The walk to the Shard Throne wasn't a parade. It was a funeral march through a kitchen.

  The smell... gods, the smell. It clung to the back of Wilhelm’s throat, a greasy, sweet coating that tasted like roast pork. But it wasn’t pork. It was the Angels. The ones who hadn’t moved fast enough when the mirrors tilted.

  "So," Malachia chirped, hopping over a puddle of molten silver that used to be a breastplate. "That went well! I mean, Uncle Desmus is foaming at the mouth, but he's always foaming. It’s his cardio."

  She looked at Wilhelm, waiting for a high-five or a witty retort.

  Wilhelm didn't answer. He was swaying, but not the fun, rum-soaked sway. He was holding a handkerchief over his nose, his face a pale shade of green.

  "Shiny Pants?" Malachia poked him. "You gonna hurl?"

  "I am... contemplating," Wilhelm gagged, waving a hand vaguely at the carnage. "The... culinary implications of modern warfare. It's... appalling."

  They rounded the corner of the nave. And stopped.

  The Shard Throne was ahead, looming in the shadows. But Wilhelm didn't look at the chair. He looked at the wall.

  The Wall of the Dead.

  Baldur was there.

  He was standing alone. The rest of the army Brandan, the survivors were celebrating near the altar, looting wine, patching wounds. But Baldur? No.

  He was kneeling in the muck.

  His armor was ruined. The left side was fused into a slag of grey metal and red skin. His eyebrow was gone. His ear was a blistered mess. He looked like a statue that had been left in a kiln too long.

  He was working.

  "What is he doing?" Malachia whispered. Her voice was small. She grabbed Wilhelm’s coat, hiding behind him slightly. "Why is he touching them?"

  Wilhelm stepped forward. His boots clicked on the marble. Click. Click.

  "Baldur?" Wilhelm called out. Softly. You don't startle a man who looks like that.

  Baldur didn't look up. His hands gauntlets burned black were busy.

  He was straightening the limbs of a corpse.

  Not a man. A boy.

  A squire. Maybe eleven years old. An Angel in training. The kid’s armor was too big for him; the breastplate had the white-and-gold paint of a squire, now bubbled and scorched. He had been part of the shield wall. Part of the meat shield Baldur had ordered forward.

  "He is out of uniform," Baldur rasped. His voice sounded like grinding stones.

  "Brother," Wilhelm said, stopping a few feet away. The smell here was overpowering. "The battle is over. We won. Brandan is... being Brandan. Come on. Let's get you a medic. Or a bucket of ice."

  Baldur ignored him. He reached down and adjusted the boy’s cloak. He brushed a flake of ash from the kid’s frozen, terrified face.

  "His name was Jonas," Baldur said. He wasn't talking to Wilhelm. He was talking to the air. To the ledger in his head. "House Miller. Third son. He wanted to carry the banner."

  Baldur’s hands were shaking. Just a tremor. Microscopic.

  "He held the line," Baldur stated. Flat. Cold. "I ordered the formation. Tortoise Shell. Use the fallen to protect the living. Jonas was... at the front."

  Wilhelm felt sick. "Baldur... you did what you had to. It was the light or the grave."

  "He held," Baldur repeated. He tugged at the boy’s collar, straightening it until it was perfectly aligned with his chin. Precision. Order. Even in death. "He did not run. The heat... it melted the buckles. He stood there and he burned because I told him to hold."

  Baldur finally looked up.

  His face was a ruin of burns and soot. But his eyes... they were clear. Grey. Terrible.

  "Is that victory, Wilhelm?" Baldur asked. No emotion. Just a question. "I spent him. Like a coin. To buy ten yards of ground."

  "It's war," Wilhelm whispered. The Bastard mask was gone. No jokes. No swaying. "We survived."

  "He didn't," Baldur said.

  He looked back down at the boy. Jonas.

  Baldur reached out with a stiff, burnt finger. He traced the Stormsong lightning bolt painted on the boy’s shield.

  "He followed orders," Baldur muttered. "Good soldier."

  And then Wilhelm saw it.

  It wasn't a sob. Baldur Stormsong didn't sob. That would be inefficient. That would be a breach of protocol.

  It was just a single drop. One clear tear cutting a track through the soot on his good cheek. It hit the boy’s breastplate with a tiny tink.

  Baldur blinked. He seemed surprised by the moisture.

  He raised a gauntlet and wiped it away instantly. Aggressively. Smearing the ash.

  "Smoke," Baldur grunted, standing up. His knees popped. He stiffened his spine until he was a rod of iron again. "The ventilation in here is substandard. Irritates the eyes."

  He turned his back on the boy. He turned his back on the wall of corpses he had built.

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  "Come," Baldur commanded, his voice back to the metallic bark of the General. "Brandan is waiting. We have a Kingdom to secure. And Wilhelm?"

  "Yes?" Wilhelm breathed, staring at the wet spot on the dead boy's armor.

  "Tuck your shirt in," Baldur said, not looking back. "You look like a vagrant. It reflects poorly on the House."

  He marched away. Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Malachia peeked out from behind Wilhelm’s leg. She looked at the dead boy. Then at the retreating metal man.

  "He's scary," she whispered. "Brandan is loud scary. Alexander is snake scary. But him? He's... cold scary."

  Wilhelm put a hand on her head. He didn't mess up her hair. He just needed to touch something living.

  "Yeah," Wilhelm murmured, watching his brother limp toward the throne. "He's the Wall, Shortstack. The Walls don't feel. They just hold up the roof so the rest of us don't get crushed."

  He looked at Jonas one last time. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the stolen silver spoon he’d been saving. He placed it gently in the dead boy’s hand.

  "For the ferryman, kid," Wilhelm whispered. "Tell him the Grey One sent you. Maybe he'll give you a discount."

  He turned around, grabbed Malachia’s hand, and put the sway back in his step.

  "Right! To the Throne! Let's go see if Brandan has broken it yet!"

  But his laugh was hollow. And he made sure to walk in step with the kid, so she wouldn't see his face.

  The walk from the nave to the Citadel wasn't long, but it felt like crossing a different kind of battlefield.

  They left the silence of the dead for the hushed panic of the living. The stone corridors, usually smelling of lavender and beeswax, now reeked of soot and fear.

  Servants pressed themselves flat against the tapestries as the "victors" marched past a burnt metal man, a silver-haired child pope, and a Master of Coin who desperately needed a drink.

  By the time the heavy oak doors of the Great Hall loomed ahead, the adrenaline had faded, leaving Wilhelm with nothing but a pounding headache and the realization that the fighting was over, but the politics were just beginning.

  The Shard Throne wasn't majestic. It was a threat carved in obsidian.

  It sat in the center of the cavernous hall like a jagged black tooth. The backrest was made of fused swords and shattered lances remnants of the first Unification Wars that twisted upwards into sharp, menacing points. If you leaned back too comfortably, it would slice your spine.

  "Comfort is the enemy of vigilance," Wilhelm muttered, eyeing the chair from the side. "Or maybe the decorator just hated people with lumbar issues."

  The hall was packed. But not with cheering crowds.

  It was filled with the silent, terrified nobility of the Moonclaw Lands. The Dukes, the Counts, the hangers-on who had survived the purge. They stood in their designated boxes, watching with the kind of stiff attention you give to a bomb that might explode.

  Wilhelm stood near the front, next to Baldur. The Grey One had cleaned up mostly. His armor was still scorched, his face a landscape of fresh burns and healing salve, but he stood rigid as a pike.

  "He looks nervous," Wilhelm whispered, swaying slightly. The rum was wearing off, replaced by a headache that felt like a rusty nail being driven into his temple.

  "He is preparing," Baldur corrected. "It is the weight. He feels it."

  Brandan stood at the foot of the dais.

  He wasn't wearing the royal ermine. He wore his battle armor, dented and bloodstained. He refused to wash it. "Let them smell the victory," he’d said. He looked massive. A mountain of iron and beard. But his hands... his big, bear-paw hands were clenched so tight the leather of his gloves creaked.

  He looked at the throne. He looked at Wilhelm.

  And for a second, the Warrior King was gone. It was just Brandan. The brother who got his head stuck in a fish barrel.

  Brandan stepped closer to Wilhelm. He didn't whisper. He rumbled, low enough that the court couldn't hear, but loud enough for his brothers.

  "We did this," Brandan said. His voice was thick. "Not me. Us. The hammer swings, but the arm aims. And the... the mind guides."

  He put a heavy hand on Wilhelm's shoulder. Then one on Baldur's.

  "I sit on the glass," Brandan growled, looking them in the eye. "But we rule. If I start thinking I’m a god... smack me. Hard."

  "With pleasure," Wilhelm grinned weakly. "I'll use a frying pan."

  "Protocol dictates a scepter," Baldur noted dryly. "But a pan would be audibly effective."

  Then the bells tolled.

  DOOOONG.

  The sound vibrated in Wilhelm’s teeth.

  "Here comes the circus," Wilhelm muttered.

  Pontifex Malachia entered.

  She wasn't wearing her combat boots. Someone probably a terrified nun had wrestled her into the ceremonial robes of the Pontificate. Heavy white silk embroidered with gold thread, a train that went on for ten meters, carried by six sweating choir boys.

  She looked... ridiculous. And terrifying.

  A twelve-year-old girl drowning in holy fabric, wearing a hat (the Miter) that was taller than her head. She walked with a scowl that could curdle milk.

  Behind her walked Archbishop Desmus. He was chanting. Loudly. Something about cleansing fire and the unworthy being crushed. He swung a censer that poured thick, acrid smoke into the room.

  And behind him... the witnesses.

  Alexander Shadowgrove. The Violet Eye. He leaned against a pillar, eating you guessed it another apple. He looked at Brandan with amused contempt. Like he was watching a monkey try to do calculus.

  Vasco Vane stood in the shadows, wringing his hands, looking at everyone’s pockets.

  Lydia Ironvine stood near the front, golden and cold, her eyes scanning the room for threats or opportunities. Probably both.

  Malachia reached the dais. She had to climb the steps. She tripped on her robe.

  Stumble.

  The hall gasped. Desmus looked ready to murder someone for the imperfection.

  "Stupid dress," Malachia hissed, loud enough to be heard in the back row. She kicked the train aside. "Who invented this? It’s a hazard!"

  She marched up to Brandan. She had to stand on a small stool a servant hurriedly placed there just to reach his head.

  She held the crown.

  The Moonclaw Crown. It wasn't the twisted gold thing Brandan had smashed earlier. This was the Coronet of the First Pact. Heavy iron. No gems. Just cold, black metal.

  "Kneel, Oaf," Malachia commanded.

  Brandan knelt. The floor cracked under his knee.

  Malachia held the crown over his head. She didn't recite the holy verses. She looked at the crowd.

  "By the power of the Concrete Sky," she shouted, her voice echoing, "and because nobody else wants the job right now... I, Pontifex Malachia, declare this man..."

  She paused. She looked at Alexander.

  "...Provisional King."

  She slammed the crown onto Brandan’s head. It looked painful.

  "Until the duel is fought," she added, glaring at the Violet Eye. "Or until I change my mind. Long live the King, I guess."

  "LONG LIVE THE KING!" Desmus roared, terrifyingly loud. "ANU!!"

  "Long live the King," the court mumbled, terrified.

  Brandan stood up. He turned to face them.

  He didn't look like a Provisional King. He looked like a storm that had decided to wear a crown.

  "I am the Storm!" Brandan bellowed, raising his hammer. "And while I sit, the Moonclaw does not bleed! Unless I make it bleed!"

  Cheering. Nervous, frantic cheering.

  Wilhelm watched. He felt... heavy.

  This was it. They had won. They had the throne. They had the girl.

  But as he looked around the room, he saw the banners.

  The Golden Chalice of Ironvine. The Needle and Cat of Whitefield. The Crystal of Hollowdeep. The weird, fleshy skull of the Skullwardens.

  They weren't cheering for Brandan. They were cheering because they were alive.

  And in the back... a messenger was whispering to Lydia. She frowned. A tiny crease in her perfect forehead.

  Wilhelm slipped away. He needed air. Or rum. Or to see just how bad the bill for this victory was going to be.