Chapter 30
CHAPTER
Sabine
The now familiar weight of Lady Delarine’s front door pressing closed felt like the final note of a song. Sabine slid down the polished mahogany until marble met silk, her skirts pooling around her in disarray.
She lifted her hand to catch the Light orbs’ silver glow, scattering rainbows of starlight across the foyer.
The violet-blue stone seemed to contain entire twilight skies, a single star pattern cut through the diamond’s central facets.
Around the stone’s bezel, a halo of seed pearls shimmered, delicate yet secure, as if someone had strung grace into armor.
It was far too fine for her. And yet, it gleamed on her finger like it’d always belonged there. Like it’d finally come home.
Sabine spent far too long on that floor, staring at that ring, willing her racing heart to slow.
Her ring. Given to her by her fiancé.
She wasn’t sure why the notion of the very thing she’d spent months attempting to extricate herself from suddenly gave this warm, tingling sensation low in her belly.
The marks still spelled a death sentence. That much hadn’t changed. But… well, nearly everything else had.
She’d expected the household to be asleep by now.
Still, she found Lady Delarine and Liora in the parlor huddled around a small marble table, their attention focused on an arrangement of painted tiles depicting the twelve affinities in intricate detail.
The women arranged them in a complex pattern on an inlaid board, the design shifting like a kaleidoscope as tiles were drawn and discarded.
Sabine lingered in the doorway, drinking in the sight with greed. How many more times would she witness her sister so carefree, hear her unguarded laugh? How many more moments like this existed before the Empire’s machinations tore them apart entirely?
Liora’s face broke into a grin when she looked up and found her sister watching. “Bine! Come, come. Lady Delarine is teaching me to play Twelvefold Concord.”
Sabine approached with her hands clasped behind her back. “Is she, now?”
“It’s a Keshiran game, you see. You must use strategy to win it.” Liora’s enthusiasm made her seem younger, more like the girl who used to steal cake from the kitchen for their secret balcony feasts.
“Your sister is a quick study when it comes to subterfuge, Miss Almarien.” Though her tone remained conversational and pleasant, Sabine did not miss the sharp edge in the Duchess’s words. Liora, mercifully, remained oblivious.
“Sit, Bine, sit. We are almost through this round.”
Sabine settled into one of the empty chairs, careful to keep her hands hidden under the table’s edge.
She twisted the ring around her finger, finding comfort in its weight.
It anchored her, steadied her like counting her breaths did, reminded her that some choices remained hers to make.
The women continued to play. Liora’s natural grace extended even to the simple act of drawing and discarding tiles.
Lady Delarine moved with calculated precision, each decision weighed against the potential consequences three moves ahead.
“We missed you at supper, Miss Almarien,” Lady Delarine finally said.
Sabine cleared her throat. “Miss Celastra asked for my help picking furniture for her future home. We went shopping, lost track of time, and ate in the Terraces.”
“I cannot believe you are entertaining Virelle these days.” Liora’s face twisted in a scowl. “Did you not hear what Miss Novaris and Miss Velindor had to say on the matter? She is toxic. If you entertain her company, you shall be socially ruined, as well.”
“That is nonsense, Liora. And cruel.”
“It most certainly is not! The Season waits for no one. She will drag you through the mud with her.”
Sabine allowed steel to enter her voice. “What effect could she possibly have on my Season? You do realize my path is all but written already, right?”
“She will soil our good name.”
“Miss Liora…” Lady Delarine warned like a grandmother to a petulant child.
“We just got back in society’s good graces, after so many cycles of struggles! You can’t allow her to ruin that.”
Something hot and forceful pressed against Sabine’s throat.
This was the result of cycles of accepting smaller portions so Liora could have more, of enduring whispered gossip while ensuring her sister remained untouched by it, of sacrificing to preserve her sister’s innocence.
A girl so insulated from consequences that she could not see their cause.
Her anger bubbled over, spilling into words she hadn’t planned to speak.
“No. What I cannot allow is for you to speak so cruelly of people you barely know.”
“But—”
“And do not worry about the Almarien name being soiled.” She placed her hands deliberately on the table, fingers intertwined. Her ring caught the light and threw it back in brilliant refractions. “I shall not carry it for much longer.”
The silence that followed felt dense enough to drown in. Then, Liora gasped sharply.
Lady Delarine’s eyes widened. “The Star of Corven. May I see it?”
Sabine allowed the older woman to take her hand, her touch remaining gentle despite the intensity of the examination.
“Queens of Corven wore this ring for centuries, before the Empire claimed their queendom. Rumor said it’d been lost when the dowager duchess stopped wearing it some fifteen cycles ago.”
The pieces aligned themselves in Sabine’s mind with satisfying precision. Azrian’s grandmother must have given him this ring before he was sent to Ilvarenne. But why him, the second son?
Another thought struck her. If the ring was still considered lost, it must have meant that—”Did Lady Evara not…”
“Oh goodness, no. The first Lady Vaelros did not wear a ring at all.”
Warmth spread through Sabine despite her attempts at containing it. He had chosen to give this ring to her . Not because tradition demanded it, not because the Empire required it, but because he wanted to .
The realization was its own kind of dangerous.
“My turn now.” Liora grabbed Sabine’s hand from the Duchess’s grip, twisting it this and that way, inspecting the ring from every angle.
Sabine held her breath, waiting for the inevitable explosion. Surely, this new choice would trigger another lecture about the social calculations Sabine should have paid closer attention to.
Instead, Liora sighed with blissful contentment. “It is most stunning, indeed.”
The pause that followed felt pregnant with possibility. Hope blossomed in Sabine’s chest that perhaps this engagement would mark a turning point, that Liora might finally accept Sabine’s happiness mattered too.
“Now that you’re engaged, we should focus all our attentions on Lord Blackwell. Maybe you could invite his parents to your blood vow? Oh, and we must have the Duchess over for tea. Tomorrow, perhaps? She ought to see the ring before the gossip rags report on it. It shall make her feel special.”
The words smothered Sabine’s hope until it had no air left to grow. “You wish to use my engagement as a means to secure your own?”
“Well, yes, of course.” Liora’s smile was so bright it could have lit all of Ilvarenne.
“It’s the perfect plan, don’t you think?
Let the Duchess see everything she has to gain by uniting Marethine with the Almarien valenhold and Lord Vaelros’s influence at court and in Corven…
she shall have no reason to object to our marriage, then. ”
“Lili,” Sabine said in the same tone she used to scold her sister when she was a child. “I don’t even know if Az—Lord Vaelros will wish to entertain such trivial pursuits. He is a busy man.”
Busy betraying the Empire he’d served for fifteen cycles, these days.
“Surely, he will make time for his wife’s family. And once Lord Blackwell proposes, we will all be family, so we should count the Duchess of Marethine as our family as well, don’t you agree?”
Sabine didn’t agree. “Do you even love this man? Why are you so eager for him to propose?”
“Who said anything about love?” Liora twirled a strand of hair around her finger. “You don’t love Lord Vaelros, do you?”
Sabine paused for one breath. Two. Three. “It’s different,” she finally said. It wasn’t lost on her that she hadn’t exactly said no.
“Hardly. I love what Lord Blackwell can provide for me. The life I imagine myself living alongside him. The place I shall take in society as his wife. It’s reason enough to marry him, for me.”
Memories of her sister devouring romance novels like doranelles for breakfast assaulted Sabine, no longer sweet but mocking and cruel. The girl she had fought so hard to protect was already disappearing like mist at midday, replaced by someone who saw the Empire’s chains as jewels.
And Sabine felt powerless to stop it.
“You can lock yourself in whatever gilded cage you wish, Lili. I’m your sister, not your captor, so I can’t stop you.
” Sabine lifted her hands in the air. “But that doesn’t mean I have to partake in your caging.
If you wish to marry Lord Blackwell, I’m sure you’ll find a way to achieve that on your own.
After all, that is what finishing school taught you, is it not? ”
“That is so selfish!” Liora stood, hands slamming on the table, scattering the neat organization of the tiles they’d been playing with. “I’ve helped you this Season. Miss Celastra stopped vexing you because of me. Why can you not do the same for me?”
Sabine didn’t point out that her sister’s intervention at the picnic only served Liora and her social ambitions. She didn’t think anything she could say, besides agreeing to support Liora’s marriage efforts, would placate her right now.
And for a moment, Sabine considered it. What harm could a little more help to her sister do?
After all, she’d been supporting her this long.
And she had done all of this—the Season, Lady Delarine’s sponsorship, even her own work as a governess—for the exact purpose of ensuring Liora would find a good match.
Sure, the match Sabine had envisioned had more to do with common interests, shared goals, attraction, chemistry, even love.
All the things Sabine couldn’t afford for herself.
The image of her gondola ride with Azrian rose unbidden, as if begging to differ with her own thoughts. Their fingers twining. Their breaths mingling. She shook her head as if to clear the haze the pictures brought.
This was not the time to entertain Liora’s social ambitions.
They had a killer on their heels, one who potentially answered to the highest powers of the Empire.
And with a ticking clock hurdling them towards their own blood vows, Sabine and Azrian were more and more likely to become the next victims. Sabine had to focus.
“Tell the Duchess of Marethine whatever you wish about my engagement and my blood vow.” Sabine rose from her chair, fists clenched.
Her ring caught the light again, throwing violet fire across the board’s geometric patterns.
This time, the beauty felt mournful, like flowers placed on a grave.
“But I cannot partake in this peacocking you’re intent on displaying. ”
At the threshold of the parlor, she paused without turning back. “I hope for your sake, little sister, that you find all the happiness you could ever wish for at the end of this engagement you so desperately seek.”
Sabine left the room with the finality of a funeral march. Some distances could not be bridged, even with genuine love. Some choices, once made, carved chasms too wide for even sisters to cross.