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“Has she come out?”

Dorian flicks his wrist, carving something cruel into the stone. “No.”

I stare at him.

He doesn’t elaborate.

Theron stretches a little, lazy and feline, eyes darting toward me like he's gauging how close I am to snapping. “She’s nesting,” he offers, tone far too pleased. “Or sulking. Or summoningvengeance from beneath the floorboards. Hard to say. But no, she hasn’t stepped beyond that room.”

“And none of you thought totellme?”

Dorian arches a brow, slow and deliberate. “You told us not to go near her. Your exact words were, and I quote, ‘Let her rot if she wants to.’”

“I say a lot of things I don’t mean,” I grind out.

“Then perhaps stop pretending your word is gospel,” he mutters, and I let it slide because I’m too busy recalibrating the fire now chewing through my spine.

Two weeks.

Twoweeksof her shut behind those velvet doors like a secret I haven’t been allowed to unwrap. No sounds of movement. No spells. No footsteps. Alistair, and only Alistair, has been permitted to breach that threshold. He brings her food. Brings her books. Brings her nothing I can use.

Theron’s smirking again. “You could always knock, Severin. Like a mortal. Like a beggar.”

I look at him the way one looks at a splinter before pulling it out with something sharp. “If I wanted her door open, it would already be open.”

“Then why isn’t it?” he sings, tilting his glass back and draining the rest.

Because that room is older than she is. Because Alistair’s Wards are rooted deep. Because I gave a command in front of the others, and if I shatter it now—if Ishatter myselfnow—they’ll see it. They’ll know.

The Void shifts beneath us. I feel it.

A corridor elongates behind me, stretching too far to belong. The light flickers. A window opens where there was none—narrow, slit-thin, pointed like the blade of a spear—and beyond it, a glimpse of something thatshouldn’tbe sky.

“She’s stirring something,” Dorian says quietly. “It’s leaking into the house.”

“The house listens to her now?” I ask, soft with disbelief.

“No,” he says, meeting my eyes, unblinking. “The housewantsher.”

The weight of that sinks deeper than I allow them to see.

Because so do I.

She was supposed to scream. Scratch. Fight.

Instead, she disappeared into silence.

The kind of silence that feels like strategy.

The kind of silence I don’t trust.

I step back, slow and calculating. The corridor stabilizes behind me. My reflection in the mirror to my right flickers—not quite matching. Not quite off. Just enough to remind me what I am.

False Dominion. Glass Throne. A king made of stories.

And she hasn’t read a single one.

“Where’s Alistair?”