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—Myroshan proverb
The inside of the warehouse completely belied the shabbiness of the outside. The floors were well swept, the ceilings high and built up with multiple layers of wood and tin to keep the deliberate disrepair of the roof from affecting the interior. Cots lined the walls, some made and some not—most of the crew didn’t live here, and Val and Mari had a small apartment above their office, but they kept beds just in case someone needed a place to stay. To the right, the open office door spilled golden light into the dim, cast from a gas lamp at the edge of the desk. The lamp was Mari’s prized possession. It’d been a gift from Val for their anniversary, when Mari couldn’t stand to do their accounting by candlelight anymore.
A few boxes were stacked in the shadows at the back of the space, proof that a drop would happen in the next few days. Val didn’t keep poison here unless she had to.
Mari stood in front of the office door, arms crossed, staring at Gabe and Bastian and the cart behind them with an unreadable expression as Lore rattled off their story. Lore kept to the truth, mostly, though she didn’t tell Mari why they were at the docks in the first place. She wanted to, though. Seeing one of her mothers had made the pain of Val’s betrayal fall away; Lore felt like a child again, eager to spill everything to one of her surrogate parents and let them fix it.
She also kept Gabe and Bastian’s identities out of the story. Telling Mari that the Sun Prince of Auverraine and one of the Presque Mort were in her warehouse was sure to fly like a dead bird.
When Lore finally dropped into silence, Mari nodded slowly, mulling the story over with her lips pressed to a thin line. “So,” she said, dark eyes wary, “you want us to keep a dead person—”
“Not dead.” It was the first time Gabe had spoken since the alley, and it startled Lore nearly as much as it did Mari. Next to him, Bastian stayed quiet, arms crossed and eyes thoughtful. They both still wore their masks, though Lore had taken hers off, and it had the disconcerting effect of making them look nearly like the same person from the corner of her eye.
“A not dead person,” Mari conceded, “in our warehouse until you can figure out how to fix them.”
“It won’t be long,” Lore said. Her voice had the same almost wheedling edge it’d carried when she was a child, begging for something she wanted. “In fact, I’m going to try in just a minute or two.”
She felt Gabe’s gaze snap to the back of her neck, raising gooseflesh. Lore bristled. Leaving Milo in this state was bad, trying to fix him was bad—she wasn’t going to please Gabe, no matter what she did, and she wished she didn’t care.
“We just needed a place to bring him,” she finished quietly. “We couldn’t leave him in the alley.”
“No, I suppose you couldn’t.” Mari sighed, reaching up to tighten the knot holding her silky scarf in place over her the twisted lengths of her hair, making the sea-glass beads at the ends clink. They must’ve caught her right before she went to bed. “Fine. He can stay.”
“Hopefully not for long.” Lore turned and looked at the stone man in the cart. The trash they’d piled on top of him had shifted, uncovering Milo’s terror-stricken face.
Mari glanced at the cart. She arched a brow at Lore.
“Give me just a second, and I’ll fix him,” Lore said. “I just needed… I just needed privacy.”
Privacy, and a place she felt comfortable. Lore hadn’t realized just how tightly she’d held herself until the tension bled out, a drop at a time. Despite everything, this warehouse still felt like home, and gods she missed it. Being here filled a hollow in her chest she wasn’t aware of carving out.
“You can have it.” Mari glanced toward the door. “Val should be here soon.”
The hollow emptied again. Lore gnawed on her lip. “Will that be a problem?”
“I don’t think so, to be honest.” Mari looked her in the eye, something softening in her face. Sadness and resignation shaped her mouth. “She was between a rock and a hard place, Lore. The Priest Exalted didn’t give her any choice. It was you, or the whole crew swung.”
Behind her, Gabe stiffened.
“Swung?” she repeated quietly. Val said it’d been a choice between her or the crew, but Lore thought that meant prison time, fines, maybe the Burnt Isles…
“Death for us all,” Mari whispered. She chewed the corner of her lip. “He wanted you, mouse. Badly.”
She thought of that first day after Horse, when Anton told her the Church had been watching since she was thirteen, since she first raised Cedric from the dead. Watching, keeping tabs, letting her live a life she thought was free until the rope finally pulled taut.
They’d waited until she got older. Until her power over Mortem had matured, grown. Because it had—the stone man in the cart was proof. She wouldn’t have been capable of something like this weeks ago, as if her time in the Citadel had somehow strengthened her ability.
Her time in the Citadel, and the slow march toward her twenty-fourth birthday.
Instinctually, her eyes darted to Bastian, seeking some kind of strength from the Sun Prince. She didn’t realize Gabe had stepped away, far enough into the warehouse to be out of earshot, until he crossed behind Bastian, pacing like a caged animal. The Presque Mort looked back once, his gaze cutting between her and the other man, before turning away again.
A knock at the door. The same pattern Lore had used. Mari went to open it.
Val stood on the other side.
“Sorry, love, I was…” Val trailed off, mouth staying open and no words coming out, eyes round as she stared at Lore.
“Mouse,” she said, and then she rushed forward.
