Low ceiling.
Damp stone.
The smell of old incense and something metallic beneath it.
Blood.
Not fresh.
Old blood, soaked into stone over centuries.
King Aeron stood on the witness ring, looking older and more fragile than he had during the public trial.
Ilyra beside him, pale and composed.
Corvek near the record table, quill ready.
Elara in the shadows, arms crossed, watching everything.
Lucien waited opposite the basin, wrists bare, face controlled past the point of pain.
And Serast stood at the head of the basin, hands folded, face serene.
Sabine crossed to the center of the floor.
The blood channels radiated outward from the basin like veins.
She could see where the bride’s channel descended toward the submission reservoir.
She could see where Lucien would stand to make his cut.
The break point would come in one breath.
Too early, and the chamber would reject them.
Too late, and her blood would enter the wrong channel.
Serast lifted his hands.
Sabine looked across the basin at Lucien.
The bond pulsed between them.
Not pulling.
Listening.
The blade waited on dark cloth. The channels waited under her feet. The king watched from the ring with a face that had already begun to understand too late.
The palace had dressed her for surrender.
Lysa had sewn rebellion into the hem.
And Sabine stood in the chamber that had destroyed Isolde, carrying both.
Twenty Nine
The Tenth Vow
