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It sounded like her mother, and it made Lore recoil.
Amelia’s hand rose, her cold fingers brushing across Lore’s cheek before dipping to her hand. She picked it up, held it before her, turned it this way and that to inspect her ring.
“Hemlock Queen,” Amelia scoffed. “Such a fierce name for someone ruled by fear. Who damned the world because she was afraid.”
Then she was gone, drifting out of the atrium and into the darkness of the nighttime Citadel.
Lore sighed. Then she made her slow way back to Bastian’s apartments, too tired to sort through what Amelia meant.
Something is happening.
The thought felt alien, as if someone was whispering inside her skull.
Then, a word.
Catacombs.
Not her inner voice, not the mundane monologue of her own thoughts. This came from somewhere else, just like it’d seemed to the first time she heard it, the night she went to the stone garden and saw her mother, saw Gabe.
But it was stronger, now, and finally she could place where she’d heard it, this voice lurking in the back of her mind, both like her own thoughts and not.
The same voice she’d heard at the Mortem leak, a lifetime ago.
Lore closed her eyes tight. “Go away,” she muttered through her teeth. She looked like a madwoman; felt like one, too. “Go the fuck away.”
Her head was quiet, but the pull she felt in her bones remained. Lore ignored it, stalking purposefully toward her bedroom, hurrying past the Citadel door as if afraid some monstrous hand would reach through and pull her into the night.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I would deem it unwise to make a move on Auverraine just yet, despite their current upheaval with the new King. We should see if the rumors are true.
—Kirythean correspondence, intercepted at the Ourish Pass by Caldienan border guards
Bastian did not often attend First Day prayers. Lore didn’t blame him—Anton and August’s designs on his life centered on religion, so it made sense that he might want to avoid it. Lore didn’t often attend, either.
But damn her if she was going to miss this one.
Lore had woken with the dawn and immediately gone to her closet. She dressed, and considered calling for Juliette to do something about her sheet-creased face and her tangled hair. Instead, Lore took care of them herself, braiding her hair, rubbing something lotion-like from a pot on her vanity into her face to smooth the creases. The end result was less polished than she was used to now, with a phalanx of maids at her disposal. She looked more like the person she had been, rather than the one she’d become.
The night before picked at her mind as she tucked down tufts of hair. Amelia in the atrium, apparently wandering at night to escape her elderly husband. Part of her wondered if Gabe could shed some light on what Amelia meant, when she said something about Lore taking Apollius’s greatest blessing. Surely, she wouldn’t refer to Bastian like that? But no, she’d said this wasn’t all about Bastian, that it was bigger. If there was more religious dissent brewing at court, Gabe needed to know. Maybe she could catch him before prayers began.
That was the reason she was up so early, getting ready on her own. To see Gabe, by himself. To make sure he was all right.
Maybe, perhaps, to mention the voice she heard in her head, and seek reassurance that she wasn’t going mad. That Anton hadn’t been right.
“Dressed already?”
Lore whirled around.
Bastian stood in her doorway, leaning against the jamb with a cup of coffee and one dark brow arched. He’d dressed, too, and more nicely than usual—golden threads shimmered through the billowing sleeves of his white shirt, constrained by an embroidered linen vest. He’d even buttoned it, this time, not left it open like an afterthought.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Lore said. “Since when are you awake this early?”
“Turning over a new leaf.” He came into the room, growing larger in the mirror. His hand twitched like it’d land on her shoulders, then fell to his side instead. “It seems we suffered the same affliction. I couldn’t sleep, either.”
He said it like he expected it to be new information, as if she hadn’t seen him last night. As if he didn’t remember their conversation at all.
Bastian’s hands rested on the back of her chair instead of her shoulders, concern drawing his brows low. “Are you well, Lore?”
