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It was obviously a dream. Lore was in her forest, the one Gabe had taught her to grow around her mind, with its uniform trees that looked too perfect to be real. Smoke twisted through the sky, billowing into the air from some nearby fire.
One she was setting herself, apparently. Lore watched her hand, through no directive of her own, reach out with a lit torch, touch it to a tree. She stepped back, a silent passenger in her own head, and watched the trees catch, joining the blazing inferno of the others, trapping her in a ring of fire.
She lifted her face and screamed.
Then, with a wrenching feeling like tearing off a bandage, Lore woke up, sweat-sheened and gasping.
Her consciousness came back to her body slowly as she panted into the dark, twitching her fingers, her toes, small tests to ensure she was awake.
The dream felt like nonsense to her. That was good. At least, she thought it was. It certainly didn’t feel like the dreams she’d had when Anton was pulling at her power, and that was good enough.
Catacombs, her mind whispered.
Lore scowled into the dark. Some vestige of that dream must still cling to her, even though she couldn’t remember it having anything to do with the catacombs. Dream-logic, detritus caught in the current of her thoughts like trash in a storm drain.
She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, pulled them away only once she’d pressed so hard she saw stars.
Back in the southeast turret, her bed had no canopy, and her bed linens had been a shade of mustard-yellow that even she knew was years out of fashion. Here, in one of the many spare bedrooms in Bastian’s palatial apartment, the canopy floating above her in the breeze through the open window was the same gauzy fabric as the deep-summer gowns in her closet, ghost-white and billowing.
Even with the window open, the air in the room was stifling. Summer in Auverraine was ridiculously warm and humid, hot as boiled piss both at midnight and midday, and this year was shaping up to be worse than most.
A bottle of wine sat in a bucket of melted ice on her nightstand, half drunk already. Lore stared at it for a moment, weighing whether or not the dry mouth and pounding head in the morning would be worth the hope of dreamless sleep.
She decided it wasn’t, but still pulled the bottle out of the ice to press the cool glass against her forehead. The dream had banished any hope of a restful night, and if she went back to sleep, she’d probably dream some more. Still, she’d rather her inevitable morning headache be due to sleeplessness than alcohol. She’d been down that road before, when an indulgence flirted with becoming a dependence, and the Citadel was too treacherous a place for that.
With a sigh, Lore got out of bed. Stretched. Found the silk dressing gown she’d left wadded on the floor and shrugged into it, not bothering to tie it closed. She’d grown fairly adept at avoiding stray courtiers on these frequent night wanderings, and it was a fair bet that anyone she ran into would be more scandalously dressed than she was. While the older courtiers were drawing in on themselves, wary and angered by Bastian’s new measures, the younger set seemed to welcome the advent of a new royal paradigm. She wondered how long that would last once the tax increases started.
Her throat hurt. She should find a glass of water, probably. She could call a servant to fetch one for her, but she was loath to wake them up. Of course, this thought led to the notion that she could go ask Bastian for a glass of water, since he would know where to find one in his own apartments. Surely he was back from his meeting with Gabe by now.
But the last thing she needed was to wander half clothed into Bastian’s rooms in the middle of the night.
The attraction between them was obvious. The want was there. But this situation was already fucked through all seven days without adding actual fucking to the equation.
She snorted, remembering having a similar thought weeks ago, when she felt caught between Gabe and Bastian, drawn to them both. The feeling hadn’t abated.
And she’d thought things were complicated then.
Sulfur smell, ember snap; she struck the match in her hand and saw it spark. Lore put flame to wick and shook it out, throwing the spent match back in the basket meant for the purpose, then picked up the candle and crept out of her room.
Outside her door was a hall with one side open to the main room of Bastian’s quarters: the marble-and-gold solar where she’d had tea with Alie weeks ago. A wide staircase in the middle of the hall led to the floor of the solar, lined with lush green ferns. Three spare bedrooms made up the second floor, and a smaller spiral staircase at the end of the open corridor led to Bastian’s rooms above, taking up the entire third story.
Lore stared at the spiral stairs for a moment, lip between her teeth. Then she shook her head and started for the main door.
When she moved in, Bastian had gotten rid of the peacocks—thank all the gods—and so, other than the soft patter of water from the fountain in the room’s center, the solar was silent and still. Plants stood clustered by the windows, casting jagged shadows across the iron-striped floor.
She scuffed her slippered foot along one of the iron bars. They were thinner here, slivers of metal in the tile rather than the thick pieces on the Citadel’s ground floor, but they served the same purpose. Reminders of holy authority, holy responsibility. An Arceneaux King was charged with keeping Mortem contained and the Buried Goddess… well, buried. And here Bastian was, harboring a deathwitch as he sat on the throne, Apollius’s chosen ruling at last.
If anything was proof that the gods were all dead—or at least past caring—it was that. Anton had been so adamant that Apollius wanted Lore gone once she’d fulfilled her purpose, so sure that Bastian’s power was the sign of His return. But there was no sign of Apollius, and Lore was still here, and the world hadn’t ended yet.
She stalked out into the hallways of the northwest turret.
The windows were sparser, here, framing the moonless sky, the stars shining brighter for its absence. Lore wandered with no destination in mind, changing direction anytime she heard voices.
Eventually, her wandering brought her down to the main floor of the Citadel. She’d grown more familiar with its warren-like corridors, the openings leading into opulent rooms filled with statuary or fountains or art. The steady motion of her footsteps dulled her mind, her vision narrowed to the floor in front of her. This felt more restful than sleep. At least she didn’t have to worry about dreaming.
The floor in front of her changed, became the threshold of the Citadel door.
Lore looked up. There were supposed to be guards here, but she saw no one—they’d abandoned their posts for more pleasurable pursuits, probably.
