They tore Corven from her in daylight. By the time the doors slammed, the mark on her wrist had gone cold, but silence rang where his voice had been. The Council bells fell quiet. Guards tramped away, leaving ash in their wake and the smell of iron still in the air. Someone had dragged her here, an antechamber turned infirmary, walls reeking of burnt wards and bitter tonics. She lay beneath a window too narrow for light, tasting Nightroot at the back of her throat. The world had stopped moving. Only the tether’s phantom pulse remained.

The latch scraped.

“Myrren?”

Ori slipped through the doorway, hair unpinned, apron streaked with soot. She looked like she’d run through fire. In one shaking hand she clutched a sliver of metal of red glint catching the half-light.

“They’ve sealed the corridors,” she whispered. “Said it’s for your safety. Saints, I had to bribe the sentry with bread to get in.” Her breath hitched as her eyes adjusted to the dim. “You’re white as salt. They said you fainted, was it the poison again?”

Myrren pushed herself upright. “Nightroot. A Veil blend. It lingers in the blood like smoke in cloth.” She pressed a trembling hand to her wrist; the bandage hid the mark, but the skin still throbbed with a faint heat. “It’s fading.”

Ori stared, then shook her head hard. “Fading? I saw what it did to you. The light in your veins.. ” She bit her lip until blood welled up. “You should be dead.”

“Not yet.” Myrren tried for wryness, but failed. “The Council?”

“They’re convening at dawn. Everyone’s whispering. They think you and..” She swallowed the name. “They think the shadowbound owns you now.”

The words struck harder than any blow. “Owns.”

“That’s what they said.” Ori’s voice cracked. “I heard Lord Aedric laugh and said the Queen will make a spectacle of it. A devotion-trial, maybe, to prove Eirden’s purity.” She laughed, brittle. “Purity. As if anyone in this palace remembers what that means.”

Myrren drew a slow breath. Beneath the reek of ointments she caught the metallic tang of the shard in Ori’s fist. “What is that?”

Ori opened her palm. A broken arrow tip lay there, edges dulled with soot. In its groove glimmered the faintest residue, a dark red, almost iridescent. “I found it on the stairs when they dragged you out. Holt said it came from the same shaft that hit the wall beside you.”

Nightroot again. Myrren could smell the sweetness under the char. “Keep it hidden,” she said softly. “If they see the coating, they’ll know it wasn’t court-made.”

“Varros?” Ori whispered.

“Or worse,” Myrren answered. Her vision swam. The scent coiled tighter, syrup and decay. “Whoever made it wanted the wound to outlive the arrow.”

Ori caught her hand. “Then stop talking about poisons.” Her grip was fierce, her eyes wet. “Stop thinking like them. Saints, you were almost..” She broke off, breath shuddering. “You’re still not awake, are you?”

The whisper scraped something raw in Myrren’s chest. “Awake?”

Ori’s answer came hoarse. “Every time I think you’re free, the spiral takes you again.”

Ori didn’t release her hand. Her fingers were icy, trembling, as if she were holding on to keep both of them from slipping through the floor. “I should’ve stopped you,” she whispered. “When Corven came back from the field, when you started talking about tethers and debts. I knew something was wrong. I dreamt about it.”

Myrren frowned, the word catching her. “Dreamt?”

Ori’s gaze darted to the shuttered window. “Not just once. Over and over. You were bleeding from the wrist. A rope around your throat. Sometimes it’s the hall, sometimes the gallows court, sometimes a field of ash, but it’s always the same. You reach for someone who isn’t there, and then..” Her breath broke. “You stop breathing.”

Myrren felt the room tilt. “Those are only dreams.”

“Then why do I wake with soot on my hands?” Ori snapped. “Why do I smell smoke when I’ve slept in the laundry wing all night?” Her voice frayed between anger and pleading. “You said poison lingers in the blood. Maybe this spiral’s poison lingers in me.”

Myrren searched her friend’s face, but the words that rose were clinical, defensive. “Nightroot induces hallucinations in bystanders who breathe it. You were close to me when they dragged me out. The residue could have..”

Ori laughed, harsh and shaking. “Still looking for formulas when saints are screaming in your head.” She turned away, wiping her face with her sleeve. “You sound just like him.”

Myrren stiffened. “Like who?”

“The shadow one,” Ori whispered. “Corven. Always talking about patterns, as if names and hearts were just alchemy you can balance if you calculate the loss. Every time you say his name, you fade more.” She pointed at the bandaged wrist. “And now the mark’s eating you.”

Myrren lifted the cloth despite herself. Beneath it, the skin glowed faintly gold at the edges, black at the center and a bruise that pulsed in time with her heartbeat. The spiral’s signature.

Ori recoiled. “Saints preserve us.”

“It isn’t an infection,” Myrren said softly. “Lightbinding clashes with shadowbinding. Thane’s magic is still in me from before. It’s just reacting.”

“Reacting?” Ori’s voice rose. “You sound like the scholars blaming fever for ghosts.” She pressed her hands to her temples. “Seliora says the Queen’s already given orders to gather witnesses. They’ll call it purification, Myrren. They’ll call it mercy while they hang you.”

Myrren’s pulse stumbled. “Seliora told you that?”

“Servants talk,” Ori muttered. “She was in the corridor with the Queen and saw the spiral smoke rise from the mark on your wrist and said, ‘Again. Spirals again.’” Her eyes filled again, raw with fear. “What did she mean, again?”

Myrren couldn’t answer. The words pressed behind her ribs like a second heartbeat.

From the hall came the clink of armor, a guard’s barked order, and Holt’s dry voice answering low, steady and  too calm. He was standing watch. Even now, Ori’s trembling steadied at the sound. Myrren envied that trust.

“Ori.” She reached for her, but her friend drew back.

“They’ll make you their scapegoat,” Ori said. “Blame you for the poison, for the spiral, for the famine if they must. And you’ll let them, because you think dying clean makes you innocent.”

Myrren flinched, Corven’s words echoing. Then I die clean.

Her throat ached. “What do you want me to do?”

Ori met her eyes, voice breaking. “Live. For once in your cursed life, just live.”

Silence settled after Ori’s outburst, thick as the ointment smoke curling from the brazier. Myrren could hear the muffled hum of the palace beyond the shift of guards, a door slammed, the hollow thud of bells marking the hour before the council convened.

Ori sank to her knees beside the bed, breath hitching. “They’ll call you before dawn,” she said. “I heard Holt arguing with the captain. He said they should wait until the fever broke, but the Queen wants the trial before the court wakes. Wants the sight of you, weak and trembling to remind them what happens when someone touches shadow.”

Myrren stared at the floorboards, tracing the dark seams between them. “Then it’s decided.”

“No.” Ori caught her hand again. Her palms were damp and smelled faintly of soap and fear. “You keep talking as if there’s only one ending. But what if there’s more than one? What if you can still turn aside before the spiral closes?”

Myrren almost smiled. “That’s what Corven said. And he’s bound tighter than any of us.”

Ori shook her head. “Don’t use his name. Every time you say it, something moves in the walls.”

A chill rippled through the chamber. The candle nearest the window guttered, flame bending sideways though no wind stirred. Myrren thought she heard a heartbeat that wasn’t hers, slow and deliberate, echoing through the tether mark.

“I’m already caught,” she whispered.

Ori pressed both hands to Myrren’s cheeks, forcing her to look up. “Then fight it. Promise me you’ll fight it, whatever it is.. him, Thane, the crown, the prophecy, I don’t care. Just promise me you’ll stop dying for them.”

Her tears hit Myrren’s skin, hot, bitter, and carrying the faint shimmer of Nightroot in the light. Myrren smelled the sweetness of it and felt sick. Even grief had been poisoned.

“I don’t know how,” she said.

“Then learn.” Ori’s voice cracked on the word. “Because if you don’t, it’ll start again. The same bells, the same noose, the same silence afterward.”

The brazier hissed; a spiral of smoke unwound toward the ceiling, gray against the pale dawn seeping through the shutters. Myrren couldn’t tell if it was incense or omen.

Ori’s shoulders shook. “You asked me once why I never leave Eirden. I told you it was because I had no one else.” She leaned closer, whispering so softly it barely reached the air. “The truth is, I’ve already left you too many times.”

Myrren froze. “What do you mean?”

Ori’s eyes unfocused, her voice breaking into a shuddering breath. “You don’t know,” she said, almost wonderingly. “You don’t know how many times I’ve lost you.”

Outside, the first council bell tolled again, distant and  merciless. Myrren smelled Nightroot bloom in the air as if the palace itself were remembering.