Sabine’s pulse kicked.
“They changed the law,” she said quietly.
“Yes. Which tells you two things. First, Isolde’s death threatened Lucien’s succession badly enough that formal repair was necessary. Second, whatever killed her made it impossible to quietly select another bride and continue as if nothing had happened.”
“Because the rite itself had failed.”
“Or because the rite succeeded in a way that exposed something the palace could not afford to leave visible.” Elara’s voice was calm, precise, and utterly without comfort. “Either the sacred machinery broke, or it worked exactly as designed andthe result was so disturbing that the crown had to rewrite the rules to contain it.”
Sabine stared at the page.
The drowning bride. The garden remembering what the palace tried to forget. Lucien saying the rite had been refined, adjusted, elements removed or buried.
She was beginning to understand that Isolde had not simply died.
Isolde had revealed something.
The sound of the archive door opening made both of them turn.
Lucien Vhalor stood in the entrance, dressed in formal black, a leather document case tucked under one arm.
His gaze swept the room, registered Elara, then landed on Sabine.
For a moment no one spoke.
Then Elara gathered her notes with brisk efficiency. “I believe I have found what I needed. The table is yours.”
“Elara, ” Lucien’s voice carried warning.
“I am leaving you alone because I choose to, not because you ordered it. Do not mistake the two.” She paused beside him on her way to the door. “And do try not to break anything. The archivists are extremely particular about their cataloging system.”
She left.
The door closed with soft finality.
Sabine and Lucien stood on opposite sides of the records hall, separated by tables and silence and the weight of everything neither of them had said in the rose gallery.
Lucien set the document case on the nearest table. “What are you doing here.”
“Researching prior sacred brides.” Sabine kept her voice level. “Halvine approved the request.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“Then ask a better question.”
His jaw tightened. He crossed the space between them in four strides and stopped close enough that Sabine could see the exhaustion in his face, the fine tension in his shoulders, the way his hands curled briefly into fists before he forced them open again.
“You are looking for Isolde,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Why.”
“Because the garden showed me a drowned bride, and you reacted as if I had named something forbidden. Because the archive records are edited past the point of honesty. Because the succession law was rewritten after her death.” Sabine gestured to the open ledger on the table. “I want to know what happened. Not the version the palace tells. The version that required legal repair.”
Lucien’s gaze dropped to the succession statute, then back to her face.
“You should not be reading that.”
