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Lore bit the inside of her cheek, working out how she wanted to phrase it. “You know Bastian’s presence makes it hard to call Mortem,” she said finally. “Like that night at the boxing ring, and then later, in the vaults. You felt it, too. But while I was… out… I felt it when he came in the room. Felt his presence, again.”
The Presque Mort’s face was expressionless beneath his eye patch, his shoulders held tense.
She shrugged. “It helped.” Weak words for something so strange. “And I think it might have something to do with Spiritum. With the Arceneaux line.”
“I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion,” Gabe said quickly. “I understand it was strange—and somewhat alarming, in the vaults—but even though the Tracts say Apollius gave them the gift, there’s disputes about the literal interpretation—”
“That’s why I want to take a look at what’s in the library,” Lore interrupted. “Just to see if there’s more information. And not just about Spiritum and the Arceneaux line, about all of this.” Her hand waved in the air, encompassing them and Bastian, the villages, a Mortem leak after so long without. “It’s all connected, somehow. Maybe there’s something in the Church library that can help us make sense of it.”
A moment of stillness, then Gabe nodded, perfunctory and business-like. “We’ll ask Malcolm tomorrow.” His eye flicked to her, finally. “Did you tell Bastian of your suspicions?”
He kept his tone even, but there was something dark behind it. They might be bought and bound by Bastian’s threat of the Isles—a threat Lore knew wasn’t idle—but Gabe’s loyalty was free, and it wasn’t for the Sun Prince. It never would be.
“No.” Lore shook her head. “No, I didn’t.”
Relief softened Gabe’s shoulders. He nodded.
For a moment, they stood there, and they could’ve filled the space between them with so many things. But Lore turned on her heel and left it empty.
Behind her shut door, Lore put the salve on her vanity before changing into a woolen chemise she found in the bottom of the wardrobe. Still shivering, she dug out a thick robe, wrapped it around herself. She felt the chill of death down her to bones, as if seeing Gabe had somehow made her body remember.
Her fingers felt numb as she fumbled the cork off the bottle of salve, poured the medicine into her palms. Gabe was right; it did sting like a bitch, and she hissed curses through her teeth as she rubbed her hands together, spreading it over her fingers and up her wrists. Eventually, the sting gave way to warmth, and she crossed her arms, making herself small as she burrowed under her covers.
But sleep wouldn’t come. She was so exhausted, but she was so cold, and rest hovered just beyond her grasp.
Getting up wasn’t really a conscious thought. Neither was padding to the door and pushing it open, looking out into the dim glow of the banked fire, out to where Gabe huddled next to the door, bare chest gilded in ember-light, staring up at the ceiling with one blue eye and one leather-covered wound.
He turned to her as she made her slow way across the dusty carpet, arms still crossed, still huddled as if she stood in a blizzard instead of a courtier’s apartment. He watched her come and didn’t say a word.
“I’m so cold,” Lore murmured.
And he still didn’t speak as he took hold of his blanket and held it out, an invitation.
Lore lay down next to Gabe, and he let the blanket fall over her, turned so his back was to the door and his chest pressed against her spine. He was warm, and it seeped into her slowly, blotting out the numbness, reminders of life in a body that knew so much death.
Gabe’s arm settled over her waist, pulled her close. The bandage over the missing tip of his finger was stark against the dark blanket. His breath stirred her hair. And Lore closed her eyes and fell into deep, thankfully dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The significance of natural phenomena in fluctuations of divine power cannot be overstated. Apollius was the god of the sun, and Nyxara the goddess of the moon. Their union proved to be a volatile one, and one that spelled destruction for the world as we knew it before the Godsfall; however, when their symbols come together in the sky, it can be a time of great power for those who know how to use it. An eclipse signifies change, change to the very nature of magic. It is a time when opposites can come together.
—Solenne Bacque, lecturer in Cosmological Theology at Ularha College in Kadmar (pre-Kirythean conquest)
Ouch.”
Gabe’s voice startled Lore awake, much closer to her ear than it should be. Her eyes flew open, registering the world at an odd angle—sideways, and from below. Every muscle in her body felt like it was on the verge of cramping, and something behind her back pressed her forward uncomfortably.
It was Gabe, arching away from the door. Gabe, lying next to her with his chest bare. Gabe, whom she’d slept with the night before, chasing warmth and not thinking about how it’d leave them in the morning.
Lore scrambled up, taking the blanket with her, clutching it around her shoulders. She’d slept with plenty of people, in both senses of the word, and didn’t much care about modesty besides. But something about it being Gabe, pious, vow-bound Gabe, made her cheeks heat furiously and an uncomfortable vulnerability crawl through her chest.
The flush across Gabe’s cheekbones said he was having his own uncomfortably vulnerable moment. She saw the decision flash across his face as he chose not to address what had happened last night, and she was absurdly grateful for it.
Gabe reached behind him, picking up whatever had come through the door. She wondered how long he’d been awake, if he’d just lain there with his arm around her as she slept.
It was another envelope, pushed under the door, Remaut once again scrawled in elegant script over the front. A seal covered the envelope’s closure, deep-purple wax impressed with an image of the Bleeding God’s Heart. The Arceneaux seal.
“Is it a summons?” Lore asked as Gabe sat up and ripped the envelope open.
