The Monarch's room was supposed to be inaccessible, but not for Valen. Mavyn trotted after her pretend-husband, their footsteps echoing against the vast corridor in the eastern wing. After a period of silence in his quarters, Valen started and tramped across the halls and the lobby in quick and wide steps. She had to jog just to match his pace. What an inconsiderate sod.

For the first time, Mavyn experienced what going up the ethereal steps felt like. Underneath the glass-like clinks of her soles, the polished, snow-blue surface adorned with ornate carvings of flowers and vines, and the cold seeping into her palm when she braced the balustrade, the ordinary sensation of climbing stairs greeted her. Her breath heaved when they cleared the first hurdle and stopped by the landing. What use were the wonders if she was to brace her knees and pant like a doused dog at the end?

From the landing, two stairs branched out in two opposite directions, curving towards the higher unknowns. She turned to Valen who trudged up the stairs to her right. She didn't dare lunge and yank him back, not when she wasn't as shameless at touching as he was. "Hey, egghead!" she hissed, keeping her voice modulated in case any of his siblings or parent dearest were watching them. The shadows boasted unwanted company. Mavyn charged that to experience. "Where are you going?"

Are you going to leave me on my own again? She wanted to ask, but killed the question at the root. That damned Kathari could do whatever he wanted, but he should bear the consequences of letting loose a Living witch in the Land of the Dead. For a pretend-husband, he wasn't doing a good job at it. Mavyn rolled her shoulders, bunching up her skirts and starting after him. Then again, he only married the other day; of course, he'd be bad at everything.

Mavyn caught up with Valen as he stepped off the last step and crossed the landing to the connecting corridors. More eerie ambience, grand columns and arches, and unexplored doors and branching corridors she dared not go into. If she got lost here as a consequence, Valen wouldn't look for her. Why would he? She was as inconsequential as a gnat under his soles.

"Answer me when I'm talking to you, my dear gleam." She threw her skirts down and stomped her foot. Her pointed heel tacked in a reverberating torrent, curling around the quiet hallways. Her tone was calm, placid; her words were anything but. "If we aim to keep this facade longer, we do it together."

Valen paused and faced her. Was he still angry about her comment about his involvement with the Monarch's poisoning? Without a word, he closed the distance between them, hooking a hand at the back of her neck. Her eyes widened, and she bucked against his hold. His grip never waivered. "What are you doing—"

"Calm, my gleam," he whispered. With their faces so close together, Mavyn felt the last traces of his breath against her lips. The immortal Kathari...they breathed air as well. "Calm."

Mavyn clenched her jaw but stayed still. Valen's red eyes burned brighter. He drew closer, and her eyes slammed shut. She expected pain, but it never came. A warm weight pressed against her forehead, and after a few seconds, his grip eased. Nothing changed when the sallow light flooded her vision again. Valen remained a few paces away, as if the last few seconds didn't happen.

"What did you do?" she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest.

I connected our consciousness, if for a moment, Valen answered despite not opening his mouth and no audible noise filtered into her ears. The timbre of his voice felt as if someone had taken a conch shell, shoved it inside her brain, and started speaking into it. This is the only way I can tell you more without alerting everyone who is concerned.

She stuck her lip out. Where are we going, and why does it need to be secret?

Valen whipped away and continued on his solitary mission, forcing her to pick up the pace and scamper towards his side. The Monarch's quarters.

Her feet froze in their path. The Monarch's quarters, she echoed. Can you not drop us there with your magic hands?

And risk discovery? Valen argued. Even with his back turned, Mavyn could imagine how his frown must have looked as he sent the thought to her. It is just as Roassa said. The Monarch knows all that goes on inside his realm.

Including Valen bringing a Living witch into the Land of the Dead to play as his wife? Mavyn bit her tongue at that cheeky thought as if it could stop it leaking into the stream of consciousness she shared with him. She already analyzed the magic he placed on her since she arrived. Death Matter...it was exquisite. More so than the Duthri.

I meant to ask about that, Mavyn said. Is the Monarch a middle-aged man or a pre-pubescent lass?

Valen's brief huff rang from her side. The Kathari appear as they wish, he said. My father chooses to appear as either form under his prerogative.

"So, he's a middle-aged man today?" Mavyn asked aloud. Valen flashed her a side glance but didn't reprimand her for switching modes. "And does his children automatically know what form he will take every time?"

"Our language doesn't make distinctions on what the Living constructs as important facets of identity," Valen answered. "The Kathari are the Kathari."

No words were exchanged further because Valen rounded a corner and stopped in front of the first room from there. Mavyn held her breath as he cranked the handle and swung the door inside. So this was when doors were useful.

Unlike the grandeur of the Judgment Seat's front yard, the Monarch's quarters resembled a lower nobleman's lounge. Gone were the elaborate decorations and the inventive and thematic embellishments. Instead, simple fixtures replaced them. Mavyn spied a wooden writing desk past an alcove, a window with the curtains drawn over it on the far side of the connecting room, and towering shelves filled with bound grimoires. If she could get her hands on one of those...would she learn all about Death Matter and how to harness it?

"Mavyn." Valen's stern tone dragged her out of her trance. He disappeared into another doorway leading to a secluded part of the Monarch's quarters. Past the bland, darkwood desk, she followed him into a modest, closed room with a four-poster bed in the middle. The canopy hung over the thick mattress like a stormy cloud. No lights beamed into the compressed expanse, but the only window was open. Outside, the rest of the Judgment Seat's territory bled out.

A set of footsteps against wooden floorboards tore her attention from the mass of floating blobs of translucent spirits making their way towards the Monarch's domain. The myths told her of a process in a deceased's journey to the Underworld, one involving the Kathari reviewing their entire lives, weighing the good deeds against the bad ones, and deciding where they would spend the rest of their lives. There were three paths, namely Paradise, or the Garden of Eden, Purgatory, and Damnation. People whose good deeds outnumber their bad ones go to Paradise, while those who lived balanced lives of good and evil were sent to Purgatory. Roassa's domain tested people further if they were deserving of Paradise or not. If a soul fails Purgatory's trials, they go to the final stage of eternal mortal suffering—Damnation.

Which path did Abnegem take? Mavyn would give half of her heart to know. She even summoned a Kathari and made a deal with him.

"Search for something that might give us a clue," Valen was saying. He rounded the bed, peeking under his father's sheets and opening drawers and nearby cabinets only to close them again.

Mavyn rolled her eyes and scanned the room. Nothing was out of the ordinary. A barren vase on the Monarch's bedside table, an empty place of biscuit crumbs on the counter lining the wall where the window lay, more grimoires slotted in neat stacks on shelves nailed with zero attention to aesthetics. Vase. An empty vase.

Valen's raised eyebrows accompanied her lonely trek to the Monarch's bedside desk. Bunching her skirts between her legs, she crouched and moved the fixture aside. A soft, ethereal glow peeked from the bed's leg and the shadows brought about by the opaque objects surrounding it. Even Mavyn's silhouette made it a bit brighter.

Teeth digging against her lip, Mavyn reached into the shadows. Her fingers closed around a fleshy stem, and she pulled into the open air...a flower. What was this doing under there? And what was this? The blossom's outer red petals drooped in a rigid circle around a clump of smaller petals protecting the reproductive parts in the middle. Long strands of pistils with pinpricks of scarlet pollen at the tips swayed with her motion when she held it up to the soft light streaming from the window.

"A spider spike," Valen said behind her. She watched him creep into her periphery, eyes trained on the strange flower in her hands. Her memory lagged behind the flower's name and the characteristics before her. Spider spikes, huh? When and where did she read about it? "It is a long way from the Garden of Eden."

Mavyn knitted her eyebrows, lowering the flower to meet Valen's gaze. "What do you mean?" she asked. "This exists in the Living World too."

He turned to leave. "The Land of the Dead is a reflection of the Living World," he explained, leaving her to catch up to him else risk being locked inside the forbidden room. "Everything that lives casts its shadow here. But the Dead do not always make it to the Land of the Living."

They made it out of the Monarch's wing when she found her voice. Against the darkness of her star-kissed dress, the red spikes burned like blood. "What's next?" she ventured. "Paradise?"

Valen opened his mouth to answer, but a different voice beat him to it. "It's nice to see you again, Mavyn," Noclys said in an annoyingly high pitch. A wide, manic smile painted his features as he approached them with a lanky gait. "I'm afraid we didn't get to converse during Roassa's union. Welcome to the family. I can't wait to see what you're capable of."

Mavyn stepped forward, but Valen cut in front of her. His shadow fell over her once more, tall as a belltower in the way of the morning sun. "What are you doing here, Noclys?" he said, tone dropping into a dangerous edge. A frown pulled on the corners of her lips. What was this? She could deal with this prick by herself.

"I can't even talk to what's yours, Val?" Noclys spread his arms in a casual shrug. "I promise I won't take her for my pleasure. It'll be entirely her choice. But I'm quite convincing."

Valen stepped deeper into her line of vision, eclipsing her view of Noclys' face. "What makes you think I'll stand by and let you have your way?"

She gritted her teeth and sidestepped him. Noclys, with his self-assured smirk and high air, dusted his lapels even though it was as pristine as the stairs. Perhaps, she should step on him as well. "Whatever this is, I want nothing to do with it," she declared, daring to stride past Noclys despite feeling his sharp stare down her back. "Come on, Valen."

"You've got some nerve," Noclys' whisper slashed a wound down her spine. The Kathari's presence lingered inches from her shoulder, oppressing and...well, damning. "For a woman of lowly birth, you have the guts to seduce my brother and talk back to an Axis of the Underworld. Interesting. Your punishment will be interesting, indeed."

"Noclys, I'm warning you," Valen threatened from a distance. He seemed far, far away now. "Step away from her."

His brother chuckled and faced Valen. "Tell me if this woman is holding you under some kind of oath, and I will help you, brother," Noclys answered before glancing at Mavyn again. A hooked finger ran down her cheek, soft and gentle, but enough to drive shivers of revulsion all over her limbs. "From Irkalla, you say? Perhaps you meant Madaura. She would fit right in with the thieves, the whores—"

A blast of scarlet clamped around Noclys' throat, cutting him off. His body zoomed away from her, the wind generated by the motion disturbing the stray strands of hair from her forehead.Wh—

"You have been warned, brother," Valen growled. His hand was outstretched, containing the force choking Noclys a few steps ahead. "Speak about my wife like that again, and you will find yourself without a throat."

Noclys clawed against Valen's searing shackle. "I'm your older brother, dimwit!" Those were the words that registered in her ears despite most of them being hissing gibberish. "I can speak to that wayward woman as much as I—"

The clamp around his neck turned a darker shade of crimson. Noclys rose a few inches off the ground, his legs flailing. A murderous glint sparked in Valen's eyes as he squeezed his fingers tighter. Tighter. "Stop," Mavyn said. The word was as loud as a whimper. The Kathari didn't hear her. Valen's fingers edged closer. Noclys' wheezing turned more desperate. It wasn't the Solstice Conclave yet, and Valen needed not be a murderer before then.

"Stop." Mavyn tried again, yanking Valen's shoulder in an attempt to dissuade him. He didn't budge. She clicked her tongue. What would it take for these two bullheads to see her?

Valen's hand closed, delivering its final judgment. Mavyn lashed out, wrapping her magic around the layer of Death Matter Valen placed on her skin. "STOP!" she thundered, the word blasting across the entire palace. Her spell, purple and blazing, knocked against the clamp around Noclys' throat, exploding upon impact. The force threw the Kathari into the wall hard enough to crack it. She slapped Valen's hand down, and their gazes locked once more.

"Wh...Mavyn, you used—" Valen sputtered, but this time, she grabbed his wrist and dragged him away before Noclys recovered with a vengeance.

"Shut up for now, my gleam," she snapped, leading him towards the darkness she remembered where Valen's quarters were. "You and I have a lot to talk about."

Mavyn threw Valen's hand the moment she deemed they were hidden enough from prying eyes. He glanced at his wrist, fingers tugging at the edge of his sleeves as if he couldn't believe a mortal had the gall to touch him with such hubris. The tables have turned on him, so how did he like being yanked around without his permission?

"What do you think you're doing?" she demanded, facing him fully. "You could have killed your brother, and it wouldn't have helped your case...and mine." She crossed her arms. "As much as I loathe you and this place, you do not have to condemn yourself. Not yet."

Valen tucked his hands behind him, guilty but trying his best not to be. "He insulted you," he replied in a flat, informing tone as if it wasn't evident enough. "I do not understand why you are upset. I have the power to help you, so I did. We are doing this together."

"I don't need you," she replied, lowering her arms and smoothing her skirt down. In the haze, it has earned a few creases. But maybe Valen's Death magic could fix it should she ask. "I could have handled your brother without resorting to violence. You are not the only one in this room with such vile wit."

Whatever Valen thought of that, it didn't show in his face. His thoughts, like his bursts of motivation and missions, remained a mystery to her. It was expected, though. The Kathari weren't meant to be comprehended by mere mortals. "May I remind you that while you're in the Land of the Dead, you are my wife," Valen answered after a brief moment of silence. "I will play my part as well as you do yours."

"I am your wife, in the meantime. Do not make the mistake of turning this into something real," she said. "May I remind you that this partnership exists for as long as I find my fiancé and you save your damned precious Monarch."

A chuckle shook her shoulders. "The way you acted in front of Noclys, you might as well have declared your love for me," she added.

The Kathari do not love, and certainly not any mortal soul. It would be in her interest to end this before it started. One doesn't keep weeds because of their pretty flowers. To ensure the survival of the entire garden of poison, weeds must be pulled, flowers, blades, roots, and all.

Valen's only answer was a cloak of silence, one that Mavyn became used to the longer she stayed with him.