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The half-tender and half-unsettling moment ended when Anton turned Lore’s way. “What happened when you tried to raise the body in the chamber?”
Her mouth opened to lie on instinct, to claim no knowledge of a chamber or a body in it. But they were long past that. Lore slumped in her seat, manacles clanking.
By the door, Gabe winced, just a bit. She thought of him that first day, loosening her restraints, trying to make her as comfortable as she could be, and pushed the memory viciously away.
“We know that’s why you went there,” Anton said wearily, taking her silence as reluctance. “And that’s why we didn’t stop you. Why we left the note, why Danielle was instructed to tell you about the docks—her family also realizes what kind of threat August has become, and is loyal to Church over Crown, to gods over humans. We need to know what happened, Lore.”
The note Bellegarde had planted, Dani at Alie’s tea. Lore had been led along like a child holding a parent’s hand; they’d been brought here so easily.
Beyond Anton, Gabe closed his eye, tilted his chin away. Had he known? Had he been part of Anton’s plan from the start?
The rest of them looked at her, the Presque Mort and Bellegarde and even Bastian, with varying levels of confusion and expectation. Lore shrank in on herself, suddenly self-conscious of her failure once again. “It didn’t work. They didn’t say anything new.”
“Nothing new,” Anton repeated. “So the same thing as last time.”
She nodded.
A quick look slid between Anton and Bellegarde, so fast she might’ve imagined it. “And what else happened, Lore?”
“I had to get past your lock, first,” she said petulantly. If he was going to talk to her like a child, she could play the damn part.
A slight smile bent the Priest Exalted’s thin mouth. “Yes. That was quite a feat. It took much practice to bend Mortem in such a way. Practice, and research.” He nodded briefly to Malcolm. “It is fortunate that we’ve kept such a wealth of knowledge in the library.”
Malcolm’s lips pressed flat. He said nothing.
“And after that?” Anton prompted.
“I raised one of them.” She didn’t mention the markings on the corpse’s hand. “But all of them got up. Every single one in the chamber.”
“Got up?” Bellegarde asked excitedly. Behind him, a slightly repulsed look spasmed across Malcolm’s face before he schooled it into neutrality again. “They were ambulatory?”
She nodded, though the nobleman’s excitement at a bunch of moving corpses made her mouth twist in the same disgusted way Malcolm’s had. “They all moved at the same time. Got up off their slabs and started coming toward us.”
“While screaming,” Bastian added. “Don’t forget the screaming.”
But the screaming aspect didn’t seem to matter to Bellegarde. He turned to Anton with barely leashed excitement. “That means the binding works. All that’s needed is—”
Anton held up a hand, and the nobleman went immediately silent.
“What binding?” Lore snapped. “What are you talking about?”
The Priest Exalted sighed. “We bound the corpses,” he said quietly. “I tied the knot yesterday, but Gabriel and Malcolm channeled the Mortem. Putting all those years of study on the properties of magic to use.”
Her eyes darted to Gabe, instinct overriding the desire not to look at him, a renewed sense of betrayal making her stomach feel hollow. Gabe’s shoulders were crooked, his head tilted so she couldn’t see his expression.
Anton noticed. A calculating look flashed in his eye. “We connected the corpses,” he continued, “so that what happened to one would happen to the others, once the Mortem in them was channeled out again. As an experiment, you understand, to see if waking one of the dead could wake them all.” He gestured to Lore. “But the waking must be done by a powerful necromancer. The most powerful we could find, and only after their power had been honed, both by nearing the age of Consecration and by proximity to Spiritum.” His gesturing hand went to Bastian. “We needed the two of you to be close together, so your powers would sharpen each other. The Law of Opposites in action.”
“I don’t have any fucking Spiritum,” Bastian hissed. “None of us do; it’s a fairy tale.”
“Apollius gives the gift to his chosen,” Anton said softly. “And that’s you, Bastian.” His fingers rose, touched the scarred side of his face. There were scars on his hand, too, Lore noticed. They looked new, still red and angry.
“I was told so by the god himself,” Anton continued. “Told that you were the Arceneaux to whom he’d bestow his power. Told that Gabriel Remaut and a child from the catacombs must stay close by you after your Consecration, and that it would pave the way for Apollius’s return.”
“What?”
Gabe’s voice, thin and quiet. His blue eye was wide, his mouth opening, then closing again.
“This has all been in motion for years,” Anton murmured. “Echoing through time. Apollius reaching down to commune with us. An Arceneaux prince, a child of treason, and the child of a Night Sister, born able to channel Mortem.” He spread his hands, smiled gently with the side of his mouth that could do such a thing. “The clearest anyone has ever heard His voice since Gerard Arceneaux himself.”
