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Upon My return, the earth will be united, one Holy Kingdom that spans all land and all sea.
—The Book of Holy Law, Tract 173
Labyrinthine stone passageways twisted through the bowels of the Church, all of them appearing clean and well maintained. Apparently, the Presque Mort and other clergy often needed to move through the Church without entering the Citadel grounds. Lore supposed it made sense, the Church’s construction being what it was—a huge stone circle around the Citadel and surrounding area, as much a wall as a structure in and of itself. The North and South Sanctuaries were like beads on the granite necklace, places where the building expanded, while the eastern and western sides were thinner, housing storage and cloisters.
Despite the fact that these passageways clearly weren’t secret, Gabe moved swiftly, like he didn’t want to be seen. Not that the chances of encountering anyone were high. Since half the Presque Mort and all the clergymen who’d conspired with Anton were in the Burnt Isles, the number of people traversing Church corridors was significantly reduced.
They approached a door that looked like any number of others they’d passed. Gabe produced a key from his pocket, slotted it into the lock. It opened into an arch of harsh summer sunlight, heat so thick it was nearly visible. Gabe slipped out the door, and Lore followed like a shadow.
The garden looked smaller in the daytime, without the seethe of mist to obscure its corners. The light made the changes easier to see, too. The banks of geraniums were thicker than she remembered, eating up the humidity and light. The living roses bloomed so densely that they nearly covered the stone ones, hiding the gray among green stems and brown thorns.
There was less Mortem to channel out of the catacombs, now. There’d been one minor lunar eclipse since the ritual—on a night that Lore spent huddled in her room around a bottle of wine—but apparently, it hadn’t yielded much magic.
She wished she could be comforted by that.
Gabe led her through the winding pathways, a different route than they’d taken the first time he’d brought her here. Up ahead, the well loomed out of the banks of flowers. The statue of Apollius sat small in the shade, hands outstretched. It seemed to Lore like He beckoned her forward. Taunting.
But Gabe didn’t linger at the well; he took a sharp right turn, moving back into the roses, toward the wall of the garden and the small greenhouse settled into the corner. With one last look at Apollius—and a lifting of both middle fingers—Lore followed.
Gabe paused outside the greenhouse. His one eye closed, opened again. “It’s not pretty,” he warned.
She’d forgotten to ask about Anton, in the rush of emotions left over from talking to Alie, confronting Gabe with the dreams. And yet here he was. Of course this was what Gabe had been doing that night.
“I’m not afraid,” she lied.
He nodded, squared his shoulders, and pushed open the door.
The greenhouse was divided into two rooms, one at the front with shelves along the glass walls, and then one at the back, covered by a half-open door, nothing but darkness visible beyond. The shelves were cluttered with broken pots and half-dead plants, clearly neglected and stuck here because there was nowhere else to put them. Gabe strode toward the back of the greenhouse and slipped through the open maw of the door.
With a gulp against preemptive nausea, Lore followed.
The back room was dark, the walls and ceiling nearly covered by climbing roses and ivy. Despite that, they thrived, blooming lush and thick. The air smelled heady, like petals and loam. It was almost beautiful.
Until you saw what the plants were drawing from, richer than any soil.
Anton was barely visible beneath the flowers. His back was flush to the wall, as near as Lore could tell, his head tipped up as if he were a bloom himself, seeking the sun through crowded leaves. Ivy covered his torso, growing onto the wall behind him like living shackles, keeping his arms spread to his sides. The posture evoked Apollius, and Lore had to swallow hard again to keep bile in her stomach where it belonged.
The roses were worse than the ivy. They wove in and out of Anton’s skin, breaching it as easily as dirt, the thorns tearing through the delicate membrane to unfurl gory petals. The one that had grown through his eye stretched up past his head, one red bloom opening wide while new buds studded its length, pushing against his eyebrow, his forehead. The socket was a hole of viscera, complemented by the deep-purple scarring all down the side of his face; a souvenir from his vision, the one that had shown him Gabe and Bastian and Lore and the destruction they would allegedly bring. Viscous fluid ran down his cheek—the remains of his eye.
But the very worst part was how he was still breathing, his chest rising and falling easily, like he was asleep.
Lore found herself angling her head so she didn’t have to face the former Priest Exalted directly, but Gabe stared right at him, not allowing himself to look away. “I couldn’t let him die,” he murmured. “Bastian promised me that much, at least, the night of the ritual. He let Anton keep his life; I couldn’t let it pass.”
The leaves rattled as Anton pulled in a breath. He was listening, Lore knew, conscious in all that thorn and blood. “Why keep him secret?”
“Because it’s undignified to leave him like this out in the open.” The Presque Mort who’d been part of the coup had all been sent away; Gabe would be the only person in the Church who knew this had happened to Anton, who knew the former Priest Exalted wasn’t dead.
“He refuses water sometimes,” Gabe continued. “It’d been a hot day, that time you saw me here, and I was making sure he drank something.”
The image of Gabe watering his mentor like a plant in a pot made her shudder.
“He begged for Apollius, at first.” Gabe’s voice was almost trance-like, reciting this litany of horrors now that he finally had a listening ear. “To save him. He never did. I moved him in here from the garden—it was hard, I had to uproot the roses one by one, and if I so much as ripped a leaf, he screamed.” A frown. “Well, not screamed, really. He couldn’t get that loud. I tried trimming back the blooms for a while, but that seemed to hurt him, so eventually I stopped.”
“Gabe.” Lore pressed a hand to his arm; his muscles were stone-tense. “If he’s in that much pain—”
But he shook his head, knowing what she was going to say and already negating it. “I can’t,” he said hoarsely. “I tried. I can’t.”
She lifted her hand away.
