Lysa stood at the chamber door with one ear angled toward the corridor, a candle cupped in her hand. Sabine knelt before the cold hearth.
They had left the fire unlit for the first time since Sabine had been moved into the chamber. The room felt exposed without it. Too large. Too aware of her.
“The old heating channels run behind the stonework,” Lysa said quietly. “Most of them were sealed when the bride wing was renovated, but not all. Servants used to hide things in them. Coins. letters. small bottles of stolen wine. Priests search drawers and mattresses. They rarely think to search walls.”
Sabine reached into the hearth throat.
Cold soot coated her fingers at once. She felt along the back wall, searching past ash, old mortar, and stone worn smooth by generations of heat. For several seconds she found nothing except grime and the rough scrape of her own breathing.
Then one stone shifted beneath her touch.
Not much. Just enough.
Sabine stilled.
Lysa turned from the door. “What?”
“There’s a gap.”
“Careful.”
Sabine worked her fingers into the narrow break and pressed. The stone gave with a soft scrape. Mortar dust fell across her wrist. Behind it was darkness, cramped and cold, smelling of dead fires and old earth.
She reached deeper.
Her fingertips brushed fabric.
Not loose ash. Not debris.
Silk.
Her pulse kicked once, hard.
She caught the edge carefully and drew it forward inch by inch. The packet resisted at first, snagged on something within the cavity, then came free in a soft collapse of dust.
Sabine sat back on her heels.
The packet was small enough to fit in both hands, wrapped in faded silk and tied with ribbon that had once been white. The fabric had yellowed with age but remained intact. Whoever had hidden it had done so with care, not panic.
Lysa crossed the room and locked the door.
Sabine carried the packet to the writing desk and unwrapped it beside the lamp.
Inside were letters.
The top page was folded twice, the edges softened from handling. Sabine opened it and saw the handwriting before she saw the words.
Precise. Controlled. Delicate without weakness.
Isolde’s.
The same hand that had written beneath the Blackwater music.
Not the first. Not the last.
Sabine’s fingers tightened on the page.
Lysa looked toward the corridor again. “Read.”
