He did not turn when she entered.
“Close the door.”
She did.
The latch clicked. The gallery held only silence, winter roses, and the particular tension that came from two people alone in a space neither of them fully controlled.
Lucien turned.
Up close, in better light than the trial chamber had allowed, she could see the exhaustion in his face. The fine lines at the corners of his eyes. The muscle tight along his jaw. He looked like a man who had not slept well in some time and had stopped pretending otherwise.
“What did you see,” he said.
Sabine’s chest tightened. “Corvyr. The house. Memories of decline.”
“And.”
She met his eyes. “A bride in ceremonial white. Veiled. Wearing a circlet. Drowning in black water.”
Lucien went absolutely still.
Not the stillness of composure. The stillness of someone forcing themselves not to move because movement would reveal too much too quickly.
Then he crossed the space between them in three strides and caught her wrist, not roughly, but with enough urgency that her breath hitched.
His thumb pressed against the marked lines on her palm. Heat bloomed under the contact, sharp and immediate, spreading up her forearm like blood returning to a limb held too long in one position.
“You are certain,” he said.
“Yes.”
His grip tightened fractionally. “Did you tell anyone else.”
“No.”
“Good.” His voice had gone rough. “Do not. Do not describe that vision to Serast. Do not mention it to Halvine. Do not speak of it where temple ears or council ears can hear you.”
“Why.” Her pulse hammered under his fingers.
“Because the garden is not supposed to show that.” He released her wrist but did not step back. “The rite has been refined over generations. Adjusted. Certain elements removed or buried. If Serast knows the garden is surfacing old imagery—”
“Was it Isolde.”
His expression fractured.
For half a breath she saw something raw beneath the control, grief or fury or guilt, maybe all three compressed into a single unguarded moment before he forced it back under discipline.
“I don’t know.” His voice had dropped lower. “The image is older than Isolde. But it has appeared before, and every time it surfaces, the temple claims the bride who saw it was unfit.”
Sabine forced herself to breathe evenly. “That is convenient.”
“Yes.” His gaze held hers. “Which is why you do not repeat what you saw.”
“And if I had failed the trial entirely.”
His jaw tightened. “Then you would have been sent home in disgrace, and your house would have fallen within the month.”
The honesty landed cold and clean.
