“I know.”
“Do you? Because favor in this palace is not protection, Lady Sabine. It is a spotlight that makes every flaw more visible and every mistake more costly. And the prince’s attention has just made you the most watched woman in Halcyr.”
She left.
Sabine stood alone in the withdrawing room, pulse hammering, hands clenched at her sides.
The candles burned lower. Outside, the supper room had emptied. Footsteps passed in the corridor, attendants clearing dishes, guards changing shifts, the palace machinery moving through its nightly rhythms with indifferent precision.
Sabine returned to her chamber.
Lysa was waiting, seated by the fire with mending in her lap that she set aside the moment Sabine entered.
“How was it?”
Sabine crossed to the window and stared out into the darkened courtyard. “Yselle knows about Marrow’s debts now. She admitted them directly.”
“That must have been satisfying.”
“It was clarifying.” Sabine turned. “She is not merely ambitious. She is cornered. Just like I am.”
“Yes. Though I suspect she will use that recognition to sharpen her attacks rather than soften them.”
“She already has.” Sabine moved to the writing desk and sat. “What are the servants saying now. After today.”
Lysa picked up her mending again, though her hands stayed still. “That you are either the luckiest bride in three generations or the most dangerous. That the prince’s intervention proves the bond is real, or that it proves he is repeating his first marriage’s pattern and will destroy you the same way he destroyed Isolde.”
“Those are contradictory readings.”
“Yes. Which is why the betting has shifted.”
Sabine looked up. “To what.”
“They are no longer wagering on whether you survive the Trials.” Lysa’s voice remained matter-of-fact. “They are betting on whether Prince Lucien’s interest saves you or condemns you first.”
The words landed cold.
Sabine looked down at her marked hand. The dark lines pulsed faintly in the firelight, branching from palm to wrist in patterns that still refused to resolve into readable script.
She thought of Lucien descending the dais. Thought of his voice when he had saidonly the chosen may touch what the rite has claimed. Thought of the way the room had erupted the moment he stepped between her and Solhain, not with approval, but with recognition that something fundamental had shifted.
He had not protected her privately.
He had claimed her publicly.
And the palace had seen exactly what that meant.
“Lysa,” Sabine said quietly.
“Yes, my lady?”
“What happened to the servants who attended Isolde? Are any of them still in the palace?”
Lysa’s hands stilled on the mending. “A few. Most were reassigned after she died. Scattered to other wings, other duties. The palace prefers not to keep witnesses concentrated where they might compare memories.”
“Can you find one? Someone who would speak to me?”
“That depends on what you want to ask them.”
