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She threaded her fingers through her loose hair, tugged at the roots as she leaned over her knees. “Amelia was loyal to Apollius. She wanted Him to be the only god. If she knew she was becoming Caeliar, would she have offered herself to Him? Is that why she was there?”
“There’s one way to find out,” Alie murmured.
Lore raised a brow in her direction.
Alie shrugged. “You could raise the body and ask.”
“I…” Lore was shocked she hadn’t thought of it before, this thing she’d been duped into thinking was her purpose in the Citadel in the first place. The idea of it set a spiral of dread in her gut, but it wasn’t a bad plan. “I could do that.”
“Why?” Gabe asked. His face was impassive, but a veritable hurricane brewed in his one eye. “It doesn’t matter what led up to her murder, whether she offered herself as a sacrifice or not.”
“It matters to me.” Lore said it through her teeth. “Because if she didn’t sacrifice herself, if this was just a murder, justice has to be done. It’s what Bastian would want, and maybe it could be a solution to our problem, if we could get him… sent away.”
“You want Bastian on the Burnt Isles?” Gabe asked.
“No.” She tugged at her hair again. “No, I just want him safe. Safe from what Apollius might make him do next.” A hoarse laugh itched at her throat. “And maybe it’d be better if he was there, if war is imminent. He might be safer on the Isles than in the Citadel, once all is said and done.”
Gabe kept whatever he wanted to say in the clenched line of his jaw, but the light in his eye softened. He wanted Bastian safe, too.
“Do we know where they took her?” Malcolm asked, after a pause.
“A vault, I’d assume,” Alie replied. “The Devereauxs had one.”
But Lore was shaking her head before the other woman finished. “Not anymore. They surrendered it as part of their sentence.” She remembered pieces of that day, one in the stretch of fugue-time right after the ritual, right after Bastian became King. Sitting on the silver chair next to his throne, wishing she could hide behind it instead, when she was just his deathwitch instead of his future Queen. When he was himself, mostly, instead of the avatar of a vengeful god.
“One of the city vaults, then?” Malcolm crossed his arms and tapped his fingers apprehensively against his biceps. “It will be difficult to sneak out to see the body, in that case.”
“I don’t think that’s where they’re taking her,” Gabe rumbled. “I think they’re putting her in the catacombs.” He looked to Lore. “At least, that’s what I gathered from what Bast—what Apollius said.”
Lore hadn’t paid much attention to what happened after Amelia’s impromptu autopsy, as she rushed from the room with her hand over her mouth, rapidly swallowing to keep from further fouling the marble floors. But she did recall Apollius’s voice telling the physician to “keep her close.”
Now, in the confessional room that was rapidly becoming too humid for comfort, Lore nodded. “That’d make sense, I guess.”
“Especially since there’s no danger to being buried underground anymore,” Malcolm said, with a slanted look at Lore.
“You’re welcome, world.” She wiggled her fingers listlessly, showing off the gray star in her palms, right where Malcom’s and Gabe’s candle tattoos were.
Catacombs, Nyxara had murmured into her head, just before night gave way fully into morning. Find Me.
It seemed like the goddess would finally be getting what She wanted.
“If we’re going to look, we should do it now.” Gabe straightened from the wall. “If Apollius told a guard to come look for you at dawn this morning, the chances of you being able to sneak out again tonight are low.”
“And what happens when you cause a panic by being gone for hours?” Alie asked. “I doubt that bloodcoat outside will stand there waiting until sundown.”
“He will if I give him a distraction,” Gabe said.
Alie’s pale brow arched. “What kind?”
“This kind.” Gabe held out his hand to the velvet curtain covering the confessional. “You should probably move, Malcolm.”
He did, squishing onto the bench beside Alie, who elbowed him with a scowl. Gathering orange-red lines, like embers made thread, crackled in the air as Gabe pulled them from the heat in the atmosphere, from the sconce on the wall.
The curtain burst into flames.
“Follow me.” Gabe grabbed Lore’s arm and turned toward the priest’s side of the confessional, wrenching open the wrought-iron lattice. “Back hallways. Malcolm, you take Alie to the Citadel, and Lore and I will head to the catacombs.”
“Excellent,” Malcolm muttered as he pushed Alie in front of him, coughing on the acrid smoke. “First a murder, then a fire. Truly, I’m having a wonderful day.”
