Erik's face darkened at her words. "If a man raises his hand to his wife, that's a criminal matter. The Royal Judiciary would intervene."
"And if he doesn't hit her but makes her miserable in a thousand other ways? If he controls every aspect of her life, isolates her from friends and family, makes her feel like she's going crazy? What then?"
Her brother was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was careful. "Has someone hurt you, Sera? Is this about Thorne? Did he do something yesterday that—"
"No." Rachel held up a hand. "This isn't about me specifically. I'm just asking questions."
"These are dangerous questions."
"Why? Because they might have uncomfortable answers?"
Erik stood and crossed to her, taking her hands in his. His grip was warm and his expression was genuinely worried. "Because the Temple of Divine Order doesn't take kindly to people who question the sanctity of blessed unions. Because suggesting that marriages can or should be dissolved is considered heresy in some circles. Because even asking these questions could damage your reputation and your marriage prospects."
Rachel almost laughed. Her marriage prospects. As if she had any intention of participating in this system.
"I appreciate the concern, but I'm not worried about my reputation right now."
"Well, I am. You're my sister, and I don't want to see you hurt yourself out of spite because Thorne chose someone else."
There was real affection in his voice, real protectiveness. It made something twist in Rachel's chest. She'd been so focused on the mission, on fixing the problems she could see coming, that she hadn't stopped to consider that Seraphina had people who loved her. People who would be confused and worried by her sudden personality change.
She squeezed his hands. "I promise I'm not doing this out of spite. I'm doing it because I'm genuinely interested. Can you trust me on that?"
Erik searched her face, then sighed. "I can trust you. I'm not sure I can trust whatever has gotten into your head, but I can trust you." He released her hands and moved toward the door, then paused. "Just be careful, Sera. The world isn't always kind to women who ask too many questions."
"Noted."
He turned back at the threshold. "And for what it's worth? I never thought Thorne was good enough for you anyway. He's too cold. Too controlled. You deserve someone who sees you, not someone who keeps you in a glass case."
Rachel felt a genuine smile tug at her lips. "Thanks, Erik."
After he left, she returned to the documents with renewed focus. If the Temple and the nobility were going to resist the idea of dissolved marriages, she needed to understand the exact mechanisms of their resistance. Every system had pressure points. Every authority had limits to its power.
She just had to find them.
The afternoon stretched into evening as Rachel worked through the documents. She discovered that the Office of Matrimonial Contracts kept records of every noble marriage for the past three hundred years. Those records were theoretically public, accessible to anyone who petitioned the Royal Judiciary for access.
That was useful. If she wanted to build a case for why the current system was failing, she needed data. Statistics. Patterns of abuse or abandonment that the romantic narrative conveniently ignored.
She also found references to something called "marriage settlements," which were apparently negotiations that happened before the wedding to determine property rights, inheritance, and financial arrangements. The settlements were binding contracts, subject to the same rules as any other legal agreement.
Which meant they could be challenged in court if one party could prove coercion, fraud, or breach of terms.
Rachel's mind raced with possibilities. If she could find women who'd been coerced into marriages, who'd signed settlements under duress, she could argue for annulment based on contract law. It wouldn't be divorce exactly, but it would establish the principle that not all marriages were sacrosanct.
A different maid arrived with dinner on a tray and another stack of notes from concerned friends. Rachel accepted the food and ignored the notes, too absorbed in her research to care about social niceties.
By the time the sun set, she'd filled six pages with notes in handwriting that looked nothing like Seraphina's elegant script. She'd identified three potential legal precedents that could be interpreted as allowing separation under extreme circumstances. She'd found the loophole in marriage contracts about renegotiation. And she'd discovered that the Temple's authority over marriages was granted by royal decree two centuries ago—which meant it could theoretically be modified by another royal decree.
The pieces were falling into place. Slowly, but surely.
Rachel was halfway through her dinner, reading a treatise on property law that was so dry it made her law school textbooks look exciting, when she found it.
Buried in a footnote, mentioned only in passing, was a reference to something called the Petitioner's Right.
She almost missed it. The footnote was small, the text cramped, and the author clearly thought it was an irrelevant historical curiosity. But Rachel read every word, every clause, every boring legal document with the same intensity, and this one made her stop breathing.
The Petitioner's Right was an ancient law from before the current dynasty. It allowed any citizen—regardless of rank or status—to bring a grievance directly before the Crown if they felt they had been failed by existing legal channels. The petition had to demonstrate that the petitioner had exhausted all other remedies, that the matter was of significant import, and that justice had been denied through the normal courts.
If accepted, the Crown would hear the case personally and render judgment. That judgment would supersede any lower court decision, any religious doctrine, any noble privilege.
It was the nuclear option. The last resort. The safety valve built into the system to prevent absolute tyranny.
And according to the treatise, it had never been repealed. The law was still on the books, still technically valid, even though no one had successfully invoked it in over a century.
Rachel set down her fork and read the passage three more times to make sure she understood correctly.
This was it. This was her way in.
If she could invoke the Petitioner's Right, she could bypass the Temple entirely. She could bypass the nobility, the prejudices, the romantic ideology. She could bring a case for marriage dissolution directly to the Crown and argue it on legal rather than religious grounds.
It would force the system to acknowledge that eternal bonds weren't always in everyone's best interest. That sometimes, the law needed to protect people from the institution that was supposed to protect them.