Chapter Twenty-Five

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The body always knows.

—Eroccan proverb

Her mind felt sludgy, her mouth sour, her limbs leadened. Neither awake nor really asleep, but caught somewhere in between, where the air tasted stale and mineral, where there was nothing soft.

Lore knew she was dreaming—or something like it—but it didn’t stop the kick of fear against her ribs when she saw the tomb. It looked larger than she remembered, a block of obsidian gleaming night-sky dark. Looming like a slice of the earth itself, prepared to bury her beneath it, to crush her into itself and make her part of whatever waited inside.

She moved with the thick slowness of dreams, the float that didn’t acknowledge arms or legs, made her a mass of thought and weightless matter. Lore tried to back away from Nyxara’s tomb, thinking that she crawled crablike, but she felt no bite of shale into her palms, no rasp of fabric over floor. No matter how far she moved, though, the tomb stayed the same distance from her, as if it were a dog and she the leash. As if they were shackled together, her and the tomb, her and the goddess buried inside it.

Surfacing, just for a moment, her mouth breaking through black water long enough to breathe.

“She’s alive.” A voice she knew in her bones, one that made her think inexplicably of fire, of incense, of rage held tight and trees burning. “She’s alive, but she isn’t waking up.”

“She will.” The other voice she didn’t know, not like she knew the first. Low, muffled, speaking from far distance while the first had been chime-clear. “Give her time.”

“It’s been three days—”

“You saw what she did.” There was no real accusation in the tone, but the words still hung ax-bladed. “Something like that takes time to recover from.”

Silence from the other voice, the one she knew.

Lore went back under.

Time passed. She didn’t know how much. She was suspended in inky darkness and saw nothing, felt nothing.

Then, sand. Ocean. Sun and blue sky.

She knew this dream, at least.

The same figure sat next to her as always. Lore turned her head, wondering if this time she’d be able to see them clearly. For a brief moment, there was a spark of recognition, the smoky effluence solidifying into a shape she should know. But then it was gone, only shadows again.

Something tugged at her chest. Lore didn’t like it, so she crossed her arms, hiding her heart away. The tug hurt, felt like it wanted to pluck the organ from her chest, but Lore kept it all to herself, something wholly her own.

No smoke spilled into the sky. It was nothing but clear, shining blue.

The figure seemed startled; at least, as startled as something essentially noncorporeal could be. “Curious,” murmured the empty voice, void of any emotion or texture. “It seems more power begets more control. But we have time. We’ll try again.”

Lore wasn’t listening. She was drifting again.

Surfacing. A sheen against her eyes, unbearably bright after so much darkness, the vague impression of a room that should be familiar. The sensation of her limbs, heavy and limp but present. This was the closest to alive she’d felt in what seemed like ages.

It was because of the person next to her. The person whose hand she could feel on her arm, a sun-blaze of heat. The darkness and death that had settled in her fled from him, repelled. The vast cavern her center had become, a hollow vessel for something else to fill, seemed to churn itself inward and knit itself whole.

“How long has she been like this?” She knew this voice, too, coming from whoever touched her. Warmth and life, honey tinged bitter. It twisted up her insides with mingled love and hatred and fear and hope.

“Nearly a week.” The first voice she remembered, the one that burned and crackled. “Anton says it’s to be expected, but—”

“Fuck Anton.” The grip on her arm tightened. Lore wished she could say it hurt, but she couldn’t move her mouth. “You should’ve let me in the first time I came, instead of making me go tell on you to your priest like a petulant child.”

“You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” Coals and embers, low smoldering.

Silence. Lore wished she could open her eyes and see if they were about to kill each other. It felt like something that had come close to happening before.

“I let you in now,” the fire-voice said, finally. “Though it’s not like you can do anything to help her.”

But he was. Something about the hand on her arm was chasing out darkness and death, repelling both in a way that felt simultaneously wonderful and horrible, but Lore couldn’t tell them, because her mouth still wouldn’t open, because this moment of lucidity was fading, because she was drifting again.

Unpleasantdidn’t begin to cover the way Lore felt when she woke.

Her mouth tasted rank, like she’d gulped a glass of storm-drain water. Her fingers ached as if she’d kept them bent for hours. When she looked down at her hands, they were knotted into tight fists, so perhaps she had.

Not hours. Days.

And all of that unpleasantness was merely a precursor to the memories of the Presque Mort whose foot had turned to bone, all living tissue eaten away by stray Mortem.

Lore concentrated on loosening her fists, one finger at a time, bending them back and forth. It was painful, enough so that her mouth bit around an animal noise, but she didn’t let it out.

The voices she’d heard—Gabe. Bastian. She hadn’t been able to conjure their names, in that in-between state where she floated with her mind and body barely tethered, but they’d been here. Now her room was empty. Bowls with traces of leftover broth she didn’t remember drinking were stacked on her vanity, and a half-empty glass of water stood on the bedside table. Lore took it, drained it. The taste in her mouth slightly improved.

The look on Gabe’s face before she’d passed out was stark in her mind as Lore forced herself out of bed, nearly stumbling on numb legs, putting a hand on the bedpost to steady herself. He’d looked horrified. Horrified of her, horrified of what she’d done.

But he’d been here. Despite what she’d done, he’d been here.

What had she done? There’d been no straight answer, though the looks on the other Presque Mort’s faces, that mingled fear and disgust, said it was her fault. But if the other man had gotten in the Mortem’s path, somehow, gotten tangled in the strands that tied her to the leak, she couldn’t have stopped it. That part wasn’t her fault, and she didn’t care if the Presque Mort thought otherwise.

But if Gabe thought it…

That felt like a spear through the gut.

Her mind kept spinning up that last image of Anton, looking at her with placid curiosity. Anton, who’d shaped Mortem in a way she’d never seen before her untrained fingers channeled it through her veins. Had he done something to it? To her?

She wanted to believe that, but it felt like an excuse. And she knew Gabe would think the same thing.

The burning in her chest wasn’t quite sadness, and it wasn’t quite anger, and it had more shame in it than she’d care to admit. But at least it gave her something to concentrate on as she hobbled toward her bedroom door, something other than the voice she’d heard as all that Mortem coursed through her hands, into her heart.

They’ll force you to be stronger, and then break you down.

Lore shook her head and pushed open the door.

Someone sat on the dusty couch, the fire before them teased to roaring. Not Gabe.

Bastian.

She stood silent and confused in the doorway as the Sun Prince looked over his shoulder, golden-brown eyes reflecting flames. He stood, stretched casually, the hem of his pristine white shirt riding up to reveal an abdomen still bruised from boxing. “Morning,” he said. “Or, evening, as it were. You slept through dinner, which I suppose isn’t a shock, since you slept through a whole week, too. I brought you something to eat.”

His voice sparked in her, like the connection she’d always felt in his presence had sunk deeper, insinuated itself into muscle and marrow. An image flashed across her mind, roses and sunlight in a mountaintop garden, but then it was gone.

A tray stood on the small table behind the couch, covered with a gleaming silver cloche, wafting a rich scent Lore didn’t immediately recognize. She pulled off the cloche, barely registering what the dish was before shoving a forkful in her mouth. A bird of some kind, roasted with vegetables.

“Peahen,” Bastian offered with a flip of his hand, settling on the arm of the couch to watch her eat. “I hate it, but it seems you don’t.”

“I’d eat anything right about now,” Lore said around a full mouth.

“See, had you not just gone through something rather traumatic, I’d be making an off-color joke about that. As it is, I will let it lie. Please admire my restraint.”

Something rather traumatic, indeed. Suddenly the roasted peahen tasted like ash. Lore chewed and swallowed what was still in her mouth, then set down the fork, crossing her arms, staring at a charred ring of onion instead of Bastian. “Did Gabe tell you what happened?”

“Of course Gabe didn’t tell me,” Bastian scoffed. “Malcolm did, and only because I was in the South Sanctuary when he carried you inside.” He paused. “Gabe wouldn’t let me come see you, but when I brought it to Anton, he insisted.”

The fact that he’d willingly gone to his uncle made her blink. “Why?”

“Why wouldn’t Gabe let me in, or why did I want to come in the first place?” But his face said he knew which question she was asking. Bastian crossed his arms, looked at a place on the carpet as he considered his answer. “Would you believe it’s because I care about you?”

It hung in the air, a firmly drawn line that Lore didn’t know how to cross. She stayed on the safe side of it. “I suppose that tracks. You’ve conscripted me into being your employee on threat of the Burnt Isles; it’s natural you’d want to protect your investment.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

She refused to do this right now, not when she was sore and trembling from a week spent in bed. “So you won’t send me to the Burnt Isles if I tell your father or your uncle you know their plans?”

Bastian was silent, and the silence was the answer. That felt right, too, felt familiar and expected. He cared. But not enough to loosen his hold.

Lore nodded as if he’d spoken.

“I don’t want you hurt,” Bastian murmured, sidestepping a true answer. “Believe what you want about me, but I don’t want you hurt. And not because you’re working for me. Just because it’s you.”

“We haven’t known each other long,” she said finally, barely a whisper.

The prince snorted. “No, we haven’t. But it sure feels like we have, Lore.”

She had no argument for that, but it wasn’t a conversation she wanted to wade through; it wasn’t one she knew how. A glass of watered wine stood beside the tray; Lore picked it up and took a sip before she tried speaking again, changing the subject. “Why were you in the South Sanctuary in the first place?”

He let the conversation bend in the direction she twisted it, as if he, too, was eager to leave questions of care and knowing. “Some of the people I like kissing live in the cloisters.”

“Bleeding God.”

“Not Him.” But jocularity faded quickly from Bastian’s face, his arms crossing over his chest. “I was there because I tried to follow you to the leak,” he said, after a moment of quiet. “I didn’t make it out before the Church doors were locked.”

“Why did you want to come? You couldn’t have done anything.”

His eyes raised from the floor, one dark curl falling from his forehead to brush his cheek. “To keep an eye on you.” A scoff. “And Remaut, too. Neither of you excel at self-preservation.”

Lore didn’t have the energy to bristle at that. She just sighed and ate another forkful of Bastian’s hated peahen.

“Did Malcolm tell you what exactly happened?” she asked after she’d swallowed. “With the other Presque Mort? I was there… it was my fault, I mean, but I don’t know—”

“It was not your fault.” It was the fiercest she’d heard him sound, barring that night in the alley, and it made her look up from the remains of her dinner. Bastian still sat on the arm of the couch, the lines of his body nonchalant, but there was a tenseness to him that belied anything casual. “You did what you could.”

You can’t flee from what you are.

She considered telling him about the voice. But the moment the thought came, it was dismissed, instinct telling her to keep that to herself. She had to have some secrets.

A moment of quiet, where she stared at her food and the Sun Prince stared at her, then Bastian sighed. “He told me,” he said. “But before I tell you, you should know that the Presque Mort whose foot was… injured… is recovering just fine, and the Church will pay for a prosthetic. He’ll be well taken care of.”

Lore nodded numbly.

“Apparently,” Bastian continued, “when you started channeling Mortem, it… surged. Like a wave. It ignored all the other Presque Mort and came only to you.”

Like it’d been waiting for her. Or directed toward her. “All of it?” she asked. “Or just the Mortem that Anton shaped?”

Bastian’s brow rose. “No one mentioned anything about Anton.”

Maybe she’d imagined it, both the knot and the voice. Maybe the Mortem flowing through her had made her see and hear things that weren’t there.

“Anyway, the Mort—his name is Jean—stepped up to you, presumably to help.” Bastian shrugged. “But he came too close. The Mortem was still seeping over the ground, and his foot got caught in it. Malcolm pulled him out before it could eat any further, and then they left you to it.”

They’d tried to help. A man who didn’t know her at all had stepped forward, and lost a limb for it.

“It’s honestly remarkable you’re standing,” Bastian continued, softer now. “You were unconscious for a week. There were more than a few times where we wondered if you’d wake up.”

She’d wondered, too, floating in that in-between, caught in dream and memory. Lore took another mindless bite of food.

“Gabe is recovering fine, too.” Bastian pushed a curl out of his eyes. “If you were worried.”

A flurry of panic swam through her stomach. “Recovering?”

“He reached for you and lost the tip of his finger.” A wicked smile twisted his mouth, but the look in Bastian’s eyes was almost… resigned. “Not that he was using it to any great effect, if you get my meaning. Not with those vows.”

Gabe had reached for her. It didn’t make up for the fact that he wasn’t here, but it was something.

They stood there, the only sound the merry crackling of the fire. A moment, then Bastian stood, brushing dust of the back of his dark pants and scowling at the mess of clothes and blankets Gabe had left on the floor. “No one has been allowed in here to clean since you’ve been ill, but I’m sending around a maid. Remaut is apparently unable to keep up with his own housekeeping.”

The sight of the blankets was a balm, another small proof that Gabriel had cared even after seeing what she’d done.

“Thank you, Bastian,” Lore murmured.

“Of course.” Bastian stood, headed toward the door. “You should rest. At this point, you might as well go back to sleep. Morning is in eight hours or so.”

Lore nodded listlessly but didn’t rouse herself to go back to her bedroom. Bastian was almost to the door when she managed to speak again. “Do you think Gabe is coming back?”

His blankets were on the floor, but she needed the reassurance. Needed someone to say they thought he’d still choose her, someone who knew what she was.

Someone who knew what she was, and cared anyway.

Bastian’s hand paused in the air a moment before settling on the wood of the door. “Of course he will. You’re here.”

Then he slipped out into the hall.

Lore took a few more halfhearted bites of peahen before lying down on the couch, the upholstery holding on to Bastian’s heat. She wondered how long he’d been here before she roused. It was hard to imagine Bastian sitting still for long, but the warmth of the cushion under her cheek was proof he’d stayed awhile.

She closed her eyes, heaved a sigh. But the image behind her eyelids was Gabe’s face, blank and terrified and looking at her like some kind of monster. So she opened her eyes and stared into the fire instead, thinking back over the little she could recall from her dreams.

The only concrete thing she could remember were the voices. Gabe’s, Bastian’s. Their voices, and the fact that Bastian’s presence—Bastian’s touch—had chased away the heavy Mortem holding her under, brought life into death. It reminded her of the alleyway, how she couldn’t call her magic when Bastian was near.

Did it have something to do with being an Arceneaux, being Apollius’s chosen? No one in the Arceneaux line had ever used Spiritum before, as far as anyone knew, but maybe they were looking at it wrong. Maybe Spiritum was just as changeable and mysterious as Mortem, and wielding it was something subtle.

Those would be questions for Gabe, when he showed up again.

The rich dinner Bastian brought sat heavy in her stomach as Lore worked at her fingers, bending them back and forth, still slightly numb from all the Mortem she’d channeled. She checked her mental barriers on the off chance she went to sleep, closing her eyes again long enough to visualize the forest, the interlocking branches, the blue sky beyond. One more thing to remind her of Gabe and the tangled web they’d strung between them, heat and friendship and suspicion and divided loyalties.

Not that she could really blame him for the divided loyalties. Not after hearing that voice.

You can’t flee from what you are.

“Watch me,” she snarled into the flame-glow of her gloomy room, fierce even as her eyelids grew heavy.

The creaking of the door hinges woke her.

Lore sat up quick, a fight-or-flight urge punching at her chest, her hair tangled and her gown twisted uncomfortably.

But the discomfort didn’t matter, because Gabe was standing in the doorway. A bandage was wrapped around the end of his pointer finger, shorter than it should be.

He looked at her. She looked at him. Neither of them knew what to say.

Eventually, the silence weighed Lore’s gaze down from his one blue eye, bringing it instead to the package in his hand. A cloth bag, bundled up. She vaguely recognized it as being from one of the local apothecaries.

Gabe followed her eyes, then held the bag out. “Medicine.” It came quiet and almost hoarse, like he hadn’t anticipated using his voice, and he was surprised to hear it issue from his throat. “For your hands.”

Lore stood, crossed the room. Took the bag without touching his skin. Inside was a small bottle of salve with a strongly medicinal smell that seeped through the cork stopper. She recognized the scent. Clove and cinnamon, warming things.

“We use it when we have to channel,” Gabe continued, somewhat less hoarse now. He straightened, and she had the sense of a mask wedged back into place. “It stings like a bitch, but brings the feeling back into your fingers faster.”

“Like a bitch, huh?” She looked up and gave him the edge of a smile, but maintaining eye contact felt too difficult, so she focused on the slight freckles across his nose. “Two weeks out from under Anton’s thumb, and you start swearing like you were born to it.”

The mention of Anton made him flinch, just a bit. But Gabe just shrugged. “I blame you.”

Said lightly, but those three words could carry so many meanings between them, be the foundation for so many stones. They both seemed to realize that at the same time, and though neither moved, it suddenly felt like there was more space between them.

“Thanks,” she said, tucking the bag with its bottle under her arm. She was cold, after stepping away from the fire. She hadn’t realized just how cold until now, and gooseflesh rippled across her skin almost painfully, as if making up for lost time. She shivered, turned back to her room. “I’m going back to bed, I think. I know I slept for a week, but it wasn’t good sleep.”

“Who was here?”

Lore’s brows knit as she glanced back at Gabe. His eye was on the tray full of half-eaten peahen. The twitch of his fingers—curled like a fist, then forced straight—said he already knew the answer.

“Bastian,” Lore said, and refused to make it sound regretful. “He was here when I woke up.”

She didn’t mean for it to seem like an admonition, but the way Gabe turned his face toward the fire said he took it as one. It was nearly a flinch.

Orange flame-light bathed his features, made the shadows of them stark. The sight plucked at something almost like a memory in Lore’s still-tired mind. She shook it away.

“Do you think Malcolm would let us into the Church library?” she asked.

“If we had a good reason. Do we?”

Lore bit the inside of her cheek, working out how she wanted to phrase it. “You know Bastian’s presence makes it hard to call Mortem,” she said finally. “Like that night at the boxing ring, and then later, in the vaults. You felt it, too. But while I was… out… I felt it when he came in the room. Felt his presence, again.”

The Presque Mort’s face was expressionless beneath his eye patch, his shoulders held tense.

She shrugged. “It helped.” Weak words for something so strange. “And I think it might have something to do with Spiritum. With the Arceneaux line.”

“I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion,” Gabe said quickly. “I understand it was strange—and somewhat alarming, in the vaults—but even though the Tracts say Apollius gave them the gift, there’s disputes about the literal interpretation—”

“That’s why I want to take a look at what’s in the library,” Lore interrupted. “Just to see if there’s more information. And not just about Spiritum and the Arceneaux line, about all of this.” Her hand waved in the air, encompassing them and Bastian, the villages, a Mortem leak after so long without. “It’s all connected, somehow. Maybe there’s something in the Church library that can help us make sense of it.”

A moment of stillness, then Gabe nodded, perfunctory and business-like. “We’ll ask Malcolm tomorrow.” His eye flicked to her, finally. “Did you tell Bastian of your suspicions?”

He kept his tone even, but there was something dark behind it. They might be bought and bound by Bastian’s threat of the Isles—a threat Lore knew wasn’t idle—but Gabe’s loyalty was free, and it wasn’t for the Sun Prince. It never would be.

“No.” Lore shook her head. “No, I didn’t.”

Relief softened Gabe’s shoulders. He nodded.

For a moment, they stood there, and they could’ve filled the space between them with so many things. But Lore turned on her heel and left it empty.

Behind her shut door, Lore put the salve on her vanity before changing into a woolen chemise she found in the bottom of the wardrobe. Still shivering, she dug out a thick robe, wrapped it around herself. She felt the chill of death down her to bones, as if seeing Gabe had somehow made her body remember.

Her fingers felt numb as she fumbled the cork off the bottle of salve, poured the medicine into her palms. Gabe was right; it did sting like a bitch, and she hissed curses through her teeth as she rubbed her hands together, spreading it over her fingers and up her wrists. Eventually, the sting gave way to warmth, and she crossed her arms, making herself small as she burrowed under her covers.

But sleep wouldn’t come. She was so exhausted, but she was so cold, and rest hovered just beyond her grasp.

Getting up wasn’t really a conscious thought. Neither was padding to the door and pushing it open, looking out into the dim glow of the banked fire, out to where Gabe huddled next to the door, bare chest gilded in ember-light, staring up at the ceiling with one blue eye and one leather-covered wound.

He turned to her as she made her slow way across the dusty carpet, arms still crossed, still huddled as if she stood in a blizzard instead of a courtier’s apartment. He watched her come and didn’t say a word.

“I’m so cold,” Lore murmured.

And he still didn’t speak as he took hold of his blanket and held it out, an invitation.

Lore lay down next to Gabe, and he let the blanket fall over her, turned so his back was to the door and his chest pressed against her spine. He was warm, and it seeped into her slowly, blotting out the numbness, reminders of life in a body that knew so much death.

Gabe’s arm settled over her waist, pulled her close. The bandage over the missing tip of his finger was stark against the dark blanket. His breath stirred her hair. And Lore closed her eyes and fell into deep, thankfully dreamless sleep.