Dawn tasted of metal. Myrren woke to the echo of that snap still humming beneath her ribs, a pulse that wasn’t hers but would not still. The spiral token lay cold in her palm, its grooves rimed with frost though the air was warm. Beyond the shutters, the palace stirred with footsteps and banners unfurling the faint brass of trumpets summoning courtiers to the morning decree. The scent of rose oil and scorched cedar drifted from the halls below: wedding perfume or funeral smoke. She could no longer tell which.

The courtyard shimmered with pale light, the kind that gilded everything beautiful enough to hide its rot. Nobles gathered beneath the marble arches, their silks whispering like restless wings. The Queen’s decree was to be read at sunrise with some rumor of tightened borders, or perhaps the long-promised betrothal announcement.

Myrren stood at the edge of the assembly beside Seliora and Captain Holt. She had not slept. The tether’s ghost still thrummed inside her, tugging faintly toward the northern gate where Corven had been stationed. Every heartbeat felt borrowed.

“Keep your head high,” Seliora murmured, her hand cool at Myrren’s wrist. “They smell fear faster than blood.”

“I’m not afraid,” Myrren lied.

Her senses were sharpened past reason. She could taste every perfume in the air: powdered lilac, honeyed amber, the musk of horses beyond the gate. But beneath them all, something wrong. Metallic. Bitter-sweet. Like lilac burned over iron.

Nightroot.

Her breath caught. The scent wasn’t drifting, it was moving. Fast.

“Myrren?” Holt’s voice turned, half-warning.

She lifted her gaze. Across the courtyard wall, a shadow shifted, too high and  too deliberate. Sunlight flashed against metal.

“Down!” she shouted, but the word came too late.

The arrow sliced the air with a hiss.

And then shadows exploded.

Corven moved before she could blink. One heartbeat he was a blur at the gate, the next he was between her and death. Darkness ripped through sunlight, twisting into a shield that caught the arrow mid-flight. It struck the shadow barrier with a hiss like searing flesh, embedding itself inches from her face. Smoke rose, curling pale and sweet.

Lilac. Burnt cedar.

Nightroot, confirmed.

The shock froze the court for a single heartbeat. Myrren could hear her own pulse hammering through the tether, echoing in Corven’s chest where his breath stuttered. The shadows around him writhed as if alive, forming a cocoon that brushed her skin with cold,  electric and intimate.

“Are you hurt?” His voice was raw, too close.

“No,” she whispered, though the word trembled. “But that poison it’s…”

“I know.” His hand caught her arm, steadying her. The touch burned like frost.

Around them, gasps broke from the nobles. Someone dropped a goblet. The sound was small, but it split the silence like thunder.

Above, the Queen did not move. Her gaze, distant and unreadable, rested on the two of them, the light and shadow still tangled together in the dawn.

The shadow barrier dissolved slowly, like ink bleeding through water. When it faded, Corven was still holding her, one hand braced against her shoulder, the other gripping the shaft of the arrow. The metal hissed where his fingers touched it, smoke curling from his skin.

“Corven..”

He didn’t let go. “It’s Nightroot. The same toxin used by the Silent Veil during the Cordelia purge.” His voice was steady, but his jaw was tight. “Whoever loosed this meant to unmake you, not kill you.”

Myrren’s throat constricted. Nightroot didn’t just poison blood, it poisoned memory. A single trace on skin could unravel hours, days, names. Her fingers twitched toward the arrow. “I can counter it, if I analyze the resin..”

He caught her wrist. “Touch it and the tether will finish what they started.”

The words hit harder than the arrow itself. The tether. She could feel it pulsing between them, a line of molten heat binding bone to bone. The world beyond the link blurred, the crowd, the marble, the scent of roses until only the rhythm of his heartbeat filled her chest.

A murmur rippled through the nobles. They had seen it. They had felt it*. Shadows curling from his hands to her skin, her breath syncing to his. The air buzzed with unease, superstition, and the slow bloom of rumor.

Seliora’s whisper cut through it like a blade. “Release her, Corven.”

But he couldn’t, not yet. His shadows trembled, recoiling and returning as if unsure which of them they belonged to. The faint blue of the poison still glimmered in the arrowhead.

Myrren’s mind raced. “If the Veil sent this, the Queen’s guard has been breached.”

“That’s impossible,” Holt muttered, scanning the parapets. “Every bow was checked.”

“Unless it wasn’t a bow,” Myrren said softly. Her nose caught something new,a smoke of pine oil, candle soot, frostmint ash. She knew that blend. “It’s alchemical propulsion. A device. The kind Varros engineers used at Redmarsh.”

Gasps again, louder this time. Nobles recoiled as if her words were a curse.

“Varros?” someone whispered. “Then it’s war..”

Seliora hissed for silence, but the panic had already started. The Queen finally moved, her voice low, unreadable. “Remove the arrow. Burn what remains before sunset.”

Guards obeyed instantly, snatching the arrow from Corven’s hand with tongs and carrying it toward the brazier. The smoke rose sweet and wrong, curling like a ghostly spiral before vanishing.

The Queen’s gaze lingered on the pattern as it faded. “Spirals again,” she murmured.

Myrren’s stomach turned. The word struck like a prophecy echo.

Corven’s hand was still on her wrist. He met her eyes, shadows flickering behind his lashes. “You see now why I stay near you,” he said quietly. “The spiral doesn’t need consent to claim what it already owns.”

Before she could answer, horns sounded at the far gate.

Prince Thane, radiant and furious, was riding into the courtyard.

Thane’s arrival shattered the hush like a blade dropped on marble. The crowd parted before his horse, sunlight blazing across his armor. His lightbinding flared uncontrolled, white fire laced his skin, burning the air until the perfume of roses curdled into smoke.

“Myrren!”

He was off the horse before it stopped, striding across the courtyard, every motion a storm barely leashed. When he saw Corven’s hand still on her wrist, his expression fractured like devotion curdled into disbelief.

“What in the saints’ names have you done?”

Corven didn’t move. The shadows around him rippled, catching the edges of Thane’s light like oil swallowing flame. “I kept her alive.”

“By binding her?” Thane’s voice cracked through the courtyard. “In front of the entire court?”

Whispers surged like surf against stone. Nobles leaned close, scandal glinting in their eyes. Some gasped, others smiled the way predators did when scenting blood.

Seliora stepped forward. “Your Highness, this is not the time..”

“It is exactly the time! ” Thane said, his voice trembling between fury and heartbreak. “Tell me, Mistress Vale, did you call him, or did he simply take what was mine to protect?”

The words struck harder than any arrow. Myrren opened her mouth, but no sound came. The tether pulsed violently, echoing through her chest, his light and Corven’s shadow colliding, warring. The pressure built until she thought her ribs might split.

“Enough.” Corven’s tone was low, dangerous. “You mistake possession for protection. She belongs to no crown and no man.”

The shadows flared again, curling around her like a shroud. Gasps followed, the nobles stumbling back as if the darkness itself might stain them. And then, from somewhere behind the Queen’s dais, a single voice hissed the words that would undo her.

“He owns her now.”

The phrase spread like contagion. “He owns her.” “Shadow-bound.” “Claimed.” The crowd rippled with it, a hundred whispers, a hundred verdicts.

Myrren felt every one of them like iron hammered into her spine. The tether burned hotter, fevered, intimate with Corven’s pulse against hers, Thane’s light searing through it as if to sever the bond by sheer force of will.

The Queen rose at last. Her expression was marble, her voice a whisper carried by the wind. “Summon the council at dawn. The crown will decide what binds whom.”

Then she turned, silks whispering like veiled knives, and left the courtyard in silence.

Corven’s hand fell away. The tether snapped back into her like a stolen heartbeat. Around her, nobles bowed as if to a spectacle already carved into legend.

She looked up at Thane’s pale fury, at Corven’s shadowed calm and for one sickening heartbeat she saw herself reflected between them: light and shadow, bride and poison, bound and condemned.

A faint hiss drew her gaze to the brazier. Amid the ashes, something still glowed. Not the arrow’s head, something smaller and  sharper. Another fragment of metal, glinting red as blood.

She caught the scent before she saw it.
Metal. Lilac. Burnt cedar.
Another arrow.

The tether flared but this time, with warning.