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“Little deathwitch,” Anton snarled. “You think you’re in the right?”
“I think,” Lore panted, forcing herself to stand, “that I’m not going to let you kill anyone else with my power.”
“That’s what you don’t understand, Lore,” her mother said, slender and sad and wreathed in flame-light. “It isn’t yours. It’s Hers. And the longer you live—the more powerful you grow—the more like Her you will become.”
“We can’t have another Godsfall.” Anton got up, slowly, looking every inch the frail old man. Except for his eyes. Those glittered with a sheen of madness, a fervor that made her recoil. The knife he’d used to stab August twisted in his grip. “We can’t let it happen again.”
“So you kill people instead?” Even healed, her side still ached; Lore pressed her fist against it. “You’re addled, Anton. There won’t be another Godsfall, because there are no more gods!”
“There is one, and you will cede your power to Him,” Anton replied, spittle flying from the corner of his scarred mouth. “The world brought to heel beneath Apollius’s merciful rule, through His blessed—”
A scream ripped the night, cutting off whatever Anton had been about to say. Torches toppled, rolling across the cobblestones; another torch swiped through the air. The living flowers growing on top of their stone counterparts were dry and brittle from a summer without rain; they licked into flame, surrounding the well in jumping tongues of fire.
And Bastian stepped through them.
His fine shirt was ripped, crusted with blood from the cut through his eyebrow. His teeth gleamed in the flickering light, bared and snarling.
Anton’s face split in a beatific, unsound smile, one that made Lore’s stomach twist uncomfortably. He had hidden all this… this worship, this devotion, keeping Bastian at arm’s length even as he worked to keep him safe from August. But now that everything was coming to a close, he looked on his nephew with the same light in his eyes that he’d cast toward the sky as he prayed.
“Bastian, my boy!” the Priest Exalted called. “I’m sorry you were hurt; I told them that you weren’t to be harmed, but when things get chaotic—”
“Your monks are all hurt far worse than I am.” Bastian held a short sword he must’ve taken from someone; he turned it so the bloodied edge caught the firelight.
The Presque Mort scattered around the garden seemed uneasy; hands fell to the harnesses around their chests. They glanced at their Priest, waiting for instruction, ready for violence if it was called for.
“It’s good that you’re here,” Anton continued, oblivious to the low, dangerous tone in Bastian’s voice. “Things have gone a bit off schedule with the girl. But now that you’ve arrived, we can move forward. Perhaps you can convince her to see reason.”
Bastian’s eyes swung to Lore, panic flashing bare and jagged across his features. “Are you hurt?”
“She’s fine,” Anton said dismissively, waving his hand. “Better, even; she channeled Spiritum and used it to heal herself.” A sharp laugh echoed over the stone roses, the hiss of flames. “If her magic has been heightened to such a level, imagine yours!”
Across the well, the Night Priestess stood still as a carved icon. Her expression wavered in the growing flames, but she didn’t look at Bastian with fear. It was closer to resignation, as if his appearance here marked a sea change, diverted the flow of her plan. She turned her eyes to Lore. There was no pity to be found in her face.
Slowly, she made her way closer, close enough for her whisper to be heard. “You care for him,” her mother whispered. “Don’t you?”
Lore didn’t answer.
“If you care for him,” she murmured, hazel eyes sheened in tears, “if you care for anyone in this world, you will let this happen. Please don’t make it harder than it has to be, Lore. You don’t understand what hell you could bring on the world.”
“I’m sorry for keeping you in the dark.” Anton moved toward Bastian the way one would approach an altar, Lore and the Night Priestess cast completely from his mind. Bastian stood still. The fire gilded him, made him look cast in gold rather than flesh.
“There was much I didn’t understand, not until recently,” Anton continued. “And I know you were fond of the girl—for that, I’m sorry, but you must understand it’s a weakness, an echo that cannot be allowed to continue for all our sakes. You must overcome it, must be ready to sacrifice old feelings and remake the world in Apollius’s image.” A tear broke from the line of his lashes and spilled down his cheek. “In your—”
“You won’t be sacrificing anyone.”
Gabe.
He appeared behind the Priest Exalted, flame-wreathed, his dagger in his hand. The blade pressed against Anton’s throat, and his hand didn’t shake as he took the Priest’s wrist, twisted it to make him drop the knife still caked in August’s blood. Gabe looked worse for wear than Bastian, his eye patch lost, bruises forming on nearly every inch of visible skin.
“Ah, Gabriel,” Anton sighed. “Your loyalties are ever-shifting. I suppose I should expect that.” A snarl lifted his mouth. “Part of you knows, I think. What you could become if this is allowed to continue. An abomination. Recurring sin.”
Gabe’s throat worked as he swallowed, as he shoved the blade close enough to pucker skin. “Be quiet,” he said, the ghost of something broken in it. “Please, Father, be quiet.”
“I’m not your father, boy,” Anton hissed.
A flinch, Gabe’s one blue eye fluttering closed, then open again.
“Lore.” Her mother’s hand was cold on her arm. “Lore, please, before this comes to a point we can’t return from.”
