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Chapter Twenty-Two

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Catastrophes come in waves.

—Auverrani proverb

Sleep clawed at the corners of Lore’s eyes, but she didn’t let them droop. At least she tried not to; every few moments, her view of the sitting room in her and Gabe’s apartments would dim, and she had to remind herself to stay awake.

They’d parted ways with Bastian after the vaults; even he was yawning by then. The Sun Prince hadn’t said anything to them, just split off in the opposite direction as they turned toward the southeast turret. Both of them had been too tired to comment then, but apparently the climb up to the apartment had reinvigorated Gabe.

“It doesn’t make sense.” Gabe ran his hands over his shorn hair, elbows on his knees. He was too large for their couch, really, and angry confusion only made him seem larger. “There’s no reason for Anton or August to lie about what they’re doing with the bodies.”

Lore shrugged, seated cross-legged in front of the fire, slumped over and propping her chin on her hand. “So you think I’m wrong?”

“I didn’t say that.” Gabe looked up, flames reflecting in his one visible eye. She watched him toss words back and forth in his mind, trying to find a combination that didn’t sound like an accusation. “I just… how do you know?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? The only logical one to follow, and of course she didn’t have an answer. She could try starting at the beginning, explaining her origins, her strange connection to Mortem and Nyxara and the remains of the Buried Watch. She could tell Gabe the same story she’d told Bastian, the full truth as closely as she could remember it, and hope that it would make him trust her. She could tell him how something in her middle seemed to tug her toward the two of them, him and Bastian both, like they were raindrops running down the same gutter, always destined to meet.

But then she thought of what Bastian said. I don’t think you can compete with a god.

She was already asking Gabe to keep secrets from Anton. It wasn’t wise to push her luck.

So she shifted on the floor, knit her fingers together in her lap, and prepared to lie. “I think it has to do with the Mortem inside the corpse. With me being the necromancer that raised him.”

It was as good an explanation as any.

Gabe shook his head. “Say you’re right, and the bodies from the villages have been kept. Surely that means August and Anton have a good reason—”

“They lied to us.” She turned completely around, now, facing him fully. “They lied to us about what was happening with the corpses. They said that they’re disposed of after being checked over for clues. Between that and their insistence that Bastian is an informant when we know he isn’t—”

“And it all comes back to trusting Bastian,” Gabe sneered under his breath.

“I’m not asking you to trust Bastian.” It was a struggle not to say it through her teeth. “I’m asking you to trust me.”

“No, technically, you’re asking me to trust Mortem. The power of death that has corrupted our city and had implications for the entire continent. The power that made people afraid of being buried underground, flowing from the corpse of a manipulative goddess.” He stood, then, his shadow eclipsing her, stretched long on the floor. “Forgive me, Lore, but the Mortem told me isn’t the most convincing argument.”

Her face flushed hot, and she stood to match him, glaring up into his one blue eye. “What about Anton doesn’t care about you beyond what you can do for him or August is a liar who wants to kill his own son? Are those convincing enough?”

His lip lifted. “Back to Bastian, again.”

“At least Bastian isn’t so far up someone else’s ass that he can only see out of their eyes.”

“No, he’s too far up his own, and he’s not doing anything but trying to get you in his bed.”

“Even if that were true, why would you care?”

“Because I thought you were too smart to fall for a handsome face that tells you what you want to hear. Because I thought you made decisions with your mind instead of your—”

Her teeth ground, almost audibly, and her hands moved before her brain told them to. Lore shoved at Gabe’s shoulders, forcing him back toward the couch—his knees hit the cushion and folded, making him sit down hard, cutting off what was sure to be something inappropriate for a monk.

Lore planted her hands on either side of Gabe’s head, gripping the back of the couch. It put them almost at eye level, but the Mort didn’t lean back. He kept his head steady, his almost-snarling mouth only inches from hers.

“His face has nothing to do with it.” It was a whisper, hissing into the scant air between them. “It has everything to do with being used by the King, the Priest Exalted, the Presque Mort. I came here through manipulation and it’s all I’ve known since. It’s all Bastian has known, and it’s all you’ve known, too. But at least the Sun Prince and I are smart enough to admit it.”

Are you so accustomed to being used that you don’t realize when it’s happening, as long as it’s done kindly?Bastian’s words echoed in her skull. Gabe hadn’t been used kindly, but he didn’t think he deserved kindness. Maybe that was the root of it. All he accepted was constant penance for a crime he’d never committed.

When Gabe breathed, she felt it. And he was so close. So close, and all of him so warm, and there was a cold deep in Lore she was always trying to thaw.

“That’s the thing about the manipulated,” Gabe said softly. “They become the best manipulators. There’s no teacher like experience.”

They stayed there, too close and too heated, anger and something else crackling between them. And even as Lore wanted to lean forward, kiss him, wrap all of this up in something she understood, it strengthened her resolve.

Gabe couldn’t know the truth about her.

He wanted her to kiss him. She could see it reflected in his one visible eye, almost a plea. Want was a palpable thing, vibrating in the air, but Gabriel was one of the Presque Mort through and through, and even in the haze of it, he couldn’t be the one to lean forward and break his vow.

Slowly, deliberately, Lore released the back of the couch. Slowly, deliberately, she stood up, staring down at the monk as he gazed up at her like he was fire and she was fuel.

“I’m looking for the bodies,” she murmured. “With or without you.”

“Just you and Bastian, huh?” It came out like he’d wanted it to be flippant; instead, it sounded half breathless. “Good luck with that.”

“Oh, I don’t think getting lucky will be a problem.”

Gabe made a low noise, then sat forward, wiping his hand over his face. A heartbeat, then he looked at her. “If the bodies are being hidden somewhere, what does that even prove?”

The tension of the previous moments dissipated; words no longer seemed to have double, heat-filled meanings. “Lots of things, probably, that we won’t really know until we see where the bodies are and what they’ve done to them. But for now, it just means we can’t trust August or Anton. It means everything they’ve told us about the bodies, about Kirythea—we can’t trust any of it.”

At the sound of Anton’s name, Gabe closed his eye, and she felt a pang of sympathy. It hurt, carving out trust from places it had lived so long. Even if it had been manipulated into you.

Gabe stared at the carpet between his boots. “What about what happened when you tried to call Mortem with Bastian in the room?” He glanced at her, morning light reflecting off his reddish-gold hair. “Are we going to talk about that, Lore?”

He said it almost like an accusation.

“We can. But I don’t know what it means.” She sighed, rubbed at her tired eyes. “I tried to call Mortem when he first pulled me away from the ring. It was impossible. When he was touching me, I could barely sense it at all.”

His brows drew low. “I couldn’t sense it in the vault, either. Maybe something about him being an Arceneaux repels it, somehow.”

“But I’ve never had that problem around August or Anton.” Just Bastian, who didn’t want to be an Arceneaux at all.

Gabe’s expression darkened. “He could be using some kind of stolen elemental power to—”

But Lore was already shaking her head. “No one has had that kind of power in generations. And if Bastian had any means of consciously repelling Mortem, he’d be using it to help Auverraine.”

Here was one more thing she just knew, one more place where she needed his trust but had no means to explain why she deserved it. Gabe angled his head so she couldn’t see his eye, just the patch over the empty socket, the harsh line of his jaw. His stubble had grown in.

“We can look in the Church library,” he said finally. “Anything about the Arceneaux line and their effect on Mortem should be in there. And if we find nothing, we’ll know it’s something Bastian is doing on his own.”

It seemed to comfort him, this idea that they might be able to find some blame to pin on the prince. A concrete plan that would tell him whether he could trust his childhood friend.

Lore nodded. “We’ll go look.”

“And we’ll look for the bodies, too.” Gabe said it like a concession. “But give it a couple of days. More than one person saw us leaving with Bastian last night; August will undoubtedly be summoning us soon.”

Lore nodded. She didn’t like the idea of waiting, but she couldn’t deny it was wise, especially if there was an audience with August in their immediate future.

Gabe stood, stretched. “I’m going to get some sleep.” When Lore looked pointedly to the morning-bright window, he shrugged. “Everyone else in this gods-damned court sleeps in. We might as well, too.”

He went to the threshold, stripped off his shirt, started making his pallet before the door. Lore stood in the doorway of her own room with its too-soft bed, shifting her weight from foot to foot. Then, decision a crackle of lightning, she marched across the room and flung herself down on the couch.

“Bed’s too soft,” she muttered, leaving out the part about wanting to trust him despite his words about manipulation, about feeling cast adrift, about not wanting to be alone and having only him to keep her from it. All that feeling was strained into those three words, though, and the quick look he gave her said he heard them.

Lore thought of that moment when he’d wanted her to kiss him. When she’d thought about it, when she’d decided not to. She thought about her decision to keep her true origins from him, and how nothing about the want coursing through her made her question that decision.

She thought of vows.

Gabriel sighed, then she heard the telltale signs of him bedding down against the door. Lore turned her face into the couch cushions, inhaled their scent of dust, and imagined her forest, grounding herself in her own mind so death couldn’t slip past.

Green-and-brown branches, azure sky. Black smoke curled against the blue, and distantly, she thought it looked thicker than before.

It took a whole day for Lore to feel like a human again. Gabe kept to the study off the main room, reading musty manuscripts and snippets of the Compendium, occasionally going down to the front hall to get them some food. Lore mostly napped on the couch, falling into the rest her body had been denied while traipsing around after the Sun Prince.

Gabe finally bedded down next to the door when night fell. It was a comfort to know he was there, close enough for her to reach in two steps if she wanted. Not that she would.

They slept late the next day, too, so when the knock came on the door, it took Lore a minute to wake.

She sat up, chemise twisted around her stomach, hair in tangles. “Gabe,” she muttered from a sleep-hoarsened throat, not wanting him to get bashed if the knocker happened to have a key.

She needn’t have worried. Gabe flinched, rubbing at his back, turning over to stare at whatever had been poked through the gap between door and floor as outside, footsteps receded down the hall. Pressing the heel of his hand to his still-whole eye, Gabe moved to sit cross-legged, a stiff white envelope in his lap.

“I do not recommend awakening by paper cut,” he mumbled as Lore crossed the room and sat in front of him. It was the same position they’d taken that first night, when he taught her how to ground herself. She shifted uncomfortably and wondered if he noticed.

Remautswirled over the creamy back of the envelope in Gabe’s lap. A small flower was drawn next to the t.

“Alie,” he said quietly.

Lore took the envelope from him and ripped it open. A simple white page, with words written in the same flourishing hand as Gabe’s surname.

A laugh tickled at the back of Lore’s throat. “A reminder about that croquet game. It’s today, after lunch.” She glanced at the window, lit with midday glow. “Which is probably right about now.”

Gabe was already shaking his head, but Lore straightened her spine with new resolve. “We’re going.”

“Do you even know how to play croquet?”

“No, but you can teach me, can’t you?” Her eyes felt gummy, her stomach sour from days of no rest followed by too much of it. Lore needed out of these apartments.

It also sounded nice to pretend at normality for a while, and a croquet game was probably as close as she was going to get.

Grimacing, Gabe rubbed at his eye. “I was rather good at it, once.” He stood, offered her his hand.

She took it and let him haul her up. He let go as soon as she was upright, too quick to be casual. Things between them seemed mostly steady, now that they’d decided on a course of action, but all that heat still shimmered right out of reach, embers waiting for the right breath of air.

Lore dressed quickly, in a lavender gown with a high waist and sleeves that covered only her shoulders. The skirt was long and full, but not as much as some she’d seen the courtiers wear—she was in no danger of taking up the entire width of a hallway. She had no idea what appropriate clothing was for a croquet game, but this would have to do.

Her hair she frowned at for a moment before partially braiding it in a crown around her head, leaving the rest of it down. Its color wavered between brown and gold, most days, but the gentle shade of her dress made it look darker. A pause, then she pinched at her cheeks, bit her lips to coax some color into them. She told herself it had nothing to do with Gabe, and absolutely nothing to do with the chance of seeing Bastian.

Gabe was dressed when she came out of her room. Wordlessly, he offered her his arm. She took it.

They marched down the hall like they were headed to a sentencing.

Lore had grown used to the crosshatched iron bars set into the floors, so much so that she barely noticed them anymore. But after last night, the bars stood out again, incongruous and dark. A reminder that things like her did not belong here.

The lunch spread was in the same place as the day before, on a massive table groaning beneath the weight of pastries and hundreds of tiny sandwiches. Alie lingered with a knot of other courtiers, her cloud-pale hair making her easy to spot.

Just as easy to spot was Bastian standing next to her, sipping from a glass of wine and eyeing Lore and Gabe like a hunter peering into a set trap.

“Oh, excellent!” Alie clapped her hands. Delicate bracelets of pale-blue gems caught the light. “Now we’ll have even teams!”

“Splendid,” Bastian murmured. “Alie, dear, I think it’s only fair that you be on Gabe and Lore’s team. You and I on the same side wouldn’t make for much competition.”

The woman standing beside Alie—Cecelia, Lore recognized now, though she looked clear-eyed and poison-free this afternoon—gave Bastian a mock pout. “Are you saying you’re better than me, Bastian? As I recall, I beat you last time we played.”

He chucked her under the chin. “Yes, but I was very distracted.”

Cecelia blushed prettily and cast her eyes away.

The man next to Cecelia glanced at Lore with a long-suffering expression. “You’re always distracted, Bastian.”

“You wound me, Olivier.” Bastian put a hand to his heart. “Don’t be cross; you distract me just as much as your lovely sister.”

Olivier rolled his eyes, but high flags of color rose in his cheeks. The blush made him and Cecelia look obviously related, highlighting bright-blue eyes and dark hair.

“Save your flirting for after the game.” Alie marched forward, headed for the doors that led to the green. “I am focused on a different kind of conquest.”

“Gods spare us all,” Gabe muttered.

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