AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Anton.” Bastian’s jaw was a tight line, his arms crossed as he stared at the door.
“Anton,” she agreed.
This entire expedition had been about proving Anton a liar. But now that they’d done it, found incontrovertible proof, it weighed heavy on Lore’s shoulders. And the blank, lost look on Bastian’s face said he felt that weight, too.
My father is a bad man, he’d said in the atrium, limned in moonlight and poison flowers. It had to sting, to know your entire legacy was corrupt.
He sighed, looked to Lore. “So my uncle and my father are killing their own citizens to provoke a war?”
“Seems likely.” Lore reached inside the chamber without actually stepping over the threshold and took one of the torches from the wall to replace the one she’d dropped. “But I don’t understand why. Kirythea is at our doorstep anyway; an eventual war is nigh inevitable. Why exacerbate it?”
“There has to be some advantage we don’t know about.” Bastian walked beside her, frowning, his hair falling over his forehead. “Something that would make a war profitable, rather than a drain on resources.”
“Not that a drain would ever be felt in the Citadel, anyway.”
He inclined his head in agreement.
Their journey back to the well was silent. Lore led them by the map in her head, retracing their steps through the tangle of tunnels. When they passed the words etched into the wall, she only allowed herself one glance.
Divinity is never destroyed.
Up ahead, a thin ray of light shone, too bright to be the moon. Dawn had sneaked up on them, and the strength of its glow after hours in the catacombs made Lore’s head ache.
Bastian stopped at the bottom of the stairs, scowling up into the sliver of sun. “He left it open,” he muttered. “Barely.”
“He’ll be there to pull it off.”
“Such faith you have in our monk.” Bastian mounted the stairs and started climbing, carefully, the muscles of his shoulders moving beneath his dusty shirt as he kept his balance with one hand on the wall. “He’s such a fickle thing; I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned tail as soon as we came down here.”
“You should have more faith in him,” Lore said to the broad expanse of Bastian’s back. Realizing she was staring, she dropped her eyes to her own feet making their careful way up the narrow stairs. “He showed up, didn’t he?”
Her answer was the lid of the well opening, sending down piercing light. Not full morning, but edged enough into dawn that the brightness made her look away.
When she turned back, Bastian was gone, the round opening ahead showing nothing but pink-washed sky. Lore rolled her eyes. Of course he would just hop out of the well once she was proven right. He and Gabe were probably spitting curses at each other right now.
But when Lore reached the top of the stairs, Bastian was on his knees between two of the Presque Mort, his head wrenched back, the tip of a bayonet denting the skin of his throat. Behind him stood Malcolm, his expression pensive, but the line of his mouth set in determination.
Before the well, Anton, his Bleeding God’s Heart pendant glinting in the thin light.
And next to Anton, Gabe.
Bastian laughed, a terrible, rueful sound, all teeth. “What was it you were saying about having faith in him, Lore?”
But Lore didn’t speak. She knew when she was caught.
A pause, the only sound the flap of Anton’s robes against his legs in the morning breeze. Then Gabe stepped up to the well, offering a hand to help her down.
She didn’t take it. She didn’t look at him. She stepped down to the cobblestones on her own, even though her legs were shaking.
Anton waved a weary hand. “Take them to the Church. Our colleagues are waiting.”
“Your colleagues?” Bastian spat. The Presque Mort hauled him up; she vaguely recognized both the guards holding Bastian from the day of the Mortem leak, and they both seemed a bit too eager to manhandle the Sun Prince. The bayonet tip never left his throat, but Bastian didn’t stop snarling. “That’s an interesting way to say fellow traitors.”
Next to her, Gabe flinched. Bastian noticed, and turned his blazing eyes toward him, mouth twisted in an ugly mess of anger and betrayal. “I guess it’s true what they say, huh, Remaut? When someone shows who they are, you’d better believe them. I thought to give you the benefit of the doubt. More fool me.”
Gabe wasn’t close enough to touch, but the very air around him seemed to vibrate with the force of keeping himself still. His fist curled by his side, white-knuckled.
“He’s right.”
