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Uncertainty sounded strange from Bastian. It bolstered her own certainty, the Law of Opposites at play again. “I did,” she said.
But Bastian’s deep breath didn’t sound like relief. Like he didn’t really want her to make a choice at all.
Bastian turned from the window, his hand rising to her arm. His skin was a pleasant heat, like water that had soaked up the sun. His hand on her arm went to her cheek, pressing gently so she turned in his direction, a flower to light.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he murmured.
Lore sighed, closed her eyes. “I’m thinking that I wish we weren’t who we are. I’m thinking that if I’d met you on the street, and you weren’t the Sun Prince, we would already own a row house together.” Her nose wrinkled. “We’d rent one, at least.” Maybe Gabe would be there, too.
He laughed quietly. “We’d be poor, and we’d have no magic, and you think that sounds better than this?”
“It does to me.”
His breath was so warm, so close. It wouldn’t take much to kiss him. And if she did, they wouldn’t stop there, they’d be inside each other on the floor in the moonlight, searching for something simple when everything around it was so complicated. They’d circled that kind of togetherness for so long, but never let themselves get that close.
Lore tipped back her head, his lips a mere hairbreadth from hers. She moved to close the gap.
And Bastian leaned away.
It didn’t hurt her, not really. Things were raw, things were fragile.
Bastian’s breath was shaky. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Any other time… I don’t know, I just feel like I shouldn’t…”
She didn’t understand that. But she didn’t have to. Lore just nodded, and stepped out of his arms.
He didn’t stop her.
She considered going back to the garden, but she didn’t. She went to the atrium instead. There was no reason to assume Gabe would be in the garden again, but she didn’t want to chance seeing him, not with Bastian’s ring on her finger.
Maybe Gabe had fully let her go. Maybe she was looking for something that wasn’t there. An indication that she was still important to him, somehow, that she was more than the thing that had trapped him here beneath the thumb of a King he hated. Or at least wanted to believe he hated.
It was selfish of her to want to be something different. But Lore’s selfishness was nothing new. The pull she felt to both of them hadn’t changed, no matter who she was engaged to.
“That’s horrible,” she muttered to herself, but was it, really?
The moon through the windows was bright enough to light her way down the stairs of the turret, through the winding halls that led to the glass-domed room full of poison plants. Lore encountered no one, but a few of the rooms she passed bled the sounds of laughter and music into the silence. The ball had been eventful; such parties didn’t end quickly. She wondered how many times her name had been uttered behind those closed doors. She wondered what rumors were brewing. Cold comfort, that none of them could be as strange as the truth.
The atrium opened around her, a cloud of warm, somnolent scent from the night-blooming flowers—evening primrose, climbing datura. Lore knew Gabe wouldn’t be here, either, but she looked for him anyway, searching for a shadow that might hold a monk.
No monk. But someone was here.
The figure was slender, taller than Lore, standing by one of the windows. A pale, thin hand caressed one of the blooms next to the glass. Hellebore, its bloody color leached pale by the moon. A fall of golden hair covered the figure’s face, but Lore recognized her almost instantly.
Amelia Devereaux. Demonde, now. Dani’s sister, the only member of her family who’d escaped the Burnt Isles, whose tears had moved Bastian to mercy. In the dim light, she almost could be Dani, the way Lore remembered her—laughing with Alie and Brigitte in Bastian’s solar, eating macarons, feeding her the tiny bread crumbs of information that would lead to Anton’s trap.
Lore made no sound, but the other woman knew she was there anyway. She lifted her hand away from the hellebore as she glanced over her shoulder.
Distantly, Lore wondered if she should try to run, to hide. The look on Amelia’s face was all malice.
“You don’t deserve it,” the other woman murmured. “You stole the greatest blessing the Bleeding God could grant, power beyond imagining, and you don’t even care. Stupid girl.”
Any other time, Lore would have some sort of arch rejoinder that would make someone think twice about talking to her like this. But she was so tired, and Amelia had a right to be angry, really. She was here while her family was gone, trapped in marriage to an old man. She just rubbed a hand over her face. “You aren’t the first to think that.”
“Just remember that it’s your fault,” Amelia continued as if Lore hadn’t spoken. Slowly, she walked toward Lore, meeting her in the center of the atrium, the moon overhead a spotlight on them both. “If you had done as you were bidden, the rest of this wouldn’t have to happen.”
“The rest of what?” Lore asked, her brow furrowed. “Don’t do anything stupid, Amelia. Demonde will probably die soon, and then you can have your pick of eligible bachelors. I mean, other than Bastian.”
The other woman’s face twisted. “This isn’t just about Bastian.” She nearly snarled his name. “This is about a new world. His world. This is bigger than any of us, deathwitch, and you’ve made it so much more complicated than it had to be. You just couldn’t go down alone; you had to take everyone else with you. Selfish.”
