General Willow moved.
He crossed the clearing in a blur, dark magic building in his palms, his eyes locked on River, who was still kneeling over Tristan's body with her forehead pressed to his and her hands full of light that couldn't save him.
Vesper saw her father's trajectory.
The woman who had fed blood magic into a prince's soul, who had crashed a bonding ceremony and screamed accusations, the woman whose cruelty had orchestrated every death on this field, ran.
She threw herself between her father and River.
General Willow's dark magic hit his daughter full in the chest.
Vesper's body absorbed the impact. Dark energy tore through her in a single, devastating pulse. She dropped to her knees between her father and the woman he was trying to kill, and the look on her face as she fell was impossible to read: surprise, defiance, the particular expression of a woman who had done terrible things and had chosen, in the final moment, to do one thing that wasn't.
