“There,” he said.
At first Sabine saw only scraped vellum. Then, beneath the later wording, faint brown strokes appeared where the old ink had bitten deeper into the page than the correction could hide.
Refusal during tenth binding.
Sabine stopped breathing.
Elara’s mouth tightened. “They did not even bother inventing a better lie.”
“They did not need to,” Elric said. “No one was supposed to read beneath it.”
Sabine gripped the edge of the stand.
The room seemed to narrow around those four words.
Refusal during tenth binding.
Not illness. Not sacred strain. Not grief. Not weakness.
Refusal.
And the palace had written over it.
Elric turned to another volume. “Older structural accounts use several terms. Completion rite. final binding. tenth sanctification. The public devotional records standardize everything as Nine Trials.”
“Because the visible nine are preparation,” Sabine said.
Elara nodded. “The tenth is the true mechanism.”
“The point where queenship is sealed,” Elric said. “Or where the bride is destroyed if she refuses what the altered rite requires.”
Lysa stood near the door, listening. “How many?”
Elric did not answer at once.
That was answer enough.
Sabine looked up. “How many?”
“I have found at least seven irregular bride deaths over four reigns. Possibly more. Some are recorded as fever. Some as withdrawal followed by private burial. One as religious instability. Two have no death record at all, only sudden removal from household accounts.”
“Not the first,” Sabine said quietly. “Not the last.”
Elara’s gaze moved to Isolde’s letter. “She knew.”
“She knew enough to hide proof.”
“Then we copy everything,” Elara said. “Now.”
They worked quickly.
Elric transcribed the chapel accounts and the scraped succession note. Elara copied the phrases from Isolde’s letters that named the Tenth Vow. Sabine read aloud, keeping her voice steady, even when the words felt like glass in her mouth.
Blood activation.
Consent altered to submission.
Refusal before the vow begins moving.
