Mirelle had gone very white. “Aeron has lost all judgment.”
“No,” Sabine said. “He has run out of safer sons.”
That chilled her more than Lucien’s name.
Courts did not restore disgraced princes because time had softened the story. They restored them when the alternatives had grown worse. If the king had called the Trials with the temple standing beside him, then the succession question had become grave enough to make danger acceptable and holiness useful.
Cassian handed back the parchment. “No decent house will send a daughter.”
Sabine looked at him.
His face changed at once. “Sabine.”
Mirelle’s answer came faster. “Absolutely not.”
Sabine lowered her eyes to the proclamation again.
District registration. lineage proofs. lawful standing. crown protection.
The kingdom had put a price on desperation and called it sacred duty.
For powerful houses, the Trials were risk. For ambitious houses, opportunity. For houses like Corvyr.
Mirelle crossed the room in two swift steps. “You will not consider it.”
“How could I fail to.”
“Because that prince buried one bride already.”
“He was exiled after her death,” Cassian said. “That should be enough.”
Sabine folded the proclamation once along its crease. “Enough for whom.”
“For anyone with sense.”
Sense.
She thought of the crown notice on the table. The east wing behind its screen. The patched apron in the corridor. Cassian still speaking as if summer itself might take pity on them. Mirelle polishing dissonant silver until it passed for continuity.
No, she thought. Sense had brought them exactly here.
She placed the proclamation beside the loan notice.
One paper naming the death of the house in legal terms. Another offering terms for postponement.
Mirelle stared at her. “Do not mistake terror for opportunity.”
Sabine looked at the two documents lying side by side on the white cloth.
“I do not,” she said.
Outside, from the district below the hill, bells began to ring for the public reading in the square.
Junor stood motionless at the door. Cassian had gone quiet in a new way, as if he had finally heard the same arithmetic shehad. Mirelle’s face remained composed except for the mouth, which had tightened by a degree only Sabine would notice.
The room had not changed. The mismatched silver still shone. The lamps still burned. The house still held itself upright on pride, old stone, and habit.
Sabine looked at the royal seal, then at the crown’s demand.
