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Gwen looked up at him. “Because mine is broken?”

Orpheus rolled his eyes. Lest you forget I’m broken. But it surfaced a question he hadn’t thought to ask. Something Orpheus presumed was common knowledge, considering Atticus’ awareness of his nature.

“Gwen, do you even understand where your magic comes from?”

The closed-off expression on her face proved she did not.

“Your magic is yours,” Orpheus explained. “Unconnected to Hell directly, unlike mine.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was made, Gwen, while you were” —born, gifted, chosen— “you’ve always had magic. It’s a natural part of you, unlike me. Mine was put there by efforts not my own, that’s why it was sealed off when I closed the chasm, because Sanctuary’s heretics put a piece of that crack inside me which closed alongside the rest. That’s why you still have yours. Magic is your birthright. I only ever had it because of decades of research and the blood of untold innocents.”

“Blood,” Gwen quietly repeated, picking at a loose thread on her sleeve. “Blood magic, you mean?”

Orpheus pressed his lips together and looked away.

“Orpheus?” Gwen asked, touching his hand again.

“Maybe. I think so.” Orpheus swallowed, unsure what else to say. To be created from nothing was one thing, to be the result of an experiment that killed hundreds of innocents was entirely another. “How do you know of it at all?”

“Atticus,” Gwen said, then must have seen the expression on his face. “He promised they wouldn’t use it unless they had to. But…”

But Orpheus had seen it: the vial of Gwen’s blood.

He shifted where he sat, broken leg beginning to ache. “Let’s move on, shall we?”

Soot chose that moment to yowl from his place at the windowsill. Open to the city below, the stars a blanket across the sky, the same song he’d been hearing each night for the last several weeks drifted in with the wind; the song Sanctuary had sung when he’d first arrived. A hymn of ghostly resonance, echoing strangely up from the square where the cathedral rose.

“Why do they sing?” he asked, curiosity finally caging him in.

“They’re praying,” Gwen replied, like it was that simple. Maybe it was, except Atticus hadn’t seemed particularly religious, and wasn’t he in charge?

“Who are they praying to?”

Gwen glanced up at him and tapped the page with her pen. “Atticus says they’re praying to me.”

“You?” Orpheus snapped, recoiling.

“Something about me being their fated mage, meant to help with some new world order.” Gwen sighed loudly and rolled her eyes. “It’s so stupid.”

Except it made a certain kind of sense if Sanctuary considered Gwen their chosen one. Faith of that type thrived off communal reinforcement. It also explained why Gwen was so uncomfortable during their arrival procession. She wasn’t just important to Sanctuary, she was meant to save it, then usher humanity into an era of unparalleled prosperity.

That was the kind of pressure that could break a person. Was that why Gwen was free every night at this time? If Atticus was in charge of her well-being, maybe he understood the effect being prayed to could have on a young person’s mind. If Orpheus had known of the hermit’s intentions for him during his childhood, the pressure would have been overwhelming. The expectation to perform would have been enough to crush him.

If there was one positive impact Lore had on his life, perhaps that was it. Unfortunately, she had to go and ruin it by manipulating him into conquering her Empire. But Gwen didn’t have that same buffer from reality. She understood her role, and the consequences of not living up to Sanctuary’s expectations.

They set her up to fail. Maybe that was the real reason Atticus had sought him out. Not because he needed him, but because Sanctuary had broken Gwen.

“Do you want to close the window?” he offered without thinking.

Gwen’s eyes snapped to his, mouth opening into a tiny oh.

“But the sky,” Gwen said. “You barely get to see it.”

Orpheus swallowed, unsure how to reply because she wasn’t wrong, and he didn’t, in fact, want to close the window. But he also didn’t want Gwen to feel unsafe here, and for all the danger he posed, that felt like the worst lie of all.

“If it bothers you, close it,” he said sharply, not meeting Gwen’s eyes, hoping she didn’t notice how his shaking hands slid into his sleeves. He dug into his scar with glorious purpose: stop spiraling, a voice that sounded like Fenrir whispered. “It would bother me, if I were you.”