Sabine lifted the cup and drank, though her mouth had gone dry enough that swallowing took effort. The wine tasted of clove, smoke, and something sweet that hit the back of her tongue and made the whole moment worse.
Or better.
She set the cup down with deliberate care.
“Thank you, Your Highness.”
Lucien inclined his head once and returned to the dais.
Conversation resumed.
But too late. The room had seen it. Not just the offering. Not just the symbolism. Something in the pause. Something in the touch.
The rest of the banquet blurred.
Sabine ate what was required. Refused what seemed dangerous. Accepted what protocol demanded. Survived the moving sequence of service, pressure, and coded insult.
But under everything ran the memory of his fingers against hers.
Once Tavi made a refusal too sharp and paid for it moments later with a visible spasm of pain low in her body. The trial punished her and called it correction. Brinna nearly dropped a cup. Yselle remained perfect enough to be uncanny.
Sabine made it to the end through discipline and fury and the simple fact that she now wanted something in the room more than food, and that had changed the shape of hunger entirely.
When the final blessing was spoken and the brides were dismissed, she rose too quickly and felt the room tilt for half a second.
Then she walked.
Out of the banquet hall. Down the side passage. Past two servants and a priest.
A hand caught her wrist and pulled her sharply into darkness.
Lucien.
He backed her into the stone wall of a narrow service corridor so fast she barely had time to breathe before his body was there, close and hard and furious with restraint.
“What were you doing?” he said.
His voice was low and ragged, nothing like the one he had used in the hall.
Sabine stared at him, pulse hammering. “Accepting the cup you offered me in front of the entire court.”
“You looked at me.”
“You came to me.”
His hand braced beside her head. The other was still around her wrist, right over the mark. Heat moved through her in wild, punishing waves.
“You could have taken it without making that face.”
“What face?”
“The one that made me think about the archive when I was supposed to be watching seven women navigate a ritual banquet.”
Sabine’s breath hitched.
The corridor was narrow. Too narrow. He filled it. She could smell wine on him now. Spice. Leather. Skin. She hated how much her body responded before thought had a chance to intervene.
“And what,” she said, “did the archive make you think about?”
