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"You really need to stop underestimating my man."

"I've been trying to tell her," Kai said, already moving to put himself between me and her, which was going to be difficult since she was sitting on me.

He wasn't healed. That mattered. There was no Magical reset button waiting Below. There was no miracle that erased everything he'd already survived.

Kai was hurt. Thrown around like a six-foot-seven tennis ball, blood still on his mouth, standing on legs that clearly did not want to hold him up anymore.

He didn't need to win.

He just needed to stand.

The One Below finally got off of me and looked at Kai like he'd broken some rule she'd trusted absolutely. "You fell."

"Yeah. I got back up."

Somewhere through the open Door, faint but unmistakable, I heard Zelda's voice.

"WITCH BINDS, BITCH!"

The tether was still doing its job even with an entire realm between them. The black and silver binding around the One Below's wrists flared bright. She jerked backward, snarling, caught between three anchors at once.

Me, Below, holding the crown.

Kai, standing between her and me.

Zelda, Above, pulling the binding tighter through a tether that stretched across worlds like it didn't care about the distance at all.

For the first time, the old instructions weren't a metaphor. They were exact.

I watched something shift in the One Below's face as her own binding started peeling away from the Door. Black and silver Sorcery retreated off the ancient seam and wrapped itself around her instead. That was the piece nobody had gotten right the first time. Margaret's Witch had bound the Door. Zelda was pulling the connection off the Door entirely and onto the woman herself, which meant the Door didn't need her anymore to stay closed.

That meant I could finally close it. On my own. For good.

She felt it too. I watched fury ferment into something rawer.

Fear.

For one second, just one, I saw past all the silver and black Sorcery and broken wings. I saw the woman Margaret had described– the sister, the mother, the Mate, the terrified girl who'd made exactly the wrong choice a very long time ago.

"Don't leave me here."

Great Goddess, help me, my heart answered that. Of course it did.

But I didn't let go of the crown.

"I won't pretend you deserved what happened to you." I meant that. Every word. "I really am sorry you lost everything you loved, but… that was your choice, and I’ll be damned if I'm letting you do it to anybody else."

“Choose,” Aideen said. No lecture. Just the one word.

"I already did."

I got up. Crown in both hands. Kai holding the line between us. Zelda's binding drawing tighter by the second.

I looked up at the opening. I thought about home, my family, my ridiculous shop, and my ridiculous life– every single thing I'd spent the last four months thinking the crown wanted to steal from me.

Those weren't the things I was giving up.

They were exactly why I was closing that Door.