Chapter 35
Thirty-Five
A primal roar splits the air. It’s the sound of stone cracking, of metal shrieking, of a beast waking only to realize it’s dying, changing.
The floor trembles. Walls groan. Above us, cracks spiderweb through the ceiling as loose debris rains down in sharp, splintering bursts.
Screams erupt. Bodies slam into one another in a desperate scramble for the exit.
“The Tower is collapsing!” My voice tears out of me, nearly lost beneath the cacophony, but it’s the only thing I have left to offer—a warning, a scream, a plea. My legs won’t stop shaking. My ribs feel too tight to contain my lungs. “Get out now!”
Alderic is already moving, a blur of motion through the chaos. He reaches for one of the maids who followed Bernice and Sylvie into rebellion and hauls her to her feet, shoving her toward the open door.
“Go!” he instructs. “Keep moving! Don’t look back!”
Even in the chaos, even with blood glossing the floor and stone falling through the air, Alderic looks like the version of the man I always hoped existed—one who fights for something beyond himself.
Another woman stumbles, knees bloodied from the stone. Alderic catches her arm, steadies her, and presses a dagger into her shaking hands.
“Run,” he says. “And if any guards try to stop you—fight.”
The women surge forward in a rush of skirts and slippers, sliding on blood-slicked stone, climbing over the fallen bodies of the Masked guard. Some are weeping. Others are silent. All of them are running.
The air is thick with smoke and dust. The scent of iron and ash.
The machine wails again, a mechanical scream that rattles through the skin of the Tower, through the spine of the kingdom.
The walls begin to warp, buckling like ribs under pressure. Somewhere behind us, a support beam gives way with a groan, collapsing in a shower of sparks.
Screams ring off stone. Chaos churns. And through it, a shadow staggers into the light. King Rothmore emerges from the fray. His face is pale, his steps uneven, but his grip is iron. Because in his arms, he drags Delphara.
Her once-glorious gown is soaked in red—his blood, her blood, the kingdom’s. Her crown is tangled in her hair, tilting like a toppled monument. The Queen of Cups, stripped of grace. For the first time, there’s fear in her eyes.
It should feel satisfying, watching her crumble—watching the woman who played goddess choke on her own undoing. But it doesn’t. It just feels…sad. But necessary.
“You will not hold power over me or my people another day,” Victor rasps.
Delphara thrashes. “You ungrateful…” she hisses, her nails raking down his forearm. “You think you have a plan to end my rule?”
“There was no rule,” he says hoarsely. “Only fear. Only the illusion of choice.”
“You swore yourself to me,” she spits. “You made the pact in exchange for a return to glory. You are mine.”
Victor tightens his grip, blood dripping from his fingertips. “I made a mistake, and I’ve paid for it every day since. But this…” He exhales raggedly. “This is where it ends.”
Delphara screams, twisting, trying to break free. But the king does not let go.
“Even if you end me,” she whispers, “you will still be mine. My magick lasts beyond the grave. You will never be free of me.”
Victor’s jaw tightens. “Then I die gladly,” he says, voice rough with resolve. “If it means saving the kingdom I betrayed, then let my blood be the price. Let the rot end with me.”
For the first time, I see him—not the king, not the pawn but the man. The man who couldn’t undo the past but still tried to stop the future from bleeding.
With the last of his strength, King Victor Rothmore seizes Delphara’s wrist and yanks her close. She shrieks in protest, hands clawing at him, but it’s too late. With one final, defiant breath, he throws himself—and the queen—into the gaping mouth of the collapsing machine.
Delphara’s scream cuts through the Tower like a blade. For a moment, time stills. Her magick erupts from her in a final shower of blue and silver light that spirals upward like mist rising off a violent sea. The spell tethering her to the King and the kingdom itself shatters.
A boom pulses outward.
Magick explodes from the Tower’s heart, and the force of it throws Alderic and me backward. I scream as we’re hurled through the air, through the crumbling doors, past the threshold, and into the open world beyond.
The machine howls as it consumes itself, its core shrieking with the power of those who tried to control it. It consumes their ambition, their cruelty, their greed, and it erupts.
A burst of light, silver and scorching, pours from every crack in the stone. It races along the seams of the Tower, eating through rot, devouring decay. It glows brighter and brighter until it is everywhere.
I can’t look away. The Tower isn’t dying—it’s being reborn. And with it, maybe, so am I.
The Tower exhales everything it’s held, every scream it silenced, every injustice it endured—it releases all of it.
A final, magnificent breath that floods the kingdom in a radiant wave.
Magick surges across the bridge, over the castle island, through the valleys, and down into the quiet villages beyond.
Machines stir in distant cities. Wheels spin.
Lights flare. The sound like a thousand beasts waking at once, stretching after centuries of restless sleep.
The light rushes back to the Tower in one last sweep. It burns away the withered apple trees. Bark turns to ash and roots crumble, their papery remains swept away by the wind. For a moment the earth around the Tower is bare.
Then something new takes hold.
Vines twist through the soil, thick and green, bursting with ruby-red fruit. The scent of strawberries lifts on the wind—wild, sun-warmed, impossibly sweet—and wraps around the stone like a promise.
The Tower no longer groans under the weight of its own ruin. It’s no longer a tomb but a beacon. It gleams, transformed. The ancient stone shimmers, smooth and silver, reflecting the waning light of the setting sun that’s broken through the clouds.
The women gather at the foot of the Tower, breathless with wonder, eyes fixed on what remains—not ruins, not wreckage, but change. The magick that once fed on blood now hums with something gentler. Something new. It nourishes. It restores.
This is not the end. It’s the beginning. A kingdom reborn. A kingdom freed.
But freedom is never tidy. It’s not neat or ceremonial. It’s uncertain, unruly, uncharted.
The aftermath hangs heavy in the air, thick with dust and salt and silence. Not the silence of peace, but the silence that follows a scream—a breathless, suspended hush where the world waits to see what comes next.
Some women clutch bloodied blades. Some hold onto each other, their arms looped tight, their bodies trembling with exhaustion. Some bear wounds that will scar, jagged reminders of the battle fought and the lives lost.
But they all stand. Fierce. Unbroken. Free.
Sylvie steps forward, her hands stained with blood, her sword hanging at her side. “The king and queen of Cups are no more,” she says, hoarse but steady. “We will need a new ruler.” Her gaze finds Alderic. “You led Pentacles once. You could lead here.”
A murmur ripples through the gathered women. Some nod. Some shift uneasily. Others look to Alderic, to me, to the Tower that now watches in silence.
Alderic steps forward. For a moment, the wind dies. The sea stills. The magick holds its breath, and so do I.
Maybe he’ll step into power and become what everyone needs. But that’s the old way, isn’t it? One throne for another. One ruler for the next.
And then, softly but clearly, he says, “The rule of kings is over.”
I turn, my gaze sweeping over the women before me—Bernice, Sylvie, the noblewomen, the attendants, the ones who fought in shadows and stitched the wounds of this kingdom long before anyone called them warriors.
I never thought I’d speak for a kingdom. But the Tower’s magick brought me to Towerfall for a reason, and it feels an awful lot like I’ve been speaking for it all along.
“You have always ruled Cups,” I say, voice shaking with the truth. “You’ve kept it alive. You’ve bled for it while the world looked away. You stayed and you fought.”
Bernice steps forward. Her apron is torn, her dress streaked with blood, but there is nothing fragile about her. She is solid, steady, unshaken.
“No more hiding. No more kneeling. No more serving men who never saw our worth.” She looks at every woman gathered, her voice rising. “Gemma speaks the truth. This kingdom is ours. And now, we take it back.”
There’s a beat of silence, and then a single voice rises.
“No more crowns.”
Another, louder. “No more thrones.”
A third, fierce, unyielding. “No more rule without us!”
The dam breaks. Voices rise like thunder. A roar of women, of power unchained. It drowns out centuries of silence, of being used, of being told to wait their turn.
No more monarchs.
No longer controlled.
Never powerless.
They do not hesitate. They do not waver. They do not ask permission.
They claim what has always been theirs.