Chapter 13
Thirteen
The Trial of Hunger
Sabine woke hungry.
Not for food.
The thought arrived before she opened her eyes, before the cold of the room reached her skin, before the first bell carried through the palace walls.
It lived low in her body, warm and insistent, and it had Lucien’s mouth, Lucien’s hands, Lucien’s rough voice in the archive when he had said he was trying not to want her in ways that would make him useless.
She lay still and let the dark hold her for a moment.
It did not help.
The memory came back in pieces sharp enough to sting.
His hand wrapped around her wrist. His mouth a breath from hers.
The sound he made when she kissed him. The force of him when control finally gave way.
The look on his face after, when he had stepped back like a man dragging himself away from a cliff he fully intended to walk toward again.
Sabine opened her eyes.
The room was still dark, the fire burned low, and her marked hand lay against the coverlet like a thing set apart from the rest of her. The black lines were quiet. Too quiet. She knew better than to trust that.
She sat up and pressed her palm to her mouth.
Nothing.
Then heat stirred under the skin anyway, faint and slow, like her body remembering before her mind had fully caught up.
A knock sounded at the door.
Lysa entered with a tray, a basin, and the expression of a woman already prepared for trouble.
“The Trial of Hunger,” she said. “Mid-afternoon. The fast begins now.”
Sabine swung her legs from the bed. “Tell me.”
Lysa set down the tray and began laying out clothing.
“You will not eat until the trial opens. Then you’ll be seated at a ceremonial banquet where every choice matters.
Which cup you accept. Which dish you touch first. Who you answer.
Who you refuse. Appetite, obedience, rank, self-command.
All of it wrapped together so the court can pretend they’re watching virtue when they’re actually watching women navigate a minefield. ”
Sabine crossed to the basin and splashed cold water over her face.
“What happens if you make the wrong choice?”
“You fail. Or you are marked as difficult. Or you offend the wrong faction and discover later that one mistake travels farther than the trial itself.” Lysa lifted a dark green gown from the wardrobe, then rejected it and reached instead for black silk edged in dull bronze. “This one.”
Sabine dried her face. “Why that one?”
“Because you are not trying to look soft today.” Lysa glanced at her reflection in the mirror. “And because you already look like a woman who has not slept because she was thinking about something she should not want.”
Sabine met her eyes in the glass.
Lysa’s mouth shifted. “So I’m right.”
Sabine said nothing.
Lysa stepped closer and lowered her voice. “Was it him?”
Sabine should have lied. Instead she looked down at her marked hand and said, “Yes.”
Lysa let out a slow breath, not surprised, only grimly confirmed. “Then you need control today more than food.”
Sabine closed her fingers into a fist. “I know.”
But knowing and having were different things. That was turning into the story of the entire palace.
Lysa dressed her in the black silk, laced it close through the bodice, and pinned her hair higher than usual, exposing the line of her throat and the marked hand both. No necklace. No softness. No distraction.
When she finished, she stood back and studied her.
“You look dangerous,” Lysa said.
“Good.”
“No,” Lysa said. “Dangerous is useful. You look like a woman trying very hard not to look touched.”
Sabine’s pulse kicked once, hard.
Lysa softened just slightly. “Then do not let the trial smell blood.”
The preparation chamber felt thinner than usual.
The fast had stripped something from all of them.
Even the air seemed sharper. Brinna sat folded into herself on the far bench, pale and shaky, her lips dry.
Tavi stood by the window with all the tightly contained violence of a drawn blade.
Yselle looked immaculate, which meant she had decided to weaponize deprivation the same way she weaponized everything else.
When Sabine entered, Yselle’s gaze slid over her once and stopped.
“Lady Sabine,” she said. “You seem surprisingly composed.”
Sabine took her place without answering.
Yselle smiled faintly. “Then again, perhaps time alone in the archives with His Highness is restorative in ways sacred fasting is not.”
The room went still.
Tavi’s eyes flicked toward Sabine at once. Brinna looked down at her hands. One of the river daughters flushed, though whether from scandal or fascination Sabine could not tell.
Sabine turned her head and met Yselle’s eyes.
“You appear curious,” she said.
“I appear observant.”
“That is a generous word for it.”
Yselle’s smile sharpened. “I thought scholarship might have agreed with you.”
Before Sabine could answer, Halvine entered carrying a lacquer tray with seven stoppered glass vials.
Saved by protocol. Again.
“The Trial of Hunger measures discipline under temptation,” Halvine said. “You have fasted. You will now be offered abundance. Appetite is not failure. Indulgence is. Refusal is not always strength. Sometimes it is insult. Read correctly. Behave correctly. Survive correctly.”
She handed a vial to each bride.
Sabine pulled the stopper and drank.
The liquid tasted bitter at first, then floral, then something stranger.
Heat moved through her body in a slow, even wave.
Not intoxicating. Clarifying. Her skin felt suddenly too awake.
The scrape of silk against her ribs. The dryness of her mouth.
The faint pulse in her hand. Everything sharpened.
Brinna swallowed hard after drinking hers. Tavi muttered, “Wonderful.”
Halvine ignored her.
“The banquet will proceed in order of selection. Lady Sabine first.”
Of course.
Sabine set the empty vial down and felt the mark pulse once under her skin, warm and low, like anticipation.
The banquet hall glowed.
Not warmly. Hungrily.
Candles burned in ranks along the walls and in high candelabras down the center of the room, throwing amber light across crimson cloth, gold plate, polished crystal, and platters loaded with enough food to shame a harvest feast. Roasted birds lacquered to a dark shine.
Bread glazed with butter and herbs. Fruit split open to show jeweled flesh.
Honey cakes. Spiced wine. Silver bowls of cream.
The scent hit her the moment she crossed the threshold and lodged hard under her ribs.
After the fast, it was almost unbearable.
That was the point.
The marked brides were seated alone at a long central table. The galleries around them were full. Nobles, clergy, council members, court women, and the same soft-faced men who always seemed most interested when something humiliating was called sacred.
Sabine took her seat.
Her pulse had already started climbing.
At the far dais, Lucien sat at the high table in formal black, one hand resting loosely near his cup. He did not look at her.
She felt him anyway.
The bond stirred at once, a low warm current through her palm, as if it recognized the room had become more dangerous because he was in it and she wanted him.
A priest began speaking blessings over the feast.
Sabine barely heard him.
Servants came in silence. Plates were set down. Cups poured. Nothing touched yet. Everything offered. Everything waiting.
She watched.
A small silver cup appeared at each place.
Drink first.
Sabine lifted hers and swallowed. The wine was dark and spiced and alive with whatever had been in the vial earlier. Heat spread through her chest and lower, making hunger suddenly less simple than food.
The first course followed. Thin slices of meat over dark bread, pears, mustard seeds, bitter greens. The scent made her stomach clench.
She ate slowly. Carefully. Never the first to reach. Never the last. Yselle did the same. Tavi ate like a woman refusing to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing her starve prettily. Brinna looked close to shaking apart.
Then the hall began testing.
A councilman offered bread to one bride before custom permitted it. She took it and earned a temple clerk’s narrowed look.
A lady from the upper gallery sent sugared figs down to another girl as a gesture of “favor.” Accepting them meant something. Refusing them meant something else.
The room was a web. Every hand extended carried rank. Every refusal carried consequence.
Sabine kept her breathing even and read as fast as she could.
Then Lord Solhain descended from the gallery carrying a wine decanter.
The room noticed immediately.
He moved from bride to bride with courtly ease, pouring for some, pausing too long at others. When he reached Sabine, his smile held exactly the amount of insult he believed decorum could contain.
“Lady Sabine. May I?”
He tipped the decanter slightly.
Her marked hand went hot.
“No,” she said.
Softly. Clearly. No apology.
Solhain’s eyes flicked to her wrist. “A refusal.”
“A preference.”
A pause.
Then he smiled and moved on.
Sabine kept her expression blank, but her pulse beat visibly at her throat. She had no idea whether she had just done something wise or catastrophic.
And then Lucien rose.
The room quieted so quickly it felt like a lung emptying.
He came down from the dais carrying a single crystal cup.
Not for the table. For her.
By the time he reached her chair, every eye in the hall was fixed on them.
“Lady Sabine,” he said.
His voice was formal. Level. Controlled. It only made the danger worse.
He held out the cup.
She looked up at him and saw what nobody else in the room could possibly read correctly. The restraint in his jaw. The careful stillness in his hand. The fact that this was not impulse now. This was choice. Deliberate. Public. Reckless in exactly the way he despised in himself.
Sabine reached for the cup.
Their fingers touched.
The mark answered violently.