“I answered the question,” Sabine said. “If the court dislikes the answer, perhaps the question was designed to produce lies instead of truth.”
Corvek did not look pleased.
He looked exact.
That was better.
Ilyra watched with the expression of someone calculating whether Sabine was now more valuable alive.
King Aeron looked deeply uncomfortable.
Lucien had gone completely still.
The third station was devotion.
Each bride was asked what she would surrender for the crown.
Yselle gave a perfect answer about service, house loyalty, duty, and the discipline required to make sacrifice look like joy.
Tavi gave a hard answer about blood already spent and bodies already buried.
Lady Celith wept through something about faith and obedience.
Sabine crossed to the devotion dais.
Serast spoke the question himself.
“What will you surrender for the crown?”
Sabine looked at him.
“Nothing.”
The room gasped.
Serast’s voice dropped. “Then you refuse devotion.”
“No. I refuse a definition of devotion that requires disappearance.” Sabine’s voice was clear. “I will offer witness, labor, endurance, and truth. I will not offer annihilation and call it love.”
The bond flared.
Sabine felt Lucien’s reaction through the mark like heat against her wrist.
Serast stepped closer.
“The Tenth Vow requires surrender.”
“The older rite did not place surrender at its center,” Sabine said. “I have heard enough of the old language to know devotion was not always another word for vanishing. If the current version requires my disappearance, the current version should answer for itself.”
The court went silent.
Serast’s face had gone pale with fury.
Corvek wrote quickly.
King Aeron leaned forward.
Elara looked like she wanted to applaud and was barely restraining herself.
