They did not wait long, and that, more than anything else, told Sable the next move had already been decided before anyone bothered to call it correction.
The bell had barely finished echoing through the main hall when the summons began to spread. It did not come to her directly. It never did. It moved through servants first, through guarded looks and sharp exhales and the tightening of shoulders when someone realized what was about to happen.
"Assembly," someone muttered near the kitchen entrance.
"Lower ranks only."
Another voice, lower and tighter, answered from somewhere behind a stack of bowls.
"They're making an example."
Sable did not ask of whom. She already knew.
The main hall filled quickly, warriors lining the edges while elders took their places above on the raised stone platform that overlooked the floor like a carved tribunal.
Servants were ordered to stand in rows near the center, not kneel, not speak, simply witness.
Sable took her place without being told. Her ribs still ached with every breath, and her shoulder burned in the steady, punishing way that told her the joint had not forgiven the previous night's treatment. She kept her expression neutral, her chin level, and her body as still as pain allowed.
Rovan stood near the platform. The elder who had first asked for her confirmation sat beside him. Neither of them looked at her immediately.
They looked at the pack.
"This is not punishment," the elder began, his voice carrying easily through the chamber.
"This is correction."
The word echoed.
Two guards brought someone forward, and the moment Sable saw Lysa her stomach tightened hard enough to hurt.
Lysa's face was pale, her lip split, her hands bound loosely in front of her. She did not struggle. She did not look at the crowd. Her gaze stayed fixed somewhere beyond the elders, beyond the hall, beyond anything that could still reach her.
"This servant," the elder continued smoothly, "has displayed instability during reassignment. She has resisted corrective instruction."
Lysa's jaw clenched. Sable did not move.
"She has also," the elder added, "maintained proximity to ongoing disruption."
There it was. The narrative, reshaped and repackaged until cruelty looked procedural.
Lysa was forced to her knees beneath the platform by a firm hand at her shoulder. The hall went silent, not with compassion, but with anticipation sharpened into obedience.
"Correction will be administered," the elder concluded.
The first strike was not a fist. It was a rod, thin and flexible, designed to hurt without breaking bone. The sound it made when it cut through the air was sharp and precise. The sound it made when it landed was worse.
Lysa gasped, her body jerking under the impact, but she did not cry out. The second strike followed immediately, landing across her back, and this time the sound that escaped her was not controlled.
Sable felt it as if it had landed across her own skin. Her hands curled slowly at her sides. This was not administrative. This was not hidden. This was spectacle.
The third strike came harder, and Lysa's breath broke into a cry that bounced off the stone walls.
Sable stepped forward before she consciously decided to move.
It was not dramatic. Just a single step out of line. Every head turned.
Rovan's gaze snapped to her at once.
"Sable," he said calmly.
"Return to position."
The rod lifted again.
Sable drew in a breath that scraped painfully against bruised ribs.
"This is because of me," she said, her voice steady enough to carry.
A ripple moved through the hall. The elder's expression did not change.
"This is because of her behavior."
"You're lying," Sable replied.
A murmur rose from the servants. The rod did not fall. Not yet.
Rovan descended one step from the platform, his posture controlled, his expression composed.
"You were given opportunity," he said.
"You refused."
"Yes."
"And now correction is required."
"For me," Sable said.
"Not for her."
The hall held its breath. This was the moment Grimridge liked best, when defiance could be crushed cleanly and publicly.
Rovan studied her for a long moment, measuring something behind his calm exterior. Then he nodded once to the guard holding the rod.
"Continue," he said.
The strike landed again. Lysa screamed this time, and Sable did not move.
She stood there, every muscle in her body trembling with contained fury, her mind racing not with panic, but with calculation. If she attacked, they would drag her down. If she signed now, they would stop. If she stayed silent, they would finish.
The rod rose again, and Sable stepped forward fully.
"Enough."
Her voice cracked across the hall like a whip.
The guard hesitated.
Rovan's eyes sharpened.
"You will not disrupt this assembly."
Sable walked toward the platform, ignoring the guards who shifted nervously at the edges. She did not rush or lunge.
She walked like someone who had already decided something irreversible.
"You want compliance," she said clearly.
"You want responsibility. You want someone to carry the pattern."
She climbed the first step of the platform, and gasps rippled through the servants.
"You're out of place," Rovan warned.
"Yes," she agreed.
"So are you."
The rod lowered slowly. The elder leaned forward slightly, interest replacing irritation.
"Speak carefully."
Sable met his gaze and did not blink.
"You're not correcting instability," she said.
"You're trying to prove that refusal is contagious."
Silence fell heavy.
"You hurt her," Sable continued, "because you can't make me agree."
The elder's voice turned cold.
"You presume too much."
"No," she said.
"I see clearly."
Her shoulder screamed as she lifted her injured arm, but she did not let the weakness show. She pointed toward Lysa.
"If this is about her behavior, release her and let me take the punishment."
A collective intake of breath swept through the hall.
Rovan's expression shifted almost imperceptibly.
"You misunderstand," he said softly.
"This is not negotiable."
"Everything is negotiable," Sable replied.
"You just don't want witnesses."
The elder stood, and the motion alone silenced the room.
"You believe you are making a moral stand," he said.
"You are making a strategic error."
Sable's heart pounded violently against her ribs, but her voice remained level.
"Then make me the example."
A long, heavy pause followed. Then the elder nodded once.
"So be it."
The guards released Lysa immediately. Two others seized Sable before she could react, dragging her fully onto the platform and forcing her down to her knees where Lysa had just been.
Pain flared as her injured shoulder twisted under their grip, but she did not resist. The rod was placed in a different hand this time.
Not a guard's. An elder's.
The first strike landed across her back.
Pain split through her at once, blinding and immediate, cutting through bruised flesh and fresh injury alike, tearing a raw cry from her throat despite every effort to contain it.
The second came harder. The third struck too close to her already battered ribs, and for a moment the hall dissolved at the edges.
But she did not collapse.
She stayed upright, her breath ragged, her vision swimming, her hands digging into stone hard enough to hurt.
The fourth strike split skin. Warmth spread beneath her clothes. The fifth turned the room into light and sound and pain.
By the time the sixth should have landed, the air in the hall had changed.
It happened before anyone spoke. Before she fully lifted her head. A pressure entered the space so completely that even the elders felt it. The rod stopped midair.
Cassian stood at the entrance to the hall.
He had not spoken. He had not ordered anyone to stop. He had simply arrived, and the entire room seemed to pull tighter around him.
From where Sable knelt, half-blinded and shaking, she saw his gaze move slowly from the elder's hand to the rod, then to the blood darkening the back of her clothing. His expression did not change, but something colder than anger settled into the hall with him. He looked at her too long, not with softness, not with pity, but with a stillness that seemed to sharpen rather than soften what he saw.
His attention dropped once, briefly and with frightening precision, to the line of her throat and then to the raw marks around her wrists, and whatever he noticed there tightened something in his face before it vanished again.
The elder lowered the rod.
"This concludes correction," he said coolly.
Sable's restraints were removed. Her body tipped forward at once, strength gone, but she did not hit the floor. Hands caught her. Cassian's.
He did not lift her gently. He did not cradle her. He simply kept her upright for one suspended second, long enough that the entire hall could see his hands on her, his grip too certain and too direct to mistake for accident.
In that instant his eyes moved over her again, lingering in the hard, deliberate way a man might look at something that had already entered his territory whether he wanted it to or not.
Then he released her.
Sable hit her knees hard against stone, pain flaring through her ribs and shoulder, but the message had already been delivered.
Cassian turned and walked out without a word.
The hall remained silent long after he left. Rovan's face had gone pale. The elder resumed his seat.
"Assembly dismissed."
The pack dispersed slowly and uneasily, the edges of order no longer sitting right. Sable remained on her knees until Mara and another servant rushed forward to lift her carefully.
Her vision blurred and her hearing dulled, but she understood enough to know what had just happened.
Cassian had not saved her. He had not stopped the punishment. But he had drawn a line in front of witnesses, and Grimridge had felt it.
As she was carried from the hall, blood trailing faintly behind her, Sable understood something with painful clarity.
This was no longer containment.
This was fracture.
And fractures spread.