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“Can we discuss the oddness later, please?”
A troubled light still shone in Gabe’s eye, but he nodded. His hands relaxed on his knees. “Think about your barrier,” he said, low and calm. “Every detail, no matter how small. Settle into it, so it seems as real as anything else.”
The only thing Lore felt like settling was her fist into her own face—anything to stop this headache. But she gradually calmed her breathing, unclenched her jaw. Untangled her thoughts from the unpleasant sensations of head pounding and a sweaty brow and death on every side, and thought instead of a forest.
Trees. Lots of them. Growing around her in an impenetrable green wall. She heard Gabe breathing in a deep, even cadence; her breath came in counterpoint, like she took in what he let out.
Slowly, slowly, the awareness of omnipresent death dimmed, faded. Not entirely, never entirely. But enough that Lore didn’t feel like she was drowning in it. In her state of deep concentration, where the forest in her head seemed as real and present as the dusty carpet below her, she could almost see something moving beyond her wall of trees. Smoke drifting sinuously in a blue sky.
The image itched at her mind, but she couldn’t fit it to a memory.
When the pounding in her skull subsided and her nightgown felt merely like cotton instead of a chthonic shroud, Lore opened her eyes.
Gabe was looking at her. He’d looked at her a lot over the course of their two days stuck together, but in light made only by a fire’s embers and with so much freckled skin visible, it seemed heavier now. Like he could really see her, a person, not a Mortem channeler or a pretender in a foxglove gown or a stone hung around his neck. Just a woman.
“Has it always been this bad?” His voice was hushed. “The awareness?”
Lore swallowed. “No.”
He stayed quiet, expecting her to go on. But when she kept silent, he didn’t press. “Our minds are most vulnerable in sleep,” Gabe said. “They’re more open, more receptive.” His eye fixed on her, shining with empathy in the moonlight through the window. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
As if this was what she’d be ashamed of, out of everything she had to choose from.
Abruptly, Lore stood. “Well. Thank you for helping me.” She rushed into her room, ready to fall asleep again, to lose herself in tree-shrouded oblivion. Eyes clenched shut, she imagined her forest, filled it out with as much detail as she could.
Branches swayed. Trunks grew thick. Through the emerald leaves, sinuous smoke snaked over an azure sky.
The Church was just as impressive as the Citadel, albeit in a different way. Where the Citadel was all opulence and gilt, the Church was austere, with whitewashed stone walls that nearly glowed, gleaming oak rafters, and pews polished to high shine. Gemlike windows of stained glass cast the gathered congregants of the North Sanctuary in shards of colored light as the sun slowly climbed the sky.
Not for the first time since rising at an ungodly hour—a phrase Gabe had taken as a pun when he woke her up, though she meant it in all sincerity—Lore gave silent thanks that she’d shown restraint with the wine fountain at Bastian’s masquerade. Her eyes still felt gritty from lack of sleep, but at least she didn’t look as haggard as some of the courtiers silently filing in through the wooden double doors. The parade of red eyes and missed streaks of glitter made an easy-to-follow guest list of who’d spent the night dancing with the Sun Prince and who hadn’t.
It would appear that most had. Among the younger courtiers, at least, Bastian was a popular man. She wondered if that was part of the reason why August was so eager to think him a spy. Men in powerful positions were unsettled by popular heirs waiting to take their places. In that regard, the Court of the Citadel wasn’t that much different from a poison runner crew. She’d seen more than one upstart assassinated by their own captain.
A yawn stretched her mouth so wide Lore’s jaw popped. She’d barely taken in the walk from the back entrance of the Citadel to the North Sanctuary, too tired to pay much attention. It was a good mile and a half, by her counting, the path cobble-paved and smooth, lined with rosebushes—a stark contrast with the rubble-strewn walkways in Dellaire proper leading to the South Sanctuary, the one meant for commoners. On either side of the path, the Citadel’s massive green spaces rolled, manicured fields and pseudo-forests, rich land fenced in by the fortress of the Church’s walls.
Something nudged her shoulder. Gabe. “Wake up, cousin.”
“I’m awake, cousin.” But another yawn cramped her jaw as she said it. “Why in all myriad hells are First Day prayers right at the ass-crack of dawn? Surely Apollius can still hear them around noon.”
Gabe inclined his head to the stained-glass window at the very front of the sanctuary. The Bleeding God’s Heart, set out in panels of red and gold and ocher. As the sun rose, its gleam traced up the window, slowly illuminating the glass until the whole thing blazed with color.
“That’s why,” he answered. She couldn’t tell if he sounded reverent or resentful. Maybe a little of both.
For sleeping against the doorframe all night, Gabriel seemed positively refreshed. Dressed in plainer clothes than he’d had for the masquerade—dark doublet, dark breeches, and a linen shirt beneath, this time with sensible sleeves—this was the handsomest he’d looked in their brief acquaintance.
Lore, on the other hand, had carefully avoided the mirror this morning, even as she brushed out her hair. The bags under her eyes were probably deep enough to smuggle hemlock.
The double doors at the back of the sanctuary remained open, emitting the last straggling courtiers. Alienor glided down the thick tapestry carpet running through the center aisle, the sun through the windows making her nearly white curls glow the same colors as the stained glass, a halo-like nimbus around her head. Her eyes were clear and her gait steady as she approached the altar at the front of the sanctuary, knelt, and kissed its polished wood. Lore and Gabe had done the same when they entered. Lore tried not to think about all the lips that had been on it before hers.
When Alie straightened and went to find her seat, her eyes met Lore’s. She smiled, threw a tiny wave. Lore returned it with a genuine smile of her own. Gabriel didn’t look at Alie at all.
An older man walked close behind Alienor, close enough that they had to be arriving together, though they looked nothing alike. His skin was milk-pale to her warm-copper, his hair wood-brown and pin-straight instead of white-blond and curling. His expression was dour, and the lines around his mouth said that rarely changed. The man’s gaze flickered to Lore, as if taking her measure.
“Who’s that?” she murmured to Gabe out of the side of her mouth.
“Severin Bellegarde.” Gabe didn’t have to move to answer the question; he’d been watching Alie already. “Alie’s father.”
Lore arched a brow. Alie must take after her mother, then, in every way.
