Chapter Nineteen

CHAPTER NINETEEN

A secret is a flame, and it cannot burn forever.

—Auverrani proverb

It only took a moment for Lore to start struggling, pulling against Bastian’s inexorable grip with curses that a duke’s cousin surely wouldn’t know. But that didn’t matter, not anymore. Michal had recognized her, and now Bastian knew who she was.

Whatshe was.

Lore twisted, trying to haul herself away, but Bastian pulled her on, toward the mouth of another narrow alley as the shouts of the crowd dimmed behind them.

No dagger, and she’d be no match for the Sun Prince in strength. Mortem was all she had. And though she wasn’t sure what she could do with it, in the absence of a dead body to raise, there had to be something.

Lore held her breath and waited for her vision to go grayscale, for her fingers to turn necrotic and cold. But it didn’t happen.

Instead there was a spark. A flash behind her eyes. The baked, heated scent of high-summer air, so close she expected a singeing. It collided with the sense of Mortem, familiar and empty, nothingness so compacted it had presence and mass. The two conflicting energies felt, for a moment, like they might tear her apart.

Bastian stopped. His grip on her arm didn’t loosen, but she felt his fingers spasm.

Then it was gone, so quickly it could’ve been the start of an aborted panic attack.

She could still feel the Mortem surrounding them, but she couldn’t see it, couldn’t channel it. Her vision would not change to the monotone that showed her life and death; the threads would not connect to her. Something was… was repelling Mortem, like an invisible wall had formed around her, cutting her off.

And as much as Lore hated her ability, it felt like losing a limb.

Whatever had just happened, it seemed not to affect the Sun Prince. He pulled her into an alley, sooty brick lined with crumpled trash. Then Bastian threw away her arm and spun to face her, advancing until she was trapped between the wall and his still-bare chest, not quite touching.

She reached for Mortem, but Bastian’s hand closed tight around her arm, and her sense of death was gone again.

What was he doing to her?

“Out with it,” Bastian growled, tossing the bloodied shirt in his other hand to the side. Gone was the casual, almost lazy arrogance he showed the court; Bastian’s eyes glinted like bayonet ends, just as sharp. “I was going to wait until we got to the vaults to demand my answers, but now that I know for sure you’re the girl who raised Claude, I’ve found I’d rather know it all now.”

“Horse,” she corrected him, because her brain was stuck in a hurricane, and it was the only thing that made sense for her to do.

“Yes, Lore, I’m aware it’s a horse.”

“No, his name is Horse. Not Claude.”

Bastian shook his head again, straightening; the motion brought their chests closer together. His hand left her arm and came to rest on the wall beside her head.

“Call the damn horse whatever you want,” Bastian said, “just tell me who you’re working for.”

“August.” Anxiety made her voice sound thin, like her throat wouldn’t expand enough to let it out fully. “You know that.”

“Is that it?” he asked. “Or are you on Kirythea’s payroll, too? You seemed very interested in what I knew about them.”

“No, I’m not working for Kirythea. Just your father.” Slowly, Lore managed to get her nerves under control. It didn’t seem like Bastian was planning to kill her. Not yet, anyway. “August thinks you’re working for Kirythea. That’s why I was trying to find out what you knew.”

He glared at her, one curl of sweaty black hair falling over his eye. “Well,” he said, after a moment. “Isn’t that a fun bit of irony.”

Lore set her jaw, still trapped between the prince and the brick. She didn’t know what to expect from this other, truer Bastian. Every line of him coiled with anger, the kind often hidden. Now, unfettered, it was so obvious she couldn’t believe she’d never noticed before, distracted by funny Bastian, clever Bastian, toying Bastian who seemed fairly easy to handle.

This was furious Bastian, and she had no idea what to do with him.

That strange gravity was back, like she’d felt when she and Bastian and Gabe were at the mouth of the culvert. Falling toward something inevitable.

The Sun Prince stepped back, though not so much that she could run for the alley mouth. His hands remained on either side of her head. “Here’s how this is going to go. You’re going to tell me exactly why my father brought you here. Then you’re going to tell me how you managed to channel more Mortem than the entire fucking Presque Mort is capable of.”

“Accident,” Lore said, latching onto the same excuse she’d given Gabe. “When I was a kid.”

His head tilted, a predator’s smile gleaming in the dark. “Oh, no, Lore,” Bastian murmured. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. See, I know who you are. I know you were a poison runner with Michal. I know you were their watchdog, because of some strange affinity you had for the catacombs. It’s remarkable, really, the things people will tell you if you just listen. I like listening.”

“Is that why you come here and get the shit beat out of you?” Lore spat. “To listen?”

“I come here because sometimes, being inside the Citadel makes me want to claw my own eyes out,” Bastian answered. “The listening is just a bonus. It’s how I found out about the villages, how I found out how little tax the nobles pay compared to everyone else. How I found out that the necromancer who raised a horse in the market square was just some girl. Getting the shit beat out of me, as you put it, is really the only way I know anything. Gods know my father isn’t going to tell me.”

Lore didn’t know if the chill in her limbs was from fear or the still-wet hem of her dressing gown.

“Now, I don’t know everything.” One of Bastian’s hands left the wall, went to his boot. Pulled something out. “But I know enough to be reasonably certain that your Mortem affliction didn’t come about in the normal way. I know enough to be sure that the truth is far more interesting than a childhood accident. So when I ask you a question, Lore, I expect it to be answered truthfully.”

Whatever he’d retrieved from his boot gleamed in the dim light of the alley, brighter than his bared teeth. A dagger, held casually in his hand, but tilted so she could see its shine.

“Let’s try again. This time, we can start with the questions about my father, since it seems you might answer those more easily.” Bastian leaned forward, close enough to kiss. The blade of his dagger scraped lightly at the silk of her dressing gown. “Why did he bring you here, other than to spy on me?”

“The villages.” She could try to lie again, but what was the point? Bastian still didn’t seem like he was going to kill her, but any conversation that included a blade seemed best to meet with truth. Gabe had tried to warn her.

Gabe. She hoped he had the sense not to come after her, but she wasn’t counting on it.

Lore swallowed, continued. “August and Anton are trying to figure out what happened to the villages. They want me to raise the bodies and ask them.”

“And do they have any suspicions?” If Bastian was shocked by the task his father had given her, he didn’t show it. “I can guess.”

“They think it’s Kirythea, using some sort of elemental magic left over from the minor gods. And they think you’re working with them, somehow.”

Something seemed to shutter in Bastian’s face. Not guilt, nothing that simple. Almost… hurt. It softened the lines of the predatory thing he’d become.

“Of course they do,” Bastian said quietly. He huffed, the sound too weary to be the start of a laugh. His head dipped just enough for the shadows to hide his eyes. “So that’s why you’re supposed to stay near me, I take it?”

She nodded, quick and truncated. Bastian held his dagger loosely, almost like he’d forgotten it was there, but she certainly hadn’t.

“Look what we have here.”

A new voice, coming from the mouth of the alley, high and scratchy.

Bastian rolled his eyes. “Wonderful,” he muttered.

Lore tore her gaze away from the Sun Prince’s gleaming dagger, focused on the figure instead. A small white man dressed in ratty clothes, bruises on his arms and scabs over the side of his face. He didn’t look very intimidating.

But the huge man behind him did. Intimidating and glassy-eyed, pale face flushed. He’d been poison-dosed, and recently.

“Gentlemen.” Bastian turned, the hand with the knife gesturing politely while his other palm stayed flat on the wall next to Lore’s head. “While I admire your enterprise, rest assured that neither I nor my friend has anything of value to offer you.”

“For your sake, I hope that’s not true.” The smaller man spread his hands apologetically. “Or our employer will be even more upset than he already is.”

“You lost.” The larger man advanced, making his face easier to see. Scarred and rough, with ears swollen from years of fistfights. Lore and Bastian both still wore their black domino masks, but these two didn’t, and it did not improve their appearances. “You lost, and you left without paying up.”

“A mistake.” Bastian didn’t sound concerned, but his fingers shifted around the hilt of his dagger, and he had that same waiting stillness he’d had in the ring. “I had a spot of business to take care of, but I assure you, I’m on my way to pay what I owe.” His lip quirked. “I assume you bet against me?”

He moved ahead of Lore as he talked, slow and easy enough to be nonchalant, putting his body between her and the two men. Almost protective now.

Gods dead and dying, she could not wrap her head around Bastian Arceneaux.

“Don’t worry about it,” the scarred man said with an unsettling smile. “We’ll collect now.”

“It can’t ever be simple,” Bastian muttered as the scarred man’s fist shot toward his head.

He feinted, turning on a bent knee to slam the heel of his hand into the man’s back. A grunt, but the scarred man seemed hardly fazed, twisting to meet Bastian from the new angle. His recent poisoning hadn’t slowed him down at all, apparently. The man’s knee came up, and Lore flinched, but it sailed past Bastian’s chin without making contact. The knife hung unused in his hand, like he didn’t want to employ a blade unless he had to.

Something else shimmered around his hands, though. Maybe it was just a trick of dim light and a terrified mind, but to Lore, the air around Bastian’s moving fists looked like it swam with gold, trails of soft sun-glow following the path of his skin.

Another dagger glinted silver as the scarred man pulled it from his belt, breaking her concentration on all that odd gold. Bastian didn’t seem to notice it, and she opened her mouth to warn him, but a slam of stars exploded in her temple before she could. The scarred man had knocked the hilt into her head.

Lore hit her knees, bones aching against the bite of cobblestone.

Then—something cold and sharp on her neck, and a boot between her shoulder blades, holding her down.

Time slowed. Her ears rang, making everything crystal clear and muffled at once. Lore had been in plenty of situations where the loss of life or limb was a possible outcome, but she’d never been held at knifepoint, never been in a place where the possibility of help was next to none. The sharp edge of the knife almost vibrated with Mortem, her fingers tingling in time.

But she still couldn’t grasp it.

Lore’s eyes met Bastian’s. She didn’t know what kind of look she gave him, whether it was pleading or defiant. He’d asked why she was here, what his father wanted; those were the answers that mattered, and he had them. The questions about her, about her magic—those were mere curiosity, and curiosity wasn’t reason enough to save her, not when there was a perfectly plausible excuse for her death holding a dagger to her neck.

Bastian could let her die and leave her here. He could kill her without even touching her.

“More expensive than just your losses, now,” the scarred man rasped, digging his knee further into Lore’s back. “You’ll pay double for making a fuss. Think how much belladonna I can buy with that, eh?”

Lore watched the calculations spin behind Bastian’s eyes. Watched him weigh and measure.

Then the prince reached into his pocket.

The movement took his concentration away from the fight, and the smaller man landed a punch to his stomach. At the moment Bastian bowed forward, hunched over his middle, he thrust out his hand, the thick gold of a signet ring gleaming in the dark.

“If you please,” Bastian said, somehow managing to barely sound winded. “Unhand my friend.”

The smaller man looked at the ring. Paled. “Milo. Let the lady up.”

But the scarred one—Milo—paid no heed. “Don’t care who he is. He owes, and my stash is nearly done for.” The dagger bit in, just enough to sting, and Lore pulled in a ragged breath.

Bastian straightened, stalked across the alley. His hand fisted in Milo’s hair and wrenched the man’s neck backward, pointing his blade at the vulnerable artery. They made a deranged chain of threats, Bastian’s knife at Milo’s throat, Milo’s at Lore’s.

“I’m the Sun Prince of Auverraine, Apollius’s chosen heir,” Bastian hissed. “And you will unhand the lady.”

A pause. Then Milo’s bulk was gone; Bastian shoved his shoulder, forcing him to his knees beside his smaller friend.

Lore dragged in a deep breath and pushed herself up to sit; her legs were too shaky to stand just yet. A tiny cut scored across her neck, a thin filament of pain.

“I really didn’t want to have to use that,” Bastian muttered, shoving the ring back into his pocket. He didn’t look at Lore.

There was no gold around his hands now. A trick of the light, then, her fear affecting her vision. Probably.

“Our apologies, Your Majesty.” The smaller man looked terrified. Milo bowed his head too far to see his expression, but Lore could bet it was glowering. “We didn’t know, we had no idea—”

“And I would very much like to keep it that way.” Bastian sighed. “I was planning to go back and pay my dues, after an… interlude.”

He cocked his head at Lore. She was still too rattled to do anything but stare at him. He’d saved her. He’d had the opportunity to dispose of her, a tidy solution to his problem, and he’d saved her instead.

What in all the myriad hells was she supposed to do with that?

The prince turned to the bruisers. “I probably won’t be returning, unfortunately, but I would greatly appreciate if you would keep this quiet.” Bastian gave them a smile; the sharp one, the predator one. “And if I hear the news get around, I’ll know who to blame, won’t I?”

They nodded. And when Bastian jerked his chin, dismissing them, they nearly tripped over each other trying to get away.

At the mouth of the alley, Milo looked back, shadows obscuring his face. Then he was gone.

“You let that one off easy, all things considered.” Lore’s voice was hoarse. She rubbed at her neck.

“Call it magnanimity.” The light of the gas lamps beyond the alley limned Bastian in red and orange as he turned to face Lore. He held out a hand. “There’s still a question you haven’t answered.”

Lore hadn’t been planning on asking him why he’d blown his own cover to keep her alive. But she thought that if she had, this would be his reason. Unanswered questions, unsatisfied curiosity.

She didn’t know whether she believed that or not. There was one more thing to consider, along with that light she might or might not have truly seen around his hands, along with him saving her—that sense of gravity, of things falling together. Of knowing, the same knowing she felt with Gabe, like the deep parts of her recognized both of these men, even if her mind and heart couldn’t keep pace.

She took his hand.

Bastian hauled her up, then let go. He didn’t back her against the wall again, trusting her not to bolt. They’d knit some kind of understanding between them, and neither wanted to be the one to fray it.

“Now,” the Sun Prince said. “Tell me how you managed to become such an accomplished Mortem channeler. And don’t lie this time, please. Like I said, I’ll know.”

He would. She knew that like she knew her own name, like she knew the raised edges of the moon scar on her palm. Gabe had bought her lie, even with that sense of knowing, but whatever thread bound her and the Sun Prince was different—thicker, coarser.

He’d saved her once. She had no guarantee that he’d do it again, if she went against his orders. So Lore took a deep breath, and she spoke truth.

“I was born in the catacombs,” she murmured. “To one of the Night Sisters, in what’s left of the Buried Watch.”