Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The goddess whispered in the Night Witch’s ear,

“It’d be so nice to see you, dear,

Open the door and let me go

There’s many stories you don’t know.”

—Children’s skipping rhyme

Lore sat by the ocean and felt, for the first time she could remember, completely fine.

The water was warm; it lapped against the white rim of the shore, splashing up her calves and wearing away at the sand she sat on. This wasn’t the beach by the harbor docks, cold and rocky—no, this was more like one of the beaches she’d heard about in the southernmost cities of Auverraine, where the rich sometimes went when winter bit too hard. There was no salt scent to the air. It smelled like nothing.

Like nothing.

Someone sat next to her. Lore couldn’t see who. When she turned her head, there was only a dark void, a person-shaped gap in the world.

A void, but if she looked too long, there were flashes of things in the dark. An obsidian block of a tomb. An iron brand, crescent-shaped, glowing orange. A woman with hazel eyes, just like hers.

Lore didn’t try to look again.

In the sky above the warm ocean, smoke twisted sinuously, gray against blue. It took Lore a moment to notice that the smoke was coming from her, streaming out from her chest, reaching dark tendrils over the water. As she watched, it stretched farther and farther, arcing over the sky.

Perfect, said the figure next to her, the one she couldn’t see. Much easier, this time.

Lore shot up from the too-soft bed, pressing her knuckles against her eyes until stars danced behind them. The mental barrier Gabriel had helped her make had finally failed, as if the strange nightmare even now fading from her memory had burned through her forest. She sensed Mortem in everything—the walls, the bedding, the furniture. It made her every limb feel leaden, made her head pound, the symptoms of suffocation even as she heaved lungfuls of air. The moment of death, crystallized and endless, all the pain with none of the peace.

Lore stood on shaky legs, hissing against the throbbing in her head. Between her mad dash away from the Northwest Ward, being tied to a chair for all of one night, and nearly dancing through another, her body felt like the end of a fraying rope.

With a lurch, she forced herself forward, through the bedroom door and into the shared sitting room. She nearly hit the wall, reeled back, gritted her teeth. Touching anything felt like a punch to her brain, and part of her wanted to claw off her perfectly tailored nightgown. She stayed her hand, but only just. Gabe would have to help her with this, and he wouldn’t be much assistance if his celibate heart gave out at the sight of her naked.

The one-eyed monk was still half propped against the threshold that led to the hallway, like a human doorstop. She prodded his shoulder with her foot; her head hurt too much to crouch down, she’d probably be sick all over him if she tried. “Gabe. It’s back.”

He went from sleep to wakefulness in an instant. Gabe sat up, his sheet slipping down to his waist, concern scrunching the skin around his eye patch—he slept in the thing, apparently, at least when he was guarding doors. His one blue eye flickered over her, took quick stock of the situation, thankfully knowing exactly what she spoke of without Lore having to explain. “Did you ground yourself before you fell asleep?”

“Did I what?”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“How the fuck would I have known to do that?” Pain made her sharp; Lore’s teeth were nearly bared.

Gabe took it in stride. He shifted his position so he sat cross-legged on the floor, palms on his knees. A sweep of his hand indicated he wanted her to do the same.

Lore did, slowly, hissing a string of curses. Her legs prickled with pins and needles; trying to move them felt like hauling sacks of unresponsive meat.

“Grounding,” Gabe said when she was settled, “is visualizing your barrier, setting it in place. Making it as real as possible in your mind, so that you don’t have to be actively concentrating to keep it up.”

“I haven’t concentrated on it all day, and it held up fine.” It’d only been a problem since her nightmare. Lore could still feel it tugging at the edges of her mind, at her heart, as if she hadn’t really woken up at all. As if the nightmare were a living thing, full of malice and trying to trap her.

But she couldn’t quite fix it in her mind. When she tried to recall exactly what happened in the dream, all she got were flashes—white sand, blue water.

His brows drew together, a fleeting expression of puzzlement. “That is odd.”

“Can we discuss the oddness later, please?”

A troubled light still shone in Gabe’s eye, but he nodded. His hands relaxed on his knees. “Think about your barrier,” he said, low and calm. “Every detail, no matter how small. Settle into it, so it seems as real as anything else.”

The only thing Lore felt like settling was her fist into her own face—anything to stop this headache. But she gradually calmed her breathing, unclenched her jaw. Untangled her thoughts from the unpleasant sensations of head pounding and a sweaty brow and death on every side, and thought instead of a forest.

Trees. Lots of them. Growing around her in an impenetrable green wall. She heard Gabe breathing in a deep, even cadence; her breath came in counterpoint, like she took in what he let out.

Slowly, slowly, the awareness of omnipresent death dimmed, faded. Not entirely, never entirely. But enough that Lore didn’t feel like she was drowning in it. In her state of deep concentration, where the forest in her head seemed as real and present as the dusty carpet below her, she could almost see something moving beyond her wall of trees. Smoke drifting sinuously in a blue sky.

The image itched at her mind, but she couldn’t fit it to a memory.

When the pounding in her skull subsided and her nightgown felt merely like cotton instead of a chthonic shroud, Lore opened her eyes.

Gabe was looking at her. He’d looked at her a lot over the course of their two days stuck together, but in light made only by a fire’s embers and with so much freckled skin visible, it seemed heavier now. Like he could really see her, a person, not a Mortem channeler or a pretender in a foxglove gown or a stone hung around his neck. Just a woman.

“Has it always been this bad?” His voice was hushed. “The awareness?”

Lore swallowed. “No.”

He stayed quiet, expecting her to go on. But when she kept silent, he didn’t press. “Our minds are most vulnerable in sleep,” Gabe said. “They’re more open, more receptive.” His eye fixed on her, shining with empathy in the moonlight through the window. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

As if this was what she’d be ashamed of, out of everything she had to choose from.

Abruptly, Lore stood. “Well. Thank you for helping me.” She rushed into her room, ready to fall asleep again, to lose herself in tree-shrouded oblivion. Eyes clenched shut, she imagined her forest, filled it out with as much detail as she could.

Branches swayed. Trunks grew thick. Through the emerald leaves, sinuous smoke snaked over an azure sky.

The Church was just as impressive as the Citadel, albeit in a different way. Where the Citadel was all opulence and gilt, the Church was austere, with whitewashed stone walls that nearly glowed, gleaming oak rafters, and pews polished to high shine. Gemlike windows of stained glass cast the gathered congregants of the North Sanctuary in shards of colored light as the sun slowly climbed the sky.

Not for the first time since rising at an ungodly hour—a phrase Gabe had taken as a pun when he woke her up, though she meant it in all sincerity—Lore gave silent thanks that she’d shown restraint with the wine fountain at Bastian’s masquerade. Her eyes still felt gritty from lack of sleep, but at least she didn’t look as haggard as some of the courtiers silently filing in through the wooden double doors. The parade of red eyes and missed streaks of glitter made an easy-to-follow guest list of who’d spent the night dancing with the Sun Prince and who hadn’t.

It would appear that most had. Among the younger courtiers, at least, Bastian was a popular man. She wondered if that was part of the reason why August was so eager to think him a spy. Men in powerful positions were unsettled by popular heirs waiting to take their places. In that regard, the Court of the Citadel wasn’t that much different from a poison runner crew. She’d seen more than one upstart assassinated by their own captain.

A yawn stretched her mouth so wide Lore’s jaw popped. She’d barely taken in the walk from the back entrance of the Citadel to the North Sanctuary, too tired to pay much attention. It was a good mile and a half, by her counting, the path cobble-paved and smooth, lined with rosebushes—a stark contrast with the rubble-strewn walkways in Dellaire proper leading to the South Sanctuary, the one meant for commoners. On either side of the path, the Citadel’s massive green spaces rolled, manicured fields and pseudo-forests, rich land fenced in by the fortress of the Church’s walls.

Something nudged her shoulder. Gabe. “Wake up, cousin.”

“I’m awake, cousin.” But another yawn cramped her jaw as she said it. “Why in all myriad hells are First Day prayers right at the ass-crack of dawn? Surely Apollius can still hear them around noon.”

Gabe inclined his head to the stained-glass window at the very front of the sanctuary. The Bleeding God’s Heart, set out in panels of red and gold and ocher. As the sun rose, its gleam traced up the window, slowly illuminating the glass until the whole thing blazed with color.

“That’s why,” he answered. She couldn’t tell if he sounded reverent or resentful. Maybe a little of both.

For sleeping against the doorframe all night, Gabriel seemed positively refreshed. Dressed in plainer clothes than he’d had for the masquerade—dark doublet, dark breeches, and a linen shirt beneath, this time with sensible sleeves—this was the handsomest he’d looked in their brief acquaintance.

Lore, on the other hand, had carefully avoided the mirror this morning, even as she brushed out her hair. The bags under her eyes were probably deep enough to smuggle hemlock.

The double doors at the back of the sanctuary remained open, emitting the last straggling courtiers. Alienor glided down the thick tapestry carpet running through the center aisle, the sun through the windows making her nearly white curls glow the same colors as the stained glass, a halo-like nimbus around her head. Her eyes were clear and her gait steady as she approached the altar at the front of the sanctuary, knelt, and kissed its polished wood. Lore and Gabe had done the same when they entered. Lore tried not to think about all the lips that had been on it before hers.

When Alie straightened and went to find her seat, her eyes met Lore’s. She smiled, threw a tiny wave. Lore returned it with a genuine smile of her own. Gabriel didn’t look at Alie at all.

An older man walked close behind Alienor, close enough that they had to be arriving together, though they looked nothing alike. His skin was milk-pale to her warm-copper, his hair wood-brown and pin-straight instead of white-blond and curling. His expression was dour, and the lines around his mouth said that rarely changed. The man’s gaze flickered to Lore, as if taking her measure.

“Who’s that?” she murmured to Gabe out of the side of her mouth.

“Severin Bellegarde.” Gabe didn’t have to move to answer the question; he’d been watching Alie already. “Alie’s father.”

Lore arched a brow. Alie must take after her mother, then, in every way.

She looked away from Bellegarde, made a show of studying the windows. Apollius, again, in various scenes both imagined and taken from the Tracts. Healing a mortal wound with a touch. Stepping through a door of cloud into what she could only assume was supposed to be the Shining Realm, leaving the world behind. Lore frowned and turned her attention to the crowd instead.

For all her resentment at being here, the North Sanctuary glittering with the gathered finery of the Court of the Citadel was certainly a sight to behold. They all knew exactly what to do, where to go, how to sit and wait and look holy, even with their eyes spiderwebbed in red from drink and poison the night before. As a non-noble, Lore had never been permitted in the North Sanctuary, and she’d only been in the South Sanctuary for common prayers a handful of times, mostly when she got caught in the shuffle while doing reconnaissance for a nearby drop.

The last of the courtiers filed in. The double doors leading to the green space and the Citadel beyond closed, booming in the silence.

At the front of the sanctuary, a small door on the raised platform behind the altar opened, emitting Anton, dressed in a robe so white it almost hurt Lore’s eyes, his Bleeding God’s Heart pendant swinging from his chest. Another of the Presque Mort emerged behind him, dressed in the usual black, holding a thurible spilling with thick incense smoke. She was missing a hand, the stump riven with lurid scars. It was rare to see women in the Presque Mort—before, anyone who wasn’t a man and could channel Mortem would’ve joined the Buried Watch, if they didn’t choose to simply try ignoring the call of their new death magic—but it did happen. Anyone of any gender could become a Mort.

And the Buried Watch wasn’t an option anymore. At least not officially.

Lore slid her eyes to Gabriel, still and stoic next to her. She probably would’ve tried to ignore her abilities, were her circumstances more conventional. The Presque Mort didn’t exactly make being a monk look fun.

Next to the Mort, a priest Lore didn’t recognize stepped up to the braziers lining the front of the dais and lit them with the flame of his beeswax taper. He was dressed in white, and unscarred. Just a general clergyman, then.

She watched Anton carefully as the braziers were lit. She’d think someone who’d been scarred by them so horribly would look at least a little nervous, but the Priest Exalted stepped right up to the smoking embers without so much as a momentary flinch.

Another door opened on the opposite side of the dais, larger than the first, inlaid with a sun’s golden corona around the lintel. August strode through, rayed crown on his head, a deep-orange cloak over his shoulders. The inside lining of the cloak was golden cloth, winking as he moved down the short stairs to the altar before the dais and sank to his knees, facing the gathered crowd.

The Sainted King’s movements looked slightly unsteady. A tremor in the knee, a tiny quake along his fingers. He scratched once at his neck, concealed by the high collar of his shirt, then clasped his hands in an attitude of prayer.

And behind him, moving at a pace just slow enough to interrupt the rhythm of the ceremony, was Bastian.

The Sun Prince looked like he’d been up all night—there was a slight reddening of his eyes, and tired lines beneath them—but somehow, he made it look good. His hair fell in gleaming waves to his shoulders, and the limning of scruff on his jaw looked rugged rather than sloppy. He was dressed similarly to his father, in a black doublet, black shirt, and black breeches, but his crown was a simple golden band across his brow, ruby-studded, and his cloak was crimson and bronze. He shot a lazy grin to the gathered court as he followed August down to the altar and slumped into a similar posture.

The King’s expression was hidden, his face lowered to his clasped hands, but Lore could see his shoulders stiffen.

Bastian shifted and pushed his hair from his face, artful in the way he made a calculated move look utterly nonchalant. Too handsome by half, and he knew it.

As if he could hear her thoughts, the Sun Prince glanced up, catching her eye. A grin curved his mouth.

Lore smiled back. Next to her, Gabe rolled his eyes.

Now that the royals were kneeling, the other courtiers did the same, smoothly going to their knees on the tufted pillows that stretched before the pews. Gabe sank with easy grace, head bowing forward.

It didn’t go so smoothly for Lore, who had to adjust the bend of her legs at least twice to keep her skirt from pulling down her neckline. She didn’t curse, though. Small improvements.

When everyone was kneeling appropriately, Anton raised his hands at the front of the sanctuary. The light through the window made the scars on his face look fresh. “Apollius, Lord of Light and Life, we greet You with the dawn, as we do at the first of every seven days.”

“We greet You and ask Your favor on the days ahead,” the gathered courtiers murmured. Lore’s tongue stumbled to keep up. She shot a sharp look at Gabriel—he could’ve told her there was audience participation here.

He gave a tiny shrug.

Up front, the one-handed Presque Mort swung the thurible to the rhythm of Anton’s voice. Gray smoke swirled around her feet, drifted over the floor to tangle around skirts and heeled boots, twining in the rays of August’s crown. The braziers added more smoke, making the sanctuary seem wreathed in heavy fog.

“We ask Your favor and beg Your protection from the dark,” Anton continued. “We ask that You shine the light from Your Shining Realm upon us, where You wait in glory.”

Lore’s lips twisted. The Shining Realm was the Church’s concession to death, the place where they thought Apollius was waiting, where He’d gone when He disappeared. If you were pious and followed the Tracts, you’d meet Him there after death. Lore could think of few things that sounded more boring.

“We beg Your protection and pledge our loyalty,” the nobles answered. “We seek the light of the place where Your undying body resides.”

The incense smoke reached them, heady and thick. Lore fought not to sneeze.

Anton lowered his hands, then his head, bowing with his chin toward the golden-rayed heart on his chest. A ripple as the gathered courtiers did the same. August and Bastian bowed, too, but the positions of the court before them and the Priest Exalted behind made it look almost like they were all bowing to the Arceneaux family.

She felt eyes on her. Anton, peering across the bowed heads to her own, with something unreadable in his expression.

Lore ducked her chin.

“We pledge our loyalty,” Anton said, “and tolerate no other sovereignty but Yours. We acknowledge none others as gods, and denounce those who’d claim it.”

“We tolerate no other sovereignty,” the courtiers murmured, “and accept none other than Apollius and those He’s blessed.”

Those he’s blessed.The Arceneaux family. Royalty and religion tangled up in an inextricable knot.

Lore shifted again, her legs going numb as they pressed into the hard floor.

“We bask in Your light,” Anton said, his hands coming down from their outstretched position to rest on his chest. He looked like the statue of the Bleeding God in the garden, and Lore was nearly certain it was intentional. “And we wait faithfully for Your return, when our world is cleared of darkness and made ready. We ask that You make a vessel for Your light.”

“We ask that You return and make us holy,” the gathered nobles murmured. “Return from Your Shining Realm and make it here.”

The thurible made one more rotation, swinging smoke in a spiral through the air. Then Anton, the Presque Mort, and the Priest with his candle stepped back.

The Sainted King stood. The light of the window behind him burnished his graying hair, illuminated the rays of his crown. Anton inclined his head to his brother, passing off the leadership of the ceremony.

There was a slight tremble in August’s hand as he raised it. “Gabriel and Eldelore Remaut, come forward please.”

Gods dead and dying, had it not occurred to anyone to give them an idea of how this was supposed to go? Gabe had told her that they had to be officially introduced, that it would look strange if they weren’t, but they’d received no instructions on how the actual introduction was supposed to take place.

August arched a brow, like he was irritated at their apparent confusion. Lore briefly considered wrenching one of those garnets off his crown and stuffing it in his nostril.

Gabe seemed just as surprised as she was. The two of them took a beat, looking at each other in lost silence. Then, ever graceful, Gabe offered her his arm and slid out into the aisle, leading her up to the altar and the smug faces of both Arceneaux men waiting there.

Curious gazes followed them. Lore couldn’t tell if any were friendly, but her money was on no.

August gave them a smile as they walked toward him, a cold one that came nowhere near his eyes. He didn’t say anything, instead flicking his fingers in a motion that told them to face the congregation.

Gabe’s cheeks burned, making the slight freckles across his nose stand out. But he did as he was bidden, taking Lore with him, and faced the court. The first row of nobles could probably hear her teeth grinding.

“At long last,” August said from behind them, voice lifted to carry across the North Sanctuary. “The Remaut family returns to the Citadel.”

He paused, and after a moment of needle-drop silence, the gathered courtiers gave a round of polite applause. Gabe’s arm was so tense beneath Lore’s hand that it nearly shook.

She squeezed, hoping to offer some kind of reassurance. But Gabe’s face didn’t change, like he barely registered her presence at all.

“Gabriel is on a brief… hiatus… from his holy duties to the Presque Mort,” August continued, “and will be residing with us for the season to introduce his cousin Eldelore to polite society. Please make them welcome.”

The courtiers all inclined their heads, faces inscrutable, blurred by the rapidly increasing sunlight through the windows lining the sanctuary. Lore nodded back, mostly because she wasn’t sure what else to do, and flicking both her middle fingers at them didn’t seem like proper duke’s-cousin behavior.

“Go in peace,” August said, and with that, First Day prayers were dismissed. Courtiers rose, making their way back toward the double doors leading to the path and the green. Voices murmured and laughed, the solemnity of religious ritual disappearing as the sun rose higher in the sky.

Lore looked to Gabe, but he still seemed far away, expression distant. After a moment, he drifted toward the doors with the rest of the nobles. With a weary sigh, Lore went to follow.

Gabe seemed so lost here. Almost as lost as she was.

August’s hand came down on her shoulder before she took a second step. “I’m afraid the court’s diversions will have to wait,” he said quietly. “You have a task before you, Lore. Come with me.”