The hearth went out, but the air did not cool.

Smoke still coiled through the chamber like a living thing, clinging to her throat, sweet with burnt roses and a trace of Thane’s light. Myrren pressed her hand to her mouth, tasting ash. The silence that followed was worse than the shouting could have been, no sound but the soft crackle of cooling embers and her own uneven breath.

“Thane?” she whispered.

No answer. Only the dull glow of embers fading in a pattern she recognized too late. The same spiral she’d seen behind her eyelids in every dream. It pulsed once before crumbling into black.

She stumbled backward, skirts brushing ash, and turned toward the door. The latch burned faintly under her fingers, still hot from his lightbinding. Outside, the corridor’s torches guttered as she passed, as if unwilling to witness her. Every guard she met averted his gaze; word of the prince’s temper had already traveled faster than fire.

She wanted clean air. Instead, the palace smelled of smoke and fear. Whispers followed her footsteps, curling through velvet drapes:
The prince’s flame went out.
She was with him when it died.

Her pulse raced faster. The spiral wasn’t only in her mind anymore, it was written into the stones. Each corridor repeated itself: the same vase, the same portrait, the same servant bowing twice. She blinked, but the repetition didn’t break. The air shimmered faintly, as if the palace itself were folding back upon an old memory.

She reached the Queen’s solar without remembering how. The door was half-open, a thin line of gold spilling onto marble.

“Myrren.”

Seliora’s voice, low, precise, the tone she used when secrets hung in the air.

Myrren hesitated on the threshold. Seliora sat alone by the window, a decanter of amber wine before her, the city’s smoke reflected in the glass. Her gown gleamed faintly silver in the torchlight, but her eyes were rimmed in exhaustion. A single candle burned beside her, its flame steady. Unnaturally steady, as if warded against the room’s shifting air.

“I heard the prince’s fire gutter,” Seliora said quietly. “You should not be walking alone.”

Myrren wanted to laugh. “The danger’s not in the corridors.”

Seliora’s gaze flicked to her, soft, pitiful, and sharp enough to cut. “No. It’s in the truth you still refuse to see.”

The candle flame bent, just slightly, as though the spiral had followed her here.

Seliora poured wine but did not drink. The glass caught the candlelight like blood behind glass.
“You think the Queen’s silence means ignorance,” she said. “But she listens better than priests. Every whisper you breathe, every time that stone in your pocket warms, she feels it.”

Myrren froze. “How do you..”

Seliora’s gaze flicked to her hand. “You still carry it, don’t you? The spiral token I gave you.”

Heat bloomed through the fabric of Myrren’s gown as if the token had heard its own name. The pulse climbed the back of her wrist, slow, deliberate, heartbeat answering heartbeat. The air thickened with frostmint and smoke.

“She’s asked about it,” Seliora continued. “About you. I told her only what I had to. Nothing that would damn you.”

Myrren’s throat tightened. “You’ve been reporting to her?”

“For months.” The admission came calm, practiced, but her fingers twisted her silver ring until it nearly cut skin. “She believes the Silent Veil infected the palace through you. She believes your memories, your loops.. are the first signs. I thought if I gave her crumbs, she’d stop looking for the loaf.”

“And you call that protection?”

Seliora’s smile faltered. “If she suspected I withheld anything, she’d have you questioned by her seers. And they would not ask kindly.”

The words scraped raw. Myrren stepped back until the marble chilled her spine. “So you sold me piece by piece and called it mercy.”

“Don’t,” Seliora whispered. “You think I haven’t seen what happens when the Queen decides a girl is poison? I watched it once already.”

“Cordelia.”

Seliora’s eyes flicked up sharply. “You remember the name.”

“Fragments,” Myrren said. “Dreams.”

“Not dreams,” Seliora murmured. “Repetitions. She stood where you stand now, begged me to choose silence, and I..” Her voice broke. “I chose the crown. She hanged before the week ended. The Queen said her death broke the spiral for a generation. I believed her.”

Myrren shook her head. “And now you believe feeding her more will keep it from returning?”

“What else is there?” Seliora’s control cracked; wine spilled over her fingers, darkening the silk at her wrist. “You think love will save you? Thane burns everything he touches. Corven drags his chains behind him. I am giving you the only shield left. Knowledge.”

The candle flame guttered suddenly, twisting into a perfect spiral before steadying again. Myrren’s pulse echoed it.

“You’re wrong,” she said softly. “Knowledge isn’t a shield. It’s a poison that spreads the moment it’s spoken.”

Seliora met her eyes, weary and resolute. “Then drink it quickly, before someone else forces it down your throat.” She leaned closer, voice a blade disguised as pity. “Better you break now, Myrren, than the spiral break the kingdom.”

The token in Myrren’s pocket burned white-hot, and for an instant she smelled two scents at once, Seliora’s frostmint perfume and the Queen’s rose-oil chambers, overlapping, indistinguishable, as if the world had folded in on itself.

The world flickered.

For one impossible heartbeat, Myrren stood in two rooms at once. The Queen’s solar and the shadowed throne hall where she had first smelled wolfsbane. Voices overlapped like echoes trapped in glass.

“She will break.”
“One shall bind.”
“Crown of ash”

She staggered, clutching the table. The pulse in her pocket seared through the fabric. Seliora’s candle flared higher, smoke rising in perfect spirals that twined toward the ceiling like a spell.

“Stop it,” Myrren gasped. “Put it out.”

Seliora didn’t move. “It’s not me.”

The spirals began to unravel into ash, falling like snow over the decanter, over the table between them. Each flake hissed where it landed, tiny burns marking the marble.

Seliora’s composure faltered. For the first time, fear slipped through her mask. “The Queen’s wards, she must have heard us..”

Myrren’s hand closed around the token. It pulsed once more, then went cold. The smoke folded inward, devoured itself, and the air fell silent.

In that silence, she heard footsteps in the corridor, measured, regal, coming closer.

“You told her,” Myrren whispered.

Seliora looked away. “She would have known, with or without me. The Veil moves through scent and shadow both. You can’t hide forever.”

“You chose her over me.”

“I chose survival.”

The door latch trembled under an unseen hand. Myrren’s mind raced: Thane’s fire, Corven’s tether, Seliora’s betrayal, every bond a snare. She felt the spiral closing like a fist around her ribs.

“You said you wanted to protect me.”

Seliora’s eyes gleamed, wet and hard all at once. “I still do. But protection means breaking you before they can claim you.”

The candlelight flickered, throwing twin silhouettes across the wall, one of firelight, one of shadow. For a heartbeat, they overlapped perfectly, indistinguishable. Myrren’s heart lurched as she remembered Thane’s burning hands, Corven’s whisper in the dark, both promises curdling into the same word: mine.

She drew a breath, and even the air tasted divided, half rose, half frost. Her senses betrayed her; every scent carried two meanings now, like the world itself could no longer decide who she belonged to.

Somewhere beyond the door, a whisper rose, soft, feminine, impossible to tell if it was the Queen or something older:
“Break. Bind. Burn.”

Seliora reached across the table and gripped Myrren’s wrist. The touch was icy. “Listen to me, Myrren Vale. Whatever comes through that door, do not speak. The moment you answer her, the spiral resets.”

The latch turned.

Light spilled into the chamber, gold edged with shadow, and every instinct in Myrren screamed that both Thane and Corven stood behind it, two versions of fate waiting to be chosen.

Seliora’s voice broke the silence, final and merciless:
“Better you break now, than the spiral break the kingdom.”