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All eyes snapped to Lore. She stared straight ahead, not looking at any of them, keeping her gaze locked on the thin flaring line of the sun emerging over the garden wall. “It seems like betrayal comes easily to you, Duke Remaut.”
She’d wounded him. She’d meant to. Still, the subtle deflation of his shoulders, the way his face turned so all she could see was that infernal eye patch, made all her organs tie themselves in knots.
“I’m afraid it’s a bit more complicated than you and my nephew think.” Anton peered at her, the rising sun behind him making the scarred side of his face a mass of runneled shadow. “Questions of betrayal and treason often are. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.” He turned sharply, headed toward the door cut into the wall of the garden that led back into the Church. “Come. We have much to discuss.”
The Presque Mort deposited Lore and Bastian in a large antechamber, empty other than a long table and a handful of chairs, hung with one simple tapestry of Apollius clutching His bleeding chest. It reminded Lore of the room she’d been taken to after accidentally raising Horse.
Her bonds were a bit more intricate this time. So were Bastian’s. Instead of ropes, their hands were manacled, and those manacles attached to thick iron rings in the floor. A slanted echo of the iron bars crossing the floor in the Citadel.
She supposed no one needed that particular reminder of their holy purpose in the Church. There were reminders everywhere.
It was Malcolm who locked the manacles around her wrists. “Why?” she asked as he worked, not bothering to whisper. “I thought you wanted things to change, Malcolm? I thought you were on our side?”
She didn’t mean to sound so wounded.
The head librarian took a moment to answer. When he did, it was with a sigh. “Anton will explain,” he said. “Gabe came to him, then they both came to me, and what they told me let me know that we have to work together.”
Lore scowled. Next to her, another Presque Mort shackled Bastian, but the Sun Prince stayed silent, staring at the floor.
An hour later, and that silence still held. In that hour, she’d observed that they both handled betrayal differently. Lore iced over, letting no emotion cross her face. Bastian, by contrast, cycled between looking like he might attempt to pull the iron ring out of the floor with his bare hands, and looking like he’d just lost a friend.
She supposed he had, in a way. The thing between her and Gabe and Bastian wasn’t friendship, not really—it was both deeper and less complicated than that, somehow, a primal knot none of them could untie. Gabe’s betrayal stung, but in a way, it also felt inevitable.
“I’m sorry, Lore,” Bastian murmured.
Her brows knit. “Sorry for what?”
“If Gabe betraying me feels this bad,” he said to his bound hands, “then I can’t imagine how it feels for you, when you care for him the way you do.”
“I don’t care for him like… like anything.” It came out breathy, not enough power behind the words to make them a truth or a lie. They just hung there.
The door opened. Both of them looked up.
Anton and Gabe, as expected, and Malcolm with them. The librarian darted a quick, furtive look at Lore, apprehension coiled in his expression.
The Presque Mort parted, revealing another figure behind them.
Severin Bellegarde.
“Well then,” Bastian said, sitting back in his chair with a clanking of chain. “It seems like everything we theorized is true. But what do you get out of war, Severin? Money? You’ve already got more houses than family members, and your style of dress makes it clear you care nothing for current fashion—”
“No one wants a war, Bastian.” Anton had changed out of his robes and into the close, dark clothing he’d worn the day of the leak, matching Gabe and Malcolm. He sat down at the table and crossed his arms, looking suddenly like a much younger man despite the gray shock of his hair. “That is, in fact, precisely what we’re trying to prevent.”
We. Apparently meaning him and Bellegarde.
Bastian’s eyes slid to Lore’s, the same realization hitting them both—the door to the chamber was closed. No one else was coming.
And August wasn’t here.
Bellegarde watched the thought spark on their faces, a thin smile creasing his dour face. “The only person trying to start a war is August,” he said. “And we are not in accord.”
“My brother believes we are on the same side, but we haven’t been. Not for a long time.” Anton shifted on the table, rested his elbows on his knees, and looked to Bastian. “I’m sorry, nephew.”
“Sorry for what?” Bastian had wiped all emotion from his face, donned the mask of careless prince. He tipped up his chin, dark hair falling down his back. “Bit late for regrets, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry,” Anton said slowly, ignoring him, “that sickness and jealousy have made your father a bad man. I am sorry that you have borne the brunt.” A pause. “I’m sorry he wants you dead, when you, of all people, do not deserve his ire.”
A muscle twitched in Bastian’s jaw. His manacled hands tensed, just enough to make his chains click together, and something sorrowful flickered across his face. His father was dying; his father wanted him dead. Both things that sat heavy.
