They herded her through corridors that reeked of smoke and rumor.
Dawn had not yet broken, yet the Queen’s decree already carried through the marble halls: Council at first light.
Every servant who passed her bowed too low, too long, their silence more cutting than words. Somewhere behind her, guards whispered the new phrase spreading like infection, the shadow-bound, owned and claimed.
The tether pulsed under her skin, fevered and erratic, answering Corven’s distant heartbeat. Each pulse dragged the memory of Thane’s voice through her like glass: Did you call him, or did he take what was mine?
By the time they locked her in the eastern solar, dawn light bled pale through the lattice, and fury burned hotter than fear.

She tore at the velvet cords that bound the window shutters until splinters bit her palms. The air inside the chamber was thick with incense, the Queen’s warding smoke meant to keep spirits out, or secrets in. It stung her throat like swallowed ash.

Every breath felt borrowed. Every heartbeat is a debt.

Through the haze, the tether flickered like a fever dream. She could feel him.. Corven, somewhere down the corridor, the steady, maddening rhythm of his pulse ghosting against hers. The same pulse that had saved her, humiliated her, and chained her.

“Protection,” she muttered bitterly. “That’s what they’ll call it. Protection.”
The word tasted like poison.

She slammed her hand against the lattice. “I didn’t ask for this,” she whispered, though no one answered. Her own reflection wavered in the bronze mirror: a girl rimed in shadowlight, wrists marked by faint black veins where the tether had burned. He owns her now, the whispers had said. Saints, she could still hear them, thick as smoke in her ears.

The door unlatched.

Corven stepped inside without armor or escort, his dark coat brushed with ash from the courtyard. The air shifted, quieter, and heavier. The incense faltered, curling toward him as if shadows devoured even smoke.

“You shouldn’t be here.” Her voice shook from restraint, not fear.

“They said you were fevered,” he answered, calm as if the court had not just branded them both heretics.

“I’m not fevered. I’m furious.” She turned on him, eyes burning. “You think saving me earns you the right to chain me before them all? To let them call me yours?”

His jaw tightened. “If I hadn’t, you’d be cold in the courtyard.”

“Then perhaps cold would’ve been freer!”

The tether flared, answering the words before either could breathe. The air between them thickened, scent of metal and lilac rising the same as the arrow, the same as the night she’d nearly died. Her knees weakened under the surge, but she forced herself upright, teeth bared.

“Do you even hear yourself?” she hissed. “You talk about saving me like it’s a debt I owe.”

Corven’s eyes darkened, the shadowbinding flickering just beneath his skin. “Debt isn’t owed, Myrren. It’s endured.”

His calm cut deeper than anger.

She wanted to strike him, to break the silence between them into something she could breathe, but the tether only tightened, and her heartbeat wasn’t hers alone.

The door slammed behind him as if the room itself wished to keep them contained. Shadows recoiled, then pooled again along the walls, breathing like a second heartbeat.

“Endured?” Myrren’s laugh came raw. “You mean lived with? Carried like a chain?”
She crossed the chamber before he could answer, fingers dragging across the desk where the Queen’s seal had been burned into wax. Council at dawn. Her name would already be whispered through its halls.
“They’ll say you bound me to keep me quiet. That the poisoner and the shadow conspired. Do you understand what you’ve done?”

“I understand you’re alive.”
He said it like a verdict, but his voice trembled.
Alive.. yes. But ruined.

She stepped close enough that the tether hummed between them. “You don’t get to decide what living costs me.”

Corven’s gaze lowered to her wrists. The faint black veins shimmered, still pulsing in rhythm with his breath. “If I could take it from you, I would.”

“But you can’t.” Her whisper struck sharper than a scream. “You’ve made me another weapon the court can use. The Queen will drag us before her, turning the prophecy into law. ‘One shall bind.’ Do you think they won’t seize that as divine sanction?”

His head lifted. The light caught in his eyes, storm meeting iron. “Prophecies were made to cage kings. Not to rule us.”

“Tell that to Thane.” The name broke from her like a bruise splitting.
She saw again the moment his fire scorched air between them, his voice shaking as he asked if she’d called Corven.
“He’ll never forgive me,” she murmured. “He’ll say I wanted this.”

“He already believes it.”

The truth hit colder than stone. She turned away, but the tether pulled her back, as though the air refused to let them separate.

Outside, a bell tolled, low, deliberate. Dawn is approaching. Somewhere in the palace, servants would be laying the Council table, polishing the crown that would decide whether she lived chained or died free.

Her pulse skipped; the tether echoed it, two hearts stumbling in unison.
“I can feel them thinking about it,” she whispered. “Their verdicts. Their curiosity. As if we’re some experiment.”

Corven moved closer until the incense between them guttered. “Let them think about what they like. Chains forged in rumor break when truth is spoken.”

She looked up sharply. “Then speak it.”

He hesitated, the first hesitation she’d ever seen in him.
“The truth,” he said at last, “is that the tether answered you. Not me.”

The words stole the air from her lungs. “You’re saying I..”

He shook his head. “Not by will. By resonance. It’s older than us. Older than prophecy. I only caught it when it struck.”

A flash, a memory or echo split through her: another courtyard, another dawn, his hand catching hers as light burned it away. Every loop ends here, a voice whispered in her mind.

She staggered back, gripping the window frame. “I’ve seen this before.”

Corven’s shadows flickered, steadying her. “Then perhaps this time we end it differently.”

Outside, the second bell tolled. The Queen’s summons. The council would soon demand them both.
But Myrren could barely hear over the tether’s pulse, the rhythm of a debt that refused to die.

The corridor outside throbbed with the rhythm of boots and whispers. The palace was waking, hungry for scandal. Through the narrow window slats, Myrren could see the first light staining the sky, a color too pale to be merciful. 

She turned from it. “When the Council calls, they’ll demand I renounce the tether.”

Corven’s gaze stayed steady. “And if you do, the recoil might kill you.”

“Then I die clean.”

He crossed the floor in a stride. “You think the Queen will let you? The moment you fall, she’ll brand me executioner and Thane her savior. Your death would crown them both.”

She flinched, anger folding under exhaustion. “Then what do you want from me?”

“Not obedience,” he said softly. “Understanding.”

The tether shivered, a silver thread burning between them. She felt his heartbeat again, slower now, steady, as if willing her to match it.

“Tell me what you see when you look at me,” he murmured.

She almost laughed. “A mistake repeated.”

He stepped closer until their reflections blurred together on the mirror’s bronze face. “Then see further. Every loop ends with your death. Every time I try to let you go, the spiral drags us back. You think this is the first tether? It isn’t.”

The air thickened, scent of iron, lilac, and smoke. Her pulse thundered. “You remember?”

He nodded once. “Enough to know this debt never ends. Each spiral burns us into new names, the same chains.”

Her fingers curled around the edge of the table. “Then how do we break it?”

“We don’t,” he said. “We outlast it.”

Outside, the third bell struck. The Council. Voices carried up the stairwell, guards calling orders, silk whispering, the rustle of judgment approaching. Myrren looked toward the door, toward the light creeping under it, as though freedom waited just beyond reach.

But the tether pulled her back. Always back.

“Corven..”

He reached for her wrist. The contact ignited the mark there, black veins flaring like ink poured into fire. She gasped as shadow and heartbeat fused, one indistinguishable from the other.

“You saved me,” she whispered. “You ruined me.”

He leaned close enough that his breath stirred the smoke between them. “No, Myrren. I only revealed what was already binding you.”

The door beyond them boomed open with guards, daylight and judgment, yet the world felt muffled, distant, as his voice cut through it.

“Chains don’t vanish,” he said. “They tighten.”