When the darkness thinned, it was not Corven’s shadows she saw but the firelight, gold turned wrong. The air stung of roses and smoke, heavy with the sweetness of burning perfume. Her knees struck stone, and for a heartbeat she thought she’d fallen through the tether into another memory. The chamber was familiar, the same hearth-lit room where Thane had sworn his love. Yet now the light burned too still, like a flame held in a jar.

“Myrren.”

His voice came soft, threaded with worry and command at once. He crossed the room, the glow of the hearth gilding his hair. “You’re trembling. You were dreaming again.”

She blinked, trying to orient herself. Her pulse still raced with echoes of Corven’s voice, this time, it ends with you. The scent of frost and ash clung to her, ghosting beneath the firelight’s perfume.

Thane touched her cheek, warm but too precise, as if testing whether she’d shatter. “You shouldn’t work yourself so hard,” he murmured. “You need rest, not riddles.”

His thumb brushed near her jaw, but when her cloak slipped, the edge of her sleeve slid back, revealing the faint shimmer of the spiral mark pulsing at her wrist. His gaze caught there, only for a second, before he smiled again, too quickly.

“What is that?”

“An old burn,” she lied.

He nodded, though the lie did not soothe him. The hearth flickered strangely, dimming though no wind touched it. The light seemed to breathe with his unease.

“Seliora said you were seen again,” Thane said finally, turning away. “In the lower halls. Near the apotheca. There were whispers of… glass vials.”

“She’s mistaken.”

“Perhaps.” His tone softened, but the smile did not return. “You must know how they talk, Myrren. They’re afraid of what they don’t understand. The Queen only wants to keep you safe.”

The words struck wrong, rehearsed, not felt. Myrren rose slowly. “Is that her promise, or yours?”

He faced her again, and for an instant the fire flared bright gold. “Both. You think I would let anyone harm you?”

The flames leapt with his anger, then stilled to ash-gray calm. She smelled iron in the air, the scent of lightbinding strained too far.

“No,” she whispered, the word more question than belief. “I think you’d burn the whole court to keep me.”

Thane stepped closer, his shadow cutting through the glow. “If that’s what it takes.”

The words hung between them, soft as a vow, sharp as a threat.
Myrren took a half step back. The fire cracked, scattering ash across the stones like gray snow.

“Burn them?” she said quietly. “Do you hear yourself, Thane?”

His jaw tightened. “You think I’m cruel. But you didn’t see her, Myrren, how the Queen trembled when she thought the Seer might speak again. You know what the court is. They twist the truth until it screams. If I must scorch their lies to keep you from them, I will.”

He moved closer. The light gilded his eyes, golden and distant, a king’s gaze trying to swallow the man beneath. She had once loved that light, believed in it. Now it felt like a cage.

“Tell me what happened,” he said. “Before Seliora found you. Before the smoke. They said you were seen with the alchemist’s books. Were you searching for something?”

Her breath caught. That memory belonged to another loop, another night. “I don’t remember,” she said, though fragments pricked at her: a vial, frost on her fingers, Corven’s whisper, You’ve died a hundred ways.

“You don’t remember,” Thane repeated softly, as if tasting the words. “Strange. The Queen warned me that your craft might blur the mind. That scentcraft can tangle memory if you breathe too deeply of your own poisons.”

“My poisons?” she echoed, incredulous.

He reached toward her face again, and the fire pulsed once, white, then gray. “You’ve been walking in strange places,” he continued. “Speaking names that aren’t mine. You said ‘Corven’ in your sleep.”

The name cut the air open between them.

Her pulse thundered. “You were listening?”

“I was afraid for you.” His tone softened again, too practiced. “You fade some nights. As if you’re not here at all.”

Because I’m not, she almost said, remembering the tether, the way the candle’s smoke had twisted into a spiral. But the words turned to ash on her tongue.

He reached for her hands. “Marry me,” he said simply. “Now. Before the court can decide anything. If you are mine, no one can accuse you again.”

Her heartbeat stuttered. The fire behind him blazed high, brilliant, heatless.

“Mine?” she whispered. “That’s what this is about?”

He flinched, but only for an instant. “Would you rather hang between their lies? The Queen’s patience is not endless. Marry me, and she cannot touch you.”

The hearthlight hissed. For a moment, she saw the ghost of ash swirl through the glow, forming the faint curve of a spiral before vanishing. The same shape she had seen in smoke, in dreams, in Corven’s chains.

She stared into the fire, her voice low. “You said this once before.”

Thane blinked. “What?”

“The same words. The same promise. By this same fire.”

Confusion crossed his face, swiftly replaced by a tender smile that did not reach his eyes. “You’re overtired. Memory plays tricks.”

But the air itself trembled, the flame wavering as though reality had exhaled. Myrren smelled the truth: ash beneath perfume, iron beneath gold.

She turned from him before her voice could shake. “If memory lies,” she said, “then whose lies are we living?”

Behind her, the fire sighed and dimmed, its glow the color of dying embers.

The chamber seemed to shrink with every breath. Firelight crawled across the walls, bending like glass about to shatter. Thane’s reflection trembled in the hearth’s glow,  too many flames for one body, too many shadows for one soul.

“Myrren,” he said again, voice fraying. “You’re shaking. You don’t trust me.”

She wanted to. Saints, she wanted to believe that his warmth was real, that the hand reaching for her wasn’t the same one that might cage her. But the tether still burned faintly beneath her skin, humming with Corven’s last words.

“I don’t know what’s real anymore,” she whispered. “You sound like yourself, but the light looks wrong.”

He followed her gaze to the hearth. The flames danced without heat, their centers hollow with gold eating its own heart. “It’s only fire,” he said, though his tone cracked. “It’s only us.”

“Then why does it smell like ash?”

He blinked, as if only now noticing the haze that thickened around them. Ash fell from the ceiling in slow spirals, fine as snow. The scent bit her tongue,  burnt roses, scorched silk, a trace of poison smoke.

Thane moved suddenly, catching her hands, pulling her closer until their breath mingled. “Enough ghosts,” he said fiercely. “We’ll start again. A wedding, a crown, no more whispers.”

His grip tightened. Not cruel,  but desperate, as though her pulse were the only truth left to him. The fire roared up behind them, bright and silent.

“Thane.”

“Say you’ll have me.” His eyes shone too bright, fevered. “Say it and end this spiral of doubt before it devours you.”

Spiral. The word struck like a bell. The tether inside her pulsed once, then went still.. waiting.

She drew a breath that tasted of smoke. “You don’t even hear yourself,” she said softly. “You’re asking me to bind myself to a fire that doesn’t burn.”

For an instant, something flickered in his gaze, confusion, or the faintest fear. Then he smiled, perfect and wrong, and the flames obeyed him, curling into a spiral above the hearth, gold rimmed with black.

Her heart lurched. It was the same shape that had risen from Corven’s candle. The same spiral that crowned her nightmares.

The ash settled on her shoulders like snowfall.

Thane whispered, “We were always meant to end in fire.”

And before she could stop herself, the truth broke out, quiet but final:

“I don’t know which version of you is real.”

The hearth went out.