This was not part of the trial.
This was hidden. Or preserved. Or left by someone who knew a woman like her might reach for forbidden evidence instead of safe passage.
She had two choices.
Take the token. Pass cleanly. Survive.
Or reach deeper for the circlet and the music, and risk whatever the river would do to punish her.
Sabine chose the evidence.
She pushed her arm deeper, her shoulder now submerged, water soaking through the silver braid of her gown. Her fingers closed around the circlet fragment and the strip of music.
The current changed.
It yanked at her arm with sudden, vicious force.
Sabine gasped and tried to pull back, but her hand had locked around the objects and the crevice held her fast. The Blackwater dragged at her shoulder, then her chest, then the boat itself.
The hull tipped.
Sabine went into the water.
Cold closed over her head like a fist.
The impact stole her breath. Her gown turned impossibly heavy, the silver braid dragging her down. She kicked hard, lungs already burning, and fought to keep hold of the circlet and the music even as the current tried to wrench them away.
The mark on her hand flared burning hot against the freezing water.
Sound became muffled. Pressure built in her ears.
And for one terrible second, Sabine saw her.
A veiled bride in ceremonial white, circlet still on her head, suspended in black water as if the shrine itself had preserved her.
Memory. Hallucination. The river remembering.
Sabine could not tell.
She kicked toward the surface, her fingers scraping stone, her lungs screaming.
Then an arm locked around her waist.
Heat flooded through the cold.
The bond erupted.
Lucien hauled her against him with controlled violence, his body solid and burning hot compared to the river. Sabine’s vision blurred, but she felt him clearly. The hard muscle of his chest. His arm tight across her ribs. His hand gripping her jaw, tilting her face toward air.
He dragged her upward.
They broke the surface together.
Sabine coughed, choked, gasped water and air in equal measure. Her body shook violently. But she did not release the objects.
Lucien’s hand was still on her face.
“Breathe,” he said roughly. “Sabine. Breathe.”
