What she was doing.
She was not saying no in common speech. She was giving the chamber a stronger shape in the language it had been built to hear.
Serast stepped closer.
“The second line,” he said, too controlled now.
“I surrender house ambition to crown design.”
Sabine felt the words press at her mouth.
Corvyr.
Cassian.
Her mother.
The estate used as leash.
House ambition.
Crown design.
No.
Sabine spoke again in High Veyran.
“I offer house burden to shared keeping, not erasure.”
The floor inscription flared red.
Stone groaned beneath her knee.
Maelor whispered something under his breath.
Serast’s eyes flashed. “You will not survive cleverness much longer.”
Sabine looked up at him.
“Then you had better listen quickly.”
The room trembled once.
Then steadied.
The relic remained lit.
The trial had not rejected her.
Serast saw it.
So did everyone else.
“The third line,” he said.
His voice had lost some of its polish.
“I surrender flesh to lawful marriage and marriage to the realm.”
