Sabine met her eyes.
“No. I believe surviving a system designed to consume women makes me dangerous. Worthiness is the language men use when they want obedience dressed as destiny.”
Yselle’s composure flickered.
Then Sabine’s turn came.
She looked at Yselle and asked the question she had been holding since the Trial of Surrender.
“Has perfection ever saved a woman from an institution built to spend her beautifully?”
The words landed.
Yselle went very still.
For one second, her face cracked open.
Not into rage.
Into fear.
Raw, terrible fear.
Because she knew the answer.
No.
Perfection had never saved anyone.
It had only made them easier to use.
Then the fear turned into fury.
Unscripted.
Unpracticed.
Real.
“You can afford to mock training,” Yselle said, voice shaking, “because you stumbled into his attention. Women like me had to make ourselves flawless because flawlessness was the only armor we were permitted. You stand there and call it performance, but it was survival. And you dare judge me for it.”
The court was silent.
Sabine felt the weight of that truth.
Yselle’s cruelty had been discipline.
Her perfection had been terror.
They were not the same, but they had both been trying to survive a palace that knew how to dress violence as honor.
Sabine did not apologize.
But something changed between them.
Rivalry became recognition again.
Sharper.
