"Smile for them, little witch," Lorian whispered, his mouth near her ear.
The hall watched.
Not people. Not really.
Nobles with stitched grins and black thread digging into pale skin. Servants with empty eye sockets. Women in masks fused to bone. Some of them shifted just slightly, the way a dead thing moves when it's being pulled by something else.
Their gazes slid over her. Cold. Heavy. Hungry.
Sylvera's jaw clenched so hard it ached. The gag bit her tongue. Her heart wouldn't stop pounding. It was loud in her own ears.
She didn't smile.
Lorian let out a quiet laugh. "Still stubborn. Even now."
His fingers tightened on her arm and he pushed her forward, steering her down the corridor as if she was a doll he'd carried in for display.
The smell got worse as they walked. Embalming oils, iron, and something sweet that didn't belong. Rot hiding under perfume. It made her stomach roll.
Candlelight flickered along damp stone. Shadows jumped, broke, came back. Nothing felt steady here. Even the air felt wrong.
From the corner of her eye she saw movement. Slow. Jerky.
A noble bowed stiffly, over and over. His stitched grin split wider with each dip. Threads strained. Some were already fraying.
Further down, children circled a cracked music box. Their veins were black under their skin, crawling up their arms and necks. Their laughter was soft. Off. One child stopped and curtsied. Its head snapped at an angle that shouldn't happen.
Sylvera's stomach tightened.
Alive. But not.
She forced her eyes forward. She didn't want to look at any of it too long. That felt dangerous. Like staring would invite it in. Like it would notice her in a different way.
Lorian glanced around, pleased with himself. Of course he was. His voice was full of pride when he spoke.
"Beautiful, isn't it? No wars. No rebellion. Just… silence."
"This isn't silence," Sylvera hissed through the gag, the words coming out rough. "It's death."
He tilted his head and smiled. "Death lasts longer than devotion."
They passed a man in silk who kept bowing to a blank wall. Over and over. His back was bent wrong, spine curved like it had snapped and healed badly. Bones pushed through the cloth in sharp ridges. She heard faint cracking every time he bowed.
He didn't stop.
Didn't look up.
Didn't even seem to see them.
"Once," Lorian said softly, "he thought himself clever. A whisper of treason. A deal in the dark."
His eyes slid to her. Silver. Bright.
"Now he greets his own shadow until I say otherwise."
Sylvera couldn't stop staring. The bending. The cracking. The way it never ended. That wasn't loyalty. It wasn't even fear anymore.
It was ruin. Plain ruin.
The corridor ended at a spiral staircase twisting down. It looked like a spine, and she hated that her brain noticed that. The steps were wet in places. She didn't ask what with.
With each step, the air got thicker. Clinging. Stinking of embalming fluid and iron. Cold crept into her bones like it belonged there.
The whispers started halfway down.
At first she thought it was her own pulse in her ears.
Then she realised it wasn't.
The stone was whispering.
Her name slid through the walls, soft and constant.
Sylvera… Sylvera…
She stumbled. Just once. Her foot hit the edge of a step and her body jerked.
Lorian's arm locked around her instantly, iron tight, pulling her close.
"Careful," he murmured, almost gentle. Almost. "It would be a shame if you broke before I was finished with you."
Mock-gentle. That was the point. It always was.
The stairs ended in a chamber carved out of black rock. Candlelight flickered low, weak and sick, and something gold gleamed at the centre.
A cage.
Gold filigree curled around the bars like vines. Elegant. Pretty. Horrible.
Inside—
women.
Women in rotting silks slumped against the bars. Painted mouths fixed in perfect smiles. Jewelled hair dulled with dust. They looked like dolls.
Until one moved.
Her head snapped toward Sylvera too fast. Too sharp. The sound in Sylvera's head was bone cracking even if she didn't hear it.
Then the woman smiled wider.
Sylvera felt cold spread under her skin.
Lorian released her slowly, almost tender, as if he enjoyed the tremor in her body. He brushed a curl away from her face.
"Stay here," he murmured. "Make friends."
The door clanged shut.
The smell inside the cage hit first. Sweet and heavy. Rotting flowers. Powder. Death dressed up as perfume. It clung to her throat.
Sylvera sank into the farthest corner. Back against gold bars. Knees pulled tight. Her wrists burned. Her mouth ached. Her body felt too small in her own skin.
Across from her, a woman stared.
Wide eyes. Glazed. Unblinking.
Another twitched, brittle, like something tugged her strings. Her hand lifted. Grey skin. Fingers tipped in black nails. She reached toward Sylvera, slow and shaking.
The stitches across her lips split as she whispered through them, voice cracked and dry.
"He'll hollow you out slow… save your screams… makes the meat sweeter…"
Sylvera froze.
Her lungs forgot how to work for a second.
The others stayed still. Perfect little ruined queens. Heads tilted at strange angles, listening. Waiting.
Above them, the castle rumbled. Laughter echoed faint and sharp, like glass breaking far away. Music bled down through the stone, too sweet, too wrong.
And beneath it all, the whispers.
The walls.
The heartbeat of old magic thrumming through black rock.
It said her name again.
Not warning.
Promise.
Sylvera shut her eyes.
She couldn't run. Not here.
She couldn't scream without giving him what he wanted.
So she listened.
To the walls. To the bones. To the magic sleeping under this place.
The bones were whispering.
Not a dream. No dream had weight like this. The sound was real. Soft. Constant. Sliding through the dark.
Sylvera lay still, every muscle tight, and turned her head toward the cage wall.
It wasn't wrought iron.
Not really.
Finger bones.
Pale and polished. Jointed. Strung together with strips of sinew like thread. They gleamed in the sour light, a lattice of death pretending to be art.
Her stomach lurched.
She pressed her ear against it.
The cold kissed her skin.
Then a pulse.
Slow. Sick. Like breath.
And the visions slammed into her.
Gold first.
Lorian—young. Alive. Laughing. Barefoot in a fountain, clothes soaked, sunlight in his hair. Someone held his hand. A shadow she couldn't name. Their laughter tangled. Their lips touched.
Her chest tightened so hard it hurt.
Then the gold burned black.
The Fall.
A crown lowered toward his brow. Gleaming. Ancient. Alive. The moment it touched him, everything cracked. Shadows bled from the metal like oil, crawling into his scalp, under his skin. His eyes rolled white. His mouth opened on a scream the vision refused to carry. Blood ran from his nose. His ears. The courtyard shattered into ash. The fountain froze into grey stone. The sky drowned in storm.
Then—
The Empty Shell.
His body stood in velvet and power. Beautiful. Hollow. Eyes sparkling with nothing behind them. Smile shaped right, but dead. Hands touching, but not human.
He walked. He ruled. He killed.
The man died screaming beneath a crown that wore him like skin.
Then the castle itself breathed against her ear, voice thick with grave dirt and centuries.
"Not possessed," it whispered. "Worn. Like a glove."
Sylvera ripped back from the wall, breath tearing her throat raw.
It made sense now. The stillness in his gaze. The hunger behind beauty. The way he smiled like he was copying a man instead of being one.
He wasn't a man cursed by darkness.
He was darkness wearing a man.
A suit of flesh.
A crown with a corpse inside.
Her mouth went dry.
Her stomach knotted.
All this time she had kissed a dead man's lips.
And something else had kissed her back.
When the door screeched open at noon, Sylvera was ready.
She sat cross-legged in the farthest corner of her cage, spine straight, hands folded in her lap like a queen awaiting execution. The gag was gone now. Her silence felt sharper than anything she could say.
Lorian stumbled in.
Not gliding. Not smug.
Stumbling.
His boots dragged. His skin was white as marble and slick with sweat. His eyes were shadowed, fevered. He looked wrong. Tired in a way that didn't look human.
When he spoke, his voice cracked.
"Lyria?"
Sylvera's breath stopped.
He stared at her like a drowning man seeing land. Then he moved fast, unsteady, dropping to his knees and crushing her against him.
"Thank the stars," he whispered into her hair, breath ragged. "I thought—I thought they'd taken you…"
His hands gripped her like chains.
His whole body trembled. His voice sounded like prayer and panic at the same time.
Sylvera froze, stiff, mind exploding with questions.
This isn't the Lorian I know.
Not the monster who smirked as he dragged her here. Not the king who kissed her like a blade and laughed when she bled.
This was… something else.
How many faces does he wear?
How many of them are real?
Who in the gods' names is Lyria?
He pulled back just enough to look at her. His silver eyes were wide, fever-bright, breaking. His lips parted—
"I'm not her," Sylvera said. Low. Steady. Cold enough to cut. "I'm Sylvera. Who is Lyria?"
Something shifted in him.
The fever snapped into frost.
His expression darkened. Not rage. Worse. A storm barely held.
He didn't answer.
He crumpled.
His knees buckled and he collapsed, unconscious.
Sylvera gasped and caught him, lowering him carefully.
"Lorian? Lorian!"
His skin was burning hot. Not normal fever. Not sickness. Something else.
Panic hit her hard. She pressed her hands to his chest and called her magic. She let her healing power pulse into him—gentle, controlled—just enough to stabilise him, just enough to keep him here.
Slowly, his eyes opened.
"Lyria?" he murmured, blinking up at her with a dazed, broken smile. His hand reached for her again.
Sylvera stopped him.
She held his hand firmly. Looked straight into those glassy, haunted eyes.
"I'm not Lyria," she said again. "I'm Sylvera."
Now she could see him. Not the beautiful lie he wore. The cracks underneath it.
Small things. Subtle things.
But she saw them.
Lorian blinked.
The haze behind his eyes faded a little. His gaze slid away, like he suddenly remembered where he was… what he was… what he'd done.
He pulled his hands back slowly.
Almost ashamed.
"I never mind," he said flatly.
Then he turned and walked out.
Just like that.
No apology. No explanation.
Sylvera sat there, stunned. The air still felt hot from his fever. From her magic. From him. Her heart wouldn't stop pounding. Her mind screamed questions until her head hurt.
What was that?
Who was Lyria?
Why did his name, once soft, now taste like ash?
She wrapped her arms around herself.
The silence he left behind was louder than anything he'd said.
The cage door groaned open behind him.
He didn't lock it.
He didn't need to.
Sylvera stared at the open doorway. Freedom sitting there, one step away.
But she didn't move.
Not yet.
Because something had shifted.
And for the first time…
Lorian had walked away unsure.