Myrren fled before she could answer him. The cloister spilled her into gold-lit marble, voices swelling beyond the doors like a tide. Court, safety, distance, she clung to the illusion of them. But Corven’s words clung sharper than any perfume, threading through her pulse: you kissed me once… or perhaps you will.

Servants hurried her toward the banquet hall, their whispers drowned beneath the glittering roar inside. The tether still thrummed at her sleeve, where the spiral token burned faintly in her pocket. Every step felt like repetition, as if she were walking into a memory already poisoned.

The chandeliers dripped light like molten gold, just as they had the first night. Silk banners rippled, jeweled goblets flashed. Perfume clashed with roasted pheasant, honeyed wine, and sugared fruits. She had lived this scene before. Every glimmer, every suffocating scent pressed down like a mask she could not remove.

The Queen sat at the high dais, pale as carved marble, her untouched goblet glinting beside her hand. Myrren’s stomach clenched. She remembered this. She had stood here once, smelled death beneath sugared wine, heard the scream that split laughter from silence.

And yet, this night was not the same.

She pressed her palm flat to the carved table, willing the stone beneath to prove itself solid. But scents betrayed her: saffron glaze, overripe plums, the sharp-green bite of foxglove oil. Her pulse stuttered. Not cyanide. Not almonds. Foxglove.

The wrongness struck like a blow.

She forced her gaze up the table. Lady Corenne, who had died before, was laughing, her jeweled fingers scattering crumbs from silk. No convulsion. No collapse. Alive.

Myrren’s vision doubled. Two nights overlaying each other, wine spilling like blood, a noble choking and then gone again, replaced by laughter. The spiral pressed against her skull, memory grinding over itself like glass on stone.

Then the scream came.

Not Lady Corenne’s.

Lord Aedric lurched forward, goblet tumbling from his hand. Dark wine streaked the tablecloth as his face contorted, veins swelling like cords. His jeweled hand clawed air. The scent struck Myrren even before he fell sharp, bitter-green, foxglove pulsing in her lungs.

Gasps rippled the hall. Chairs scraped back. Nobles stumbled from the high table, their perfumes curdling into sweat and fear.

And the accusations came faster than before.

“She knew! ook at her!”
“She smelled it before the cup touched him!”
“Every death follows her!”

Every eye turned to Myrren.

The hall erupted.

Servants dragged Lord Aedric back from the table, his body jerking as if the foxglove had rooted itself through his veins. Silverware clattered to the floor, wine spread in a widening stain, and voices sharpened like blades.

“She spoke it before! before he fell!”
“Only the guilty name poisons so quickly.”
“She has marked us all!”

Myrren’s chest locked. The night folded in on itself, a terror she had already lived replaying, but faster, crueler, as though the spiral had learned from its last loop. No time for proof, no chance to breathe.

Lady Aurelia surged to her feet, her gown a flare of frost-pale silk, voice ringing across the chamber. “Every death bends toward her! Wolfsbane in the throne hall, cyanide at our last feast, and now this. How many bodies will follow before you see the truth?”

Nobles murmured assent, hungry for blood. The air thickened with the scent of sweat, powder, and panic.

Thane rose. Golden fire seemed to gather around him as he stepped to her side. His hand brushed her elbow, a shield, a vow. “She did not pour that cup.” His voice carried warmth like sunlight pressed against stone. “You fear her because she sees what you refuse to do. Knowledge is not guilt. Suspicion is not true.”

For a breath, silence held. His defense cut through the hysteria but it was fragile, as breakable as glass.

Then Seliora spoke, her words cool and precise as a dagger. “Cousin, every truth she names cuts another thread from the crown. Nobles whisper already that devotion blinds you. Will you bind yourself to her ruin?”

A sharper silence fell. The Queen’s gaze shifted, unreadable, her long fingers resting idly on her untouched goblet. She did not speak. She did not need to. Silence was sanctioned.

The weight of her stillness nearly broke Myrren. Her pulse hammered; the tether throbbed beneath her skin, alive. And then, shadows stirred at the edge of the chamber.

Corven.

He had not moved during the outcry. But now, from his place in the shadows, he said softly: “Perhaps they are right to fear. Poison walks with her. Even her shadow stirs with it.”

The hall was still. His words were not shouted accusations, but quiet inevitability. And because he spoke with such calm, it rang truer than Aurelia’s shrieks.

Myrren’s breath caught, fury rising sharp as acid. But his storm-gray eyes met hers, with steady, unflinching and she saw it. Not betrayal but a warning. A shield disguised as condemnation. He was pushing the nobles away from her, tethering their suspicion to fear itself instead of proof.

But Thane heard only betrayal. His jaw tightened, his hand falling from her arm. “Even you, Corven? I thought shadows at least kept their loyalty.”

“Shadows keep the truth,” Corven answered. His tone was quiet, dangerous. “Whether you like it or not.”

A ripple of unrest spread through the nobles, torn between Thane’s sunlight and Corven’s shadow.

And then Lord Aedric convulsed, a choking gasp tearing from his lips. Kael, crouched beside him, raised a hand slick with the residue of green-stained vomit. His smile was thin, almost delighted. “Foxglove, yes. But not enough to kill. Someone wanted him broken, not buried.”

A second wave of murmurs rose, sharper now:
“Not kill.. just cripple?”
“A warning, then.”
“Or a message.”

Myrren’s blood chilled. That was the truth she would have named but Kael had stolen the words from her tongue, twisting them into suspicion before she could speak.

All eyes returned to her again, sharpened, accusing.

The chamber pressed in, breath and perfume suffocating. Myrren’s senses flared too sharp, every candle sputtering, every scrape of silver on porcelain ringing like a threat. She caught the faint tang of frostmint under the smoke of roasted meats, not natural, not culinary. Her mind raced: a masking agent. Someone had buried a foxglove beneath it.

The spiral burned in her pocket. Heat pulsed against her thigh, keeping rhythm with her heartbeat. It was alive, as if whispering: you’ve been here before, and you will be again.

She forced her gaze upward.

Thane stood a step apart now, golden but taut, as though Corven’s words had cut deeper than he wanted to show. His jaw was set, but his hand no longer touched her arm. He looked every inch the prince shielding a court, yet the warmth in his eyes was strained, brittle at the edges.

Corven lingered in shadow, his presence steady, inevitable. His storm-gray eyes fixed on her not the nobles, not the Queen, only her. A tether, pulling, binding.

Between them, the hall vibrated with whispers: scapegoat, traitor, poisoner. Myrren’s breath tangled in her throat. She wanted to speak, to explain, to defend herself but words would be twisted into nooses before they left her lips.

Then she saw it.

Blood.

A dark rivulet sliding across the linen tablecloth, seeping into embroidered spirals of gold. It crept toward her fingertips, staining them red. The scent struck her nose iron, sharp, metallic, and undeniable.

She froze. No one else screamed. No one else moved. The nobles were still arguing, Aurelia’s shrill voice carrying above the rest, but not one of them looked at the blood pouring across the feast.

Her vision swam. She blinked hard.

The table was clean.

No blood. No stains. Only overturned goblets and scattered crumbs.

Her hand trembled where it gripped the wood, knuckles pale. The spiral throbbed in her pocket, searing hot now, as if mocking her confusion.

“Do you see it?” Corven’s voice was low, too low for the others. His eyes did not waver. “Tell me you see it.”

She wanted to deny it. Saints, she wanted to. But her lips parted, and the truth slipped free in a whisper she could not stop.

“Yes.”

And in that moment, she knew whether vision, poison, or prophecy, the spiral was no longer only memory. It was bleeding into her present.