Theron Nightblade stood three paces from the queen and tried to hold a single thread of swamp magic. He wanted that power. He wanted enough of it to one day match her own. The green light coiled in his palm, cold and alive. Then his boots carried him too far from her chair, and the curse woke. Pain ripped up his spine. The magic burst apart like smoke in wind. He dropped to one knee on the stone floor of Blackspire Castle. The red glass windows above him threw light across his hands, now empty. He had learned the rule a hundred times. Stray from her side, and the curse flared. The pain scattered any spell he tried to hold. He could not practice. He could not grow strong enough to free himself. The curse kept him weak on purpose. He had given up his name and his crown at the fae court to leave that life. Someone had sold him to this instead. He still did not know who. But he knew the taste of betrayal, and it filled his mouth now. Morwenna watched him from her chair. She was small and lovely, crowned with purple blooms, and three dead men lay in her waters for trusting that face. The swamp was rotting her from the inside. Theron could smell it under the flowers. "You stray," she said. "The curse answers." "I know what it does." He stood. His legs shook. "You tied me close so I would never learn enough to leave." "Yes." She did not soften it. She never did. Theron breathed through the pain and thought hard. The curse punished distance. So he would stop fighting the distance. He crossed the floor and knelt right beside her chair, closer than she had ever let him stand. The pain faded. His hands went still. Then he opened his palm and called the magic again, this time without stepping away. The thread held. Green light wound through his fingers, steady and whole. He shaped it into a small knot, then another. The curse did not stir. Beside her, inside the leash, he was free to work. Morwenna turned her head. For the first time he saw her go still. "That is not allowed," she said. "You never forbade it." He let the light fade and met her eyes. "The curse binds me to you. So I will learn at your side, where it cannot touch me." Her face did not change, but her hands pressed flat on the arms of her chair. She had built a cage to keep him weak. He had turned it into a schoolroom. "You will regret this closeness," she said. "Maybe." Theron settled in beside her and called the light once more. It answered clean. "But now I can begin." He would learn her power an arm's length from her throat. And she could not send him away.