Sabine sat near the fire in her chamber, wrapped in blankets, her skin still blue-pale from the Blackwater’s cold. The mark on her hand pulsed hot despite everything.
“You nearly drowned,” Lysa said quietly.
“I know.”
“And you brought something back the temple did not want found.”
Sabine opened her palm.
The strip of water-swollen music lay across her hand, ink blurred but not destroyed.
Lysa knelt beside the fire and helped Sabine position the strip near the heat without touching flame.
They waited.
As the music dried, the ink began to clarify.
Notes appeared. A fragment of melody Sabine did not recognize.
And beneath the notes, written in tiny, precise script, a single line:
Not the first. Not the last.
Sabine stopped breathing.
Lysa read the words over her shoulder and went very still.
“Isolde,” Sabine said quietly.
“She knew.”
“Yes.”
The meaning settled into Sabine’s chest like stone. Isolde had not believed herself a single tragic accident. She had known the rite consumed women before her. She had tried to leave warning for whoever came next. The mystery was no longer what happened to Isolde.
The mystery was how many women.
How long.
Who kept it hidden.
And what the final vow was actually designed to do.
A soft knock sounded at the door. Lysa crossed the room and opened it a crack. A palace runner stood in the corridor, holding a sealed note. Lysa took it, closed the door, and handed the note to Sabine. The seal was Lucien’s.
Sabine broke it open. Inside, in his precise handwriting, four words:
Do not let Serast see.
Sabine folded the note carefully and fed it to the fire.
She looked down at the strip of music, at Isolde’s careful warning, at the evidence that the rite had been consuming women long before Lucien’s first bride ever entered the Vow Chamber. The Blackwater had tried to drown her. Lucien had broken protocol to save her.
And now the temple knew she had touched something they wanted buried underwater.
Sabine wrapped the music in silk and hid it in the false lining of her travel case.
Tomorrow, Serast would summon her.
