“I changed two.”
“I noticed.”
“You should not have been able to notice.”
“I have learned enough High Veyran to know when a man is trying to save me with grammar.”
A breath left him. Almost a laugh. No humor in it.
Then he leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers.
The contact was brief.
Necessary.
Dangerous.
“I could feel it pushing through you,” he said. “The chamber wanted surrender spoken before you understood you were offering it.”
“The rite is not measuring love.”
“No.”
“It is manufacturing dependence.”
His hand tightened around hers.
“And calling it sanctity,” he said.
For a moment they stood in silence.
Sabine felt his anger through the bond now, but beneath it there was something else. A shaken recognition. The trial had given them more than memory. More than proof.
It had shown them the mechanism in motion.
The rite did not wait for consent.
It made the body answer, then called the answer holy.
“We need the original wording,” Sabine said.
Lucien lifted his head.
His expression changed.
Resolved.
“There is somewhere I should have taken you sooner.”
“Where?”
“The foundation chapel.”
Sabine stared at him.
“The original royal chapel,” he said. “Beneath the eastern tower. Older than the temple’s version of the rite. Isolde believed the First Consent was carved there.”
“Believed?”
