Chapter Twenty

CHAPTER TWENTY

There will be two factions to control the power of the Buried Goddess—the Presque Mort, the Almost Dead, who will channel Mortem when it reaches the surface, and the Veilleurs Enterre, the Buried Watch, who will ensure that what has been struck down by your god does not rise again.

—The Book of Holy Law, Tract 35

Silence.

Then, a hoarse laugh. Bastian’s eyes were a dark glitter in the gloom of the alleyway, his bloody hands clenched to linen-wrapped fists. “The Buried Watch? They were disbanded after the Night Witch went mad. There’s no one down there anymore.”

“There is.” Lore swallowed. Her throat felt like she’d eaten live coals. “There aren’t many of them left; maybe twenty or so. But they’re still there. Still watching Nyxara’s tomb.”

Still waiting. Still sending someone into the obsidian tomb on every eclipse to see if the body of the goddess had stirred. Lore remembered what those people had looked like when they came back out. Their faces blank, their eyes vacant, as if their very sense of self had been scooped away.

The moon-shaped scars on their hands a burning, angry red.

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Bastian spoke slowly, like he didn’t trust her capacity to understand him. “The Buried Watch hasn’t existed for centuries. The Church would never let a faction persist, not after the Night Witch decided she was Nyxara reborn.”

Lore shrugged. “Like I said, there aren’t many of them. The Church killed most of them after the Night Witch—they thought the same madness might infect the others. But some of them were able to hide, to keep the order alive.”

“How the fuck do they get new members, then? No one goes to the catacombs.”

“They do if they have nowhere else to go.” Like a merchant’s daughter, pregnant with a bastard child that she desperately wanted to keep. Lore’s mother had fled to the catacombs when her parents told her they were going to send her to a sanitarium. It’d been panic; she’d only gone there to hide.

But she’d found so much more than a place to hide.

Bastian’s eyebrow arched, expression clearly incredulous. “So are the rest of the stories true?” He snorted. “Do they sneak out at night and give naughty children bad dreams? Enchant horses to throw their riders?”

“No.” She shook her head. “The true Buried Watch—the Night Sisters who’ve taken the vow—never leave the tomb, except when some of the younger ones are sent up to get supplies. We stole, or bartered stuff we found in the tunnels. Lost coins, precious stones. You’d be surprised what you can find if you look for it.”

Her voice was casual as she spoke of such strangeness. Lore had only ever said these things to Val and Mari, when she told them what she was after she raised Cedric. She’d always thought she’d never be able to find the words again, but they came out of her so easily.

The Sun Prince narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t accuse her of lying again. “So they’re still doing what the Tracts say?” The question came out guarded. “Watching to make sure Nyxara doesn’t rise?”

“They have a Compendium. They read from the same Tracts the Presque Mort do. They follow the Church’s laws.” Despite herself, anger began its slow burn at the bottom of her stomach. “The Buried Watch was given the worst task possible, sent down to live in the dark, and when their leader predictably went mad from it—from being locked underground next to a goddess’s tomb—the Church decided it had incorrectly interpreted the Tracts, and killed them.”

Her hair was sticky and wet, clinging to her forehead. Lore reached up to push it away, and didn’t realize she’d used her scarred hand until Bastian grabbed it.

She jerked back on instinct—the scar was unusual, but not to the point where she’d felt the need to hide it. At least, not until now. But Bastian held her fast, using his other hand to uncurl her fingers so he could get a good look.

Slowly, he opened his hand next to her own.

A sun. Well, half a sun—carved into the top part of his palm, the edges still fresh and red, only beginning to scab. A half circle arced from just below his smallest finger to his thumb, the short lines of rays cut up to his first knuckle. If they’d pressed their palms together, the upside-down crescent of her moon would fit perfectly as the completed curve of his sun.

She thought of his Consecration, when Anton had taken the knife and carved into his nephew, how everyone watching had seemed shocked.

“That’s some coincidence, isn’t it?” Bastian murmured.

Lore snatched back her hand.

“Is this how they gave you the ability to channel Mortem?” he asked. “Or was it just a bit of unhinged pageantry, like mine? Anton does love to make things dramatic.”

“The Sisters didn’t give me the ability to channel,” Lore said. “I was born with it. I don’t know how, and I don’t think they do, either.”

They’d never offered her any kind of explanation, at least. Only sidelong looks and whispers.

Bastian frowned at her like a particularly difficult cipher. As if the answers she’d given him only served to make more questions.

And Bleeding God, she’d given him all the answers. The Sun Prince of Auverraine knew the truth about her, a truth that she’d never offered to anyone but Val and Mari. And she’d told Bastian even more than that—she’d never told her adoptive mothers that she was a born Mortem channeler, that she hadn’t come by her power in the usual way.

“Come on,” Bastian said finally, moving away. “Time to be getting back, especially if you want to see the vaults before the sun comes up.”

If he wasn’t going to talk further about her childhood, she wasn’t, either. “We have to find Gabriel first.”

“Remaut can take care of himself.” Bastian was nearly at the mouth of the alley; with a frustrated growl, Lore hurried to catch up. “And if we go back to the ring, you’re likely to run into your former paramour again. I assume that’s a conversation you want to avoid, since you were spying on him, too.” He glanced at her over his shoulder, as if he anticipated her shocked look. “Michal is smarter than you gave him credit for; he knew your game from very early on. He told me all about it when I came down here the other night, after the masquerade. I think he would’ve forgiven you, had you not turned out to be a necromancer as well as a spy.”

She tried not to let that sting. “Do you ever sleep?”

“No rest for the wicked, dearest.”

Gas lamps glowed on the street corners, casting coronas of sunset-colored light. Now that the threat of imminent death had passed, Lore’s thoughts expanded again, covering more than just survival instinct. She frowned at Bastian’s back. “You thought I was an assassin.”

“Seemed a likely scenario.”

“But you knew I was answering to your father. So you think—”

“Yes, Lore, I think my father might be trying to kill me.”

“Because he thinks you’re working with Kirythea.”

“No, actually,” he said, his shoulders still bare and going tight. “In fact, I can nearly assure you that my father knows that’s bullshit.”

Lore gnawed on her bottom lip, letting the necessary pieces fall into place, the things he wasn’t saying. “So August just wants to kill you, then. And is using this as an excuse.”

“Very good.”

“But why? You’re his only heir. And why not just hire an assassin, if he actually wants you dead? Why go through with some charade of framing you?”

Bastian didn’t answer at first. They walked on, in and out of the shadows between streetlights. “My father and I have never seen eye-to-eye on anything,” he said finally, softly. “Not ruling, not religion. Frankly, I think it’s stupid for the crown of Auverraine to be determined by Apollius’s blessing. An absent god shouldn’t be the final say in the rule of law.”

“That’s heresy.”

“Quite.” Bastian rubbed absently at his side. A bruise was slowly forming there, the edges filling in lurid purple. “I think my father assumes these thoughts are only due to not wanting the crown myself. And he’s right. I don’t want it. But not enough to turn the country over to Jax and the Kirythean Empire.”

“So why kill you?”

“Eliminates the possibility of me changing my mind,” he said drily. “As for not just hiring an assassin: August knows this court. He knows that his disdain for me is no secret. If I were to just drop dead, or be accidentally killed, there’d always be rumors. The Arceneaux line is blessed, remember, avatars of our god. It wouldn’t do for one of us to be suspected of murder, not when he could frame me as a Kirythean spy and have a perfectly good reason for an execution.” He gave her a sardonic look. “He told you to stick close to me, right? He’s probably planning to plant evidence for you to find. Then he has the word of a holy man and a duke’s cousin”—he poked her shoulder—“to back him up. No one would question his motives.”

“So why don’t you run away?” Lore asked. “If you think your father is one good excuse away from having you assassinated, if you don’t even want the damn crown, why stay in the Citadel?”

“Because the Citadel is mine.” His answer came with a vehemence she hadn’t expected. “Even if I don’t want it, me running away won’t solve anything. I don’t want to be the Sun Prince, but I am, and that comes with a measure of responsibility. If I want to see anything change, I will have to do it myself.” He glanced at her. “And if my father is able to choose his own heir from the remaining Arceneaux relatives, which he would be free to do with me gone, it will not be someone who is good for Auverraine. I can guarantee it. My relatives are few, and all of them are awful.”

Lore thought of what she and Gabe had talked about up in their room, about one pebble trying to dam a river. Bastian wasn’t a pebble, though. Bastian was a boulder.

“I’m surprised he’s concerned with an heir at all, to be honest.” She fell into step beside the Sun Prince, following him down familiar streets. “He’s dosing himself with poison regularly, and I assume the Sainted King has a deathdealer who knows the right amounts. Seems like he’s trying to make the matter of passing on the crown as moot as possible.”

Bastian said nothing, but his eyes cut quickly to her, then away. His mouth firmed thoughtfully.

They rounded a corner, and Bastian took her elbow, steering her toward the culvert cut into the Citadel Wall—she hadn’t seen it, hidden in shadow. “You and Remaut are going to have to become better actors,” he said, changing the subject. “Everyone in the Citadel has a nose for bullshit, and he doesn’t look at you like a cousin.”

“How does he look at me, then?” Lore jerked her elbow from Bastian’s hold.

“Like he’s not especially pleased about that vow of celibacy.”

Heat flooded her cheeks.

With a smile, Bastian gestured toward the culvert with his sun-scarred hand. “After you, my lady.”

Lore crawled down into the tunnel, re-soaking her hem. Bastian splashed down behind her and took the lead, holding out his lighter.

“Gabriel knows how to get back to the Citadel, right?” Lore asked.

“He’s an industrious fellow, he’ll find his way.” The flame from the lighter shivered over the slick walls. Something rat-shaped scurried into the shadows. “Your concern is touching.”

The way he said it belied the words. Lore scowled at his back, gathering her hem high to avoid the water. “He’s just as caught up in all this as I am.”

“Be that as it may, Gabriel’s loyalty is to one person alone. And diverting as you are, Lore, I don’t think you can compete with Apollius. If the opportunity arises for Remaut to use you in service to his god, he’ll take it.” He turned to face her, the flame gilding his dark hair in fiendish light, keeping his eyes in shadow. “In fact, it seems like I’m the only person in the Citadel who knows who you are and what you’re capable of, and isn’t trying to make you a tool.”

It wasn’t true, but neither was it comforting. Gabe didn’t know what she was, not really. Not like Bastian did.

Bleeding God and Buried Goddess, she hoped that wasn’t a mistake.

“Gabe isn’t trying to use me,” she said softly. “Gabe is trying to keep me safe.”

The prince turned around with a rueful noise, shaking his head. “Are you so accustomed to being used that you don’t realize when it’s happening, as long as it’s done kindly?”

She had no answer for that.