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"The Guardian shall fall," Barney breathed, like he was watching a prophecy complete itself in real time.

"Falling isn't dying," I ground out through my teeth.

"Get up," Roy said, fierce and immediate, right there with me the way he always was when it counted.

"Working on it."

"Your Mate is running toward us carrying a crown while being chased by an ancient nightmare."

"I noticed."

"Then get up!"

Zelda reached the threshold first. Crossed clean through, stumbling onto solid ground on our side, already turning back toward the mist.

Martha was maybe ten feet behind her. And right behind Martha, close enough now that I could see individual strands of silver light writhing under blackened skin, was the thing that had been Margaret's sister.

I reached my free hand toward the portal. "COME ON!"

"I'M COMING!"

Then the thing behind her spoke. Its voice was layered and enormous. It filled the whole passage.

"Leave the crown."

Martha stopped.

Just for half a second. Just long enough that my heart nearly stopped with her.

"MARTHA!"

She turned back toward the thing chasing her. The strong set of her shoulders and the way her back went ramrod straight, I knew that she was not surrendering.

She was furious.

"You know what? NO."

"He will die because of you."

Martha turned to the side. I watched Margaret's sister's words land. Watched Martha's eyes flick to me, kneeling there with black Magic still wrapped around my ankle, and I knew precisely what was being offered to her in that moment. Drop the crown. Save the Guardian. Become exactly what her ancestor had become, one refusal at a time.

"No," Martha said, and her voice didn't shake at all. "He gets to choose, too."

Something in my chest cracked wide open. She understood. My Mate had understood the one thing everybody else kept getting wrong: my choice mattered, too.

"RUN, LOVE!" I bellowed.

She ran.

She leaped through the threshold at a dead sprint, and I caught her wrist with my free hand the second she crossed, then helped to pull her the rest of the way through by sheer force of will.

The creature lunged after her.

Zelda threw everything she had at it in the same instant– and for the first time all night, her Magic didn't hit the Door.

It hit her.

The thing shrieked, a sound that seemed to come from every one of those layered faces at once. A black and silver mark bloomed across her torso and wrists where Zelda's Magic caught hold. It didn't look like enough to hold her for long. Not yet.