“You’re looking too closely at Isolde.”
“Yes.”
“Does the prince know?”
“He knows I’m asking questions.”
“And he hasn’t stopped you.”
“No. Only warned me.”
Lysa studied her for a beat too long. “Servants are also saying you came back from yesterday’s trial looking like someone had been kissed until she forgot how to think.”
Sabine’s face heated. “Lysa.”
“I’m not mocking you. I’m telling you that the palace is watching for signs. If you and Lucien keep looking at each other the way you have been, people will make use of it.” She paused.“Women who want too visibly in this place are usually punished for appetite before men are.”
Then she took the basin and left.
Sabine stood alone in the room with the strip of music in her hand.
Isolde had written music. Hidden it. Left pieces of herself in places meant for sleep and prayer and private thought. Or someone else was using those remnants now, threading them through the bride wing like bait.
Either way, Isolde was no longer abstract.
She had made things. Touched things. Been erased badly enough that what remained had begun surfacing through the cracks.
And Sabine could not keep reacting to objects one at a time. She needed someone who had been there. Someone who had seen the body. Someone who knew what the official story had replaced.
She needed Physician Tal.
Morning came gray and hard.
Sabine took the excuse Lysa suggested and walked to the physician’s wing carrying herself like someone still recovering from yesterday’s trial. The attendant outside Tal’s consultation room admitted her with little question. Marked brides were allowed fragility. They were not allowed control.
Tal entered moments later. Tall, graying, precise. A man whose face had learned neutrality so thoroughly it seemed carved there.
“Lady Sabine. You are unwell?”
“Dizziness,” she said. “Lingering heat after the Trial of Hunger. I wanted to be sure the wine had not reacted badly with the mark.”
Tal took her hand, examined the dark lines, checked the pulse beneath her wrist.
“The mark is active,” he said. “That is not unusual.”
“Active how?”
“It responds to ritual conditions. Proximity. Stress. Certain ceremonial thresholds.”
His thumb lifted from her skin.
Sabine held his gaze. “And to the prince?”
Tal’s face did not change, but his hand stilled.
“That is not a medical question.”
“No,” she said. “This is. What happened to Isolde?”
