“Do you regret cutting it?” he asked.

Elodie touched the ends at her shoulder.

Once she would have given the easy answer. No regret. All sacrifice justified. A clean sentence for a portrait of a brave queen.

The truth had more weight.

“I regret that I had to,” she said. “I regret believing there was no one I could ask for help. I regret every person who saw a desperate girl and decided her hair was worth less because she needed the money.”

Arvid waited.

“But the hair?” She looked across the room at Basil dancing with one ruined shoe, at Maura laughing, at Orren stacking bowls because he had learned repair sometimes looked like ordinary work. “That grew back.”

“What did you lose that day?”

“Only hair.” She kissed Liora’s bare head. “What I gained was a chance for my family to live. Later, I gained the chance to begin again as myself.”

Arvid’s sadness eased. He did not replace it with gratitude or tell her pain had been necessary to bring them here.

“Would you do it again?” he asked.

“I would ask for help first.”

“Good.”

“Then I would break into your stable.”

“Naturally.”

Liora woke and made a small furious sound. Arvid took her without assuming, holding out his hands until Elodie transferred the baby. Their daughter settled against the king’s open collar and drooled over the faded edge of his mark.

No answering mark showed on Liora’s skin. No prophecy waited beneath her hair. She would grow into a wolf or she would not. She would inherit a crown only under laws that gave her the right to remain a person beneath it.

The academy bell rang outside.

Ash trotted to the doorway. Filada followed at a more dignified pace, stopping where straw met stone. Students rushed forward, then remembered the first rule and waited for the horses to close the remaining distance.

Filada chose Elodie. Ash chose the bread table.

Chaos followed.

Basil chased the colt. Timo protected the soup. Calanthe removed her wig before Ash could eat royal hair. Arvid laughed so hard that Liora began laughing too, though she could not know why.

Cold air entered through the doors. No servant hurried to shut them. The feast had been planned with the doors open so the animals could approach, frightened children could leave without asking and late families could see there was room before crossing the threshold.

Elodie stood beneath the lintel where a corrupt warehouse had become a school.

Once, she had borrowed a boy’s name to earn bread. Once, Basil’s hunger had forced her to price pieces of herself. Now his real name hung over the academy office. Her own appeared beneath it, followed by Royal Beastkeeper, Committee Chair and Queen—not one title erasing another.

Arvid came beside her with their daughter.

“Close the doors?” he asked.

Elodie looked at the long table, the winter road and Filada waiting between them.

“Leave them open.”

So the doors remained open, and no one in their family ever had to steal another name to be fed.