The hall’s roar swelled around her nobles shouting over overturned goblets, the Queen’s silence cutting sharper than any blade. Myrren stumbled back from the table, the phantom taste of iron still coating her tongue.

She barely remembered how she was led away. Thane’s voice rose once, commanding sunlight against the shadows, but it did not steady her. Corven’s gaze followed her retreat like a chain at her throat. The spiral pulsed in her pocket, burning her skin with each step.

By the time Ori pulled her into the safety of her chamber, Myrren’s knees threatened to buckle. The door shut behind them with a decisive thud, sealing the feast and its illusions on the other side of stone.

She did not remember collapsing onto the bed, only the spiral’s heat searing her thigh and Ori’s hand pressing hers until darkness claimed her.

When she woke up, Ori was still there. Shadows marked the chamber walls, candles guttering low. Ori’s eyes were wide, sleepless.

“You were whispering again.” The words came fast, sharp, tumbling over each other. She perched on the bed’s edge, arms knotted tight, as though afraid her friend might vanish. “Not just nonsense, not like last week when you mumbled about rosemary and chalk you said it clear as a bell this time. Recipes, Myrren. You were reciting them.”

Myrren’s pulse jolted. “Reciting?”

“Poisons.” Ori’s voice cracked on the word. “Moonbane resin, frostmint infusion, venom of the spiral serpent—things no servant should even know. I wrote them down, so you’d believe me.”

She held up a scrap of laundry ledger, smudged with charcoal. The hasty scrawl was Ori’s, but the words of recipes half-lost to Myrren’s dreams were unmistakably hers.

Her stomach dropped.

Ori’s voice fell to a whisper, brittle and trembling: “And then you said something else. You said ” Her lip bled where she bit it. “You said, ‘The antidote will fail.’”

The chamber tilted. Myrren pressed her hand to her mouth, fighting nausea. Her dreams were they dreams at all, or the Silent Veil twisting her into its script?

“Ori…” Her throat burned. “I don’t remember. I never meant..”

“You never mean it!” Ori burst out, half sob, half fury. “But what if someone else heard you? A guard, a court spy, even Thane himself? You’re already one breath from the noose, Myrren. If you whisper poisons in your sleep, they’ll swear you’re plotting in your waking hours too.”

Her words left a shuddering silence. Myrren’s fingers shook against the coverlet. She could almost taste wolfsbane on her tongue, bitter and damning.

And for one terrifying moment, she wondered if Ori was right if she had dreamed a failure into truth.

“Myrren, listen to me.” Ori’s hands fumbled for hers, grip fierce, almost painful. “The palace is a sieve of whispers. Servants gossip louder than nobles fight. If I heard you, someone else might have. Do you understand what that means?”

Myrren tore her hand free, pacing to the narrow window. Cold air leaked through the shutters, damp with smoke from the riot fires that still burned beyond the gates. She pressed her palm against the stone, trying to steady herself.

“It means,” she whispered, “I could have condemned myself in my sleep.”

The words curled like a curse in the air.

Ori bit her lip until it bled. “Or worse. They’ll say you know poisons too well, that you’re not naming them anymore, you’re brewing them. That you’re not saving the court, you’re plotting to ruin it.” Her eyes glistened. “If the Queen hears even a hint of it…”

The unspoken hung heavy. The Queen would not hesitate. Myrren had seen what her silences wrought.

She turned, desperate. “But what if it wasn’t just a dream? What if the spiral made me say it? I smelled frostmint tonight, I saw blood spill across a tablecloth no one else could see..”

“Stop.” Ori shook her head violently. “Don’t talk like them. That’s how the Silent Veil pulls people under. First dreams, then whispers, then…” She trailed off, trembling. “You’re not theirs, Myrren. Promise me you’re not.”

The spiral stone seared hot in her pocket, as if mocking the promise she could not make. She wanted to say I’m not theirs, but the words stuck, ash on her tongue.

Instead she murmured, “Thane was beside me when I woke. If he heard…” Her chest tightened. His devotion had always been sunlight, but even sunlight could burn when turned toward suspicion. If he repeated her words to the Queen, she would be ash before dawn.

Ori’s expression darkened. “And Corven.. saints, Myrren, what about him? You think shadows don’t carry whispers? If he hears you in your sleep, he’ll use it. He’ll bind you tighter with every secret that slips loose.”

The accusation lanced deeper than Myrren expected. Corven’s gaze in the banquet hall had been steady, storm-gray, seeing too much. He had asked if she saw the blood. He would know the whispers were real. But what would he do with that truth? shield her with his shadows, or bind her to them forever?

“Myrren.” Ori’s voice broke, soft this time, pleading. She clutched the crumpled ledger scrap to her chest as if it were a death sentence. “Don’t give them reason. Even in sleep, don’t let them hear you. You can’t afford another mistake.”

The word sliced her open. Another mistake. The child she had killed with honeyroot tonic rose in her memory, lungs gasping, lips blue. She had sworn never again. Sworn every antidote would work. And yet her own mouth had betrayed her with those words: The antidote will fail.

Her knees buckled. She sank to the bed, trembling, as if her body bore the weight of every whisper, every spiral loop that had ever trapped her.

Ori hovered, frantic, pressing a damp cloth to her hand, as though tending a wound she could not see. “You’re scaring me,” she whispered. “You’re scaring me worse than the nobles do.”

The chamber’s silence pressed heavier than the banquet’s roar. Myrren clutched the bedframe until her knuckles whitened, breath shallow as if she’d swallowed her own poison.

“Ori…” Her voice cracked, a plea she could not shape into sense. “What if the antidote really does fail? What if I’ve already..”

“No.” Ori seized her shoulders, shaking her once, hard. “You cannot say things like that, not even to me. Especially not to me. If the wrong ears catch so much as a murmur..”

Her eyes flicked toward the door, where shadows shifted in the candlelight. Myrren’s chest constricted. In this palace, there were no locked doors, only listening walls.

She pressed trembling fingers to her lips. Her mind chased itself in circles: Thane’s brittle devotion, Corven’s tethered gaze, the Queen’s silent verdict. Who would believe her innocence if her own mouth betrayed her?

The spiral in her pocket pulsed hot, insistent, as if answering: None of them. Not this time.

A chill swept her spine. Was she weaving her own noose, stitch by whispered stitch? Or was the Silent Veil scripting her into it?

Myrren,” Ori whispered, softer now. She pressed their foreheads together, the way she had once pressed her head to hers after her brother’s breath came back under Myrren’s antidote. “You’ve already saved one life with your craft. Don’t let the crown twist it into a rope around your neck

Her breath trembled against Myrren’s skin. “You have to be careful. Every step you take here is already watched. Every breath weighed. And now even your dreams speak against you.”

Myrren swallowed hard. “What if I can’t stop it? What if the spiral wants me guilty, no matter what I do?”

Ori’s lips quivered. She looked younger suddenly, too young for all the fear she carried. “Then promise me something. Promise me you’ll fight it. That you’ll bite your tongue bloody before you give them another word to twist.”

Myrren wanted to swear it. Saints, she wanted to. But the stone seared against her thigh, its heat thrumming in time with her pulse, and she knew she would dream again. She always dreamed again.

Ori drew back, eyes glistening, jaw set with a courage she didn’t feel. Her voice was a broken whisper, but it struck sharper than any noble’s accusation.

“If you’re not careful, you’ll be hanged..” Her breath caught. “Or worse, bound.”

The word hung between them like a chain.

Bound. To shadows. To the spiral. To Corven.

And Myrren, shaking, could not tell which fate was worse.