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“Not exactly kind, when staying meant she had to marry that oaf.” He adjusted his circlet again, pushing it back like he couldn’t find a comfortable angle to wear it. “Amelia’s father swore she had nothing to do with the rest of the family’s plans. She was pious, ridiculously so, but she was willing to make an oath promising that she’d never plotted against me specifically, and never would.” He paused. “She cried so much, at the trial. Call me soft, but I couldn’t send her to the Burnt Isles after that.”
“Seems that tears sway you easily,” Lore murmured.
“Don’t be jealous.” But his smile was wan and tired. “I just… knew she was innocent, I suppose.” He shook his head. “No, that’s not quite right. It was intuition. A feeling like keeping her here was right, like it would set the correct tone for my reign. Something to do with Spiritum, maybe.” He frowned slightly. “It seems as though I should pay attention to such things.”
Lore lumped up the chiffon of her skirt again, dug into it with her thumbnail until a thread in the delicate fabric broke. “Maybe.”
“You seem less than convinced.”
“You were less than convincing. Intuition, Bastian? That’s what you’re ruling with?”
He gave her a sardonic look. “Remember when you raised the body in the vaults? When it said some claptrap about awakening, about finding the others, and you just knew what it meant?”
She bristled. “That’s different.”
“Is it, though?” He leaned her way again, looking almost eager. Bastian had never been one for theological debate, not like Gabe, but the man did love to argue. “Both of our powers are misunderstood. Both of us can use them in ways never seen before. Is it really so unbelievable that it might push us in the right direction from time to time? Give us a dream, a vision, something?”
Lore’s frown deepened. But before she could ask him to elaborate, the doors at the front of the room opened.
On the other side, Gabe.
The daggers on his chest harness gleamed, the pendant of the Bleeding God’s Heart hanging on a shorter chain than Anton had worn. Right over his own heart, glinting back refracted chandelier glow. The candles tattooed on his palms showed in fragments as he walked, snatches of black ink.
It made Lore think of the deep dark before dawn, of those hands on her skin and the cold of a window at her back. She swallowed.
There was a pause in the party, this time. Dancers stopped their swirling, one of the violinists missed a note. Lore didn’t blame them; Gabe looked like an oncoming storm. It didn’t seem that his mood had improved since the coronation.
From the corner of the dance floor where she’d been standing with Lore’s mothers after leaving Caius, Alie started forward. Mari’s hand on her arm stopped her. Brigitte, Alie’s friend who’d also been at that ill-fated tea party, had joined their group moments before, and now seemed equally apprehensive of the looming Priest Exalted, taking a step back toward the corner.
Gabe didn’t look at any of them. He strode right up to the throne dais, glaring, and crossed his arms. The stance emphasized the Heart pendant against his chest. “You called?”
His voice was even and steady, but in the momentary quiet, it rang clear as Church bells. Especially the stretch of silence where he didn’t add Your Majesty.
The pause didn’t last long—the courtiers of the Citadel knew how to mask their interest, knew how to act as though nothing was amiss while keeping a shrewd eye on proceedings. The string quartet began again, the dancers swung back into measured steps, wineglasses were once again lifted to already-stained mouths.
“I did,” Bastian said quietly. All the quick energy he and Lore’s brief debate had brought him was gone now; Bastian seemed nothing but determined.
Gabe’s eye flickered her way, so quickly Lore could’ve imagined it.
Slowly, Bastian placed his empty goblet on the floor, then stood, turning her direction. He looked almost apologetic. “This sort of thing has to be officially Church-witnessed.”
Then he went down on one knee.
Every system in Lore’s body froze, from muscle to marrow. Alternative explanations flickered past, were discarded—surely this meant something else, surely it wasn’t what it looked like—
If the room had paused before, now it stood arrested, every subtly watching eye casting out its secrecy in favor of open staring. The quartet didn’t just miss a note; it stuttered, a discordant jangle of strings, then went silent.
Alie had a hand over her mouth. Beside her, Brigitte’s dark brows were in the vicinity of her hairline, her wineglass half raised like she’d been arrested mid-sip.
In the corner, where he’d been speaking with Demonde and Amelia, Maxon went silent, turning to the dais with narrowed, curious eyes.
All of this entered Lore’s mind and was briskly, emotionlessly cataloged, distractions against the fact that Bastian Arceneaux was currently kneeling in front of her. Lore gazed out at the crowd until they blurred, then her eyes sought Gabe.
He looked as shocked as she felt. And he was looking at her, finally, as if that shock had broken through every other barrier they’d built between them. Bastian was aware of Gabe, too; she could see it in the way he was turned just slightly, so he could keep the other man in his sights. That triangle, again, three points that left them all bleeding.
“Lore.”
Bastian’s voice, different than she’d ever heard it. No, that wasn’t quite right—it had the same unreal, earnest quality it’d had that night in the atrium three weeks ago, when they were headed down into the catacombs. When he said that his father being a bad man meant his hatred must make Bastian good.
