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She thought of his Consecration, when Anton had taken the knife and carved into his nephew, how everyone watching had seemed shocked.
“That’s some coincidence, isn’t it?” Bastian murmured.
Lore snatched back her hand.
“Is this how they gave you the ability to channel Mortem?” he asked. “Or was it just a bit of unhinged pageantry, like mine? Anton does love to make things dramatic.”
“The Sisters didn’t give me the ability to channel,” Lore said. “I was born with it. I don’t know how, and I don’t think they do, either.”
They’d never offered her any kind of explanation, at least. Only sidelong looks and whispers.
Bastian frowned at her like a particularly difficult cipher. As if the answers she’d given him only served to make more questions.
And Bleeding God, she’d given him all the answers. The Sun Prince of Auverraine knew the truth about her, a truth that she’d never offered to anyone but Val and Mari. And she’d told Bastian even more than that—she’d never told her adoptive mothers that she was a born Mortem channeler, that she hadn’t come by her power in the usual way.
“Come on,” Bastian said finally, moving away. “Time to be getting back, especially if you want to see the vaults before the sun comes up.”
If he wasn’t going to talk further about her childhood, she wasn’t, either. “We have to find Gabriel first.”
“Remaut can take care of himself.” Bastian was nearly at the mouth of the alley; with a frustrated growl, Lore hurried to catch up. “And if we go back to the ring, you’re likely to run into your former paramour again. I assume that’s a conversation you want to avoid, since you were spying on him, too.” He glanced at her over his shoulder, as if he anticipated her shocked look. “Michal is smarter than you gave him credit for; he knew your game from very early on. He told me all about it when I came down here the other night, after the masquerade. I think he would’ve forgiven you, had you not turned out to be a necromancer as well as a spy.”
She tried not to let that sting. “Do you ever sleep?”
“No rest for the wicked, dearest.”
Gas lamps glowed on the street corners, casting coronas of sunset-colored light. Now that the threat of imminent death had passed, Lore’s thoughts expanded again, covering more than just survival instinct. She frowned at Bastian’s back. “You thought I was an assassin.”
“Seemed a likely scenario.”
“But you knew I was answering to your father. So you think—”
“Yes, Lore, I think my father might be trying to kill me.”
“Because he thinks you’re working with Kirythea.”
“No, actually,” he said, his shoulders still bare and going tight. “In fact, I can nearly assure you that my father knows that’s bullshit.”
Lore gnawed on her bottom lip, letting the necessary pieces fall into place, the things he wasn’t saying. “So August just wants to kill you, then. And is using this as an excuse.”
“Very good.”
“But why? You’re his only heir. And why not just hire an assassin, if he actually wants you dead? Why go through with some charade of framing you?”
Bastian didn’t answer at first. They walked on, in and out of the shadows between streetlights. “My father and I have never seen eye-to-eye on anything,” he said finally, softly. “Not ruling, not religion. Frankly, I think it’s stupid for the crown of Auverraine to be determined by Apollius’s blessing. An absent god shouldn’t be the final say in the rule of law.”
“That’s heresy.”
“Quite.” Bastian rubbed absently at his side. A bruise was slowly forming there, the edges filling in lurid purple. “I think my father assumes these thoughts are only due to not wanting the crown myself. And he’s right. I don’t want it. But not enough to turn the country over to Jax and the Kirythean Empire.”
“So why kill you?”
“Eliminates the possibility of me changing my mind,” he said drily. “As for not just hiring an assassin: August knows this court. He knows that his disdain for me is no secret. If I were to just drop dead, or be accidentally killed, there’d always be rumors. The Arceneaux line is blessed, remember, avatars of our god. It wouldn’t do for one of us to be suspected of murder, not when he could frame me as a Kirythean spy and have a perfectly good reason for an execution.” He gave her a sardonic look. “He told you to stick close to me, right? He’s probably planning to plant evidence for you to find. Then he has the word of a holy man and a duke’s cousin”—he poked her shoulder—“to back him up. No one would question his motives.”
“So why don’t you run away?” Lore asked. “If you think your father is one good excuse away from having you assassinated, if you don’t even want the damn crown, why stay in the Citadel?”
“Because the Citadel is mine.” His answer came with a vehemence she hadn’t expected. “Even if I don’t want it, me running away won’t solve anything. I don’t want to be the Sun Prince, but I am, and that comes with a measure of responsibility. If I want to see anything change, I will have to do it myself.” He glanced at her. “And if my father is able to choose his own heir from the remaining Arceneaux relatives, which he would be free to do with me gone, it will not be someone who is good for Auverraine. I can guarantee it. My relatives are few, and all of them are awful.”
Lore thought of what she and Gabe had talked about up in their room, about one pebble trying to dam a river. Bastian wasn’t a pebble, though. Bastian was a boulder.
