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Lore let out a shaky breath and whirled to Alie. “Are you—”
“Fine,” she said faintly. “Go see Gabe.”
Then she shut the door.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
There is no path thornier than that between two people who once grew love.
—Emilie Beligne, Auverrani poet
The sun beat down with heated fists on Lore’s hair as she crossed the Citadel green, entered the heavy doors of the Church. She kept a brisk pace and didn’t look to see if her guard was following as she stalked down the corridor of stained-glass windows.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that Bastian wanted Caius to spend time with Alie. She was their best diplomat, able to pull information out of anyone before they realized they’d let it go. Still, this was one more thing he hadn’t discussed with her, and it made irritation flare, made her teeth clench.
But she wasn’t surprised. No, Bastian doing what Bastian thought best was nothing new. It felt like an ingrained truth, now, something that hadn’t shocked her before and shouldn’t shock her again.
Alie was right. How well did she know him, really?
Lore twisted her ring around and around her finger, rubbing the skin raw.
She approached the doors to the unused confessional room, and her guard found his place against the wall a polite distance away. “The Sainted King ordered it,” he said in response to her skeptical brow. “You’re to have privacy when you meet with the Priest Exalted.”
Lore didn’t press that bit of luck. With a nod, she slipped into the confessional room, closed the door behind her. A moment, then she turned the lock, just to be sure.
She didn’t want any part of this conversation to be overheard.
Hurrying down the aisle, flicking aside the curtain, letting it fall behind her. But Lore didn’t sit on the bench, instead striding right up to where the lattice kept them apart, pressing as close to it as she could without touching. “I need to talk to you.”
The shadows moved over the floor as Gabe sat down on the other side of the lattice, bisected by delicately twisted metal and the wavering light of the single sconce. “Excellent news,” he rumbled, exhaustion and irritation mingling in his tone. “You’re doing that right now.”
“Don’t be an asshole, Gabe.” Lore reached up and hooked her fingers in the curving metal, as if making him see her skin could somehow imbue her voice with urgency. His shadow stiffened; it worked. “I mean about…”
She didn’t finish, but her fingers tightened in the lattice, curled like she could tear the metal out herself, make him look at her.
A sigh from the other side. “Fine,” Gabe said wearily, his head lolling back against the wall. “Talk.”
And when she did, it wasn’t to ask about Anton. Not yet. “I’m still dreaming.”
“We’ve discussed that. As long as your defenses—”
“No,” she cut in. “They still don’t feel like the dreams I had with Anton, they feel… solid. They feel almost like memories. But not mine.”
Silence from the other side, though she saw him shift. Lore had never asked him what he still believed about Apollius, Nyxara, about her power being the harbinger of the world’s end. Bastian had taken the lack of apocalypse as a sign that Anton was wrong, but he’d never really believed to begin with. Gabe had. Gabe had believed so much.
And Lore still didn’t know where she fell. A fulcrum, the tipping point between Gabe’s piety and Bastian’s indifference.
“I guess it’s possible they mean nothing,” Lore said, when it became clear Gabe planned to hold his quiet. “But since the whole point of us meeting here is so my magic doesn’t somehow bring back the Buried Goddess, I think they’re worth discussing.” Her voice snapped, there at the end. “Now is the part where you say something, Remaut.”
His surname made him stiffen. Slowly, Gabe sat up straight. A shadowy blur as he ran his hand over his face, his hair, adjusted his eye patch. “What do you want me to say, Your Majesty?”
“I want to know whether you think they’re important.” She let go of the lattice and clasped her hands in front of her, because this next part felt like a confession. “I do.”
A pause, heavy.
“Tell me about the dreams.” His tone was even, but the shadows moved as Gabe stood, paced back and forth. “As much detail as you can.”
Lore sank onto the bench. “I’m in a forest,” she said quietly. “Or kind of a forest, at least. It feels like the one on the green—something planned, not natural. It looks a lot like the one I imagine as my barrier.”
