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Lore pulled the least offensive dress she could find from the rack, a dark-green affair in velvet that looked to have enough room in the breast and hips for her to wear. Her shirt made a small sound as it hit the floor, and Gabriel stiffened.
She smirked.
The dress was still too tight, but Lore was fairly certain it was the best she could do. Once clothed, she tapped Gabriel on the shoulder to sidle out of the room.
“Such a gentleman,” she remarked, starting down the hall to where Anton and Malcolm waited, unfamiliar velvet swishing around her legs. “Celibacy has got to be a drag, but you didn’t even try to peek.”
The Mort made a choked noise.
The Citadel was bright enough to hurt her eyes.
She’d seen the tops of its four corner turrets before—they were just barely visible over the wall of the Church, built in a circle around the Citadel itself—but seeing them up close was another thing entirely. They gleamed in the sun, arrows pointing toward the sky, flocked with silver that traced the tower’s sides like frosting on a cake. In the walls that connected the turrets, windows glinted jewel-like at equidistant points, some stained glass and some diamond-clear. A domed glass roof arched up in the center of the square the turrets made, throwing off rainbow prisms. The building was a behemoth of marble and precious metal, polished wood and gemstone, large enough to house the entire court in the summer months. Lore thought she could wander around in there for a year without finding the way out.
The ground around the Citadel was a garden, at least here, between the southern wall of the Church and the Citadel’s main entrance. On the other side of the Citadel, there were fields, stables, an entire world the size of at least two city Wards. And all around it, the Church, built more like a fortress. As much a structure to keep out the rabble as it was for worship.
Anton led them from the Church’s arched doorway out into the garden. Lore glanced back, shading her eyes—they’d come from the South Sanctuary, the one meant for common worshippers. Miles away, on the opposite side of the Citadel, was the North Sanctuary, meant for the court. The large stone walls that split the grounds in two were filled with storage and cloisters, topped with battlements prepared for the possibility of siege.
A white marble statue rose from a tangle of pink roses beside the path. The Bleeding God, again, wearing a crown like sun rays—a holdover from when the pantheon had been whole and He’d been merely the god of light, life, and the day, instead of everything. Plinths circled the statue, now empty, but Lore counted five. One for each elemental god of the former pantheon, dying one by one, Their bodies found in strange places all over the world. And one beside Apollius, slightly taller than the others, for Nyxara.
Anton and Malcolm walked before her, Gabriel behind, though none of them necessarily seemed to be on guard. It wasn’t like she’d run, and there was nowhere to go but back inside the Church, anyway.
“Keep your head down if you see anyone.” Gabriel’s voice came low enough to tickle her shoulder blades. “Unless you want to be the subject of rumors for years to come. New faces in the court are rare.”
Lore kept her voice low, too. “Maybe they’ll come up with something interesting.”
“More interesting than the truth?”
“Fair.” She glanced over her shoulder. “If your boss wants me to befriend the Sun Prince, though, I think rumors are probably inevitable.”
Gabriel didn’t respond, but his eye narrowed.
Trees were planted throughout the garden with just enough randomness to seem unplanned, and thickly flowering arbors covered the benches beneath them almost entirely from view. Movement under one of the arbors caught her eye. Lore squinted between a froth of yellow roses, curiosity immediately overriding Gabriel’s directions.
A dark-haired man had his head bent low, whispering to a lady whose back was turned. Lore could make out little of his face through the flowers, but what she could see was almost ridiculously handsome—strong jaw, sun-bronzed white skin, dark eyes. The lady she could see even less of, only enough to surmise that her hair was light brown and her clothes were elegant. The man seemed to be trying to talk her out of them, if the insolent hand on her thigh and the brush of his lips against her shoulder were any indication.
As if he could feel her watching, the man raised his eyes, staring at Lore through the lattice of roses. His lips continued their gentle path along his companion’s shoulder blade as, slowly and deliberately, he winked.
Lore whipped her head around to face the front.
The guards asked no questions as the Presque Mort approached the entrance to the Citadel proper, great double doors inlaid with large golden hearts like the one Anton wore as a pendant. The guards inclined their heads to Anton as the doors opened, sun reflecting off the tiny garnets in the wood, nearly the same color as their coats.
Up until now, Lore had kept her nerves well in hand. Necessity made her shrewd, and she needed to keep her head. But as the Citadel doors closed behind her, Lore’s heart leapt in the direction of her throat, thrumming so quickly she could nearly taste it.
The inside of the Citadel was even more luxurious than the outside. Knaves set into the walls held small icons of Apollius, sun rays over their arched tops breaking gold on the rich mahogany. The ceilings were painted with lush garden scenes, nude figures reclining among green trees and beside rushing blue streams, interrupted occasionally by the gold chains of heavy chandeliers, light catching the hanging gems and splashing rainbows across the walls.
The iron crossbars bisecting the floor seemed brutally out of place.
The bars were flush to the marble, but Lore still didn’t want to step on them. She lengthened her stride as much as the too-tight dress would allow. “Interesting décor decision.” Something about all this opulence made her want to keep her voice quiet.
“They’re symbolic,” Gabriel murmured back. “Supposed to remind everyone that the Citadel is here to keep Mortem contained, and that the Arceneaux line rules through divine right.”
“Gaudy.”
“Quite.”
A huge tapestry hung on the wall to her left, nearly wide enough to span the length of the hallway. In the top corner, the pale, chestnut-haired figure of Apollius hovered, wings of light spread behind His back, one hand thrust forward into the chest of a dark shape careening toward the ground. Just like the tapestry in the Church, the figure was vague, more smoke and shadow than concrete lines, but the crescent crown on Her brow was clear. Below, azure thread was interrupted by circles of brown and green, seven stylized islands in a stormy sea. The one at the end of the archipelago, farthest from the viewer, was the biggest by far. The Golden Mount. Where Apollius and Nyxara had lived before this moment.
This was the Godsfall, how the Burnt Isles had gotten their name. Apollius cast down Nyxara when She tried to kill Him and take His place, creating a deep crater in the second island and rupturing the others. According to the Book of Holy Law, that was why so many gemstones and precious metals could be mined from them. Gods bled riches, apparently. Convenient.
