Velmora moved on muffled feet. Soldiers combed every corridor, storeroom, and cellar with lanterns held high, prying up rush mats and tapping stone for hollows. Kitchen pots were overturned; wine casks tasted, poured, and broken; goblets scrubbed until the silver wept. Every doorkeeper kept a slate of names—who entered, who left, when. Gatehouse horns sounded only for patrol changes. Even the dovecotes were sealed; no messages left the palace walls.
In the council chamber, the lords argued in voices kept low by fear.
"We must send for outside apothecaries," one urged.
"And announce to the realm that His Majesty bleeds?" another hissed. "Invite our enemies to supper?"
Kael stood behind them like iron. "No word leaves these walls," he said. "No hawker, no courier, no pigeon. Anyone asks after the king, they are told: His Majesty is at prayer."
Grudging nods. No one wanted to be the man who said otherwise.
-
In the royal apartments, the world narrowed to breath and hope.
Aldric lay pale beneath linen sheets. The royal physician moved like a shadow at the bedside, leaving a wake of steam, crushed leaves, and the bitter sting of ground bark. Assistants came and went with bowls and pestles, their hands stained green and gold. Every remedy slid through the king like water through a sieve.
Queen Ava never released her son's hand. "Steady," she whispered, as if the word itself could anchor him. "Steady, my heart." Every so often she pressed her lips to his knuckles, then looked up only to command, "More light," or "Change the cloth."
The three queens kept vigil. Virelda sat straighter than seemed human, fingers laced so tightly her knuckles were white. Selene wept openly, tears beading and falling without shame, her breath hiccuping as she prayed under it. Aurora said nothing at all. Her eyes were red, throat sore with swallowed cries; she watched the rise and fall of his chest as if, by watching, she could will the next breath to come.
"Go and rest," Ava said once, not unkindly. "All of you."
Virelda shook her head. "Forgive me, Mother. I cannot."
Selene sniffed. "I will not."
Aurora's voice was soft. "I will stay."
Hours bled into a second night. The physician tasted another infusion, grimaced, and set it aside.
"Speak," Ava ordered.
He bowed, palms flat to the floor. "Your Majesty, I have bled him and leeched him, purged the humors, soothed the fever, and warmed the chill. His pulse…" The physician faltered. "It grows thready. If a remedy exists, it is not mine. I fear His Majesty will not last the night—or the morrow at most."
Sound broke loose in the chamber. The soldiers jaw worked and a tear slipped free. Selene made a sound like a cut string. Virelda did not move, but the interlaced hands trembled. Ava bent until her brow touched Aldric's wrist, and the breath she let out shook.
Aurora's world went white around the edges. She heard herself make a low, wounded noise. Then, like a spark inside fog, a thought flared—sharp, certain.
…No more herbs. Find the wound….
She lurched to her feet.
"Aurora?" Ava lifted her head.
Aurora swallowed hard. "Forgive me, Mother." Her voice broke on the last word. "I must—just a moment."
"Where are you going, Your Majesty?" Kael's voice came from the doorway, careful but taut.
"I need to be excused," she said, and ran.
She flew through the corridors, skirts clenched in her fists, hair coming loose from its pins. Her maids caught sight of her and sprinted after.
"My lady!" Lira called, breathless. "Wait!"
Aurora reached her chambers, slammed the door, and dropped the bolt. Fists thudded against the wood almost at once.
"Open, my lady—please—" Faye's voice cracked. "Do not hurt yourself!"
"I will not," Aurora called, ragged but steady. "Do not be afraid. Give me a little time—and do not knock."
Silence fell outside, broken only by their anxious breathing. Inside, Aurora paced once, twice, then forced herself into stillness. Her fingers shook; she laced them together until the tremor stilled.
"Show me," she whispered. "Show me where."
The words that rose to her lips were not learned but remembered—syllables from the dream-book that had come to her again and again in sleep. She spoke them softly, and the chamber seemed to lean closer. The air cooled. Light thinned. The present loosened.
The scene gathered like ink in water.
She saw the royal dining the morning before the tragedy struck: the table heavy with silver and steam. Aldric entering late, shoulders drawn, offering a nod as he took his seat. She watched herself—Aurora—in a pale dress, smiling at him; Selene watching the smile; Virelda not-watching it at all.
"Steady," she told the magic. "Not faces. Hands."
The vision tightened. Trays came and went on quick arms. A girl—one of the newer servants—stepped behind the king's chair. A small movement, a servant's nothing—lifting a bowl, setting it down. But her other hand dipped low, as if adjusting a napkin. Aurora's sight sharpened to a point.
There. The servant's smallest finger touched the rim of Aldric's soup—no more than a graze, a brush, a whisper. Something dark clung to the nail, a shine so fine it could have been oil. The servant's eyes did not flicker. She moved away.
Aurora sucked in air and the vision snapped. Her chamber returned, bright and wrong.
She did not wait. She threw the bolt and tore the door open. Lira stumbled forward with a startled cry; Faye grabbed for Aurora's sleeve.
"My lady—what—?"
"The servants quarter," Aurora said. "Now."
They ran, skirts catching and snagging on hurried feet. Down into the north wing, where soot from the kitchens smudged the stone and the ceilings lowered and the corridors smelled of soap and ash. A wailing drifted up the narrow stair—raw, keening.
They turned the last corner into the servant's hall. Women were gathered in knots, faces blotched, hands to mouths. When they saw Aurora, they scrambled to bow, tears still on their cheeks.
"What has happened?" Aurora asked, though the answer already beat at the back of her skull.
No one spoke. They only parted—opening a narrow path to a tiny side chamber.
On a low pallet, the servant from her vision lay very still. Her lips had a bluish cast; her hands were folded neatly over her belly, as if another servant had done it for her. At the pallet's foot, a thimble-sized vial of dark glass lay on its side, a single drop dried to a brown star on the reed mat. The air held a bitter, metallic tang, like old coins and green bark.
An older woman—the head of the scullery—lifted red eyes to Aurora's.
"Your Majesty," she whispered, her voice in ruins. "We found her like this. She would not speak—only wept, and then…" She covered her mouth. "She took her own life."
Faye made a small sound. Lira reached for Aurora's hand and missed it by an inch.
Aurora stared at the vial, at the stillness that could not be undone. Her heart pounded against her ribs, asking the same question again and again: Who sent you? Who gave you this?
She turned. "Thank you," she said to the scullery woman. "Have her buried properly. And send for Commander Kael—tell him what you have told me."
The woman nodded.
Aurora turned and ran again, nearly colliding with the sculptures. Her maids pelted after her, breathless and terrified.
They reached her chamber. Aurora slipped inside, turned, and caught her maids' hands before they could follow.
"Listen to me." Her voice had steadied; it carried the tone of command she almost never used. "I must not be disturbed. Not for anyone but the Queen Mother. Not for anyone, do you hear me?"
"My lady," Lira whispered, eyes huge. "What are you going to do?"
Aurora swallowed. "Stay here."
She closed the door. The bolt slid home with a clean, decisive click. The chamber went very quiet.
Outside, her maids pressed their palms to the wood, hands trembling but still.
Inside, Aurora stood at the center of the floor, lifting her face, and began to chant the spell.
-
Night pressed close around the cottage—a ring of thorn and shadow—and within, the witches' fire burned blue. Clay jars lined the walls like watching eyes; herbs hung in dusky bunches from the rafters. The women had gathered in a crescent, cloaks pooled at their feet, voices low and sharp.
"The black witches grow bolder," Zyra said first, her tone edged with amusement. "They took their strike, and still Archon has not crawled to us."
Elisa stood at the head of the table, white hair braided back, face unreadable in the fire's strange light. "She is near," she murmured. "I feel her at the edges."
A ripple ran through the flames, a thin wind that should not have reached them inside. Shadows deepened in the corners—then knitted themselves together. Aurora stepped out of the dark as if called by it, her eyes rimmed red from tears, her breath steady and cold. No greeting.
"Was it you?" Her voice carried—clear, commanding, brittle with grief. "Were you the ones who poisoned Aldric?"
Zyra tilted her head, smiling. "That is not the question you should be asking."
Aurora took one step forward; the floorboards sighed. "Was. It. You."
Elisa's mouth curved—almost a smile, almost pity. "Must everything that befalls your king be laid at our feet? You give us too much credit, child."
"You have done nothing but seek to bind me," Aurora answered, jaw tight. "I have reason enough."
Laughter skittered around the cottage, bright and unkind—every mouth but Elisa's.
"It was not our hand," Elisa said at last, voice level. "It was the black coven in the marsh. And the draught they used is said to have no antidote."
"Velmora's king will not see the dawn," Zyra added softly, relish curling at the edge of her words.
Aurora's eyes flared—blue shocked to ember. "Liar."
"Go on then," another witch said with a languid shrug. "Visit the marsh and ask them yourself."
Aurora's gaze slid past them all and locked on Elisa. For a heartbeat the cottage went breathless: daughter and mother, snow-colored hair and blue eyes, a thin line of grief stretched between them. Aurora's mouth hardened.
"I will not plead with you," she said. "Not now. Not ever."
Shadows licked up from the corners like smoke. When they thinned, she was gone.
Silence rang.
Elisa's head turned, very slowly, toward the witch who had taunted last. "Why did you send her to them?"
Zyra folded her arms. "Because it serves us. If there is no antidote, she will tear the marsh to shreds and be rid of them. Who else among us can face them and live?" A small, satisfied hum. "She will do what we cannot."
Elisa looked into the blue fire as if it might answer something she could not. She only sighed.
-
The black witches' coven bled out across a drowned clearing where trees grew like ribs and the soil stank of iron. Totems of bone and bog-wood watched from stakes; a ring of stones drank the moonlight until it looked like oil. Green fire guttered in a cracked cauldron, casting sickly light over seven robed figures.
They spoke in a tongue that crawled. They smiled with too many teeth.
A wind that did not ruffle the reeds slid through the clearing. The flames bowed. From the seam between one heartbeat and the next, a figure stepped—white hair bright as winter, eyes cold as starlight.
The leader straightened, bracelets of black glass chiming at her wrist. "What a guest we receive," she said, savoring each word. "Velmora's little moon come to drown."
"Give me the antidote," Aurora said.
Laughter shook the circle, low and delighted.
"There is none," the leader purred. "Already, the venom chews him hollow. By now it has kissed his blood, his marrow, his breath. Our brew does not unwind."
Aurora's stare did not waver. "Why strike at him?"
The leader's eyes flashed with old heat. "Because his father stole a province that was mine by rite. He burned our groves and named it tax. When I laid the curse that took his heart on the battlefield, he died choking in the mud he loved. His son reigns on the ash he left. Why should he fare better?"
"Then your quarrel was with the dead," Aurora said, a bitter scoff. "Cowardice, striking the child for the father's sin."
"Child?" The witch's smile widened. "I strike kings. And the second blow will be sweeter than the first."
"You did not only strike Aldric, you also drove an innocent girl to take her life," Aurora said.
"Innocent?" one of the witches scoffed, laughing. "That girl was one of ours. She had vowed to take her own life should she ever be caught—and she did."
Aurora's eyes widened, then her mouth curved—not a smile. "You miscount. Aldric is not without shield."
"Oh?" Another witch cooed. "You? A dream-walker with untrained hands?"
"By morning," another sang, "your king will be a tale."
A stillness fell. Aurora lifted her hand.
It was no shout, no blaze of power. The air itself seemed to tighten around the witches, pressing in like the sea against the shore. The reeds hushed. The fire guttered.
One witch clutched at her throat, her rasping cry cut short. Another's knees buckled, and she sank into the mud with a heavy thud. Words tumbled from their lips—counter-charms, frantic incantations, names of ancestors long forgotten—but the magic held fast, choking them, bending their bodies to her will.
The leader's eyes bulged; she staggered, hands shaking as she tried to form a cutting sign in the air. The sign broke, smudged by invisible fingers. Panic cracked something bright in her face.
Aurora's voice came low, iron around grief. "Hear me, if Aldric dies, there will be no marsh, no stones, no names for your dead to answer. I will pull this place up by its roots and salt the hole where it stood."
The leader's lips worked; no sound came.
Aurora stood very still. The rush in her ears—the part of her that burned and wanted—said finish it. The part that remembered Aldric's hand steadying her at a palace door said no.
Killing them would not fetch back a heartbeat. It would only make her into something her mother's coven wanted, and the marsh would learn that cruelty births only more.
She opened her hand.
Air ripped back into the clearing. The witches collapsed fully—coughing, gagging, dragging breath like it weighed more than their bodies. The leader rolled to her side and retched dark spittle into the grass.
"Incredible," one croaked between fits, eyes wet and wide with something like awe. "She is…powerful."
Aurora looked around the ring—at their totems, their altar, the stained pestles and bowls still tacky with their work. She memorized the shapes of the roots piled by the cauldron, the smell of the tar-black resin crusted at its lip, the iron filings dusting a slab of stone. Clues. Threads. She would pull them later.
"For all your power," she said softly, "you have made one mistake. You think the only way to answer poison is with an antidote."
She stepped backward. Shadow closed over her like a curtain.
By the time the witches caught their breath, the reeds were only whispering, the ring of stones only stones again—and the place where Aurora had stood was as empty as their certainty.