shock, managed to nod back. “Quite.” Then, gathering herself quickly, she faced the soldiers. “Place my mother under guard. She has crimes to answer for.”

The Bavarian guards glanced at the Prince Electors. Who still held the power to tip this all into chaos.

But one waved them on. “Well, get on with it. Your empress has given you an order.”

A smile bloomed on Briar’s face. Was it of relief? Gratitude? Shock? She couldn’t tell, only that something had clicked rightly into place.

Briar raced forward as soldiers wrestled Matilda of Bavaria across the room, ignoring her snarls and snaps of command.

Frieda was gaping at Ben when Briar stopped next to her.

Ben’s cheeks went scarlet. He looked pleadingly at Phillip, who sheathed his sword.

“Did I just help stage a coup?” Ben asked.

A slow-growing smirk bloomed on Phillip’s face. “Possibly.”

“Oh.” Ben scratched his jaw, clearly on the fence between alarm and vague acceptance. “A lot’s happened in the last hour. Why not end with a coup? That makes perfect—”

Frieda grabbed the collar of his tunic and kissed him.

Briar clamped her hands over her mouth, but it did nothing to stop her squeal.

Phillip laughed and pulled Briar back. “Give them a moment to—”

“Wait!” Briar tried to wriggle out of his hold, but he was strong and determined, and half of her wasn’t even trying to fight.

Frieda peeled back from Ben in enough of a pause to gasp, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I—”

“Forgiven, forgiven, of course you’re forgiven.” Ben was frantically shaking his head, his arms around Frieda’s waist, his face a wild falling apart of need. “Kiss me again, my God I’ve missed you—”

And then they were fully assailing one another. In the banquet hall of the Frankfurt palace. While the Prince Electors watched on in unmasked shock.

Phillip managed to wrestle Briar back a few yards, giving Ben and Frieda what amounted to privacy in this utterly ridiculous place for a reunion, but Ben was right—after everything that had happened the past hour, why not?

Briar spun into Phillip’s arms and looked up at him. She was smiling widely, and she couldn’t remember the last time she had done so with such sincerity.

Phillip beamed down at her, eyes darting over her face, absorbing the sight. “Ah. Finally.”

She cocked her head. “Finally?”

“I told you, I’m incredibly selfish. All I’ve wanted is to see you smile like that again.”

Her chest filled with joy, unrepentant and wild, and she pushed up onto her toes to rest her lips on his.

“You came for me,” she said against his mouth. It was a question and a statement.

He tightened his hold on her. “Always.”

“And you faced her.” Briar arched back to look into his eyes. Still clear, still steady on hers, brightened by his smile.

“I did.”

It was the way his smile didn’t waver that let her grin stretch. “The Pain from Lorraine’s greatest victory yet. How can I make it up to you? As your empress, or queen, or wife?”

What a great many titles she would have.

Once, that would have made her buckle.

Now, she laughed, because it was still so absurd, and impossible, and wonderful in that impossibility.

And she wouldn’t bear any of this weight alone.

Phillip put his lips on her neck, a feather-soft kiss now, and it turned the rapid flush of joy to syrupy sugar in her veins.

“As my wife,” he said into her skin. “Always that first.”

She pressed into his touch. “Together.” The word burst out of her.

Phillip glided his lips up to her ear. “Together,” he finished, that promise between the two of them now stretching out to encompass Frieda and Ben, united in this, the barest beginnings of a foundation that Briar had never dared to dream of.