Alice stood at the center of the broken throne steps, and the room had gone quiet in the way a held breath goes quiet.
Her wings had gone fully black. What red-gold light had spread through a whole hall of drained men and transformed monsters was pulled tight now, drawn back into her own body, coiled there like something waiting.
The living men lay still where they'd dropped, breathing but empty. The Incubus Thralls hadn't moved in a full minute. Maeve's circlet had a hairline crack running clean across the white stone under her boots, and she stood with one hand pressed flat against her own sternum, feeling the strain of holding the field this long.
