“Yes.”
“They will try to make obedience sound like love.”
Sabine’s fingers stilled on the hidden seam beneath her ribs.
Isolde’s letter remained sewn there.
“They already have,” she said.
Lysa looked up.
Sabine met her eyes in the small mirror inside the screen.
“The wording matters. If the trial accepts language, then the rite can be moved by language.”
“And if it does not accept yours?”
“Then we learn how much of the old vow is still alive.”
“That is a terrible plan.”
“It is the only one we have.”
Lysa pinned Sabine’s hair back, not softly. She left the throat exposed. The face unadorned. The mark mostly covered, but not hidden completely.
“Look at me,” Lysa said.
Sabine did.
“If you feel the room taking your mouth, bite your tongue.”
Sabine almost smiled.
Lysa did not.
“I mean it. Blood interrupts some speech binding. Old servant knowledge. Probably heresy. Use it.”
Sabine held that close.
“Thank you.”
“Do not thank me. Walk out alive and I will consider us even.”
Sabine stepped from behind the screen.
Lucien’s gaze found her immediately.
It moved over her face first. Then her hands. Then the mark at her sleeve. Then back to her eyes.
He said nothing.
Good.
If he spoke softly now, she might not survive it.
Ilyra turned toward the door. “Let us go.”
The underground passage to the Trial of Surrender did not follow the same route as the Blackwater shrine.
