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Her words were muffled by goose down, but the plaintive wheedle in her voice was clear. So was Bastian’s sigh. “Because you are my deathwitch, Lore. The highest office in the court.”
“An office you made up.”
“And made the highest.” The mattress bent as he sat. “Staying near me is also best for your safety. But I won’t rehash that conversation.”
“If I never have another conversation about staying close to you, it will be too soon.” Still under her pillow, Lore scrunched her eyes shut. “We don’t even know if I can get as far as the farmlands.”
The Mortem strung all through her, the magic that had never let her leave Dellaire, seemed to have loosened its hold somewhat ever since the ritual. Not that she’d tested it—she hadn’t left the Citadel since then—but she could feel it. Something about holding both Spiritum and Mortem had made the chains of one loosen, opened up the world for her. She supposed she should be grateful for that.
“Seems as good a day as any to find out,” Bastian said. “If you don’t drink that coffee, I’m going to. You have thirty seconds.”
Reluctantly, she pulled her pillow off her head.
Bastian looked just as stunningly beautiful as he always did. His dark hair curled around his collar, the golden circlet studded with rubies across his brow, bisecting the well-healed scar slashing from his forehead to the outside corner of his right eye. He hadn’t used Spiritum to soften it, to make it heal as less than brutal.
He arched a brow at her when she sat up, her coffee cup held teasingly close to his own mouth. She held out her hand, and he surrendered the bone china. “You look like you need it. When did you go to bed, ten minutes before sunrise?”
Lore blew across the top of the coffee before taking a sip. “I went to bed right after dinner, thank you. I just didn’t sleep particularly well. Bad dreams.”
His teasingly arched brow slashed low instead, suddenly serious. “You’re dreaming again?”
Burning trees, screaming sky. She’d dreamed, all right, but it hadn’t been the same. More like a memory than a dream at all.
Lore set the coffee aside, stood up to rummage through her closet. “Yes, but not anything important. Not like before.” Lore swallowed hard as she dug through gowns. In summer, the courtiers of the Citadel dressed in things that either showed as much skin as possible, or touched skin as little as they could. Lore went for the second option, gauzy tentlike gowns that floated around her like a cloud.
But Bastian wasn’t swayed. “I thought he was supposed to be teaching you to guard your mind.”
He. They hardly ever said Gabe’s name to each other, as if he were a haunting. “He is.”
“Not well, apparently. I’ll have to talk to—”
“No, Bastian.” Lore whipped around, a gown she’d barely looked at clutched to her chest. Deep, bloody red, not really appropriate for summer. “This isn’t about him, it’s about me.”
Her fear. Her shame. Her selfishness.
You are the seed of the apocalypse, her mother had said in the dark of the eclipse. Endings take time, she’d said by the well last night.
Bastian sighed, tipping back his head. When he came toward her, it was careful. Warm hands on her shoulders, placed light before settling firm.
She didn’t look up, staring at her bare feet on the plush carpet.
“You have to let it go, Lore,” he murmured.
But she never would. The dreams with the smoke twisting over the sky weren’t the only ones she was afraid of—the regular nightmares were just as bad. Where she saw the child in the vaults with his black eyes, mouth unhinged and spilling whispers. Where she saw obsidian walls closing around her, and she couldn’t scream no matter how hard she tried.
“The power is yours,” Bastian said fiercely, almost like he was trying to convince himself as well as her. “You control it. No one else.”
Lore kneaded the red dress in her hands to soothe the itch in her fingers. She could still feel Mortem in inanimate things, if she tried, reaching past the bounds of the forest she’d grown in her mind. It was almost soothing. “I know,” she murmured. “I know the power is mine.”
And though it wasn’t the complete thought, she left it there, because the rest of what she felt about her magic wasn’t easily put into words. She didn’t want to admit she was afraid. Didn’t want to tell him that sometimes her entire mind turned toward the terror that maybe Anton was right. Maybe the more she used her power, the more like Nyxara she would become.
Lore didn’t believe that. Refused to. And yet.
“Maybe I should stay here today,” she said. “There’s no reason for me to go with you to the farmlands, is there?”
His hands on her shoulders tightened, just a bit, before falling to the dress she held. “The reason,” he said, “is because I want you to.”
“Not quite good enough.”
