Page 238 of The Ninth Bride

Sabine looked down at the names and understood her first act as queen would not be celebration.

It would be witness.

“We start with their names. Every one of them. The kingdom buried women under plaster and called it sanctity. Now it will learn who they were.”

Lucien stepped closer.

“Then we make them impossible to bury again.”

Below, the Blackwater moved through the city as it always had, carrying old dark beneath the evening light.

The bells kept ringing, uncertain whether they were announcing a queen or warning of one.

Sabine held the border packet over the dead brides’ names and felt the circlet settle steady against her brow.

The rite was broken.

So was the kingdom that had needed it.

And Sabine intended to make every hidden woman’s name impossible to bury again.