Sleep never came. Myrren carried the spiral in her palm until dawn bled pale against the shutters. By then, her skin ached with the phantom tug, every breath snagged by an unseen chain. When the bells tolled the first petitions, she slipped into the cloisters for air, the stone corridors damp and sharp with old cypress. She told herself she wanted distance from the onyx weight in her pocket,
but the tether dragged her toward someone else entirely.

Dawn thinned to ash as she crossed the cloister walk, mortar damp beneath her slippers, the air sour with last night’s torches. That was when the fox slipped from behind the colonnade, rust-red, quick as a spark, clever eyes fixed not on her, but on the man in shadow ahead.

Corven halted. The animal halted. He moved; it flowed after him, brush-tail low, soundless paws on stone.

“Since when,” Myrren whispered, “do palace strays take orders?”

“They don’t.” Corven’s voice was steady, but she felt the tremor under it, a taut wire in the quiet. “It’s not following orders.” His gaze cut to the fox, then to her wrist, where the phantom ache had lived these last days. “It’s following a chain.”

The tether tugged then, subtle, iron through blood, a breath stolen from her lungs. She masked the flinch by lifting her chin, letting the scents arrange themselves into meaning: damp wool; old oil on hinges; cypress and steel coiling around him like a vow he despised. Beneath that, a wild musk, fur and frost-bitten rosemary, clinging to the fox’s coat as if it had run the outer walls all night to arrive at his heel.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, the same words he had used in another corridor, another loop. But his eyes weren’t on the danger that stalked Eirden. They were on her mouth, as if it had once said something that remade him.

The fox flicked an ear. Myrren stepped aside to break the line between animal and man, and the tether dragged across her pulse like a hooked ring. The courtyard seemed to tilt; for a blink she tasted bitterness, a phantom echo of stonefruit on the tongue. The memory was a knife made of scent: a library’s ink and wine, his voice running too raw, too honest. 

No. She slammed the thought shut.

“The pull is worse,” Corven said softly. He stood close enough that the cold of him pressed through cloth, shadows layering his shoulders like a second cloak. “When you breathe, it snags my ribs. When you turn away, it bites.”

The fox leaned until its whiskers brushed the leather of his boot. Possessive, almost. Myrren hated the heat beneath her skin, the answering want of being claimed by anything at all. “Then you should avoid me,” she said, each word precise, a measured dose. “And I will avoid you.”

His mouth curved, not quite a smile. “You’ve tried.”

The tether hummed, an invisible chain, link by link, drawn tight across the distance they pretended to keep. Wind lifted, combing the fox’s fur; the creature’s head cocked, clever, as if listening to something she couldn’t hear.

Corven’s next words were nearly a breath. “About that night..”

“You were drunk,” she cut in, too quickly. “You said nothing.”

“Did I?” He searched her face as if he expected to find yesterday written there. “Or did you refuse to hear me?”

Myrren’s fingers curled against her skirt, knuckles whitening. She had steadied him with both hands; she had felt the shadows strain toward her like a tide; she had fled before his last word could ruin her. “If you confessed anything, I don’t remember.”

“Liar.” It wasn’t an accusation. It was weary, almost tender.

The fox stepped between them and bared tiny teeth, not at Corven, but at her.

She didn’t move. Neither did he.

Somewhere beyond the cloister, a bell tolled for the morning petitions; grain riots would be measured, rationed, lied about. Here, a different rationing: breath, truth, distance. The tether bit, and the fox’s eyes glinted like coins dropped into a wishing well just as Corven said, quieter than the bell, “Then let me remind you.”

The fox’s low growl rippled through the stonework, a warning Myrren refused to heed. She pressed her palm against the spiral in her pocket until the edges bit her skin, as though the pain could drown the pull of him.

“You speak as if I chose this,” she said. “As if I wanted your tether wound through me like wire.”

Corven tilted his head, shadows shifting across his face. “You think I chose it either?” His hand flexed at his side, gloved, restrained. “The chain is older than both of us. Ask the Seers. Ask your Queen.”

At the word Queen, her throat tightened. Seliora’s warning echoed,  they always choose the ones who carry guilt. Wasn’t that the same choice now? Her, bent under regret, lashed by some ancient spiral she hadn’t consented to wear?

She straightened, though her heart stuttered. “Chains can be broken. I’ve seen them.”

Corven’s laugh was low, not cruel but carved from despair. “Not this one. Not when even the foxes bow to it.” He glanced down at the animal, which blinked up at him with amber eyes, tail brushing his boot like a loyal hound.

The sight unsettled her more than his nearness. It was wrong, nature reshaped, wildness shackled. A reflection of them both.

She found her voice, sharp as glass. “Then let the Queen have her chain. I won’t be bound.”

“You already are.” His words struck with the quiet certainty of prophecy, a sentence already written. “Every time you try to sever it, the tether knots tighter.”

Something shifted in the air then,  a cool draft swept through the cloisters, carrying incense and the murmur of prayers from the petition hall. Court business would begin soon, and with it, the Queen’s watchful eyes. If anyone saw them standing this close, the whispers would spiral into scandal.

Myrren stepped back, but the tether pulled taut, every inch widening the hollow in her chest. Corven’s gaze followed her retreat, and for once it wasn’t shadow she saw in him, but ache.

“You deny remembering,” he said quietly. “But I felt it. You steadied me when I was broken with drink, and still the tether held. You smelled of rain on ashwood, and I thought..” He cut himself short, as though speaking the memory might unravel him.

She clenched her fists. “You imagined it.”

His eyes burned, not with anger but with something she could not allow herself to name. “Then why do you tremble now?”

The fox gave a soft chuff, as if punctuating his words. Myrren’s pulse betrayed her,  she was trembling, the spiral in her pocket searing like a live coal. She forced her voice steady. “Because every word you speak drags me closer to ruin. And I won’t let you.”

A bell clanged again, louder this time. The cloister door shuddered with footsteps approaching, courtiers, priests, perhaps even Aurelia with her sharpened tongue. Myrren’s stomach turned cold. If they were seen..

She seized her chance and turned from him, breath shallow. “Stay away, Corven. For both our sakes.”

But even as she left him in the shadows, the tether burned like a chain drawn tighter, and the fox padded after her steps as though it knew where she belonged.

Myrren quickened her pace, the cloister arch yawning toward the hall. Voices swelled beyond the door,  court, safety, distance. She clung to them.

But the tether snapped taut. In a single heartbeat, Corven’s shadow fell beside hers. The fox slipped around her ankles, brush-tail curling like a question.

“You run,” he murmured, so close she could feel the cold at her nape, “and still you pull me after you.”

Her hand flew to her pocket, the spiral burned, alive, as if answering him. She hated the shiver it dragged down her spine. “You think this is fate?” she hissed. “It’s poison. It’s a trick.”

“Perhaps.” His breath brushed her ear, heavy with unsaid truths. “But poison can taste like devotion. And chains…” His fingers barely grazed her sleeve, enough to send the tether thrumming. “…chains can bind sweeter than freedom.”

She turned, pulse breaking. His eyes caught hers,  and the fox stilled, watching, as if it already knew.

Corven’s voice was a blade’s whisper.
“You kissed me once. Or perhaps you will. Either way..
I cannot forget it.”