The conversation with Elodie was a fragile, gilded thread. Gisela smiled, laughed at the right moments, sipped her wine—performing the gracious daughter for her father's vibrant new bride. Then, the air cooled.
Sophia glided over, a shadow in silk and diamonds. She offered Elodie a perfect, shallow bow, a goblet steady in her hand. "I am Sophia. Queen of Spain," she said, her voice smooth as oil. Her eyes slid to Gisela, and the practiced warmth froze. "I do hope you will succeed where our mothers failed. In providing an heir, of course."
"By God's grace, I shall try," Elodie replied with a polite smile, subtly shifting to include Gisela again.
Then—
Splash.
The dark wine arced from Sophia's goblet, not toward the floor, but with deliberate, shocking accuracy across the bodice of Gisela's gown. The crimson velvet drank the stain, spreading instantly into a wet, purple-black bloom over her heart.
Gisela gasped, recoiling as the cold shock seeped through to her skin. "Ah!"
"Oh, mon dieu!" Elodie exclaimed, reaching with a napkin.
"A thousand apologies! What a dreadful clumsiness," Sophia murmured, her tone a masterpiece of feigned regret. She surged forward, her own napkin in hand. "Here, let me help—"
Her hands did not dab. They grasped. With a sharp, precise tug at the already-strained lace trim of the neckline, she tore it.
There was a soft, ripping sound, louder than a shout in the sudden hush that had fallen around them. The fabric parted, revealing a shocking crescent of pale skin and the curve of Gisela's breast before she could clutch the ruin to her chest.
Gisela stumbled back two paces, not from force, but from the violation. Rage, hot and blinding, flooded her, warring with a cold, paralyzing shame. Her eyes locked on Sophia, who stood holding the torn piece of lace, her expression now one of wide-eyed, counterfeit horror.
"What have I done?" Sophia breathed, for the benefit of the staring court. But her eyes, in that fleeting private moment before the crowd closed in, held only a glacial, triumphant spite. The message was clear: she could strip Gisela of dignity as easily as she had once stolen her childhood peace. The exposed flesh was merely the physical proof of a deeper, more permanent vulnerability.
A guard materialized from the periphery, his movement swift and silent. He did not ask. He simply stepped into the space between Gisela and Sophia, his broad back becoming an abrupt, unforgiving wall that severed her from her stepsister's venomous gaze. It was not chivalry; it was the containment of a scandal.
A gasp, then a torrent of whispers erupted, cresting around her like a wave of cold, slithering sound. The noise was not of concern, but of voracious curiosity. Gisela stood frozen, one hand pressed uselessly against the ruin of lace and velvet, the cold air of the hall a shocking kiss on her newly exposed skin. The feeling was less of nudity and more of a surgical unveiling, as if Sophia had ripped away not just fabric, but a layer of her political armor.
Then, a different hand closed around her upper arm. This grip was not the guard's impersonal solidity, but familiar and decisive. It pulled, and her body, disconnected from her will, obeyed. She was turned and drawn swiftly away from the guard, away from Sophia's false concern, into a current of bodies that parted just enough to let them pass.
She did not see who guided her. She saw only the blur of silks and leering faces, their whispers now sharpening into words that lashed at her retreating back—"scandal," "exposed," "how clumsy." The hand on her arm was her only tether, leading her not toward safety, but into a different, quieter shade of the same dazzling, merciless hell. The rescue felt like another form of capture.
Only then did Gisela lift her face. Tears had cut clean tracks through the powder on her cheeks, but her eyes were dry and wide with a shock so profound it felt like silence. Her gaze, seeking an anchor in the swirling malice, found Sebastian.
He was not smiling. The void in his eyes, so evident moments before with Henry, had focused into something still and assessing. His gaze did not flinch from her hands clutched over the torn fabric, from the devastating exposure she was trying to contain. He saw the ruin not as a scandal, but as a fact.
"Wait here," he said, his voice low and devoid of the mocking lilt he used for Henry. It was a simple, direct command. He turned slightly, his movement catching the attention of a hovering maid frozen in uncertainty. He did not request.
"Bring a cloak." His voice carried no volume, yet it sliced through the surrounding whispers. "Now."
The "now" was not impatient, but absolute. It was the sound of someone accustomed to being obeyed, even in exile. The maid scurried away. Sebastian turned back to Gisela, his body positioning itself at an angle that subtly blocked the most direct lines of sight from the crowd. It was not an intimate shelter, but a strategic one. He offered no false comfort, no touching words. He simply stood as a temporary wall between her and the feast's hungry eyes, his presence a silent indictment of the court that bred such cruelty and the brother who had allowed it to reach his wife. The awaited cloak would be not a comfort, but a shroud for her public dignity, delivered by the one man in the palace who understood what it meant to be stripped bare by this family.
The maid returned, offering a heavy wool cloak with a bowed head before dissolving back into the shadows. Sebastian took it and draped it over Gisela's shoulders. The fabric was coarse and smelled of horses and cold stone—it was a stable-hand's garment, not a queen's. Its weight was less a comfort and more an efficient concealment.
"Come," he said, his voice low. His arm encircled her, not as a lover's embrace, but as a bulwark against collapse. He felt the fine, seismic tremor running through her frame and guided her away from the light and laughter, into the deeper arteries of the palace where the silence was thick and cold.
He led her to a secluded embrasure where a narrow window overlooked a black, empty courtyard. The distant feast was now a dull murmur. Gisela's trembling began to still, replaced by a hollow calm.
"Don't ever cry like that where they can see you," Sebastian instructed, his tone not gentle, but practical. He cupped her face, his thumbs brushing away the residue of her tears with a startling tenderness. Her amber eyes, wide and lost, lifted to his.
"Have… have you seen Henry?" she asked, the habit of fear overriding the moment.
A shadow passed behind Sebastian's eyes. "You shouldn't worry about him. He is… otherwise engaged." His gaze held hers, searching. "You are alone."
The finality of it hung between them.
"You are beautiful," he said, the words soft but stark, devoid of poetry. When Gisela tried to lower her head in shame, his fingers gently tilted her chin back up. "I am serious." He studied her face as if memorizing a map. "Hauntingly beautiful."
He lowered his head. His lips found hers.
The kiss was not harsh, but it was deeply knowing—a communication that bypassed words. It spoke of shared isolation, of understanding the exact texture of the despair this family cultivated. Gisela, starved for any tenderness, any connection that wasn't a blade, could not pull away. A small, shattered sound escaped her. Her hand rose from her chest, her fingers finding the nape of his neck, not to push him away, but to anchor herself in the freefall.
She kissed him back, pouring every ounce of her confusion, her rage at Henry, her humiliation by Sophia, into that silent, desperate exchange. It was less a passion and more a mutual confession of ruin.