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“Not as sorry as he’s going to be.” Alie pushed up from the desk as if she carried pounds of stones on her back. “My mother gave in to August because she had no choice—no one he set his sights on did. When I was born, Severin got paid for my upkeep, to pretend that I was his, and he still treated my mother like… like…” She turned away, the gas lamp catching the shine in her eyes. “I will ruin him,” she murmured, almost to herself. “I will make sure everything is taken from him, and I will see him in the fucking Burnt Isles. Bastian will do it in a heartbeat.”
And he would, Lore thought. If Apollius would let him.
She went to her friend tentatively, not sure if Alie wanted physical comfort. But when she got close, the other woman threw her arms around her and buried her head in Lore’s shoulder. She didn’t sob, but her breath hitched, and warmth soaked into Lore’s sleeve.
“Whatever you want,” Lore said into her cloud of white hair. “Whatever you want done to him, I’ll make sure it happens.”
Alie nodded, trying to regulate her breathing, make it even. When her head lifted, her eyes were still wet, but her mouth was a snarl. “If August was still alive, I’d kill him. Maybe you could raise him for me, just so I have the pleasure of killing him again.”
Lore thought of the former King’s body, ensconced in a vault on the highest level in the center of the Citadel, the back of his head stomped in. “I’m glad he died dirty,” she said. “And I’m glad it hurt.”
“It wasn’t enough.” Alie dashed her wrist against her eyes. “It should’ve hurt more.”
Her anger was still there, but it burned itself out and became a sorrowful exhaustion almost instantly. Alie sagged, and Lore helped her stack up the mess of folders and folios into some semblance of order, murmuring soft reassurance. Then she helped her friend down the stairs, to her bedroom. “Do you want me to bring you something to eat?”
“Not hungry,” Alie said, rubbing at her eyes. “I’m just… I’m just going to sleep, I think.”
“Let me know if you need anything.”
Alie nodded again, softly closing the door.
In the dark, Lore closed her eyes. Her breath rattled in through her nose, out through her mouth.
Logistics. Pragmatism. It seemed August was invested in keeping his by-blows secret, from them and from the court—that was good. The last thing they needed was someone challenging Bastian for the throne. One less thing to worry about. She could weather this. It was cataclysmic for Alie, but just one more straw to add to Lore’s growing pile, and she could hold it up because she had no choice.
Lore made it halfway down the hall before she broke down.
It came in waves. She’d shoved this off for so long, this rending, that it couldn’t come on her all at once. First, a sob, clawing its way out of her throat like a live thing caged, and the force of it made one knee buckle, then the other. One hand went out to steady her on the wall while the other clapped over her mouth, like she could gag it back down.
But it’d started, now, and it wasn’t going to stop. Stinging tears flooded her eyes as Lore collapsed against the wall and curled up as small as she could and wept and wept and wept.
It was for Alie, at least it started that way. Lore had always had an easier time crying for others than for herself. But it quickly coalesced into everything—the inherent corruption that allowed what had happened to Lise, the way the powerful got to do whatever they wanted while everyone else bowed under the weight of divine expectation, the girl she’d been in the catacombs and the way her mother must’ve loved her, once. Her life with Mari and Val and how she could never get it back. Gabe, the way she kept hurting him and he kept hurting her. Bastian, oh gods, Bastian, shackled to the god who’d orchestrated it all, drowning in his own head.
Lore didn’t know how long she cried. Until she wrung herself out, at least, all that emotion finally given a valve.
When it was over, she still huddled by the wall. Her muscles ached as she stretched out her legs, let her arms flop to her sides, boneless. Her head tipped back, salt on her tongue when she licked her tear-sticky lips.
I don’t suppose, she said to the back of her mind, that You could check into August’s hell and make sure it’s sufficiently hellish?
No reply from the goddess. “I’ll take that as a no,” she muttered, and pushed herself up.
Her stomach growled. Surely, it was dinnertime, despite the way the sky outside the windows seemed closer to midnight.
I don’t suppose, she said again, in the same tone, that You have anything to do with the weirdly early moonrise?
The eclipse ritual brought Us into the world again, at least after a fashion, Nyxara said. The world responds.
That was a shitty answer, but probably the one Lore should’ve expected. She shrugged off a shiver and started down the shadowy hall, regretting leaving the candelabra back in Alie’s study, but unwilling to go retrieve it.
She really didn’t want to walk past that statue of Apollius again.
Instead, Lore made her way to the bedroom she was sharing with Bastian. She opened the door gently, trying not to make noise. Gods knew he needed his rest.
The idiom was fleeting and ingrained, but Lore’s lips still twisted. Gods knew, indeed.
He was asleep, curled up on his side, shoulders rising and falling with gentle breath. At some point, he’d roused enough to pull off his shirt, and it lay in a heap next to the bed.
Lore cocked her head and let herself stare at him for a moment, her hunger forgotten. For a man whose presence loomed so large, who was known to throw his legs as wide as possible on the throne and take up all available space, Bastian made himself as small as he could when sleeping. He lay on his side, knees pulled in, head craned toward them. Fetal, almost, reverting to the boy he’d been beneath the weight of a sickly mother, a cruel father, and the threat of a crown.
