By the time the chamber emptied and the verdict was smothered in the Queen’s silence, the jeers had already clung to her like smoke.
Parlor trick. Alley rat. Perfumer’s daughter.

The words had been tossed at her hours ago in the council chamber, yet they circled her ribs still, barbed and persistent. Myrren walked quickly down the eastern corridor, her satchel pressed against her hip as though its weight could steady her. Candlelight blurred against her lashes, each flame bending in her breath.

The nobles laughed. Smirked. Dismissed her with jeweled hands fluttering over goblets she had just saved them from drinking.

“They’d sooner drink poison than admit I kept their lungs clear,” she muttered, low enough for the stone to keep her secret.

The palace smelled of roses tonight, thick and cloying as if the courtiers had drowned themselves in perfume to hide the sour reek of fear. Beneath it, she caught mildew in the foundations, smoke from guttering sconces, and the faint tang of sweat in velvet sleeves. No fragrance could bury the truth: this court was rotting, and she had been set among the rot like kindling.

A shadow detached from the wall ahead. Broad-shouldered, armor creaking soft in the hush.

“Captain Holt,” she said, exhaling sharply.

His gaze swept the corridor, then settled on her with the soldier’s gravity. “You move quickly for someone already marked.” His tone was not unkind, but blunt enough to bruise.

“I prefer not to be followed,” she replied.

A faint huff of amusement escaped him. “Then you’ve chosen the wrong palace.” He adjusted his grip on his sword hilt, eyes flicking toward the empty arches behind her. “Careful, Mistress Vale. Enemies multiply quicker than allies in this place.”

Before she could answer, Holt turned, his footsteps fading into the long hush of the corridor, leaving her alone with his warning echoing like prophecy.

She sensed him before she saw him.
The air shifted, cooler, steadier, threaded with steel and cypress. Shadows thickened at the edges of the corridor as if reluctant to let him go.

Myrren’s steps faltered. “If you mean to mock me,” she said without turning, “you’re too late. They’ve all had their turn.”

Silence. Then a voice brushed her ear, low and measured. “Mockery is for fools.”

She whirled. Lord Corven stood half-lit by candlelight, every line of him carved in shadow. Unsmiling. Unmoving. His gaze fixed on her as though the jeers of nobles had never existed, as though her defense had been carved into his ledger.

Her mouth was dry. “Then what do you call it? Amusement? A game?”

His eyes caught the light, storm-grey and unreadable. “No. You stood against them. That takes more than cleverness.”

A bitter laugh escaped her. “So what, faith is your specialty now?”

He stepped closer, the air tightening with his presence until her lungs resisted her own breath. His voice dropped, a whisper that brushed across her skin.

“No. Silence is. But for you I will choose faith.”

The words struck sharper than any applause. Myrren froze, the echo settling into her chest like a weight, like a promise. He did not reach for her, yet she felt the pull of him in chains she had not seen but could feel, winding invisibly through her pulse.

Her throat worked, but no words rose. She turned her face slightly, trying to breathe past the heat flooding her skin. His nearness was not golden warmth like Thane’s, but a dangerous gravity. And when he stepped back, the air loosened, as though something had been cut away from her ribs.

Corven reached past her to push open a carved oak door. “If you must tempt enemies,” he said softly, “do it where I can silence them first.”

He stepped inside. Against her better judgment, she followed.

The air shifted instantly, cooler, thick with parchment and dust. The archives breathed not the clean dust of linen and chalk, but the damp, clinging kind that carried mildew and secrets. Rows of scrolls loomed like sentinels. The faint scent of charred ink clung to the stones, as though knowledge had once been burned here.

Her lantern caught on a cracked spine. She tugged it free. The parchment exhaled a scent that froze her in place like iron, ash, and roses pressed flat by centuries.

Her pulse hammered. This was no court inventory.

The script was cramped, desperate, written in shorthand she knew too well: the language of apothecaries. She skimmed, her breath tightening with every faded line.

Spiral Mark.

The words wound down the margin like a warning. Beneath them, fragments: scent as covenant… silence as chain… blood remembers what bond cannot break.

Her stomach clenched. None of it was full, only shards of meaning, as if the scribe had feared to write more. But the weight of it pressed like a hand against her throat.

A memory stirred the day she was ten, when she brewed something strange that made her tutor breathe a memory so vividly it nearly broke him. She had buried the accident. She had told herself it was a mistake. Nothing more.

Yet here, centuries old, the same words waited for her.
Not an accident. Not a mistake. Pattern.

Her hands trembled as she shut the book. The scent clung to her skin: roses and ash, iron and silence.

The snap of parchment had barely settled when she felt it with
not sound, not sight, but weight.

Shadows bent closer. Myrren turned, breath catching.

Corven stood between the shelves, storm-grey eyes unreadable. Still, but not idle. Watching.

“You can’t choose what marks you,” he said softly. “It chooses you.”

The words struck too close to the ink still burning on the page. She swallowed hard, but his silence after said more than the words ever could.

Then another presence joined. Footsteps clicked against stone, measured, deliberate. A figure emerged from the aisle, black robes smudged with soot.

Master Kael Droveth.

His gaze swept the shelves, then settled on the book in her grip. Not surprise but recognition. And hunger.

“Well.” His voice was cool as glass. “The Spiral always draws the curious.”

Her fingers clenched on the brittle spine. “You know what this is?”

Kael’s eyes glinted. “A covenant written in breath. A bond no crown could sanction, no church could bless.” He stepped closer, the faint reek of burned herbs clinging to his robes. His voice dropped to a whisper meant only for her.
“You should not exist.”

The words sliced deeper than any curse.

Shame and fury tangled in her chest. “What do you mean?”

Kael’s lips curved faintly. “Some knowledge dies with the bloodline that carries it. Yet here you stand, lowborn, nameless, wielding it as if bred for it. An aberration. Or a prophecy.”

Before she could answer, the hush of the library broke.

A scrape against stone, soft, deliberate.

From the shelves, a shadow uncoiled, dagger glinting. The assassin moved fast, silent as a hunting cat.

Myrren had no time to cry out.

Serenya was already moving.

The pale woman stepped from a darker alcove, her blade hissing once, clean through the assassin’s throat. The man collapsed at Myrren’s feet, blood soaking marble, steam rising faintly in the candlelight.

Myrren staggered back, hand clamped to her mouth. She had seen death before, but never so sudden, so merciless.

Serenya wiped her blade on her sleeve, unhurried, as if she had swatted a fly. Her gaze found Myrren’s, flat, unblinking, as though weighing her against the corpse.

Kael crouched by the fallen man, fingers brushing blood-slick steel. “Curious. The alloy is Varrosian… and the toxin in his sheath is rare enough that guild records should not list it at all.”

“You mean it was smuggled,” Myrren said.

“Oh, far worse.” Kael smiled faintly. “It was purchased. Which means one of our guilds is profiting from assassinations.”

The truth behind the words was corrosive.

Corven’s jaw tightened. “The Council will deny it.”

“Of course they will.” Kael’s eyes glittered. “But denials leave trails. And trails always lead somewhere sweet.”

The scent in the air shifted. Sweet but far sweeter than blood should smell.

Not copper. Not iron.
Roses.

Myrren’s knees weakened. She crouched beside the corpse, ignoring the warmth spreading across the marble. The scent clung, lush and unmistakable, a perfume no human body should carry.

Her hand hovered above the pooling red, fingers trembling. “This isn’t possible.”

Kael’s voice lowered, almost reverent. “And yet.”

Her mind raced. The forbidden pages, the outlawed herb. Saint’s Tongue. An alchemy that changed the very nature of blood, turning it aromatic, impossible.

As it spread across the floor, the blood curled, not random streaks but a shape. A spiral. Perfect, deliberate, forming before her eyes as though guided by an unseen hand.

Her chest tightened. “The mark…”

Kael’s whisper threaded close. “The spiral of two. The prophecy speaks of it.”

She looked to Corven, desperate for denial. But his storm-grey gaze was steady, fixed on the spiral as if it had been waiting for them all along.

“It isn’t possible,” she whispered again, more plea than statement.

His reply was quiet, inevitable as breath. “No. Inevitable.”

The spiral gleamed in lamplight, rose-scented blood coiling across pale marble, burning itself into her senses.