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Lore’s brows knit. “I beg to differ.”
The pleased look on Bastian’s face faltered, a shadow passing over it. “Do you.”
Not a question. He said it flat.
“If it’s all… escaped,” she said, her voice skipping over saying exactly what had happened, “I’ll need my barrier more than ever.”
Her forest, he’d said. Had she ever told him it looked like that?
“It would be a waste of time.” Bastian’s voice brooked no argument. “You and Remaut both have better things to do than hide away in a dusty confessional booth.”
“I highly disagree.”
“As do I,” Gabe said quietly.
Bastian’s eyes swung between the two of them, more gold than brown. “I see.”
“Bastian,” Lore said, starting toward him, passing close by a bank of stone roses. “We should keep things as they are until—”
Her arm brushed a stone stem, and it gave, as if the rock had suddenly become ice and melted at her heat. Lore lifted it quickly, backing away from the flower bed.
The rose only cracked, at first. Then it shattered. All of them did, down the line, the rock becoming so brittle it flaked like ash before nearly disintegrating, a cloud of gray grit in the humid air.
She’d seen rock do this before, but only when huge amounts of Mortem were channeled into it.
That’s when she noticed her hand. The gray star on her palm had extended outward, nearly covering her fingers, every vein etched in ink. The cold set in slow, the pins and needles as her blood went sluggish.
Mortem. She’d channeled Mortem into the roses, with barely a touch. But that was impossible, if it was gone—
Not gone.
The voice was faint, like a whisper through a door that was only cracked.
Just in you now.
“Fuck,” Lore whispered, staring at her hand, staring at where the stone roses had been. Staring at Bastian, who looked at her with something both thrilled and almost worried in his eyes.
“I’m going to keep working with Gabe.” Lore didn’t know how to hold her hands, afraid that she might channel death into anything she touched. “In fact, I think we should go practice right now.”
Bastian didn’t say anything, even as Gabe nodded and turned to walk back into the Church, even as Lore followed him. He just watched them go.
“I don’t understand.”
She’d said some version of those three words at least five times in the few minutes she’d been following Gabe through the labyrinthine back hallways of the Church, taking the long way like they had the day they went to see Anton. Gabe didn’t try to hide, this time, apparently unafraid of being followed.
Lore kept her arms crossed tight, her stained hands hidden. “I didn’t even feel it, Gabe. There was no warning. It just happened.”
“We’ll have to guard your mind more,” Gabe said, stating the obvious. He walked with no thought for her shorter stride; Lore scrambled to keep up. “Stronger barriers. If all the Mortem is in you now—”
“Wait.” She stopped in the middle of the stone hallway. “How do you know that for sure?” The voice had told her, quiet in her head. Did he have a voice, too? Something whispering to him when the sky grew dark?
He turned, confusion written across his features. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “But am I wrong?”
Lore shook her head.
He nodded once, decisively, then started down the hall again. Knowing things they shouldn’t about each other wasn’t a shock at this point.
What is happening to us? Lore could feel it approaching, like the charge in the air before a storm, a dread and anticipation she couldn’t put words to.
