Useful. Polished. Safe.
Tavi went next.
She crossed to the dais like she was approaching a firing line.
“I bring House Rennic’s military sacrifice and honest loyalty. My family has bled for the crown in every border war for three generations. I claim sovereign marriage through blood already spent and discipline that does not require performance.”
Blunt.
Powerful.
Not elegant, but true.
Lady Celith stammered through something about lineage and devotion. Her voice gave out twice before she finished, but she remained standing.
Then Sabine’s turn came.
She crossed to the dais and looked at the cracked relic.
Two hands engraved on the inner band.
Facing palms.
Mutual answer.
She spoke.
“I bring witness. I bring knowledge of cost. I bring the ability to stand inside a broken system and name what it demands without calling that demand holy.”
The room went silent.
Not approval.
Shock.
Sabine continued.
“I do not claim perfection, beauty, obedience, or house strength. I claim the capacity to see what the palace has spent centuries making invisible. And I claim the willingness to speak that truth even when silence would be safer.”
Serast’s face hardened.
Corvek’s pen paused over the record.
Lucien’s eyes never left her.
Sabine stepped back.
The court erupted into whispers.
Yselle looked at her with something close to fury.
Good.
Let her be angry.
Sabine had stopped selling herself like decorative property.
The second station was composure.
