A fox.
Sabine picked it up slowly.
The craftsmanship was fine, delicate enough that each ear, each paw, each curve of the tail had been rendered with care. The kind of work someone did not by accident, but by practiced hand. It fit in her palm perfectly, warm from sitting near the fire.
She turned and crossed to the door, opened it, and found the corridor guard stationed three paces down.
“Did anyone enter my chamber while I was at supper.”
The guard’s expression remained neutral. “No, my lady. Only your attendant, and she left before you returned.”
“No one else.”
“No one I saw, my lady.”
Sabine closed the door and locked it from the inside.
She returned to the desk, set the fox beside the inkstand, and stared at it.
Someone had entered her room. Someone the guards either had not seen or had been instructed not to mention. Someone who knew she had been summoned away and had used that absence to leave a message she could not yet interpret.
The fox was not a threat. At least, it did not feel like one.
It felt like observation. Like acknowledgment.
Like someone telling her: I see you. And I am watching.
She thought of the corridor outside the bride wing two nights ago. Lucien standing in lamplight, sending the frightened girl away, his gaze settling on Sabine with that same unsettling recognition.
She thought of his thumb pressing into her palm in the Hall, the heat answering before either of them had spoken a word.
She thought of Lysa’s voice:The palace shows you what it’s hiding, if you watch long enough.
Sabine picked up the fox again and turned it over in her hands.
Carved by someone who understood small precise things. Left where she would find it but not immediately. Placed with enough care to suggest intention but not enough spectacle to feel theatrical.
She did not know yet what it meant.
But she knew it was not from the queen mother. Not from Halvine. Not from anyone who wanted her compliant or afraid.
It was from someone who had decided, for reasons she could not yet name, to let her know she was being seen.
Sabine set the fox back on the mantel where the firelight caught it.
Then she crossed to the bed, extinguished the lamp, and lay in the dark with the mark pulsing faintly beneath her skin and the carved animal watching from across the room.
Sleep came slowly.
And when it finally did, she dreamed of dark branching lines spreading across stone, and a man’s hand turning hers upward into light she could not name.
Nine
The Trial of Bearing
The summons came at dawn, delivered by Lysa with a cup of water and a face that said the day would cost more than sleep.
“The Trial of Bearing,” she said, setting the cup on the bedside table. “Today. Mid-morning. You’re to dress formally and be ready when they call.”
