Myrren jolted awake with a scream trapped in her chest.

The vow still rang in her ears “Marry me, bind yourself to me”  but it sounded wrong, warped, as though the golden warmth of Thane’s voice had been poured through cracked glass. The chamber where he had held her was gone. No firelight. No nobles lingering with jeweled daggers in their smiles. Only the chill press of stone, damp air closing in, shadows seeping against her skin.

Her hands clutched the blanket twisted around her body. She lay on her own narrow bed, lantern guttering low, the scent of mildew and old parchment heavy in the air. Her pulse still thundered as though she had just stepped out of the throne hall. But this was no hall. No court. No banquet.

“What..?” The word broke from her lips raw, as if she had been shouting all night. She pressed trembling fingers to her mouth.

Fragments slammed against her mind like shards of glass. The banquet’s glitter, the bitter almond scent of cyanide. Thane’s firelit promises, his hands cupping her face. The storm lodge, Corven’s chains pulling her against him. Saints! Has that happened? Or was it only memory?

Her chest tightened. She could see both endings at once. She had said yes. She had said nothing. She had kissed Corven in the shadows, she had never touched him at all. Every thread knotted together until she could not breathe.

“Myrren.”

The voice was low, steady, too close.

She turned sharply. Corven stood in the far corner, shadows clinging to him like a second skin. He was watching her as though he had been standing there a long time, unreadable as stone. His storm-grey eyes reflected the lantern flame like dull silver.

Her throat scraped. “What are you doing here?”

“You cried out.” He did not move, only tilted his head as if measuring her pulse through silence alone. “Tell me what you saw.”

She forced a breath past the cage in her lungs. “I saw..” Her voice faltered. Saints, what had she seen? The words tangled, splintered. She remembered Thane’s lips shaping vows. She remembered Corven whispering that she had kissed him once. She remembered both, and neither.

Corven’s gaze sharpened. “You’re remembering what hasn’t happened yet.”

The world tilted. A rush of nausea burned her throat, as if every memory she trusted was laced with poison.

She gripped the sheets hard enough to tear the seams. “That’s impossible.”

His shadows shifted, restless. “Not for you.”

“Myrren.” Corven’s voice carried no comfort, only the weight of inevitability. “The spiral is tugging harder. You feel it, don’t you?”

She wanted to deny him, to spit out that he was mad, but the words caught in her throat. Instead she smelled it,  roses, faint and cloying, the banquet’s perfume curling around her as if she were still there. She blinked, and for one sickening heartbeat the chamber tilted into that glittering hall: chandeliers blazing, nobles shrieking, wine spilling like blood across silk.

Then it was gone. Only the dim flicker of her lantern remained.

Her breath came ragged. “It was real,” she whispered, as much to herself as to him. “I know what I saw. I lived it.”

Corven’s shadows twitched against the stone like chains straining. “Real and unreal bleed together here. That is the spiral’s game. It doesn’t matter whether you call it memory, vision, or lie. You still feel its pull.”

“I’m not a Seer,” she snapped, but her hands betrayed her, trembling in her lap. She had mocked Seers before, with their riddles and self-made madness. Now her own mind felt no steadier.

Corven stepped closer, shadows folding around his boots. His presence pressed against her ribs like another heartbeat. “No. You’re worse. Seers glimpse one thread. You..” His gaze darkened, as if the words themselves were dangerous. “You’ve lived them.”

Her pulse stuttered. “You speak as if you’ve seen this before.”

He did not answer at once. He studied her instead, the way a physician might study a wound too deep to stitch. “You kissed me once,” he said at last, quiet as a confession. “Or perhaps you will. Either way, I cannot forget it.”

Her breath caught. Heat and ice surged in the same moment, tangled. She wanted to deny it, but the memory stirred, faint, half-formed of his hand against her wrist, his lips brushing her skin like a chain tightening. Yet she could not tell if it was memory or dream.

“I..” She faltered, shaking her head hard enough to sting her neck. “No. That never happened.”

“Not here. Not yet.” His shadows curled closer, like smoke drawn to flame. “But you felt it, didn’t you? That’s why you look at him the way you do. You’re afraid of what you’ll choose when the spiral forces you to.”

“Thane,” she breathed, as if the prince’s name might anchor her. His vow still rang in her ears, sunlight promising salvation. “He asked me to..”

Her voice broke. Did he? She remembered his vow, yes, but now it felt brittle, half-rehearsed. She remembered the way his smile faltered at the edges, as if his devotion were already cracking.

Corven leaned closer, storm-grey gaze steady. “Light burns. Shadows bind. You already know which leaves scars.”

The chamber swam. For a heartbeat she saw both of them, Thane’s golden light spilling like fire over her skin, Corven’s shadows coiling like chains around her wrist. Two versions of her, two fates, collapsing into one body that could not hold them both.

“Myrren.” Corven’s voice was low, almost pleading now. “Tell me which truth you want me to hold.”

She could not answer. Because the truth was that both men lived inside her veins,  devotion, like poison, tether like smoke and she no longer knew which was real.

The lantern sputtered, shadows jerking against the walls. Myrren tore her gaze from Corven, desperate to breathe air not laced with chains.

She pushed from the bed, bare feet cold against stone. The chamber tilted as she crossed to the small desk near the window. She needed something tangible, something real, like a paper, ink, anything that could not melt into smoke at the spiral’s whim.

Her fingers brushed parchment.

A folded note lay waiting. No seal. No hand but her own could have placed it here; she had locked the door herself. Yet the fibers were smudged with faint gray dust, familiar as breath. She lifted it carefully. Ink stained her fingertips before she even opened it, as though it had been written in haste.

Her pulse hammered. She knew this scent. Ink, yes, but also frostmint, her own masking agent. The one she used when hiding drafts in her childhood journals. The one no one else should know.

Her chest was constricted.

She unfolded the parchment. The handwriting was hers. Tilted, hurried, the loops of her vowels jagged with urgency.

Do not trust him.

The words burned hotter than any poison.

Her throat closed. She had written this. She had not written this. Saints, she knew the weight of her own script, the tilt of her letters. And yet she had no memory of bending to this desk, no memory of setting ink to parchment.

Behind her, Corven’s voice cut the silence. “What did you find?”

She crumpled the page in her fist before she realized she had moved, ink biting into her palm. Her pulse thundered too loud for words.

“Show me.” His steps drew nearer, steady, unhurried, as though the shadows themselves gave him patience.

“No,” she managed, voice raw. She couldn’t let him see it. Saints, what if it named him? What if it was named Thane?

The air seemed thinner, every breath sharp as glass. Her skin prickled, as though both men stood in the room at once: Thane with his vows of fire, Corven with his chains of shadow. The warning scrawled across her palm seared hotter than flame.

Her own voice, or her own hand, had condemned someone. But which one is he?

Corven stopped just behind her, so close she felt the pull of the tether humming in her bones.

“Myrren.” His voice brushed her ear, low and certain. “Who do you fear?”

She opened her fist slowly. The ink smeared across her skin like blood.

Do not trust him.

The lantern guttered out.

Darkness swallowed the chamber whole.