Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Night Witch said she’d watch the tomb

But lost her mind instead

She tried to let the goddess out

But the goddess got in her head

—Auverrani children’s rhyme

Think they left any wine in here?”

Their apartments felt cavernous with only the two of them inside. Lore toed off her slippers by the door—they pinched something awful, which meant in all the years the Presque Mort had been watching her, they’d still managed to get her shoe size wrong—and sat heavily down on the couch. “I need some, after all that.”

“If they did, it will be in the sidebar.” Gabriel waved toward a small table next to the empty fireplace. He leaned against the wall by the door, one hand reaching up to readjust the leather patch on his eye. “Hopefully August tells someone to send us food.”

“He can’t expect me to spy on an empty stomach.” Lore rummaged through the sidebar until she found two dusty wineglasses and a small bottle of red. “That was strange, right? I mean, I haven’t attended many Consecrations—any, really—but that seemed strange.”

“It was,” Gabriel conceded. “Malcolm told me Anton was planning more Tract readings than a typical ceremony, but I wasn’t expecting…”

“A bloodletting?”

His mouth quirked, somewhere between a smirk and a grimace. “Precisely.” He rubbed at his jaw. Slight reddish stubble grew there, the sign of a long day. “But there was a purpose, I’m sure. Anton always has a purpose. And an Arceneaux Consecration is a special occasion; I shouldn’t expect it to be the same as others I’ve seen.”

It sounded like Gabriel had gotten very good at rationalizing whatever Anton did. The man could probably strip naked and waltz around the South Sanctuary, and Gabriel would think it had some higher spiritual purpose.

Lore pulled off the cork of the wine bottle with her teeth. It smelled vinegary, and her nose wrinkled when she poured it. “It’s shit,” she warned, handing a glass to Gabriel, “but so is this day.”

She half expected him to refuse—she wasn’t clear on how the Presque Mort felt about alcohol—and for a moment, it looked like he would, eyeing the glass balefully.

“If you don’t help me drink this, I’ll just throw back the whole bottle,” Lore said. “I promise you don’t want that. I sing when I’m drunk, and I’m a very bad singer.”

Gabriel studied the glass a moment longer before plucking it from her fingers. “Fine.” He tossed back a swallow, pulling a face. “Apollius’s wounds, that’s awful.”

“But it is better than thinking about the situation in which we find ourselves.” Lore sat back on the carpet with her own glass, crossing her legs beneath her borrowed skirt. “I still don’t know how I’m supposed to get close to Bastian. Or why we had to attend his extremely… eccentric… Consecration.”

“It won’t be hard,” Gabriel said darkly, taking another sip of wine. He avoided the subject of the Consecration entirely. “Like August said, Bastian likes pretty people. Just let him come to you.”

“That could’ve been a compliment, if you didn’t say pretty with the same tone that most people say pus.” Lore tossed back the rest of her vinegary wine and poured more. “But this is the most words you’ve said to me since yesterday, so I suppose I should be grateful.”

Gabriel said nothing, staring down into the crimson depths of his glass. “Being here is… difficult,” he said finally.

They sat in silence for a moment. “I’m sorry,” Lore murmured.

He looked at her, then, brows lowered. “Sorry for what?”

“That you have to stay here. With me.”

He snorted. “You’re not the worst company in the Citadel.”

“You really need to work on your compliments.”

Gabriel lifted his wine her direction, a mock toast. She raised her glass in kind, and they both drank.

It was strangely easy, being with the Mort. He wasn’t one to talk, but his silence was soothing, like sitting with an old friend, someone you’d known for ages.

Lore frowned into her wine. She’d barely known Gabriel for two whole days; their relationship began with a fight in an alley. And he was obviously deeply loyal to Anton, while Lore didn’t really trust the Priest Exalted or his brother. Getting too comfortable with the one-eyed Mort was surely not a good idea—and she knew better, besides. What was it about him that made her want to toss out years of experience teaching her trust was a commodity to be hoarded?

It was probably nerves. Nerves and desperation, making her cling to whatever seemed solid. When Lore was cast adrift, she wasn’t the type to let the current take her. She was the type to scramble for an anchor, no matter how ill-advised it may be.

She waved a hand toward her face, eager for something else to think about. The wine made her land on a less-than-tactful subject. “So. You have one eye.”

“Astute observation.”

“How badly did it hurt?”

His fingers lightly touched the patch again. “Bad,” he said, after a stretch of quiet. Then, low and vehement, “Really fucking bad.”

“You drink and you curse.” Lore arched her brow. “They apparently aren’t sticklers in the Presque Mort about anything other than celibacy.”

“Oh, no, they’re sticklers. But fourteen years of holy life hasn’t refined all the worldliness out of me just yet. A personal defect.” He tossed back the rest of the wine and strode to the fireplace. Cut wood was piled on a golden stand next to it, and he threw a few logs on the bricks, then set about searching for a match. “Holiness takes a while to set in, apparently.”

“If ever.” Lore watched Gabriel’s fruitless search for a match a moment longer, then set down her now-empty glass and headed for the doorway into the hall. “Hold on, there’s an easier way.”

In the hall, Lore grabbed one of the lit candles from the Bleeding God’s Heart candelabra. “Put this in the fireplace, then feed it wood,” she instructed as she came back in the room, passing the candle off before sitting back down on the couch. “Unfamiliar with setting fires?”

“Not necessarily.” Gabriel removed the wood he’d already set, then chose some smaller pieces, holding one above the candle’s flame. “Unfamiliar with stealing candles from depictions of the Bleeding God’s Heart to do it, though. That’s technically a sin.”

“Five minutes, and I have wholly undermined your divine sensibilities. And most of the candles had burned out, anyway, so clearly no one in this turret was feeling pious.”

“That’s the Court of the Citadel for you. If the piety can’t be seen, it doesn’t matter.” Gabriel sat back on his heels, watching flames lick up the kindling, catch on the logs. “So what’s your story, if that’s the game we’re playing? I’m assuming it’s nothing quite so dramatic as having your eye ripped out by the heir to the Kirythean Empire. So was it a more mundane near-death experience? Some accident that left you with power and your family afraid?”

And Bleeding God help her, for a moment, Lore considered telling him the truth. Her mouth was open to let it all spill out—well, you see, I was born in the catacombs and I’ve been able to channel Mortem for as long as I can remember—and she choked the words back just in time.

Dammit. That feeling of familiarity that plagued her when it came to this man was more than irritating. It was dangerous.

She recovered with a sip of wine. “Fell off a bridge, drowned for a minute. Came back. Family wasn’t into it, so they kicked me out when I was thirteen.”

Vague details. Easy lies.

“Some family,” Gabriel muttered to the flames. He stood, went to sit on the couch. “Though, granted, I have no room to judge on that front.”

“What about you?” Lore asked, eager to turn the conversation away from herself. “How’d you fall in with the Presque Mort, after…”

“After my father betrayed August to the Kirythean Empire and gave them a stronghold directly on Auverraine’s border?” Gabriel’s voice was flat and inflectionless. “Anton found me. Told me it was my destiny to join the Presque Mort, to make something holy out of something terrible.”

He’d been ten. She remembered him saying so in the throne room. He’d been ten, newly orphaned and horribly injured, and Anton had twisted that into loyalty. Her distaste for the man grew teeth.

She didn’t ask Gabriel how it happened, but he continued as if she had. Sometimes all you needed was a sign that someone was listening. “My father pledged fealty to Kirythea when they approached the Balgian border. August had denied military help; all his extra troops were guarding the Burnt Isles.” A pause. “They still killed my father, though. The Kirytheans. Jax said a man who’d betray one country would easily betray another, then cut off my father’s head.” He made a rueful noise. “Jax was sixteen. Still a child, and already ruthless.”

“You were there?” Lore murmured. Then she shook her head. “I mean, of course you were there, since then he…”

She didn’t finish, and swallowed against sudden dryness in her throat. Gabriel Remaut had watched his father beheaded, and then the person who’d done it had plucked out his eye.

Gabriel nodded. In the dim light, she could almost see the vestiges of that scared boy in the scarred man. “I’m not sure why Jax let me live, to be honest. He wasn’t the Emperor yet, and killing us all certainly would’ve made his point about traitors. But he sent me back to Auverraine—in a bad state, certainly, but alive.” A shrug. “Anton found me soon after. I was inducted into the Presque Mort, then I stayed in the Northreach monastery—I could sense too much Mortem to make staying in Dellaire a possibility. Anton traveled back and forth as often as he could, to help me learn to block it from my mind. The plan was always for me to come here, when I was ready.” He made a rueful noise. “It took until after my Consecration.”

She thought of him in that room beneath the Church, telling her to make a barrier around her mind. It’s your head. It’d sounded like something he’d repeated to himself over and over, a lesson long-ingrained.

Lore leaned forward, fingers knotted. “So Jax spared you after killing your father,” she said. “And knowing that this court is full of assholes, I assume that only made them more suspicious of you.”

Gabriel stayed silent for long enough that Lore wondered if he’d decided dissecting his history for her was something he didn’t want to do after all.

“Sometimes,” he murmured finally, “I wish he’d just finished the job.”

A rustle outside, in the hall. Something slid through the crack beneath the door and the floor—a creamy white envelope.

Lore stood, her legs only slightly wine-loose, and picked it up. Remaut, read twirling golden script across the front. She ripped it open, read the letter inside, then brandished it at Gabriel. “It’s an invitation.”

He stood and crossed over to her, frowning. “To what?”

“A masquerade. Hosted by Bastian, in the throne room, at sunset.”

They stared at each other, wearing similar guarded expressions. “Well,” Lore said finally, “I am supposed to get close to him.”

Gabriel grumbled, then took the invitation, reading it for himself. “August hasn’t introduced you to court yet. How does he know we’re here?”

“He might’ve seen me coming into the Citadel,” Lore said, then quickly told Gabriel about spotting Bastian in the garden. She glossed over what he’d been doing there, thoughtful for his monkish sensibilities, but the way he rolled his eyes said he knew without her saying.

“Wonderful,” he muttered. “So your cover might be blown before you even begin.”

“Not necessarily.” The specter of a cell to wait in between raising villagers’ bodies loomed large in her mind still, the reality that would become hers if she couldn’t spy on Bastian. “I’m a good liar; if he asks about what we were doing this morning, I’ll say I had a night on the town and you had to escort me back.”

“I still don’t like that he knows you’re here. It means he’s paying more attention than August thinks. I knew us going to the Consecration was a bad idea.”

It was the closest she’d heard him come to naysaying Anton, and Lore assumed it was the closest he ever did.

Gabriel gave the invitation another once-over, then cast it on the couch. “And what are we supposed to wear to a masquerade?”

A light knock on the door. “Your Grace? I have a delivery. From His Majesty.”

“Gods, I hope it’s dinner,” Lore said, opening the door.

Not dinner. Instead, a rolling cart with two garment bags, hastily brought in by a slight serving girl who looked at Lore with wide, curious eyes. She ducked a curtsy and was gone before they could ask her any questions.

Lore unbuttoned one of the bags and peered inside. “Looks like clothes won’t be a problem.”

Gabriel groaned.