“I could not get Serast’s ceremonial book,” he said. “It has been moved to the Vow Chamber for dawn.”
Sabine crossed to him. “Ilyra told me the truth about Isolde.”
Lucien went very still.
“She said the chamber killed her. That you tried to save her after the rite was moving. That your blood was from pulling against the mechanism.”
“She knew.” His voice was rough.
“Yes.”
He turned away. “And she let me carry the guilt anyway because the court needed a simple story.”
Sabine caught his wrist. “You are not the villain they made you.”
“I failed her.”
“The rite failed her. The crown failed her. The temple failed her.” Sabine pulled him to face her. “You reached. That is more than anyone else did.”
Lucien’s control cracked.
He pulled her against him, one hand sliding into her hair, his forehead resting against hers. “At dawn, I have to watch you walk into the same chamber. And if I move too soon, Serast controls the narrative. If I move too late, you die.”
“Then we make the chamber show what it does before it can hide behind ceremony.”
“Sabine”
She kissed him.
Hard. Deliberate. Shutting down his guilt before it could become a wall between them.
Lucien tried to keep the kiss controlled, but Sabine refused to let him turn himself into a punishment.
She pushed him back until he sat on the edge of the desk. Then she lowered herself before him.
By choice.
Not ritual posture.
Lucien’s breathing stopped. “You do not have to.”
“I know.” She met his eyes. “This is not submission. This is choosing what my body gives.”
His throat moved. He looked like a man facing a blade he wanted to touch.
Sabine worked the fastenings of his trousers open with steady hands. His body answered her before his mouth could form another warning, and the sight of that, the honesty of it, sent heat through her so sharply she had to steady herself against his thigh.
She touched him first with her hand.
Slowly.
Learning him the way the rite had tried to learn her, except this was not taking. This was asking, watching, answering. Lucien’s hands curled against the desk edge, knuckles pale, every line of him held taut with restraint.
“Sabine.”
Her name was warning, plea, surrender.
She lowered her mouth to him.
