"You serve in far more important ways now," Elizabeth replied gently. "You've become his anchor. His steady hand. That matters more than any title."
Seraphina watched the exchange with quiet fascination. "I guarded a prison for three hundred years. I thought connection was a weakness. Now I see it as strength. Thank you… all of you… for showing me that."
Vale raised her glass with a small smirk. "To unexpected alliances. And to the man who somehow convinced a Warden, a maid, a queen, and his own mother to follow him into hell and back."
We drank to that.
