She was right. Le breloque was making me . . . making me . . . something. I didn’t know what.

Jane has choice, Beast thought at me.

I remembered the words Hayyel had spoken about me making good choices. This was surely one. “No,” I said. “I refuse.”

Beast chuffed in approval.

Above me, the wings fluttered. Lifted. Resettled. Covering the dome of my soul. The light from them spread. The licking flames of the corona’s power died down. Flickered. Vanished.

The Glob in my pocket warmed. Sparked with electricity. I pulled it free and lifted it. Held it high. “I will not accept the magic. I have my own.”

Swiftly, the Glob drained le breloque. The vision of my soul home, shot through with brilliance, dimmed and disappeared. I was back in Leo’s office, holding the Glob over my head. Over the sound of the scuffle I thought I heard the whisper of angel wings.

I reached up and took the wreath off my head, looked it over, and said simply, “Stop.”

The fight stopped. Bruiser was bleeding and Leo’s severed and reattaching fingers were at an odd angle. “It didn’t work.” I hooked the crown over my arm. “I don’t know what you intended to happen, but it didn’t take.” I thunked the crown with a fingernail. The sound reverberated in the room.

Leo looked horrified. Bruiser looked relieved, the kind of desperate relief he might have expressed when I called him from the boat to say I was alive. “I’m not a queen.” I thunked the corona again. “I’m leaving now. And if you ever try to crown me again, I’ll cut off your head and shove it up your royal ass.” I looked at Bruiser and added, “You coming?”

Bruiser remembered to breathe. Leo started laughing.

I grinned at them both. A Beastly grin, all teeth and violence.

Without another word, I left the Mithran Council Chambers, a crown over my arm, my honeybunch at my side.

• • •

Due to a twist in diplomacy and an aggressive move on Leo’s chessboard of vamp politics, the invasion of New Orleans was over, but the danger wasn’t past. A blood challenge might be worse than anything we had faced to date. But I had my team and my love by my side. And I still had myself, my own soul—both of them. Together we could survive.

We might, just maybe, even win a challenge to the death.