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“I do my best, my lord.”
“I’m sure you do.” Caius gestured to the cell. “Don’t worry overmuch about us. Imprisonment here is no great hardship. I’m sure that means your father is doing just fine, since he is only confined to his home, and not a cell.”
Alie stiffened, her façade cracking for the first time since they’d come down here. “What do you know about my father?”
“Oh, we all know of Severin Bellegarde,” Caius said. “He and Anton Arceneaux make quite the cautionary tale about thinking Apollius’s will is set in stone, don’t they? To be truly faithful, one must be adaptable.”
A slight twitch in Alie’s fingers as she recovered, slipped into her false persona again. “Indeed,” she murmured. Then, she made a show of glancing backward, starting, as if she were a fairy-tale princess looking at a nonexistent clock. “Oh, it is getting late, and I have somewhere to be. I’ll be back if I can, but I do hope Bastian continues to be kind, even though some encourage him not to be.”
“I’m not worried.” Caius smiled at her. There was a genuine warmth to it, though the dim lighting made it devilish. “Though a visit from you will always be welcome.”
She curtsied, a slight bob of her head and flutter of shimmering skirts. Her smile fell away as soon as she turned from Caius, her expression drawn and thoughtful.
“The guard told me that he would only let me in if I brought out the sconce,” she said, taking it gingerly from the wall. A cut of her eyes to Lore; she was trying to hide her presence. “I’m terribly sorry to leave you in the dark.”
“Think nothing of it,” Caius said. “Apollius will be lord of all, even the deepest night.”
Alie held the sconce to the side, away from Lore, and slipped through the door.
Lore followed after, a wraith in almost total darkness. But she felt Caius’s eyes on the back of her neck.
Neither of them spoke until they reached the main floor of the Citadel again. The sounds of courtiers rousing for late-night parties echoed ghostly in the halls, but for now, Alie and Lore were still alone.
“Well,” Alie said finally, “it sounds like they aren’t angry. That’s something.”
“Why hasn’t Bastian had them questioned?” Though the meeting with the Kirytheans had gone about as well as could be expected, Lore was still unsettled. Their placidity at their capture felt unnatural—surely, even the best damn diplomats the world over would be perturbed at such an imprisonment, guilty or not? Though she supposed she wasn’t the best judge of such things.
Alie shrugged. “He could be trying to wear them out mentally. Leave them alone in the dark, see if it makes them more willing to talk.”
“Except they don’t seem to mind being alone in the dark.”
“True.” Alie sighed, shook her head. “Either way, it seems Bastian hasn’t fucked this up quite as much as we’d thought. I’ll take that as a win. And now I am going to bed.”
They walked together up the northeast turret. Alie gave a halfhearted wave when they reached her wing, eyes still thoughtful as she disappeared beneath the pothos vine.
When Lore reached Bastian’s apartments, she closed the door and rested her back against it, chin tilted up, eyes closed. She was exhausted, all the sudden, as tired as Bastian looked, as Alie seemed down there in the holding cells. Twenty-four, and she felt centuries old, too many years packed into her frame.
After three weeks spent in a blur after the eclipse ritual, scrambling to keep up with how quickly and irrevocably her life had changed, Lore had looked forward to some sort of calm. An eye in the storm. She’d gotten it, somewhat, though it was only through sheer force of will. Ignoring how Bastian changed, trying to smooth it over, make it something normal.
It wasn’t an option, not anymore. She had to find out how to fix him. How to banish whatever changes had been set into motion by the eclipse, if such a thing could even be done.
Don’t think like that, she admonished herself.
Then there was the question of the Kirytheans, the Empire breathing down their necks, the apparent assassination attempt that had left her with all the Mortem in Dellaire trapped inside her body.
“So stop a war,” Lore muttered to herself, “and stop a god. Sure. Fine. Certainly two things I can do.”
Lore pushed off the door, trudged up the stairs to her room. No light but the moon, lending just enough glow to help her navigate without tripping. Lore flopped into bed, staring up at the billowing canopy. Her hand snaked under her pillow to support her neck; something crinkled against her fingers.
Paper. Frowning, Lore pulled it out, squinted to read what was written on it in the gloom.
I’m sorry. In an elegant hand she’d seen before, though the ink was smudged, like it’d been written in a hurry. Try to talk to Gabe, he’ll help you.
A note from Bastian. One that made hardly any sense. She couldn’t keep up with his changing tides, especially where Gabe was involved—one moment, he seemed to begrudge the air the Priest Exalted breathed, and the next, he seemed to long for him just like she did. Some of that she could attribute to the affliction that she suspected was a mirror to her own, but not all of it.
“What is your angle, Bastian?” she murmured into the moon-glow dark of her bedroom.
To try and keep you safer than he’s been able to keep himself, answered the voice in her head. I’m not offended.
