For a moment, none of them spoke. The pieces, long scattered and senseless, had finally clicked into pd the picture they formed was far more terrifying than disbelief.

  Duke Markus Padparadscha let out a quiet breath.

  “So that’s why,” he mused. “The healing, the presehe sheer weight of you in a room...” He exhaled sharply, a mix of admiration and irony in his voice. “Saint Lucia herself. Sitting in front of us, posing as a mert’s wife. And here I thought I’d seehing.”

  Marquis Timothy Mossflower let out a low, knowing sigh, ping the bridge of his nose as if a long-unsolved riddle had just unraveled before him. “No wohe power shifts in Inkia have been too precise. It wasn’t just political maneuvering—there’s been something else at work, something bigger.”

  The darker the night, the brighter the break of dawn. The emergence of the Demon Lord, and now the inal Saint—the holy woman who had been missing since even before the birth of the first Demon Lord…!

  He g Bianca before fixing his sharp gaze baan. “You weren’t just some ‘mysteriously ill woman’ who came out of nowhere. You were watg. Waiting. And the moment things went wrong, you stepped in.”

  He let out a quiet chuckle, though there was no real humor in it. “A saint meddling in the mess of men. Well. I suppose the corruption in this kingdom was offensive enough to warrant diviervention.”

  Bianca Lumine, meanwhile, was silent. Still. The weight of it all settled into her bones—not as shoot as resistance, but as firmation.

  It all made sehe sheer absurdity of Bunny Fay di Sator—the wife of a mert—possessing that level of power. The way her presenatention, even when she was doing nothing at all.

  The strange, unshakable feeling Bianca had every time she was in the same room as her, like standing in the presence of something far greater than any mere mortal.

  Of course she was Saint Lucia.

  Of course she had been here all along.

  A slned breath left Bianca’s lips. “I should have known,” she murmured, her voice quiet, almost amused at her own blindness. “I did know. I just refused to see it.”

  The moment she saw her alive with a hole in her chest that couldn’t be healed even with her holy power.

  Her eyes flickered with somethiween reverend bitter irony as she finally looked at Man—not as Bunny Fay di Sator, but as the inal Saint.

  COUGH!

  Man spat blood—thick, bck, clotting as it left her lips. Yvain flinched, his breath hitg, his chest tightening with something raw and unbearable. That sight—the darkness of it, the wrongness of it—dragged him back to a pce he didn’t want to be.

  The way his father left and never came home. The way his mother had colpsed, frail hands clutg her belly, and how she never opened her eyes again.

  “Mommy, when will Daddy be home?”

  The words slipped out before he could stop them, quiet, dazed. He didn’t even realize it—the way he had said Mommy, not Mama, the way he had called Burn Daddy, not Papa. He had spoken as if they were his real parents.

  Man’s vision wavered, but she forced herself to focus on Bianca, pinning her with an unwavering gaze despite the pain.

  “We’ve wasted too much time,” she rasped. Her voice was thin but sharp, cutting through the tension like a bde. “You should have told me everything you know about the Pope’s demise years ago. And the Democratic Teachers. And the Loneborn Mert Group…” She paused, inhaling shallowly. “But tell me ohing.”

  Bianca’s response was immediate, almost desperate. “I don’t know about the Demon Lord.”

  Her words tumbled out, rushed and frantic, the weight ency pressing down on her. “A Lumine ot be influenced by corruption—we have Apostle Romeuf’s blood. The Lumine Royal Family, all of us, we… we don’t know.”

  She swallowed hard.

  “The Pope…” A flicker of something uain passed through her expression. “We had nothing to do with his death. But yes, we rose to power afterward. My father… he won’t tell me anything, but I know something is wrong. Something was wrong. Maybe—maybe he was involved.”

  The fession slipped past her lips in a whisper, barely audible.

  “He was the one whed my marriage to Markus. He helped me into Saint Lucia, made me Headmaster.” She exhaled sharply, shaking her head. “I don’t know about Lankor’s ties to the Democratic Teachers. I was only one of the founders. And yes, I agree—Loneborn Mert Group is suspicious. Especially now that you’re eg it to him. I think… I think you o talk to my father.”

  Silence.

  Bianca’s breath hitched, her throat tightening as she stared at the blood staining Man’s lips. The weight of it hit her all at ohe truth, the magnitude of the person before her.

  “Why—” Her voice cracked, raw and trembling. “Why are you makiell you all this if you’re just going to die?”

  She k, her hands shaking, tears slipping down her face.

  “Your Holiness… We finally found you…” Her voice broke, thick with something deeper than just sorrow. Devotion. Reverence. Faith so profound it bordered on awe.

  “You finally returned…”

  Her gaze shoh something pure, untouched by the corruption that had tainted so much of their world. Bianca Lumine was uncorrupted. She erhaps, one of the few truly i ones left. And now, she k in front of the figure every saint had idolized in their hearts for turies.

  She k before the inal Saint.

  Man’s lips curled into a soft, knowing smile as she reached out, brushing her fingers gently over Bianca’s bowed head.

  “My child…” she whispered, her voice like a beion. “Be not afraid.”

  A pause. Then, a promise.

  “I will return, just as I always have.”

  Because no matter what happened, she would. That was the nature of the inal Saint. She was the woman too holy for death to cim.

  After all, if it weren’t true—if she could die—the seventeen known reinations of Princess Lucia Elle of Elysian would have been impossible.

  She turned her gaze to Yvain, her smile softening as she met his tear-filled eyes.

  “Ain, don’t cry…”

  The boy king snapped out of his daze, his lips parting slightly in realization.

  Man’s voice was steady, warm, certain.

  “Your father will return soon.”

  COUGH!

  Man’s body trembled as another clot of bck blood left her lips, staining the floor beh her. The room felt suffog, the weight of iability pressing down on them all.

  Horror. Despair.

  The realization that they were about to lose her was an unbearable truth. It hung in the air, heavy and cruel, like a stormcloud about to break.

  The inal Saint—their Saint—was slipping away before their eyes.

  Bianca’s breath hitched. Yvain’s fiightened around Bir. Even Duke Padparadscha and Marquis Mossflower, hardened men of politid war, could do nothing but stand in the suffog silence.

  Then—

  BANG!

  The door swung open with a sharp crash.

  A guard stumbled in, breathless, wide-eyed, frantic. “Madame!” he gasped, urgency thi his voice. “They’re back!”

  For a moment, no one moved.

  Man’s shes fluttered. A flicker of something—hope, disbelief—lit up in her fevered eyes. Her lips parted, voice barely more than a breath.

  “Caliburn…?”

  The guard straightened, his face pale with exertion but his eyes shining with undeniable certainty.

  “The First Prince of Inkia, and the Sed Elven Princess.”