Spring is too bright. It always has been, but today it feels excessive—light spilling through open stone and climbing vines, the scent of flowers thick in the air, laughter drifting too easily through a court that pretends it has never fractured. I step beside Rhys without speaking, shadows curled close to me, quiet but restless, as if something beneath the surface has already begun to shift. I feel it before I understand it, a pull that is sharp, immediate, and unmistakably wrong. My steps slow without thought, attention snapping inward before it ever lifts outward, my shadows tightening as though they’ve caught something I haven’t yet seen. It’s not the court, not the noise, not the light. It’s her.

The realization lands with a force that steals the breath from my lungs. No. That isn’t possible. She isn’t supposed to be here. She isn’t— My gaze lifts, and there she is. Leaning against a pillar like she’s always belonged to it, one hip angled, posture effortless in a way that would look careless on anyone else. It doesn’t on her. Nothing about her is careless. Black drapes over her like shadow given form, a glass of wine held loosely between her fingers as though the entire room exists at a distance she refuses to acknowledge.

Vyrethra

The name doesn’t leave my mouth, but my shadows have already found her. Of course they have. They always did.

Something in my chest tightens, not outwardly, not violently, but with a precision I recognize immediately. The bond. It hasn’t dulled. If anything, it feels sharper now, like time has only honed it into something more difficult to ignore. She doesn’t look at me. Not yet. She doesn’t react. She doesn’t acknowledge the shift in the room that I can feel as clearly as my own pulse. Good. That’s expected. That’s her.

Beside me, Tamlin exhales something that might almost be amusement, his attention settling in the same direction as mine. “You see her,” he says, casual, as though he’s pointing out nothing more than a passing curiosity. “My Viper.” My head turns slightly, slow and deliberate, the movement controlled even as something colder settles beneath my ribs. My. The word doesn’t sit right. It doesn’t fit. And the fact that he says it so easily—

“What are you talking about?” Rhys asks, sharper now, his attention snapping fully toward her.

Tamlin doesn’t look away. “She’s been here for some time. Useful, when she feels like it. Difficult to read. But then,” a faint smirk touches his mouth, something almost satisfied, “she always was.”

The words land exactly where they’re meant to. Rhys stills—not physically, but internally. I can feel it, the shift into calculation, into recognition, into the exact suspicion he always held about her. That she would become something unpredictable. Something uncontainable. Something dangerous. Exactly what he feared.

And something in me tightens further, sharper now, not at her—but at this. At him. At all of it.

“She didn’t stay because she was loyal,” Rhys says quietly, voice edged now, already drawing a conclusion he believes is justified.

“She stayed alive,” I cut in, my voice low and precise, controlled in a way that doesn’t hide the edge beneath it. “That’s what you left her to do.”

Silence settles over the space, heavy and deliberate. Rhys’s attention shifts to me, something unreadable flickering across his expression, but I don’t look at him. I don’t need to. I know exactly what he’s thinking. That he was right. That this confirms something. That she became exactly what he feared. He never saw her. Not then. Not now.

My gaze returns to her without effort, drawn back as though that thread between us has never once loosened. She hasn’t changed. Not in any way that matters. If anything, she’s more herself now than she ever was, untouched by expectation, unclaimed by any narrative being forced onto her in a room full of people who never understood her to begin with. And as I watch her, standing there like nothing in this room has any claim on her, one thought settles in with quiet, unshakable certainty.

She didn’t change.

We did.