She finished drying Sabine’s arm, folded the linen with exact corners, and stepped back. “The physician will be here soon. You should dress.”
The palace physician arrived precisely when Lysa said he would,an older man in dark robes with ink-stained fingers and the kind of face that had stopped reacting to human suffering decades ago. He examined Sabine’s mark in silence, pressing his thumb to various points along the pattern, checking her pulse, studying the darkness beneath her skin with an expression that revealed nothing.
“Does it pain you,” he asked.
“No.”
“Heat. cold. numbness.”
“Warmth. Occasionally.”
He made a notation in a small leather book. “The bond has taken cleanly. No visible corruption. The pattern is stable.”
“What does the pattern mean.”
His gaze lifted briefly. “That you have been chosen.”
“I know that. What does the design itself signify.”
“The sacred mark is unique to each union. Its specific form is known only to the gods and the bound.”
Which was a polished way of saying: I will not tell you, and you have no right to press.
He closed his book. “You will report any change in sensation,heat, cold, pain, or involuntary movement. Refusal to report may be considered defiance of the rite.”
He left without waiting for acknowledgment.
Lysa appeared from the corner where she had been standing silent throughout the examination. “He won’t tell you anything useful, my lady. None of them will.”
Sabine crossed to the window again. “Then who will.”
“No one. Not directly. But if you watch long enough, the palace shows you what it’s hiding.”
Sabine turned. “You speak more plainly than most servants.”
“Most servants want to keep their positions longer than three years.” Lysa began folding the discarded ivory gown with swift, economical movements. “I expect I’ll be reassigned after the Trials conclude. Or dismissed. Either way, I’d rather be useful than decorative while I’m here.”
A knock sounded. Harder this time. Official.
Lysa crossed to the door, opened it a fraction, spoke briefly with whoever stood outside, then turned back.
“Queen Mother Ilyra requests your presence at private supper in the Moth Conservatory. You’re to be dressed appropriately and escorted within the hour.”
Sabine’s chest tightened. “Requests.”
“In the palace, ‘requests’ means ‘commands,’ my lady. But they dress it prettier.”
Lysa dressed her in deep blue silk,darker than mourning, richer than modesty, cut to suggest both elegance and restraint. She pinned Sabine’s hair into a style that looked simpler than it was, leaving the throat and marked hand visible. Minimaljewelry. No house colors. Everything chosen to read as dignity without presumption.
“You’re very good at this,” Sabine said as Lysa adjusted the final pin.
“Three years of watching court wives dress brides for political dinners teaches you what matters.” Lysa stepped back and assessed her work with a critical eye. “The queen mother will want you presentable but not competitive. Visible but not proud. You look like a woman who was chosen, not a woman who expected it.”
“Is that what she wants to see.”
“It’s what she’ll be testing for.”
An attendant arrived to escort Sabine through the inner passages to the conservatory. The route took them deeper into the palace’s residential heart, through corridors lined with portraits of dead queens and painted ceilings showing idealized court life in gold leaf and fading pigment.
