Chapter 44
CHAPTER
Sabine
Sabine couldn’t imagine how she was meant to sleep, with her household under siege.
Tonight, every window was shuttered against the approaching Dusktide cold, but still the chill found her.
Except it was the hollow, icy ache of uncertainty, crawling up from the stones and into her bones.
The world outside Vaelros House might have remained unchanged, but inside, everything was new, fragile, and sharp as ground glass.
She sat at her vanity, elbows perched on the marble top, bare feet planted in the plush of the rug.
The chandelier flickered with the silver glow of Light-affinity orbs, casting a cold, unwavering light across the table.
Ellie hovered behind her, a silent presence, brushing out the knots in Sabine’s hair with careful, ritualistic patience.
The mirror was unforgiving to the heavy shadows beneath Sabine’s eyes, the way her mouth had become a thin, colorless line as if the world had leeched life right out of her. In this reflection, she almost didn’t recognize herself.
“You have not touched your tea, my lady,” Ellie murmured. The brush worked methodically, unhurried, a metronome for the nerves dancing inside Sabine’s skin.
“It was not so much for drinking as for the scent,” Sabine said. “The lavender reminds me of our valenhold. It’s the smell of childhood.”
Ellie’s face in the glass was unchanged, but her hands faltered, just a fraction. “The world is never kind to beautiful things. We try to preserve them, but in the end, they wither all the same.”
Sabine offered a soft, practiced smile. She traced the rim of the cup. “You are a poet at heart, Ellie. You should’ve been born in the old age, when poets could earn their bread.”
Ellie’s slender fingers paused in her task, gathering a fresh lock of Sabine’s hair, settling the strand into place with a gentle tug. “Or die for it.”
The brush glided over Sabine’s scalp, soothing. Ellie replaced it with a comb as if handling a sacred relic. “My mother used to say that every great art is equal parts beauty and peril.”
Sabine closed her eyes, surrendering to the sensation of Ellie’s careful strokes.
Somewhere deep in her memory, she felt the familiar comfort of her own mother’s hands, patiently untangling her childhood hair beside a sunlit window.
The memory felt distant, almost fragile, like a gilded frame without its picture.
She almost startled herself when she spoke.
“I wanted to thank you, Ellie. Not just for tonight, but for… everything.” She turned, just slightly.
The vanity’s crowd of bottles and vials caught the light, scattering tiny sparks of color across the wallpaper.
“You’ve stood by me through cycles of discomfort and uncertainty.
I know it hasn’t been easy. If you ever wish for another position or a recommendation, you need only ask. ”
In the mirror, Ellie’s expression flickered. For a heartbeat, Sabine couldn’t decide if what she glimpsed there was gratitude or sorrow. “I have no wish to serve another, my lady. Your family took me in when I had no other home. I belong to this House. I mean to die in it, as well.”
Sabine didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing. In the quiet, Ellie finished the last section of hair, coiled it loosely, and tied it with a navy ribbon. “Will you need help with your nightgown?”
Sabine shook her head. “I can manage a row of buttons. But if you wish to keep me company a while, I wouldn’t object.”
A real smile, quick and shy, flickered over Ellie’s face before she hid it away. “I’d like that.” She tidied the vanity, lining up every bottle and brush with the exactness of a clockmaker.
They sat in companionable silence. Sabine’s fingers toyed with a strand of hair that had escaped its bindings as her mind sifted through the wreckage of the past days: the brutal murder, the grim registry hearing, the sickening sight of her own bracelet on a corpse’s wrist. She could still feel the High Binder’s cold, dissecting gaze.
At last, she broke the quiet. “Ellie, when you heard of the murder, what was your first thought?”
Ellie didn’t hesitate. “That it was a message meant for you.”
“So you don’t believe me capable of such a thing?”
“No, my lady.” Ellie’s voice was certain, and it soothed like a balm. “There are cruelties you’re incapable of committing. I’d wager my life on it.”
This time, Sabine’s smile was as real as it was fleeting. “That’s a comfort. Even if it is more faith than I deserve.”
Ellie seemed pleased. She struck a match and lit the tapers beside the bed, then drew the velvet curtains against the night. Sabine stayed at her vanity, tracing the rim of a glass vial while Ellie set out a crystal phial of sleep-draught.
“If I may ask, my lady… do you think the Registry will discover the true killer?”
Sabine weighed the question. “If I’m being honest, I don’t see an incentive for them to do so, when they’ve already made me the perfect pariah.”
“But you’re not perfect in that sense.” Ellie scratched her jaw. “If you had some kind of destructive affinity, sure. It could’ve worked in their favor. They could’ve claimed you had… lost control, or… not known your own limits.”
A ribbon of dread wound through Sabine as she witnessed Ellie reason with the cold clarity of a strategist. It was a side of her Sabine had not been privy to before.
“But this? Cold-blooded murder. You had no reason to kill her, and certainly not in that way. She was another debutante, was she not? It would be like… well, clubbing a lamb with a hammer then painting its fleece with your own colors.”
The aftertaste of bile rose to Sabine’s throat, but she let Ellie continue.
“The target was far too obvious, that with the mark on her wrist and all. Killing her would be like begging for attention upon yourself, especially when you didn’t even know her! It doesn’t make any sense. None at all. I’ve said it to anyone who will listen, my lady.”
Sabine’s heart was pounding.
The Registry report had never mentioned the mark or its placement.
Gossip columns had speculated endlessly about motive, but never that detail.
She met Ellie’s gaze in the mirror, searching for a hint of irony or malice. She found neither. “Thank you for your unwavering support,” she said, keeping her tone as neutral as possible.
Ellie shrugged. “It’s only right.”
Sabine turned to face her maid. “Ellie, forgive me for the imposition, but… may I ask something personal?”
“Of course, my lady.”
“I wonder, if we’d gotten there sooner, before she bled out from her wound… do you think your Ice affinity would’ve been able to save her? Slow the bleeding, at least until we could get her to a doctor?”
Ellie’s face tightened. “No, my lady, I…” she paused for a long moment. “I guess, if the wound was minor enough, it might’ve been possible. But you see, I am not a very good weaver. I can heal a burn here and there, but a cut that deep, I would’ve been helpless with.”
Sabine let the silence close in, so thick it felt like drowning.
She hadn’t specified how deep the cut had been.
“Thank you for your opinion, Ellie. I always value it.”
For a heartbeat, they were frozen in the mirror: mistress and servant, reflections of each other, neither able to look away.
“If you have need of me in the night, ring twice,” Ellie said.
Sabine nodded as Ellie moved around the room, blowing out the lamps one by one. When only the faintest light remained, Ellie offered a shallow curtsy and slipped from the room.
Sabine lingered at the mirror long after, mind racing. Perhaps Ellie had only heard the details from another servant. But the certainty in her voice, the exactness of her words—the way she spoke of death and survival, so easily—it was too careful. Too rehearsed.
Sabine had expected the murderer to be someone from the fringes of her life, not the person who represented the last, unwavering comfort from her old life. To have even that pulled away, one thread at a time, left her shivering in her own skin.