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A seditious theocrat who seemed to have gotten exactly what he wanted, all things considered. Bastian on the throne, every day further reduced to a mouthpiece for Apollius.
Lore picked up her pace.
The top floor of Courdigne was no better lit than any of the others, but there was a large window set into the middle of the hall. It faced the back gardens and was nearly as large as one of the walls in the room where she and Bastian stayed, though something blocked a bit of the light, something she couldn’t make out in the shadows.
Placing the candelabra carefully on the ground, Lore crept closer, suddenly nervous, as if this wasn’t a place she was supposed to be.
Another statue of Apollius, the one with the empty chest. Wait, no, not empty—an eclipse had been carved into the circular space, the rays of the sun reaching out to the edges of the cavity, the crescent moon hanging in space below it. The same symbol carved into her palm, Bastian’s palm.
The marble eclipse wasn’t the only difference. Instead of howling in pain, Apollius’s face was a rictus of terrible triumph, His mouth stretched in a cruel grin that looked disturbingly like the one Bastian wore sometimes. One hand reached to the side, holding what looked to be a chunk of rock carved with a sun. The other stretched over His head, holding another rock, this one marked with a moon.
And on His head, the sun-rayed crown of Auverraine.
I told you, Nyxara murmured in the back of her mind. Our goals are different. His is to regain what He lost, and more.
And Yours?
A pause. To find a way for the world to live with what We’ve done.
Lore stared at the statue for a moment, her hands opening and closing on her skirt. Then she thrust her middle finger at it and went to pick up her candelabra, searching for a door to open.
The first she tried led only to darkness, and the statue had spooked her enough that she didn’t relish exploring the shadows. Three more doors were the same, one cut with enough moonlight to show that it was a shabby and understocked library, but the fifth one she tried opened on soft light.
A study, and Alie in it, sitting at a large oaken desk, surrounded by a storm of open books and files. Her head was in her hands, her pale curls flattened with dust and the day’s work. A portrait leaned against the far wall, next to a wrinkled canvas covering.
The woman in the frame had pale, coiling hair, her skin a shade or two darker than Alie’s coppery brown, a smile lurking around full lips and putting a shine in her dark eyes. Lise, it had to be, her portrait hidden away up here. Freckles scattered across her small nose in the same pattern as her daughter’s.
Lore stepped inside, closed the door, raised a brow. “Was the room like this when you found it, or did I miss a very localized hurricane?”
“Neither.” Alie didn’t look up, as if she’d been expecting Lore to show at some point. “This mess is mine.”
Lore put down her candelabra, blowing out the candles since this room was a tinderbox. She picked up one of the folios scattered across the floor.
At the desk, Alie finally raised her eyes, as if she might ask Lore not to look. But she just sighed again and waved her hand, an invitation.
The leather binding creaked when Lore opened the folio. She expected a ledger, and it was, kind of. But instead of tracking things like grain costs, food expenses, and livestock numbers, it was a list of payments. The same amount every time, a mind-boggling sum, and careful dates of when they’d been received.
Her eyes narrowed in the dim light, peering at the spidery lettering of the first date. “Is this your birthday?” She knew it’d been just after Gabe’s; there was a list of nobles’ Consecrations etched into one of the stones of the South Sanctuary, and she remembered seeing Alie’s there, the score-marks still fresh.
“Sure is,” Alie said quietly.
Lore frowned at the dates and payments for a moment, then picked up another folio. This one held what looked like separation papers, a simple contract drawn up to set parameters when a noble couple decided to live apart. The contract, surprisingly, seemed to heavily favor Lise Bellegarde over Severin.
“For as huge an asshole as your father is,” Lore said, “he was much kinder in these negotiations than I anticipated.”
“Helps when you’re being prodded along by the King,” Alie said, poison simmering in her tone.
Lore’s fingers curled over the folio, an awful realization twisting in at her gut. She looked up at Alie, mouth agape.
“Did you put it together?” Alie stared straight ahead, her eyes glazed with hurt and fury and sorrow all at once. “August is my father.”
Everything slotted into place with perfect clarity. What Malcolm said about August never being faithful, Alie’s parents’ separation, the payments—August coerced Lise into his bed, and when a child came of it, he paid Severin to keep her true parentage quiet and raise Alie as his own. Lore wondered how many other illegitimate children August had in the Citadel, if all of them had been somehow paid off. If they knew, or if it was kept secret.
“Notice,” Alie said coldly, “that those payments weren’t to Courdigne. They went to Theris, where Severin lives most of the time. Not a coin of it went to my mother.” She glared at the ledger. “He must’ve moved the records here when Bastian put him under house arrest.”
Another quick look at the folio proved it true, Theris penciled in that same spidery handwriting next to the payment dates.
“Alie…” Lore didn’t know what to say. What could you say, to this? “Gods, Alie, I’m so sorry.”
