While Elara held him, Sabine moved.
Slowly.
She gathered the most damning Isolde page, the one naming the Tenth Vow as submission disguised as sanctification. She folded it once beneath the table edge and slid it inside her bodice, against her ribs, near the spreading mark.
The letter warmed at once.
Too much.
The mark answered through fabric and paper, a pulse of heat bright enough that Sabine feared it would show on her skin.
She kept her face still.
Elric shifted a stack of ledgers, screening her movement.
Lysa coughed once from the door.
Warning.
More footsteps above.
Sabine picked up another page, this one referencing blood channels and drainage.
No time to hide it.
She held it to the lamp.
The vellum caught slowly, curling at the corner before the flame ran along the edge. Smoke rose in a thin gray thread.
Heskar turned. “Lady Sabine.”
The page blackened.
“You are destroying evidence.”
“I am protecting private correspondence,” Sabine said.
Her voice sounded calmer than she felt.
“Correspondence not addressed to you.”
“You cannot prove that.”
His eyes sharpened.
For one terrible second she thought he would cross the room and search her himself.
Elara moved between them.
“Touch a marked bride under my witness without formal female attendance and I will make the accusation so loudly the temple will spend a year pretending not to hear it.”
Heskar stopped.
The burning page collapsed into ash.
Sabine let the last corner fall into the lamp tray.
Elara smiled without warmth. “Now. Shall we continue discussing jurisdiction?”
