When Myrren woke, dawn had not yet broken. The air reeked of smoke and wet stone. Her gown was damp, her wrists unmarked, except for the faint ache where the spiral had burned beneath her skin. Corven was gone. Only the echo of his voice lingered: They’ve already touched you.
She rose on trembling legs. The corridors above murmured with training horns and the clash of steel. Perhaps the Seer’s hall, the mark, the shadows had been another illusion. Yet the scent of cypress still clung to her sleeves.
Drawn by the noise, she followed the sound of fire meeting iron… and found herself standing at the edge of the courtyard where Thane burned the world to light.

The training yard stank of iron, wet straw, and the sweet scorch of Lightbinding. Man-shaped dummies listed on their posts, ribs charred through, straw guts smoking where golden fire had kissed them to ash. Thane stood at the center, bare forearms latticed with heat, palms still bright enough to turn the mist into steam.

“You’ll set the keep alight trying to convince yourself you can,” Holt said, boots crunching over cinders.

Thane didn’t turn. Flame climbed his fingers anyway, a reflex that looked too much like anger to be only magic. “Better ash than rot,” he said. “Better flame than a court that lies to my face.”

“Spoken like a man who’s never had to mop his own disasters.” Holt’s voice was dry as old leather. “Or bury them.”

Thane spun, light spitting from his palm to crack the practice post in two. The pieces fell with a hollow thunk. “Say what you came to say, Evander.”

Holt didn’t flinch at the heat. “You’re blind.”

“To what?”

“To her.” Holt jerked his chin toward the palace wings, where windows held a sheen of dawn like thin honey. “To Myrren. To what your devotion is doing to your sight.”

“Mind your tongue.”

“I’ve watched you since you were twelve and thought a sword could fix hunger.” Holt’s tone wasn’t unkind, only tired. “You’re making the same mistake with love. You think if you burn bright enough you’ll cauterize the wound. That isn’t healing, lad. That’s scarring.”

Thane’s jaw tightened. The magic guttered and returned, a heartbeat of fire. “You don’t know her.”

“I know what you’ve made her mean.” Holt stepped closer, boots in the circle of singed sand. “You’ve turned a woman into a vow. Vows aren’t people. And vows don’t breathe when the crown tightens.”

From the shadowed arcade, Myrren stopped dead. She’d come following the copper tang of heat and the faint ghost of myrrh, her own scent clinging to a sleeve Thane had worn yesterday. Now her breath snagged against the column. She could see both of them through the lattice of stone: Thane bright as a struck match, Holt a slab of quiet iron.

“She’s safer with me,” Thane said.

Holt’s laugh was a single bark. “From what? From nobles? From poison? From a prophecy you refuse to admit is strangling the court? Hear me.” His voice dropped until even the mist seemed to lean in. “Love bends the truth—and in this court, truth kills.”

Silence pulsed. Somewhere a gull cried over the river. The steamed air tasted like salt and soot.

Thane’s hands lowered. The light crawled back into his skin, leaving him with only the tremor in his breath.

Myrren pressed her palm to the cold stone and felt the onyx spiral at her throat give a small, traitorous throb, like agreement.

Holt turned away first. “Put out your fires, Highness,” he said, already retreating toward the gate. “Before they put you out.”

Thane stared after him, chest rising, falling.

The token warmed again against Myrren’s skin.

And before she’d decided to move, her name, soft, questioning and flared in her mind as if someone had spoken it just behind her ear.

The sun had fully risen by the time the courtyard emptied. Ash floated on the breeze, glimmering like snow over the blackened sand. Myrren stayed hidden behind the colonnade until Holt’s boots faded down the corridor. Only then did she step forward. The heat that still lingered from Thane’s Lightbinding curled the air, making him shimmer like a mirage.

He knelt beside the shattered dummy, fingertips brushing the ash as though he could gather its dust into something living. “He doesn’t understand,” Thane murmured, not turning. “He’s seen too many people die to believe anyone can be saved.”

Myrren hesitated. “And you still believe you can save me?”

He looked over his shoulder, golden light tracing the curve of his jaw. “If I didn’t, then what is all this for?”

She wanted to tell him it wasn’t for her, that the spiral under her skin still pulsed with onyx light, that Corven’s voice still whispered through the seams of her thoughts. But Thane’s expression stopped her. The same fierce devotion that once steadied her now looked like something fevered, desperate.

He rose, closing the distance between them. “You shouldn’t have been near the Seer’s halls last night,” he said, his tone soft but edged. “There were guards searching all night. If they’d found you..”

“They didn’t.” Her reply came sharper than she intended. “Corven pulled me away before they sealed the ward.”

The name cut through him like cold air. “You were with him.”

“Only because he found me first.”

Thane’s jaw clenched. “You trust him too easily.”

Myrren met his gaze, chin high. “He told me the truth. The Silent Veil touched me. They marked me.” She bared her wrist. The faint spiral shimmered beneath the skin, ghostlike but real.

He caught her arm as if to banish it by force, his palm burning with light. “Then I’ll remove it.”

“Thane, don’t..”

Golden radiance flooded her wrist. The mark writhed, but it didn’t fade. Instead, a sharp scent filled the air, ozone and myrrh singed together, the scent of her own craft turned wrong. Myrren bit back a cry. “You’re hurting me.”

He pulled back, breathing hard. “I’m trying to protect you.”

“By burning me?”

His voice broke. “By keeping you alive. You think I don’t see what’s coming? The Queen watches you. The nobles whisper. Corven stalks shadows in your name. The only way to keep you safe is to bring you closer, to me, to the crown.”

She stared at him, the space between them full of heat and fear. “You don’t hear yourself, do you? That’s not safe. That’s a cage gilded in your light.”

For a heartbeat, pain crossed his features. Then it hardened into resolve. “If a cage keeps you breathing, then I’ll build one high enough to hold the sun itself.”

The words landed like a vow and a threat at once. The air between them rippled with the residue of his magic, faint gold motes drifting like dust. Myrren took a step back, her pulse echoing in her throat.

“Love isn’t a prison, Thane.”

He looked away, eyes blazing. “No. But the truth is. And I’ll bear that chain if it spares you.”

The fountain behind them cracked under lingering heat, water hissing through new fractures. Myrren stared at the fissure spreading across the marble and thought of Holt’s warning – love bends the truth, and truth kills.

Rain began before noon, thin, steady, the kind that slicked the marble and dulled the sound of boots in the corridors. Myrren left Thane by the fountain, his light guttering against the drizzle, and walked until the palace opened to the upper terraces. From here, Eirden sprawled below: roofs shrouded in mist, the river running black as ink. The air tasted of iron and wet ash.

She pressed her hand against the balustrade. Beneath her skin, the spiral burned faintly, pulsing to a rhythm that wasn’t her heartbeat. Each pulse tugged at something inside her, like a tether straining, reminding her she wasn’t free.

Below, Holt’s voice carried from the barracks yard, barking orders. The sound grounded her, solid and mortal. She almost went to him. Almost asked what he’d meant, love bends the truth. But she already knew. She’d seen it in Thane’s eyes when he tried to burn her clean.

A shiver climbed her spine. For the first time, the scent of his magic, once warm as cedar and sunlight, now smelled of smoke left too long in the air, something scorched and clinging. She thought of Corven’s shadows swallowing her whole, the gentleness in his voice when he’d said forgive me. Between them stretched a spiral of fire and shadow, and she was the crown of ash balanced between both.

The sky darkened. Lightning flashed once across the clouds, reflected in the onyx token at her throat. It flared, bright enough to paint the terrace in a flicker of light, two silhouettes superimposed: Thane’s golden outline and Corven’s dark one. For a breath, both reached for her.

Then the vision split. The terrace swayed under her feet. She caught herself against the rail, gasping, heart racing.

“Myrren.”

She turned. Holt stood at the far archway, rain dripping from his cloak, eyes grave. “You shouldn’t be alone. The Queen sent for the prince. Something’s stirred in the lower halls, your name among it.”

Her stomach tightened. “What do they want with me now?”

He hesitated, jaw flexing. “To test his loyalty, I think.”

A coldness spread through her chest. “Mine or his?”

“Both.”

Thunder rolled above them. Holt started to speak again, but his voice was lost in the wind. When she looked back toward the courtyard, she saw Thane emerging from the haze, his cloak catching gold fire from within, light crawling over his skin like armor.

The spiral at her wrist throbbed in answer.

Holt’s hand went to his sword. “Don’t let him see the mark,” he warned softly.

But it was too late. Thane’s gaze had already found her through the rain, bright and unblinking, as if the world beyond her no longer existed.

She didn’t move. The air between them shimmered, half devotion, half command.

And as lightning split the sky again, Myrren couldn’t tell if the light coming toward her was meant to save her… or to cage her forever.