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“Did you pick it out?” Lore asked.
He swallowed. “No.”
Her throat went rough.
They spoke often enough. In front of people, at least, playing their parts of King and deathwitch, now betrothed. Lore held his hand and laughed at his jokes, feeling completely outside herself. She tried not to look too closely at him when the sun was high.
And at night, she would beg the goddess in her head for a solution, hoping maybe She could give her what the books of myths hadn’t. Tell me how to free him.
There isn’t a way to free him, Nyxara said. How did a disembodied voice manage to sound so weary? Not now.
“You’re lying.” Lore sneered it at her canopy, though her voice wasn’t necessary to speak to the Buried Goddess.
Nyxara stayed silent.
Alie tried to speak with her, sometimes. Asked what was wrong. But Lore didn’t know what to tell her, so she just said she was overwhelmed, and it wasn’t a lie. Alie tried to help, told Lore she could talk to her about anything. Lore nodded and kept her own counsel.
Occasionally, someone would ask about the Kirytheans, what Bastian planned to do with them. He would wave the questions artfully away, reassuring the asker that everything was taken care of, that there was no need to worry, that peace would hold stronger than it had before.
Then it was time to leave the Allairs estate and head to the home of Hugh and Amelia Demonde.
Lore barely paid attention when they arrived, though in a distant way, she recognized that this estate was the finest they’d visited so far. Amelia greeted them at the huge doors, a rose wreath in her hair to match the pots that grew riotous on the deep porch. “Your Majesties, it is truly a thrill to host you.” A curtsy, her golden hair falling to hide her face.
It was certainly a change in attitude from the last time Lore had seen her. There was something she recognized in Amelia’s stance, something she’d felt often in her first month at the Citadel. A wariness. An impending defeat.
Bastian seemed to recognize it, too. His face, usually stern and austere during daylight hours, seemed to soften as he looked at Amelia. “Lady Demonde.”
She looked up, almost hopeful.
But the shutters fell over Bastian’s face again; the softness grew edges. “How brave of you, to host a summer progress.” He left the bizarre statement for a moment, dangling, severed. “When you are so new to this estate. Of course, such a lady as yourself would find no hardship in managing a great house. This is what you were raised for.”
Amelia pressed her lips tightly together, then nodded. “Of course, Your Majesty. Do come in. We’ve planned a garden party for all our guests, but you have plenty of time to freshen up first.” Her eyes flickered to Lore. “We have prepared separate rooms, but if you wish—”
“No,” Bastian said. He sounded ragged; when Lore looked at him, that softness was back in his expression, a flash of regret, almost pained. “Separate is fine.”
After being shown to her separate room, Lore was outfitted in a new dress, though she’d only worn the other for the hour-long carriage ride between the Allairs estate and the Demonde mansion. Juliette brushed out her hair and arranged it with a wreath of white roses, which Lore assumed after seeing Amelia’s was the custom for garden parties.
Bastian waited outside her room. He smiled when she emerged, a cold glitter in his eye. “Roses have always suited you.”
Lore didn’t say anything. She threaded her arm through his and let him lead her down the stairs, out into the sprawling garden.
She tried to pull away when they reached the green, but Bastian held her arm tight. His eyes were closed, a line between his brows. “I’m trying,” he murmured. “Just give me a little more time, and I promise we’ll talk about this.”
“How much time?” She was going to burst. She was going to go stark raving mad if she was unable to tell anyone about the goddess in her head soon. Lore had held the truth of her Mortem channeling close for eleven years; she’d used up all her secrecy. “We need to come up with a solution, as soon as we can. Before it gets worse.”
He huffed a laugh, pressed the heel of his palm against his forehead. “I never took you for an optimist.”
An echo of what Nyxara told her, deep in the night when the moon was high and Lore couldn’t sleep. There was no way to fix this.
“Go.” Bastian released her arm. “He’s coming back.”
“But I—”
“Go, Lore.” He all but pushed her away as his head bent, his eyes closing again. From afar, it would appear to an onlooker like he was fighting off a particularly bad headache. But up close, Lore could see the veins throbbing in his temples, the sheen of golden magic gathering around his clenched fists.
Lore turned on her heel, walking into the green as fast as she could without running, not paying attention to where she was going. The Demonde garden was divided into two separate parts—the first, near the manor, was filled with the typical beds and trellises. The second was a hedge maze.
She blundered into it, the points of the leaves scratching her skin, catching on the billows of her skirt. The hedge was as tall as two of her, cool and dark against the summer heat, and the sounds of other courtiers echoed ghostly through the greenery, laughing and calling to one another, sighs of lovers who’d found privacy.
