She didn’t remember falling asleep.

But the fire was gone. The scent of Thane’s magic had faded, no more cedar smoke or golden heat. Only cold air now, and the ache of something unfinished.

Her ink-stained hand still curled on the desk, fingers numb.

Outside, the roses were red again.

Or had they always been?

She blinked once, twice. Her cloak was folded neatly on the edge of the bed, though she couldn’t recall folding it. The candle hadn’t burned down. The wine goblet on the table was still full. But the room felt… rearranged. Like someone had pressed pause on her life, shuffled the pieces, and resumed the scene without her permission.

Her quill had rolled a half-turn toward the edge of the desk. A scrap of parchment was pinned beneath it. The ink-stain across the fibers was dry, but not hers. A faint spiral mark had been drawn there, only half-formed, as though the hand had faltered mid-line.

She drew in a sharp breath.

It smelled faintly of frostmint.

The memory of her childhood formulas seized her chest, the tonic, the mistake, the child’s lungs gone still. For an instant she thought she had spilled it again, dragged the past into the present with her own hand.

But when she blinked, the ink blot was just ink again. No spiral. No frostmint.

Her pulse was hammered anyway.

She rose quickly, needing air. But when she reached the window, the glass reflected only her own pale face. The roses beyond looked almost too red, their scent too vivid, as if they had been steeped in dye. For a heartbeat, she thought she smelled blood in the petals.

Then.. silence. A hush that wasn’t the natural quiet of night, but something deeper. She knew that silence. The kind that came before accusations in the throne hall. The kind that followed when nobles whispered her name like a poison.

Her skin prickled. Someone had been here. She was sure of it.

A soft knock broke the stillness.

Not Ori’s knock. Not Corven’s silence.

This one was precise.

Before she could rise, the door creaked open.

Seliora Veyne stepped inside, unannounced, unhurried.

She wore no court paint tonight, just a charcoal velvet cloak clasped at the throat, her silver hair unbound. No jewels. No perfume. She looked, Myrren thought suddenly, like a mourner who had chosen not to cry.

“Still awake,” Seliora said, eyes sweeping the chamber with faint disdain. “I thought you might be.”

Myrren’s throat tightened. “Is it late?”

“Late enough for memories to rise. Too late for the truth  to hide.”

Seliora moved without invitation, gliding to the fireless hearth and pulling a chair forward. She sat with the ease of someone accustomed to rooms obeying her presence. Her gloved hands rested lightly over one knee. She didn’t ask to sit. She didn’t need to.

It was Myrren who felt like the guest.

“You’re spiraling, aren’t you?” Seliora said, like one might ask about a fever.

Myrren went still. “Excuse me?”

“That’s what they call it in the deeper archives,” Seliora said mildly. “When memory untethers. When dreams repeat. When lovers make the same vow twice with different hands.”

Her words dropped into the silence like stones.

Seliora tilted her head. “It’s always the firelight. That’s how it starts.”

Myrren took a slow, careful step back. Her fingers brushed the edge of the desk. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ve seen it before.” Seliora’s voice was soft, but every syllable struck with a precise edge. “Every spiral begins with warmth. A golden prince. A garden. A promise. But you’ve heard that promise more than once now, haven’t you?”

Myrren’s heart kicked. “I..”

“You don’t have to admit it. You’re not meant to.”

Seliora looked toward the window, her profile etched in silver from the moonlight. “The spiral works better when you think it’s all your own choice.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re not supposed to,” Seliora murmured. “Not yet.”

A long silence stretched between them.

Then Seliora looked over her shoulder. “Do you remember Cordelia?”

Myrren stiffened. “That’s a myth. A cautionary tale.”

“A poisoner. A scentcrafter. Like you.” Seliora’s eyes glinted. “Like me, once. Too precise. Too curious. The court sorcerers used her as a tethered subject, looped her through false visions, rewritten moments, half-erased lovers. They tried to bend the prophecy around her.”

“That’s not in the scrolls.”

Seliora’s smile was faint. “The crown doesn’t archive tragedies it intends to repeat.”

The name Cordelia stirred something. Myrren had found it once, in a torn corner of a footnoted record. A scribbled name beside a list of banned tinctures. The page had smelled of foxglove and ash. She’d assumed the scent was old mildew. Now she wasn’t sure.

“She failed?” Myrren asked.

“She remembered too late,” Seliora said. “Every time she woke, she forgot who she was. The spiral reset her. Rewrote her.”

Myrren’s pulse pounded in her throat. “That’s not possible.”

“It is,” Seliora said softly, “when prophecy is engineered.”

The word engineered scraped like flint against her ribs. Myrren pressed her palms flat to the desk, willing her heartbeat to slow. But the silence wasn’t empty. The air hummed. She felt the edges of something pressing inward. Like someone was watching from behind the walls of the room, or inside her own mind.

Seliora’s tone was gentle, but it didn’t soften. “The Queen knows pieces of it. Enough to use you, not enough to free you. Don’t mistake her silence for ignorance.”

The Queen’s name cut sharper than poison. Myrren had spent weeks trying not to smell the woman’s coldness as more than perfume and steel. The idea that Aelira might be complicit in whatever this spiral was, might even want it, made Myrren’s stomach twist.

“I saw it,” she whispered. “A moment that wasn’t mine.”

Seliora only nodded, unsurprised.

“Thane. But not tonight. He said the same words, but he wore a different cloak. The hearth was on my left. My dress was green. I’ve never worn green.”

She looked down at her fingers. They trembled.

“That was an echo,” Seliora murmured.

And as the word left her lips, the air shifted. Curtains stirred though the window was latched. A new scent bled into the chamber: clove, foxglove, and rain-wet stone. Myrren blinked..

And she was standing in another room. Just for a blink. Corven’s chain twined around her wrist, his voice saying: “You’ll forget me again.”

Then it was gone.

The chain. The room. Even the scent.

She staggered.

Seliora caught her wrist, not roughly, but like someone used to steadying women on the verge of breaking.

“Easy,” she murmured. “They’re coming faster now.”

“What is this?” Myrren rasped.

“Proof,” Seliora said. “You’re the keystone. You’re remembering between the cracks.”

Myrren sank into the nearby chair. Her skin felt too tight for her bones.

“Why me?”

“Because you already broke once.”

Seliora didn’t flinch as she said it. “They always choose the ones who carry guilt. It makes you bend.”

Myrren’s chest clenched. “The child. The tonic..”

“Was an accident,” Seliora said sharply. “But your self-blame? That’s what made you useful.”

Her words struck harder than any accusation in the throne hall. Myrren’s throat closed. She wanted to deny it, but the memory of honeyroot and silence was carved too deep.

Seliora reached into her cloak.

“I don’t know if this is the first spiral or the thirtieth,” she said. “But I remember you. I remember the way you smell lavender before you lie. I remember the way you never cry in front of the Queen.”

She pulled something small from her pocket and held it out.

A black stone spiral. Onyx. Carved so finely the grooves caught the firelight like liquid.

“Take it,” Seliora said. “You’ve held it before.”

Myrren’s hand closed around it, and nearly recoiled.

It was warm.

Not the warmth of stone from a pocket, but something deeper. Something alive. Her fingers trembled.

“Burn it if you must,” Seliora said. “But when you wake again.. remember me.”

Myrren looked up, but Seliora was already halfway to the door.

“Why are you helping me?” she asked.

Seliora paused at the threshold. Her expression is unreadable.

“Because once, I didn’t. And I watched you hang.”

Then she left.

The door closed without a sound.

No scent lingered.

No echo of footsteps.

Just silence.

And the spiral pulsing in Myrren’s palm like a second heartbeat.

A sharp tug jolted her chest, sudden, electric. The same pull she had only ever felt when Corven was near.

But the room was empty.

Her breath came ragged. The spiral seemed to grow hotter in her hand, as if responding to something, or someone, not present.

She gasped, clutching it tighter.