Chapter 16
CHAPTER
Sabine
Sabine sat on the bed in her borrowed room at Braythar House with a book open before her, the pages unturned for nearly half an hour. The words refused to resolve into meaning. Instead, they blurred at the edges, drifting off the margins like ghosts.
Ellie had left a porcelain cup on the nightstand to her left; the steam had long since vanished, though the faint scent of tea still lingered in the air. Sabine could not bring herself to drink it.
She wore a navy blue dressing gown, soft and oversized, which she’d slipped into the day she returned from the funeral. She had not exchanged it for anything else.
Days had gone by. Three, she thought, or four. No, five.
The bodice hung looser than she remembered. She’d been unaware of the change until the mirror, this morning—or was it yesterday?—had shown her the new shadows pooling at her collarbones. She had no memory of skipping meals, but neither could she recall eating them.
She tried again to focus on the page, forcing her eyes along each line, but the words would not resolve.
Instead, her mind kept circling back to the biers, to the careful arrangement of the Bennetts’ hands—folded, not touching, the Registry’s idea of dignity—and from there, helplessly, to twin biers she had stood before twelve cycles ago.
When Liora had asked for their parents to hold hands one last time, Sabine had done it herself, rearranging cold fingers until they interlocked, because her sister had been seven.
And Sabine had needed something to do with her own hands that were shaking like fallen leaves in Dusktide wind.
She pressed her palm flat against the open page.
The panic that lived beneath her ribs was not the sharp kind, the one she’d learned to fight off by counting breaths.
It was the kind that gripped at her and kept her immobile, like someone had tied a thousand-pound weight to her ankles and thrown her into the Velnar, and all she could do was sink.
It was absurd, the rational part of her insisted, to be seized by so much helplessness.
But melancholy was not rational. She couldn’t name what she mourned—not what had happened to the Bennetts, but something looming, some premonition of greater loss yet to come.
The Fade had taken eighteen months to finish what it started with her parents. Eighteen months of watching two people become less themselves, quieter, thinner, until the faces that looked back at her were wearing familiar skin over something unrecognizable.
The Bennetts had lasted days .
She’d never heard of someone dying so quickly, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that the marks had something to do with it, in some way. The thought haunted her into sleeplessness.
She had spent cycles in a clean bargain with herself: no blood vow meant no magic, surely, but it also meant no Fade.
She’d never end up like her parents, and that felt recompense enough for what she’d need to give up for it.
Then the mark appeared and rewrote every term without her consent, forcing her to run arithmetic she already knew she couldn’t solve.
The connecting door creaked, and Liora appeared, filling the space with her easy, practiced grace in a gown of muted dove-gray trimmed with violet ribbon.
“Are you planning to spend the entire week in this room?” Liora’s question was light in tone, but the look in her eyes betrayed a flicker of impatience. “You haven’t left in five days, it’s beginning to worry the staff.”
So five days, then. Sabine closed the book very carefully, like it might shatter. “I appreciate your concern.”
“You don’t look appreciative.” Liora folded herself into a chair, tucking her feet beneath the hem of her skirt.
She surveyed the untouched tea, the forgotten book, Sabine’s shapeless dress.
Her sister was doing her best to stay composed, Sabine could tell, but she was buzzing with barely coiled excitement.
“Come on, out with it.”
“With what?”
“Whatever it is you came here to say. I can tell you’re dying to share.” Sabine grimaced. Poor choice of words.
But her sister didn’t seem to notice. Instead, she produced a scandal sheet from the pocket of her gown. Sabine scanned it, but the words blurred together, much like the book she’d attempted earlier. Liora grew impatient, tapping her finger repeatedly on a line halfway down the second page.
“Me!” Liora squealed. “The Season’s Singular! Can you even imagine what that will mean for my prospects?”
Oh, Sabine imagined it, alright. She imagined it, because she’d concocted this whole thing, sold yet another part of herself to the Empire’s machinery to make it possible.
She should’ve felt more joy, relief, at least, that it’d worked.
Her sister would have her pick of a match and would finally enjoy the privilege of marrying for love.
It was everything Sabine had worked for.
Then why did it not soothe the hollow ache in her chest? Why did it not make her feel any less like she was drowning?
“I’m happy for you, Lili. You deserve it.”
Her sister pouted. “You know, Lady Hemsley is hosting a musical evening tonight. Practically everyone will be there.”
Sabine managed a brittle smile. “That sounds dreadful.”
“You’re being impossible.” Liora’s mouth tightened, but she kept her tone light. “The Bennetts would never have wanted you to exile yourself on their behalf. Come with me. You don’t have to speak to anyone. Just sit in the corner and listen to the music. It will help.”
Sabine wondered if her sister truly believed that or simply wanted to parade her own resilience before the world. “I don’t think it will.”
“You can’t hide away forever. People will talk. They already are.”
Sabine fixed her gaze on the rain-streaked window, the world beyond smeared into streaks of green and gray. “Let them talk.”
Liora’s foot began to tap. “You’re not even trying. Some of us are working to restore the family name. Now that I’ve managed to become the Singular, my Season cannot go wrong.”
Managed it. As if the title had been bestowed on Liora purely out of her own qualities.
Sure, her sister was beautiful, and she knew how to behave in society. Sabine was certain she’d rise to the challenge of the title. But could Liora not see the political machinations behind it? Did she not realize she’d only been given it because of the power they’d borrowed from others?
She drew her mouth into a line, refusing to acknowledge her sister’s antics. “You don’t need me to perform for the Gilt. Go to Lady Hemsley’s without me. Tell everyone whatever you like.”
For a moment, Liora just stared, the foot-tapping stilled. “You’re not well,” she said, voice gentler now. “You’re pale as a shroud. You’ve barely eaten.”
Sabine shrugged. “It will pass.”
“It won’t, if you keep brooding. I’ve seen you do this before.
I’m not saying you can’t grieve, but this isn’t grief; it’s…
well, I do not know what to call it, but it’s not normal, and it’s certainly not healthy for you.
Even Lady Delarine said so. If you don’t come tonight, people will think you’re—”
A flicker of movement in the doorway. The Duchess entered without a knock. The effect on the room was immediate. Liora straightened instantly, hands folded, face composed. Even Sabine felt the change, as if someone had opened the window and let in a finer, colder draft.
“Am I interrupting?” Lady Delarine sounded kind, but her gaze was careful, missing nothing.
“Not at all,” Liora replied, saccharine composure resuming its place. “We were just discussing Sabine’s plans for this evening.”
The Duchess allowed herself a mild, knowing smile and drifted toward the settee across from Sabine. “Plans? I assumed you had none. You haven’t left your rooms in days.”
Sabine stared at her hands. “I’ve had little appetite for company.”
“Lady Hemsley’s music night is hardly company,” Liora interjected. “It’s practically a civic duty. Besides, I’ve already assured our hostess that we’ll both attend.”
Sabine flinched at the presumption, but said nothing.
Lady Delarine regarded her for a long, careful moment. “Grief is a complicated thing,” she said at last. “But so is despair. And when the two are entangled, especially when they have been for a very long time, one can lose sight of the door that leads out.”
Sabine looked at the Duchess, finding only gentleness in her assessment. Was it purely the wisdom of her age that allowed Lady Delarine to see her so clearly?
Liora, undeterred, leaned forward. “She’s convinced herself that leaving the house would be unseemly. Not a soul expects us to go into some sort of religious mourning just because someone who was barely an acquaintance met a tragic end.”
That was… so very far from the reason Sabine couldn’t leave her room, she didn’t even know where to begin.“It has nothing to do with that,” Sabine said quietly.
“No, of course not,” Lady Delarine replied. “Life in Ilvarenne rarely pauses for tragedy. If it did, there would be no life at all. Still, I would like to understand what troubles you, child. Truly.”
Sabine’s throat tightened. “I can’t help wondering why so little has been said about their deaths. A newly bonded, marked couple, dying so soon after their blood vow cannot be a regular occurrence we all simply accept…” She trailed off, energy spent.
For a heartbeat, no one spoke.
Then, Liora and Lady Delarine exchanged a look.
“My dear,” Lady Delarine said, laced with that same careful patience one reserved for the feeble-minded, “the Bennetts did not bear a mark. You must be confused.”
Sabine stared.
Liora offered a brittle laugh, chiming in with unconvincing cheer. “You’re probably thinking of another marked couple. There have been several announced already, and sometimes even I struggle to—”
Sabine could not hear the rest. The world shrank to a ringing. She searched the Duchess’s face, then Liora’s, for some sign that this was a joke, a misunderstanding.