The scorch mark still pulsed faintly on the table.

Thane stood motionless in its glow, his breathing ragged, the scent of cedar and ash coiling around him like regret. The spiral burned perfect and golden beneath his hand, though his skin had stopped glowing. It took too much effort to dim the fire.

He had frightened her. Again.

“Saints,” he whispered, dragging both hands through his hair, palms trembling. “What am I doing?”

The Queen’s bells had stopped. The silence that followed was heavier than sound, and it rang through his skull as if the walls were narrowing around him.

She had looked at him like she didn’t recognize him.

Or worse like she did.

The knock at the door was precise, deliberate. He didn’t call out. Seliora entered anyway.

The silver of her gown caught what little light remained. Her gaze flicked to the scorch mark, to the faint shimmer of gold still licking the wood. She said nothing, but her fingers went to her rings, turning one slowly.

“She saw it,” Thane said without turning. “The fire. What it’s becoming.”

“She’s seen worse,” Seliora replied, voice calm, eyes sharper than any blade. “But I imagine the spiral’s edge feels nearer now.”

He turned then sharply. “You believe in that?”

She didn’t answer at first. Just crossed the room and set a single folded note on the edge of the table. “The court is circling. Aedric whispers poison again. Frostmint suggests exile. And you’ve scorched your name into her skin.”

“I didn’t touch her.”

“But your fire did.”

Thane pressed his hand to his chest, where the light had cracked through his ribs. “I can’t stop it, Seliora. Not when she’s near. And if I lose her..”

“You won’t.”

“She’s slipping.”

“She’s bound to you.” Her tone didn’t flinch. “You said it yourself.”

He looked up. “Then say what you came to say.”

Seliora studied him for a long moment. Then, quiet as breath: “Marry her. Before the spiral does.”

Thane flinched. Not from the words but from how much he’d wanted to hear them.

Behind the far wall, a faint shuffle of fabric.

Unheard by either of them, a breath hitched.

Thane’s jaw clenched. “You sound like the Queen.”

Seliora arched a brow, unfazed. “Then perhaps she’s right. Even silence sees what fire refuses to.”

“I’m not a weapon.”

“No,” she said, “but you’re becoming one. And Myrren is on the blast path.”

He turned away, pacing now. The spiral mark still shimmered faintly behind him. “You think this is only about power?”

“I think,” she said slowly, “that you love her in a way the court will never forgive. That you’d bind her to your flame and call it devotion. And I think the spiral knows that.”

Thane’s hands curled into fists. “You believe in ghosts and echoes and fate..”

“No,” Seliora cut in. “I believe in patterns. In watching a girl hang for poison she didn’t brew. Seeing your fire flare too late. In remembering a loop even when I shouldn’t.”

That stopped him. “You said you didn’t remember those things.”

“I said I wasn’t sure if it was the first time or the thirtieth.” Her fingers twisted a different ring now, the obsidian one. “But I remember her face, Thane. Twisted in pain. Not because she died. But because she thought you’d save her.”

His breath caught.

Seliora stepped closer, her voice low and deliberate. “If you don’t marry her now, someone else will decide her fate. The Queen is already hinting at alternate matches. Nobles whisper that Corven’s chain is stronger than your vows. Those shadows suit her better than fire.”

Thane flinched. “She’d never..”

“She kissed him, didn’t she?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

Seliora exhaled. “Then don’t give her time to drift. Anchor her. Crown her beside you before the court binds her to chains she can’t break.”

He looked at the mark again spiraled and  glowing, like a curse he couldn’t outrun. “What if she says no?”

“Then at least it’s her choice,” Seliora said softly. “But gods help you if she finds out you waited to ask until it served your crown.”

He laughed, bitter. “You think I’m that far gone?”

Seliora met his gaze, no mercy in hers. “I think you already branded her. The court just hasn’t named it yet.”

She turned away then, voice quieter. “Every loop ends the same. Fire or gallows. Lightbinding, then execution. I thought it was a dream the first time. Second, I started writing names. By the third, I knew: we are trapped, Thane. And love is what gets us hanged.”

A beat.

“And still, I would risk it. Because if the spiral’s going to break, it begins with choosing her.”

Behind the tapestry, Myrren’s knees nearly buckled. She bit down on her sleeve to stay silent.

The spiral token in her pocket pulsed once, warm and alive, as if echoing what she’d heard before.

Not again, she thought. Saints, not again.

Myrren didn’t move.

The world around her had narrowed to breath and stone and the taste of ash curling at the back of her throat. She clutched the edge of the tapestry with fingers gone white, the words still echoing from the other side like a chant carved into bone.

Marry her. Before the spiral does.

They spoke of her like she was already lost.

Like the spiral had already chosen how to end her.

The spiral token in her pocket pulsed again but it’s too warm now. She didn’t remember it pulsing like this before. Or maybe she did. Maybe she always had. Maybe this was the part where her memory slipped sideways and time doubled back on itself.

A scent of frostmint smoke and honeyroot coiled into her lungs. She reeled.

That wasn’t now. That was Cordelia. No..

That was her.

A crowd watching. Noose tightening. Thane’s voice, steady and golden: “The kingdom must be protected.”

She gasped and pressed a palm to her mouth. The vision vanished like breath on glass, but the echo clung.

She didn’t know if it was a memory, a spiral, or a warning. Only that it burned.

She felt it in her ribs, in the spot where Corven had once whispered: “You’ve died before. I’ve held your hand through it.”

And she’d laughed, hadn’t she? Or maybe that hadn’t happened yet.

Tears pricked her eyes. She blinked them away.

Thane had meant it as protection. She believed that. Saints help her, she did. But if he asked her to marry him now, after this..

Could she trust it?

Could she ever be sure it was love?

Or just the spiral winding tighter?

Footsteps inside the room shifted, Seliora was rising. Myrren backed away from the wall, breath trembling, hand still clenched around the token like it might tell her what was real.

But it didn’t speak.

It only pulsed.

Like a second heartbeat.

Like a countdown.

Myrren staggered back from the tapestry, her breath catching on the edge of a sob.

The corridor beyond was empty, save for a single guttering sconce. Its flame flickered, then bent sideways, as if pushed by breathless heat. The same heat that still clung to her skin.

She pressed a hand to her chest. Her heart wasn’t steady. It wasn’t even hers, it beat like the spiral token in her pocket. Hard. Wrong. Familiar.

Marry her. Before the spiral does.

Seliora’s words looped through her ears like a curse, threading through half-remembered dreams, fragments of old trials, gallows smoke, Corven’s whisper in a chamber she hadn’t yet entered: You wore white once. Right before they burned you.

She thought she’d made that up.

Now she wasn’t so sure.

Her fingers fumbled for the spiral token. It pulsed under her touch, warm as skin, the grooves catching the light from Thane’s lingering magic still seeping through the walls.

It looked like a promise.

It felt like a trap.

Steps approached, the soft glide of silk, deliberate, and familiar. Myrren backed into shadow as Seliora exited the room alone. Her face was composed, mouth a perfect line. But her hand still turned the obsidian ring as she walked.

She’s seen this before, Myrren realized.

And she’s trying to change the ending.

But at what cost?

The thought twisted, splintered, buried under another memory that wasn’t hers. Seliora at a gallows, whispering I’m sorry as fire cracked behind her.

Myrren’s hands were shaking.

Down the corridor, a brighter light bloomed. Thane stepped into the archway, pausing to look after his cousin. He didn’t smile.

Instead, he murmured, “Tonight.”

Then he turned in the opposite direction.

Myrren pressed back against the wall, trembling.

Not tonight. Saints, not again.

She could smell the future rising from the stone with scorched cedar, frostmint smoke, and the faintest curl of rose oil. Wedding scents. Funeral scents. They were the same in every spiral.

She reached into her pocket and drew the spiral token into her palm. It pulsed.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

And somewhere in the dark, a tether snapped so softly she almost missed it.