The ash-scent hadn’t faded when the screams began.

Myrren’s head snapped toward the far doors of the Spiral Hall. The air, heavy moments ago with incense, now carried iron and fresh blood, sharp and metallic. Torches guttered, smoke veering as if the hall itself exhaled. The carved spiral beneath her feet still glowed faintly, but the Queen was gone, her silks vanished into shadow. Only the echo of her words clung to the air: It ends with you.

Then chaos struck.

Guards burst through the western archway, dragging a convulsing noble between them. The man’s lips frothed pale blue; his eyes rolled back white. A goblet clattered from his fingers, spilling wine that shimmered green. The scent hit her before thought with foxglove, bitter sap, and something new threaded beneath. Not brewed for a single throat, but a feast.

“Poison,” someone shouted. “Again.. saints preserve us!”

Myrren staggered forward, instinct already moving her hands to her satchel. Her pulse pounded against her ribs, twin to the hum that hadn’t stopped since the spiral flared. “He’s been dosed with..” she began, but her voice vanished under the roar of panic. Courtiers stumbled for the exits; silks tore, jewels scattered like falling stars.

A shape moved against the wall  while everything else broke. Corven.

He stepped from the smoke as if born from it, eyes catching the light like tempered steel. His shadows curled against the stone, restless,  and aware. When his gaze found hers, something in the air shuddered.

“Myrren.” His voice carried calm through the chaos. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I can help him,” she said, already kneeling beside the fallen noble. “It’s a compound of foxglove and something binding..”

He crouched beside her, hand catching her wrist before she could uncork a vial. The moment his skin met hers, pain flared with heat, then cold, then a pulse so strong she gasped. The spiral token in her pocket thrummed in answer.

Across the hall, a maid screamed. “Look! their hands!”

Myrren froze. Gold-black bruises bloomed where Corven’s fingers gripped her. A shimmer arced between them as thin as light on water, gone before she could blink. Gasps rose like a tide.

“Shadowbinding,” a courtier whispered. “She’s marked.”

Corven’s expression hardened. He rose, pulling her with him, shadows coiling higher. “You’re done saving them,” he murmured. “They’ve already decided it’s you.”

Before she could protest, he dragged her toward the doors, his grip unrelenting. Behind them, the hall erupted in shrieks and bells of poison and panic bleeding into one sound.

They did not make it three steps before the guards closed ranks. Swords flashed, the royal crest gleaming dull in the smoke. “By order of Her Majesty, no one leaves the hall!”

Corven’s shadows lashed before she saw him move, snuffing the nearest torches. Panic deepened into terror as half the room went black. Myrren caught his sleeve. “You’ll damn us both!”

“They already have.” His voice was low, strained. “The poison wasn’t meant for him. It was meant for you.”

The words struck like a blade.

“Lies!” The accusation came from the dais. Prince Thane strode forward through the gloom, gold catching the dying light, fury bright on his face. “You think I’d let harm come to her under my roof?”

“Then look at her hands,” Corven snapped. “The toxin resonates through her tether. That shimmer wasn’t mine alone.”

Thane froze. His gaze dropped to where the gold-black mark still marbled her skin. It pulsed faintly with each heartbeat, her heartbeat, or Corven’s, she couldn’t tell.

“What have you done to her?” Thane’s voice cracked between rage and dread. “You bind her with your shadows and call it protection?”

Myrren stepped between them, trembling. “Stop. Both of you. The poison’s spreading, and if we waste..”

But the air around them was already thickening, charged. Light flickered across Thane’s fingers with bright gold, and dangerous. His magic rose with his anger, scenting the air like burned cedar. Corven’s shadows deepened in reply, swallowing the light until the hall’s edges blurred.

“You’re tearing the hall apart!” she cried, but neither man heard her. The tether between her and Corven hummed violently, resonating against Thane’s light until her knees buckled.

Then through the ringing chaos another voice: calm, cool, cutting.
“Enough.”

The Queen stood at the dais again, untouched by the turmoil. Every gaze snapped to her. Even the shadows seemed to bend back.

Her eyes lingered on the faint glow joining Myrren and Corven. “Fascinating,” she said softly. “So the bond survived exposure.”

Whispers rippled outward. Myrren’s blood turned to ice. Exposure. The Queen had known. This was deliberate.

“Your Majesty,” Thane began, but Aelira silenced him with a look. “Escort them to the western chambers. Privately.”

Corven’s jaw tightened. “She means to cage us.”

“She means to test you,” Myrren whispered.

When the guards approached, Myrren’s panic fractured into defiance. She snatched a vial from her belt and flung it to the ground. A burst of white smoke filled the space. Coughs, shouts, confusion. Corven caught her again, his grip searing through the haze.

“This way,” he said.

They ran. Through corridors that smelled of iron and burnt myrrh, past courtiers choked on fear. Myrren’s mind spun, what poison had she just unleashed in the hall? How had her own formula resurfaced? And why had the Queen smiled as the chaos began?

By the time they reached the outer doors, her pulse had split in two: her own, and Corven’s echoing within it.

They burst into the western passage which is empty, echoing and torchlight trembling along stone. The heavy doors slammed behind them. Silence fell, thick and absolute.

Myrren leaned against the wall, chest heaving. The air here reeked of copper and ash. Her hands still glowed faintly beneath the skin, veins webbed with gold and shadow. “You shouldn’t have done that,” she gasped. “Running only makes us look guilty.”

Corven turned toward her, face half in light, half in dark. “You think they needed proof?” His tone was quieter now, threaded with something she couldn’t name. “The Queen wanted to see the tether awakened. She has it.”

“The tether..” She pressed a hand to her chest. Her pulse was no longer her own. Two rhythms collided beneath her ribs, one strong, one faltering. “It’s wrong. It shouldn’t hurt.”

“It does when it remembers.”

She stared at him. “What does that mean?”

Corven hesitated. The shadows behind him shifted, restless, alive. “It means this isn’t the first time we’ve stood here.”

The corridor swayed. Myrren caught herself on the stone, breath shallow. The scent of the hall clung to her with foxglove, smoke, the faint sweetness of decay and beneath it, something older. Familiar. “I’d remember,” she whispered. “I’d know if..”

“You did.” He stepped closer. The torchlight caught the faint scars across his forearm with dark chains inked beneath the skin. “You remember as scent, as dream, as dread. I remember death.”

Her hand shook. “You’re talking madness.”

“Am I?” He reached for her wrist again, slower this time. When his skin touched hers, the mark between them flared with a ripple of gold and black, brief but searing. And in its light, she saw it: herself, collapsing on this same floor, mouth stained blue, Corven shouting her name as guards dragged him away. The vision blinked out, leaving only cold.

She stumbled back, trembling. “That wasn’t real.”

“It was.” His voice roughened. “You’ve died here before.”

Her breath hitched. The words sounded wrong and right at once, echoing inside her like memory.

He stepped closer, close enough that the smoke curled between their mouths like a breath not yet shared. His shadows reached for her, not threatening, but trembling, uncertain whether to hold her or shield her from what was coming.

“Don’t do it again,” he whispered, voice scraped raw.

Behind them, the hall erupted with bootfalls, shouted orders, the Queen’s voice slicing through the din like a blade. Myrren barely turned toward the sound before the tether between them surged and burning, desperate, brighter than firelight.

Corven’s hand caught her jaw, thumb grazing her cheek with a reverence that undid her. His touch forced her gaze to his, storm-gray and unbearable.

“Do you understand now?” His voice broke like something half-remembered. “Every spiral ends with your death. And I—” A pause. A heartbeat. “I remember all of them.”

The torches sputtered, guttered.

Then darkness took them both.