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They reached the confessional room, but Gabe didn’t stop, leading her through the lattice and then the velvet curtain, down the deserted aisles to the door. He opened it, waved her through, turned right, and went down the hall. She recognized the path, after weeks of taking it daily a little over a month ago. He was going to the library.
“Think on your barrier,” he said as he walked, a lesson given on the move. “You know how to do it by now. Think on it hard, Lore, guard your mind like your life depends on it.”
It had this whole time, but never had she felt it quite so acutely.
She could imagine her forest without closing her eyes now. It sprang up around her thoughts, thick and green, a mirror image of the forest she saw in her dreams. Lore could nearly smell it—the thick sap, the sharp bite of greenery, salt on the breeze—
When Gabe reached the library door, she was calmer, the panic in her stomach soothed enough to pull in full breaths. Experimentally, she reached out, touched the stone wall. No melting, no sudden brittleness.
It’s more settled, the voice in her head said. Stronger now, as the sky outside dimmed to dusk. You can contain it.
Lore lifted her hand away.
When Gabe threw open the door, Malcolm was waiting, already gloved, shoving books beneath the glass dome running down the center of the reading tables. His mouth was a thin line, his eyes determined, but there was a barely-there shake in his hands. “I’ve pulled everything that mentions channeling mechanics,” he said, not looking up from his work. “Between the three of us, we should be able to check all of these in an hour or so, just keep it quick, and I can send to Farramark and maybe even Kettleburgh for more—”
“I don’t think we need all that, Malcolm.” Gabe’s voice was gentle.
Still, Malcolm scowled, his gloved hands sliding the last book under glass. He moved toward the shelf for more—the pothos vine growing along it twitched at his approach. “Then what do you think we need, Your Holiness? Because the Mortem is gone, and while that seems great in theory, in practice I am extremely troubled.”
“What we need,” Gabe said, “are the myths.”
“Why?” Lore asked, even as Malcolm, with a shrewd look at Gabe, diverted his course from the shelf. He went toward the small alcove in the corner, the one where he’d once told her the prophecies and other things deemed too important for common eyes were kept. “What could you possibly think the damn myths are going to tell us? It seems like Malcolm has the right idea about how to figure out what happened to the Mortem, how to reverse it.”
“Reverse it?” Gabe arched a reddish brow.
Lore hadn’t known that’s what she was hoping for until the words were already out of her mouth.
Too late for that, the voice said.
Shut up. Gods, there was a very real possibility she was completely mad now, no slow descent for her. She was talking to the fucking voice in her head like it was an irritating sibling.
Not quite, the voice rejoined. This would be much easier if you stopped pretending you don’t know who I am.
Lore concentrated on her forest very, very hard. “I don’t want this,” she murmured. “Gabe, there’s no way anyone could want this.”
Someone could. Lore wasn’t sure whether the thought came from the voice or from her.
He sighed. His hand twitched up, tentative, before he smoothed back her hair, tucked it behind her ear. It’d been at least a day since it was brushed, a frizzed and tangled halo around her head—Juliette would have heart palpitations if she knew Lore was traipsing around the Church in such a state, and in a nightgown, too.
But he didn’t turn to stone. That was something. The cold fear that had trapped her eased, somewhat.
“This doesn’t feel like something that can be reversed,” he said quietly.
The fear came back, albeit in a different shape.
“Here.” Malcolm came out from the small alcove room with only one book in his gloved hands. He slid it beneath the glass, then pulled two other pairs of gloves from his pocket, tossed them at Lore and Gabe. “This is the only one I could find.” He barked a rueful laugh. “There’s apparently volumes of technically non-canonical stories in Laerdas, if we wanted to ask our Kirythean friends in the gods-damned holding cells. Maybe Alie can bring it up.”
“Hopefully not,” Gabe rumbled. Alie hadn’t accompanied them to the well, instead going to her own apartments, ostensibly to prepare for the sudden diplomatic crisis. “I think we should keep this as quiet as possible.”
“You might need to adjust your expectations of possible.” Lore slid onto the bench in front of the book as she pulled on her gloves, now confident that she could touch things without sending death into them immediately. “I don’t think me saving everyone from an explosion will be news that goes away quickly.”
“Probably not.” Malcolm reached through the door to turn the book’s delicate pages. “But the part about you somehow absorbing all the excess Mortem leaking from Nyxara—and keeping it—can hopefully be left out.”
That could be true. The average courtier didn’t keep up with the eclipse cycles; there’d be no reason for them to know that Lore had taken in all the Mortem left in Nyxara’s dead body.
“There’s just too much we don’t know,” Malcolm said, still leafing through the book. “Can we still channel the Mortem in dead matter, when there’s no extra coming from the Buried Goddess? What about people who dose poison? Will it even do anything anymore? Will you still get the high, will it still make you live longer—”
“It should.” Finally, something Lore had concrete answers for. “Most poisons have mild mind-altering effects when taken correctly, even outside of Dellaire—that’s why poison runners are able to do business elsewhere, shipping out poisons grown here, since they’re more potent.” Or they had been. Maybe she’d ruined Val and Mari’s business, too. Lore was breaking records for ruining things lately. “The life-lengthening effect utilized the Mortem within a person more than the Mortem leaking from the Buried Goddess. Anyone who bought some years should still have them.”
