Chapter 2: The Heart of the Court

The palace underbelly smelled of old stone and forgotten oaths. Tamsin pressed herself against the cold wall as a pair of royal guards — their faces too smooth, their smiles too fixed — passed without a flicker of recognition. Enchanted duplicates. She could see the faint seams of the spell behind their eyes, the way a painted portrait might betray a brushstroke if you looked long enough. "Third corridor on the left," Ralen breathed into her ear. "The old king's study. They don't use it — the duplicate never learned to read." Tamsin followed him through shadows thick as velvet. She had been born in this palace, tutored in its secret passages as part of her training. But that was before everything changed. Now the corridors felt like the inside of a dying thing — still breathing, but wrongly. The study door was sealed with a wax enchantment, crimson and cracked with age. Tamsin pressed her palm against it and felt the magic resist, then yield — recognizing something in her she had forgotten she possessed. "Your old clearance still holds," Ralen said, impressed. "Or the spell is decaying," she replied. "Either way." Inside, the room was exactly as she remembered from childhood glimpses: floor-to-ceiling shelves of tomes, a cold hearth, and in the center of the desk — an ornate silver box no larger than a loaf of bread. The Heart of the Court. As Tamsin reached for it, the box pulsed. Once. Like a heartbeat. "Someone knows we're here," Ralen said. From somewhere deep beneath the palace, a low resonant sound began — not quite a bell, not quite a voice. The duplicates were stirring. "Take it and run," Tamsin said, and for the first time in years, her hands crackled with gold light.