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It was almost funny, the way everyone was so convinced she and Bastian were sleeping together.
On the other side of the well, Gabe kept his silence, his mouth a thin line beneath the shadow of his eye patch. Lore expected him to say something, or at least to force his face into an expression that wasn’t blank with the barest seasoning of disapproval. But he did nothing.
He’d raged at the idea of her going down there with Bastian, once. It’d bothered him enough to go to Anton, to betray everything, and now he acted like he didn’t care at all.
She cared, though. It’d be so much easier if she didn’t.
Bastian mounted the spiral stairs first, climbing down the side of the well, the bright white of his shirt fading the farther he went. He held no torch, but he flicked his lighter when he was halfway down, the glimmer of flame touching a cigarette in his mouth. Of course Bastian would smoke while they went to lay an army of screaming corpses to rest.
Gods, Lore hoped they didn’t scream this time. Her head couldn’t take it this morning.
She went next, and Jerault followed behind, all of them silent. When Lore was nearly to the bottom, she looked up.
Gabe had moved, finally. He leaned over the well, his tattooed hands braced against the sides, staring down at them. He was too far for her to see his expression, but maybe it had softened, a little, shown his signature Gabe-flavored worry. She’d take anything, at this point.
If it wasn’t there, she didn’t want to see. Lore finished the climb into the well without looking up again.
The catacombs pressed in from all sides, oppressive darkness, and Lore stood close to Bastian as she fashioned a torch from the supplies left on the packed-dirt floor, her hands trembling. “Why didn’t you bring one of these?”
Bastian shrugged, taking the half-finished torch from her and completing the job. “Seemed wasteful.” He handed it back. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Lore. We are the most powerful things down here.”
She snorted. “The Buried Goddess might beg to differ.”
“She’s dead, which makes me confident I could win an argument with Her.”
Lore gave him a weak smile and leaned in toward his body, just a bit, pulled into his gravity. He kissed her forehead, quick and quiet, fleeting enough to be imagined in the dark.
“Everything will be fine,” he murmured, a now-familiar repetition, his lips still close enough to brush her skin. “I promise I will keep you safe.”
The refrain had grown constant in the last few weeks. Bastian’s charge that he would keep her safe, keep her close, do whatever he had to do. And she would let him. Lore was too tired and cast adrift in this new life to do anything else.
Torch in hand, Bastian led the way into the tunnels. When Lore blinked, her internal map of the catacombs fell into place, but she didn’t think they’d need it. The night they’d come down here and found the rooms of corpses—the night Gabe betrayed them—was burned deep into both of their memories.
Jerault cleared his throat. “Is there… ah, should we be worried about…”
“There’s no one down here,” Lore said.
The Presque Mort’s relieved exhale was powerful enough to stir her hair. He was walking very close behind her, like he was afraid of being left in the dark. Lore couldn’t find it in herself to be annoyed.
“And if there was someone down here, that’s what we have you for.” Bastian glanced at the monk with a flirtatious smile. “I’m confident you could protect us from just about anything, Jerault. I recall your stamina.”
Jerault made a noise like he’d swallowed a mouthful of wine the wrong way. Lore rolled her eyes. Bastian ashed his cigarette with a pleased smirk.
They walked quickly, none of them wanting to stay down here longer than was absolutely necessary. The flame of Bastian’s torch flickered on the pockmarked stone, and when they reached a fork in the path, it briefly illuminated the words carved into the wall.
Divinity is never destroyed. It is only echoed.
Lore scowled at it as they passed.
It didn’t take long to reach the vault that held the young, healthy bodies from the villages. Her sense of Mortem, simmering just beneath her consciousness, rose up like a black tide, nearly overwhelming.
She closed her eyes and imagined a forest. A small grove of uniform trees, a sacred place, keeping her safe, keeping her contained.
It helped, a little. Not as much as it used to.
“No screaming.” Bastian turned from the wall to Lore, brow arched, the flickering torchlight gilding his hair. “That’s something.”
Jerault shivered. “I thought you were exaggerating that part.”
