AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Gabe’s hand, hanging close to her face as he leaned the opposite elbow against the mantel, twitched toward a fist. He’d been silent ever since Mari told them about the catacombs, for the entire walk back to the Citadel and into their apartments. She glanced up at him; his eye patch faced her, and the line of his mouth told her nothing.
“Not if we bring one of the Presque Mort.” The Sun Prince’s expression she could read just fine—anger, and the expectation of a fight. “And not if we’re careful. The real question is how we’ll find the bodies once we’re inside the catacombs. Under the Citadel doesn’t narrow it down much.”
Lore looked at him, chewing her cheek and willing him to read the answer to that in her eyes. She’d been so close to telling Gabe the truth of what she was in the alley, but that was before she turned Milo to stone, before Gabe started looking at her as if she were sin incarnate. She didn’t want to tell him the truth now. Didn’t ever want to tell him.
Bastian caught her eye. Understood. He dipped his chin in her direction. “We’ll find a way, though.”
“How do you suppose?” Gabe didn’t look at either of them, still facing the fire Lore had coaxed to life. His hand had given up the fight against a fist and curled inward, the points of his knuckles casting sharp shadows on the floor. “The catacombs are vast.”
“I’ll find a map,” Bastian said, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. “There has to be one somewhere.”
Lore expected Gabe to call him out on the asinine answer, but instead the Presque Mort clenched his teeth to match his fist.
“And once we find these bodies?” he asked the flames. “What then? What do we do with them?”
“Then,” Lore said softly, “I ask them how they died. Again.”
A frown pulled down Gabe’s mouth. He didn’t have to say what bothered him; they all remembered what happened to the first corpse she’d raised. The one that told her to find the others. The night killed me.
Lore shifted so she could pull her knees to her chest, a makeshift shield. “I know how to fix it now,” she murmured, a rebuttal to the thing Gabe didn’t say. “If I… accidentally make it last, again.”
Gabe flinched. She pretended not to notice. Icy silence blanketed the room, distrust crystallizing in the corners.
It ached, but part of her wondered what had taken it so long. Gabe was never meant to trust her. They might have the same monstrousness, but it wasn’t an equal share, and his was taken as a kind of honor.
Hers was just a curse.
“On that subject,” Bastian said, “it’s probably time to let Claude rest, too. After all this is finished, of course. We can give him a proper burial. I’ll talk to the florist.”
Her eyes slid to his. He gave her a tiny smile, rueful. Trying to warm the ice in here, but even Bastian’s sun couldn’t thaw the dead of winter.
Silence reigned a few minutes longer, the kind that held you in thrall, dreading what would come after but unable to escape it. Finally, Gabe straightened, looking first to Bastian, then to Lore. “All of this is assuming that Mari isn’t lying.”
His tone made it clear—he was starting a fight, and he didn’t care.
Lore could’ve stopped it. She could’ve let the words lie, not allowed them to be the catalyst Gabe apparently wanted. But she didn’t have the patience for that.
Slowly, she stood, spine straight, head angled so she could match the glare he leveled at her. “Are you calling Mari a liar?”
“I have no reason to believe she’s not,” Gabe said. The fight was gone from his voice now; it’d just been there to strike the flint. Now there was a blaze, and he kept himself expressionless, as if he was above it. “She’s a poison runner.”
“So was I,” Lore snarled.
Gabe cocked his head. “And see how loyal you’ve been to the crown that rescued you from your life of crime?”
She slapped him.
The sound cracked through the room like a gunshot, just as jarring. Gabe’s head wrenched to the side, the impression of her fingers blooming scarlet across his cheek, but he stayed silent, turning back to face her as soon as inertia allowed.
Behind the couch, Bastian did nothing. His eyes stayed on Lore, narrowed and calculating.
“It could be a trap.” Still in that low, expressionless voice, even as Gabe’s face burned a stinging red from the impact. “Your old friends could be trying to lure you into the catacombs.”
“Why would they do that?” He didn’t know about what was down there. Who. If someone wanted her back in the catacombs, it wouldn’t be Val or Mari. “They have papers from August. They’re privateers now. Does that change your estimation? Make them seem more loyal?”
“No,” Gabe said. “Just more easily bought.”
“And you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, Duke Remaut?”
