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He let go of my wrist, and put his other hand on the other side of my face. He turned me to face him and cradled me oh so gently between his hands. “Draw your sword, Merry. Draw it, and let them see how weak you truly are.” He whispered it against my face as he came in for a kiss.

I put my hands on his hands, bare skin to bare skin, as he kissed me. My arm that had been crippled by the original injury seemed a little less hurt. Was it the crown protecting me, or the fact that I was queen at last?

He laid a gentle kiss on my mouth, a good kiss, and not what I’d expected, but then he was full of surprises tonight.

He drew back from me, taking my hands in his. He smiled, and his eyes were completely mad. “I’m going to kill you now.”

“I know,” I said, and I used the hands of blood and flesh together. Where Holly and Ash and I had used them to heal, now I used them to destroy. I drove the hand of blood into him, not in search of wounds, but in search of blood. I used the hand of flesh to cut and tear his body from the inside out. As the hands of power had flowed over the battlefield in a wave of cleansing blood and smoothing flesh, now they filled this one man.

Cel’s eyes went wide. “You can’t,” he whispered.

“I can,” I said, and I flexed that power, flexed it like a giant’s fist that I’d shoved deep into his body, then I opened that fist. One moment Cel was there, eyes wide, hands in mine, the next he wasn’t. Blood smacked into me, and thicker things hit my face. There was a sharp pain in my cheek, and I was left standing alone, covered in blood and thicker things. I scraped what was left of my cousin off my face so I could see, and found that it was his teeth in my cheek, blown there by the force of the magic. I pulled them out, and promised myself a tetanus shot, and antibiotics if I could have them while pregnant. I promised myself a lot of things as I stood there, shaking.

Doyle was suddenly at my side. Rhys was there too, wiping the blood from his face. His eye was back to its usual scar. Galen was with me too. His only injuries were the fresh ones from the fight.

“But how…?” I asked.

“He died, and his hand of old blood died with him,” Doyle said. I held my bloodstained hand out to Doyle. He took it, and I drew him over the red ruin that was all that was left of our enemy. I drew him down into a kiss, and the moment our lips met, our skin ran with light. I was moonlight, and he was black fire, bright enough that it cast shadows across the field.

There were gasps and whispers, and I finally came away from the kiss to find that there was a crown woven into Doyle’s hair. Thin thorn branches formed a latticework above his head, but each thorn was tipped with silver. It was Jonty who whispered, “The Crown of Thorn and Silver.”

Doyle reached up and touched the crown. He came away with a bright spot of crimson on his fingertip. “It is sharp.”

“My king,” I said.

He smiled. “One of them.”

Then a sound, a horrible wet throaty sound, drove the answering smile from my face. “Frost,” I said, and turned back to the stag. It lay on its side, the spear sticking up like a young tree stripped of its branches. Blood had drenched its white coat.

Doyle and I went to him. I knelt and touched the fur where it was clean of blood. He was warm to the touch, but there was no movement. “No,” I said. “No.”

“He was a willing sacrifice,” Doyle said.

I shook my head. “I do not want this.”

“He gave himself so you could rule the Unseelie.”

I shook my head again. “I don’t want to rule them without him at my side.” I laid my head on the stag’s still-warm side, and whispered, “Frost, come back to me. Please, please, don’t go. Don’t go.”

I smelled roses, thick and warm as summer’s kiss. I rose and there was a shower of rose petals falling from the winter sky.

It was Galen who wrapped his hands around the spear, and took it out of the stag’s side to show the horrible wound. Galen stood above us, bathed in the rose petals, the