The visible stages are preparation only.
Lysa fastened the final clasp.
“There,” she said. “You look like you might survive.”
Sabine lifted her chin.
“That will have to do.”
The corridor outside the bride wing was full of silence.
Not empty.
Silent.
Two attendants waited by the door. A temple warden stood behind them, gloved hands folded over the head of a black staff. No one bowed. No one spoke beyond what was required.
Sabine followed them.
The palace shifted around her as they moved inward. The soft spaces fell away. No bride galleries, no flowered withdrawing rooms, no ceremonial halls dressed for spectators. This route went down and in, through colder corridors, past locked doors and wall carvings worn smooth by centuries of hands pretending not to tremble.
The mark heated with each turn.
By the time they reached the Vow Chamber antechamber, Sabine’s skin had begun to prickle beneath the gown.
The room was circular and low-ceilinged, built of dark stone veined with red. Lamps burned in niches along the walls. The air smelled of iron, incense, cold water, and old wax.
At the center stood a black basin on a waist-high plinth.
Beside it: a silver blade.
A chalice.
White cloth.
A strip of black silk.
Serast waited near the far wall in formal black, gold thread catching the lamplight at his throat. Bloodwright Maelor stood beside the plinth with his sleeves folded back, hands bare, expression calm.
Mistress Halvine occupied a writing table with a crown clerk.
No Elara.
No Lysa.
No friendly witness.
Lucien stood opposite the basin.
He wore black, as always, but today there was no armor of ceremony in it. No sash. No court ornament. Only the severe cut of a man brought to a room he hated and required to stand still inside it.
His gaze found Sabine the moment she entered.
The bond answered.
Heat moved through her body with such force she had to pause in the doorway.
Lucien’s expression did not change, but his hand flexed once at his side.
