The throne room was suddenly normal again. Just a room. No supernatural presence. No ghost.
Just Rhys and Liam, standing in the silence.
"You didn't choose me," Liam said quietly. "You chose yourself."
"Yeah." Rhys felt exhausted. "Is that okay?"
"That's perfect." Liam pulled him into a hug—warm, real, alive. "That's exactly what you should have done."
Rhys broke down then. Sobbed into Liam's shoulder for everything he'd been through. For Kai. For Elara. For the twisted thing he'd felt for Pryce that wasn't quite love but wasn't quite hate either.
"You did the right thing," Liam murmured. "You didn't let him win, but you didn't let revenge consume you either."
"I sentenced him to eternal loneliness. That's pretty vengeful."
"That's justice. There's a difference." Liam pulled back, wiped Rhys's tears. "And now? What do you want to do now?"
Rhys looked around the palace. At the place that had been his prison for thirty days.
"I want to leave. I want to feel the sun. I want to..." He laughed shakily. "I want to get coffee at a normal cafe and remember what real life feels like."
"Then let's go." Liam took his hand. "The palace is mine legally anyway. I'll deal with selling it or whatever. But you—you're free now."
Free.
The word felt foreign and wonderful.
They walked out of Ashton Estate at 1 AM. The moment Rhys crossed the property line, he felt it—the curse's hold snapping like a cut thread.
He was free.
Really, truly free.
The night air was cold and clean. The stars were bright. And Liam's hand in his was warm and real and promised nothing except possibility.
"Where do you want to go?" Liam asked.
"I don't care." Rhys tilted his face up to the sky. "Anywhere but here."
They got in Liam's Range Rover and drove away from the palace, from the curse, from three hundred years of suffering.
Drove toward an uncertain future that was entirely their own.