When they returned to the main corridor, the attendants stepped closer again. The illusion of privacy collapsed. Tavi nodded once and turned toward her own chamber.
Sabine watched her go, then continued to her room and locked the door.
She did not write the conversation into her notebook. Some truths were safer left unrecorded.
Evening fell slowly over the bride wing. Lamps were lit by attendants moving in careful sequence. Supper came and went with less spectacle than the first night, smaller portions, quieter conversation, Yselle still holding court but with diminishingreturns as exhaustion replaced nerves. Afterward, the brides dispersed to their chambers under the same enforced routine.
Sabine changed into a plain night dress, unpinned her hair, and sat at the writing desk with her notebook open.
She was halfway through a line about chapel coercion when voices rose in the corridor outside.
Not loud. Sharp.
She set the pen down and crossed to the door.
“—no right to ask questions that are not your place to ask—”
A man’s voice. Clipped. Temple inflection.
“I only wanted to know when—”
A girl. Younger. Frightened.
“You will return to your chamber and wait for instruction like the rest.”
“But no one has told us—”
A sound. Not a blow. Worse. The specific noise of a hand gripping an arm hard enough to stop movement.
Sabine opened her door.
Three chambers down, a temple guard in black and silver had backed a girl against the wall. She was small, dark-haired, one of the lesser-ranked brides from a house Sabine did not recognize. Her face had gone pale. The guard’s hand circled her upper arm, not striking but holding, and his body angled in a way that made the corridor feel narrower.
“Let go of me,” the girl said, voice shaking.
“When you learn—”
“Let her go.”
The voice came from the far end of the corridor. Low. Flat. Precise as a blade drawn from a sheath.
Sabine’s head turned.
Prince Lucien Vhalor stood ten paces away, hands loose at his sides, expression unreadable in the dim corridor light. Hewore no crown, no formal regalia, only dark clothing cut with severe simplicity. He did not raise his voice. He did not need to.
The guard released the girl’s arm immediately and stepped back.
Lucien crossed the space without haste. His boots made almost no sound on the stone floor. When he stopped, he stood between the guard and the girl, his back to her, his attention entirely on the man who had been gripping her.
“The rite claims women,” Lucien said. “Not clerics’ tempers.”
The guard’s jaw worked once. “She was being difficult—”
“She asked a question.”
“She has no right—”
Lucien’s voice dropped lower. Not louder. Colder. “You will leave this corridor. You will not return to the bride wing tonight. If I hear that any woman here has been handled again because she dared to speak, you will explain yourself to me personally. Do you understand.”
