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“That could be why you dream of it,” Gabe murmured. “You’ve built it up often enough that it stays in your mind without you trying.”
But Lore was already shaking her head before he finished. “It’s not like that. It’s more like… like I remembered this forest, and that’s why I chose it as my barrier.” She waved a hand. “Anyway, I guess that part isn’t important. I’m in the forest, and my hands are on a tree, except they don’t look like mine. They aren’t scarred.”
A brief pause in his pacing, the memory of how she’d gotten that scar arresting his movement. But then the pacing started back up again.
“And I’m talking to people, sometimes,” Lore continued. “Having these full conversations that don’t seem odd at all, inside the dream, but make no sense outside of it. I can’t remember the specifics when I wake up, but it’s something about a decision being made…”
The more she talked, the more foolish she felt. Maybe she was ascribing meaning to something meaningless, just like trying to find a sign in Gabe that he cared about her when all he’d done was show he didn’t. When it was cruel of her to still want him to.
A long sigh, her head dropping into her hands. “Forget it. I’m being stupid, this doesn’t mean—”
“You aren’t being stupid.” He was standing directly on the other side, as close as she had been before. A moment, then his fingers hooked through the metal, blunt and callused.
“Have you told Bastian?” he asked quietly.
She tried to parse out the nuances in his tone, separate the hurt from the longing and the anger. But they were braided together and wouldn’t come undone.
“I told him that I dreamed,” Lore answered, “but not what was in them.” She laughed, quick and breathless and a little bit desperate. “They scare me, Gabe. And I just want to know if I should be scared.”
His fingers twitched, like he didn’t like that answer. But the fragmented light from the sconce flickered over the golden-red of his hair as he nodded. They stood in silence, a fragile moment that could shatter if either of them moved in the wrong direction.
Finally, Gabe sighed. “You know I want to trust you, Lore.”
And her heart shouldn’t leap up at that, not with Bastian’s ring on her finger.
“So I’m going to,” he said, almost a challenge. “A little bit, at least.”
He was not a man accustomed to giving in to what he wanted. Gods knew Lore hadn’t given him a good reason to trust her, but he was going to do it, simply because he wanted to.
She wanted to touch him. Wanted to feel the move of his skin under hers, the tender thrum of his heart. She still remembered every beat of that kiss in the southeast turret so many weeks ago, like a dance her muscles hadn’t yet forgotten.
Gabe’s other hand went to a notch in the wall, twisted something. With a long-rusted squeal, a piece in the middle of the metal lattice popped open.
A door. It seemed logical now that there would be a door, a way between the different sides of the confessional, but Lore hadn’t considered it until she saw it open, hadn’t even seen hinges anywhere in all that twisting iron, it must’ve been a delicately wrought thing, very subtle—
All of those details were just distractions her mind provided her, trying to take away the impact of Gabriel Remaut standing in the now-open door, looking at her, close enough to touch.
There were dark bruises beneath his visible eye, and his face was wan beneath his faint scattering of freckles. There was a red mark on his temple, like the strap of his eye patch had rubbed him raw, like he’d been wearing it too long without giving himself a break.
“Follow me.” A turn on his heel, as if it didn’t even occur to Gabe that she wouldn’t.
“There’s a bloodcoat outside of the confessional room,” she said as she stood. “Bastian told him to stay with me.”
Gabe tossed a dark look toward the front of the room, as if the bloodcoat could feel it through the velvet curtain and oak door. “I’m surprised you were able to come in here without him, then.”
“That, apparently, was also part of Bastian’s orders. I’m to have privacy when I’m with you.”
Surprise made Gabe freeze, made him look over his shoulder at her with his forehead so furrowed it nearly nudged his eye patch out of place. “Well,” he said, and didn’t finish.
“Well,” Lore agreed.
A moment, then Gabe turned back around, continuing his stride through the priest’s half of the confessional, to a small stone door beyond. “Thankfully,” he said, “we can get to where we’re going without leaving this room, so Bastian’s guard won’t see you leave.”
“And where is it we’re going?”
He tipped his head back, loosing a sigh at the ceiling. “The stone garden,” he said, resigned. “I’m going to show you why I was there that night.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
