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Her lips pressed into a white line, but Lore fought the urge to jerk away. Instead she ducked her head, as gracefully as she could. “Lead on, Your Majesty.”
August gave a surprised snort. “Well then,” he murmured, “it seems a weed can become a rose, if you move it from the gutter.”
She was going to wear her teeth to nubs if she kept grinding them this hard.
Gabriel watched August lead her down the aisle, worry clear on his face. Lore tried her best to look confident and reassured. This was the price of staying out of the Burnt Isles, and she could manage it without his worry.
When her eyes left Gabe, they found Bastian.
The Sun Prince loitered near the doors, joking with a knot of people she vaguely recognized from the masquerade—one of them being Cecelia, the woman who’d offered them belladonna. Her eyes were glazed this morning, but other than that, she seemed fine. Those court physicians must really earn their keep.
The now-risen sun gilded Bastian’s skin, highlighted a scar through one brow, made his eyes look closer to golden than black. There was something solemn in them as he watched his father lead Lore away.
She had no idea where the vaults were supposed to be. They were yet another mark of privilege. It was exorbitantly expensive to be laid to rest within the Citadel rather than in one of the lesser vaults on the edges of Dellaire—little more than stone boxes with bodies stacked inside. Particularly pious commoners were known to start saving for a place in the city vaults from the moment their children were born.
The Sainted King strolled slowly enough to look casual, but his jaw was tight beneath his trimmed gray beard. “Most of the bodies from the latest attack have been examined and disposed of,” he said. “But the Presque Mort were working all night, and rode hard to bring one of the bodies here, for you to… try.”
Her palm was clammy. She wiped it on her skirt. “The latest attack?”
August nodded. “There was another last night.”
Three villages, all dead. Lore swallowed past a sudden lump in her throat.
They fell into uneasy silence as August led her down the path and back into the Citadel, the double doors closing behind them. The interior dim was disorienting after the summer-morning sunlight.
Once inside, August stopped, breathing labored as if the trek across the green had worn him out. He reached inside his glimmering cloak and pulled out a flask, taking a quick nip.
An herbal scent itched at her nose, immediately familiar. It seemed like sipping poison for fun wasn’t confined only to the younger nobles.
“I hope whoever is dosing you knows what they’re doing,” Lore said quietly.
Dark eyes swung her way, cold and calculating. “You mind your affairs, deathwitch,” August said, tucking the flask away, “and I’ll mind my own.”
The Sainted King strolled down a hallway, then took a sharp turn to a small doorway between two huge oil paintings of Apollius. The paintings were pre-Godsfall—the god’s chest was whole, His heart not yet carved out by His vengeful wife.
With a quick glance around the hall, August pushed the door open to reveal a narrow corridor beyond, lined with arched recesses crowned in golden sun rays. Statues of Apollius stood in the alcoves, plain white marble, each in a different pose. Hands outstretched. Hands to chest. Head tilted up, or looking down with a benevolent smile.
Words in swirling calligraphy had been carved over the arched doorway at the hall’s end, almost too ornate for Lore to make out. She squinted in the dark.
“Our deaths remain our own,” August intoned quietly, reading it aloud.
The numb, nervous feeling at the back of her neck extended down her shoulders.
The door at the end of the hall swung soundlessly inward onto thin gray light and a bare stone staircase, leading down only a few steps before leveling out into a tunnel.
The Sainted King offered a courtly hand. “Come along.”
Lore took the King’s hand and let him lead her into the gloom.
She hated tunnels. Thankfully, this one was short. Up ahead, a lone bloodcoat guard stood at the lip of where the tunnel opened up into what looked like full sunlight.
Not just any bloodcoat, Lore noticed as they approached. Gold lapels gleamed on his red jacket, the bayonet and sword by his side polished to a high shine. He made no indication that he noticed them at all, but when August approached, he inclined his head and stepped aside.
“The Sacred Guard,” August said as they passed. “A highly sought-after position, only granted to those who show themselves worthy both physically and spiritually, and whose loyalty I can be assured of.” He gave her a sidelong look. “They don’t get much chance to use their weapons, but they certainly know how.”
If she wasn’t so completely distracted by the sight of the vaults, Lore might’ve wondered if that was a threat. The room at the end of the tunnel was wide and circular, but the ceiling soared miles above their heads, topped with a cut-glass skylight that filtered the morning sun into faceted shards. It must’ve been what Lore had seen gleaming in the center of the Citadel yesterday.
The skylight was impressive, but not nearly as impressive as the vaults themselves. They climbed like stone towers, stretching nearly all the way to the glass above. Stairs were cut into the sides of the vaults, twisting upward, broken by platforms that led to small doors—the only way to get to the bodies inside. At the tops of the vaults, overgrown rosebushes reached for the sun. The roses were the only living things inside the vaults, other than August and Lore and the guard in the tunnel.
