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A presence at her back. Gabe. He didn’t touch her, but his hand hovered over his dagger, and Bastian’s arm still looped over her hips. The three of them standing close, drawn together again.
August’s eyes narrowed at them, but only momentarily. Then his chin tilted up, addressing the sky through the window rather than his gathered faithful. “If you’re here,” he said, “you know the cusp on which we stand. Violence, yes, but for a purpose, and with an end—a war we are sure to win. For the glory of Auverraine. For the glory of Apollius, the Bleeding God. To pave the way for His return and make the world new, a rebirth from the ashes of the old.”
“May He return,” rose voices from around the room, among the scattered poison flowers. “May He return in blood and fire and His wounds be healed.”
It echoed the call and response of First Day prayers, shaded sinister.
Next to her father, Alie’s brow creased, confusion marring her slightly amused expression. At least she hadn’t been in on it. At least Lore had one friend.
Bastian’s arm lay heavy across her waist. Two friends.
And though Gabe had given them up to Anton, he still stood at her back. Maybe Lore had more people than she thought.
Cold comfort, while staring down a King who wanted her dead. While the man who was supposed to stop him was still nowhere to be seen.
August continued. “An eclipse is a time of great power, when the light and the dark join together. When the world becomes a portal of change, and things can be set on new paths.” His dark eyes shone as he leveled them at his son. “The world is off balance, since Apollius disappeared. Things do not always turn out as they are meant to be. And when that happens, it is up to us to change it.”
“Where the fuck is Anton?” Bastian hissed from the side of his mouth, the question directed at Gabe behind him. “This isn’t the time to start running late.”
“He’s coming.” But Gabe sounded just as scared as Bastian did. Lore’s palms slicked with cold sweat.
Across the atrium, Alie’s deep-green eyes flickered between August and her rapt father and Lore, trying to fit together the pieces of an unlikely puzzle. Worry carved lines in her brow; then determination smoothed them.
She made a tiny motion forward, as if to join Lore and Bastian and Gabe in the center of the room; Bellegarde’s hand shot out, closed tightly around her wrist, fish-belly-white against copper-brown. Alie was too far away to hear, but Lore saw the tiny sound of pain steal from her mouth.
Gabe did, too. He stiffened, the lines of his body straining toward Alie, caught in between.
August ignored them all. An unsound smile lit his pale face, head still tipped toward the heavens. “In a god’s hands, a curse can become a gift. In a god’s hands—one god, the true god—darkness and light can come together. Every power can come together, housed in one holy body. One god, one crown. One empire that spans the world, heals all its ills and puts it back to rights.”
As he spoke, more Presque Mort filed into the room, their dark clothes and scarred bodies scattering through poisonous blooms. They said nothing, just lined the edges of the atrium, blank-faced as soldiers sent to a battle’s front. The Priest Exalted was still nowhere to be seen.
Finally, August lowered his head, facing the small crowd instead of the sky. His expression was one of deep peace, deep fulfillment, someone seeing a plan come to fruition after years of careful coordination. Subtly, he nodded.
The Presque Mort moved, quick and silent. Bastian realized it first, turning with his teeth bared, a knife he’d hidden in his boot suddenly in his hand and catching a wicked gleam. Gabe took a moment longer, confusion writ large across his features—but when one of the Presque Mort put a rough hand on his shoulder, he spun, gripping his own dagger, though he didn’t draw it yet.
Lore had no weapon, but when the Presque Mort grabbed her, she struggled anyway, lashing out with her feet, clawing with her nails. It was useless, but she tried.
Anton had deserted them. He wasn’t here to stop the ritual.
Maybe he’d never planned on it in the first place. Maybe he’d only pretended, as a way to keep them docile, keep them from running. A gentle touch on the rabbit’s neck before you broke it.
She caught a glimpse of Gabe’s face. He hadn’t quite been able to make himself draw his dagger on his fellows. Through his snarl, he looked lost, stricken.
Across the room, Bellegarde held on to Alie’s hand, tight enough to leave a mark. The slighter woman had no chance of getting away, but still she strained forward, panic on her face. “Gabe!”
Something about his name in Alie’s mouth shook Gabe from his stasis. With an anguished sound, he finally drew his knife, slashed at one of the Presque Mort. They were on him in an instant, overwhelming him, hauling him away. He gave a wordless shout, one that almost resolved into Alie’s name but never quite made it there. A sickening thunk as a fist crashed into his temple; he slumped to the ground.
Someone grabbed Lore’s braid, fallen from its jet pins, and jerked it backward. She snarled, but the Presque Mort’s arms closed around her, kept her confined. It took two to do the same to Bastian; the Sun Prince thrashed, shouting curses that echoed through the slowly darkening atrium. One of the monks struck out with a dagger; the sharp edge sliced through Bastian’s eyebrow, sheeting blood and shocking him into enough stillness to be subdued, arms twisted behind his back.
The shadow of the moon moved closer to the low-hanging sun.
The Presque Mort who held Lore steered her toward August’s throne. The Sainted King stood motionless and aloof, hands behind his back. Another Presque Mort—the one from the leak, walking almost normally on a prosthetic foot—approached the dais and handed the King a dagger, cast in silver and scrolled over with gold. It matched his throne, a marriage of night and day, sun and moon.
“It was always meant to be this way,” he said quietly, pitched so only Lore and Bastian could hear. “Mortem and Spiritum, bound together, held by the same person. The age of many gods is past; now, there’s only room for one.”
“So you decided it should be you?” Lore’s voice was harsh, made hoarse by the way the Presque Mort held on to her hair, her neck stretched forward like an offering. She had to strain to see August, fingering his fine knife.
“Apollius decided it should be someone in our family.” August shrugged. “He chose incorrectly, when deciding on the specific person, but that can be easily remedied. When we are one—when I become His avatar, His vessel—He will understand.”
