Fast.
Precise.
Maelor realized a fraction too late.
At the same moment, Sabine spoke the altered vow aloud in High Veyran.
Her voice was clear.
“I stand as equal witness. I carry equal burden. I answer as sovereign self, not emptied vessel. My blood travels with his, not beneath it. My will joins where his will answers. I am not consumed. I am met.”
The chamber convulsed.
Stone cracked from basin to wall.
The channels reversed direction, blood flowing backward, refusing the descent.
Black water overflowed the basin’s edge.
Candle flames went blue.
And the plaster covering the hidden names split.
Old names bled through.
Women erased.
Women scraped from the record.
Women edited into acceptable deaths.
The wall testified.
Sabine glimpsed names she did not know.
Older names.
Partial names.
Names covered so thoroughly that only fragments remained.
Isolde’s carved section cracked, and beneath the newer stone, older words bled through in the same dark wetness as the channels.
Refusal recorded. Completion forced. Bride lost under witness.
The truth Serast had buried.
Elara saw it from the shadows.
Corvek saw it and his pen moved faster.
Aeron saw it and went pale.
Serast’s voice cut through the chaos.
“Bloodwright Maelor, force the rite back into orthodoxy!”
Maelor moved toward Sabine.
