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There was one easy answer, but it wasn’t something either of them could bear. Wasn’t something Lore would even consider.
A piece of another possible solution turned itself over in her mind, the seed of a plan. But Gabe would stop that one, too. Infuriating, beautiful, lonely man; he wouldn’t bear losing either of them.
So Lore lied. “I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”
Gabe nodded. Then he stood from the bench. “Getting late. We should probably sleep while we can, seeing as we keep finding things to do in the wee hours.”
His face seemed blurred in her vision. In Nyxara’s memories, Hestraon hadn’t looked like Gabe, but when Lore tried to recall them now, his face was all she could see. His face above her in that grove, a pleasurable strain, his eyes closing and then opening again like he didn’t want to miss a moment of seeing her like that, didn’t want to waste any of it. The brief glimpses of his face Nyxara had allowed her to see in the memory of Him and Her and Apollius together, before She’d broken it off, kept it for Herself.
So how much of the want Lore had felt for Gabe had really been hers? How much of it had been the goddess choosing her as a vessel, even as Hestraon’s power chose him, drawing them into a caring they had no real ownership over?
She thought of Apollius wearing Bastian like a costume. Of Nyxara essentially doing the same thing to her, albeit kindlier.
Bastian had told her something like that, once. About how she didn’t recognize when she was being used, as long as it was done kindly.
Apparently, not much had changed.
Moonlight glinted in Gabe’s one eye, was swallowed by the leather of the patch where his other should be. Light and dark, bisecting his face, making him two things at once. He stepped closer to her, his scent of Church incense flooding her breath. “Lore?”
“This is mine,” she said.
And she kissed him.
It was different from the kiss they’d shared on that long-ago night in their shared turret apartment, unreal and ethereal and informed only by heat, by what their bodies wanted from each other. This was deliberate, this was decided, and Lore molded herself to every muscled curve of him, melted them together as much as she could.
Being Nyxara’s avatar had to mean that there was some deep-seated kinship here, some piece of her that mirrored a piece in the Buried Goddess, and surely that meant the love she felt could belong to both of them, couldn’t it? She loved Gabe, Nyxara loved Hestraon. She loved Bastian, and, despite Herself, Nyxara loved Apollius. It was all too much to hold, but Lore wouldn’t let go of it. Any of it.
Gabe’s mouth opened hungrily over hers, his tongue flickering at her lip. She gasped him in, let her own tongue slide against his, the imitation of something they both wanted. His hardness pushed against her stomach, and she wanted to reach for it, but that would be cruel. She didn’t have time to give him that. Not right now.
There were things she had to do.
Still, when he feathered kisses over her shoulders, her neck, her collarbone, she held him close. And when his teeth and lips and tongue loved a bruise into the skin just below her ear, she pushed into him, let him do it, found pleasure in the ache.
One more deep kiss, and Lore thought she’d have to be the one to break it off, but she wasn’t. Gabe stepped back, shaking his head. “We can’t,” he murmured.
Once again, she was reminded of that night and how it ended, and a wry smile picked up her kiss-swollen lips. “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
His brow furrowed. Then he laughed.
After a moment, she joined him.
They cackled in the stone garden, the rocky petals throwing back the echoes. Gabe bent at the waist, like the muscles in his stomach hurt; Lore wiped at her streaming eyes. As their hysterics subsided, Gabe wrapped his arms around her, resting his chin on top of her head. Lore hugged his waist, burrowing her face into his shoulder.
“Are you wiping snot on me?”
“It’s better if you don’t know.”
They stood in silence, then, once all the laughter had petered out completely. Another lingering moment, the two of them pressed together, then they broke apart. Gabe didn’t kiss her forehead—that was Bastian’s tenderness—but he caressed her face, his thumb running over her cheek and then down her jaw. “I’ll walk you back.”
There were things to do, first. Things she had to gather before she went. Lore had two items of business to take care of, and he would stop them both. “I’ll be fine. You go get some sleep.”
Lore expected him to resist leaving her here alone. But Gabe nodded. With a gentle squeeze of her hand, he faded into the dark, headed back into the Church.
She waited until she couldn’t hear his footsteps anymore. Then Lore went to the greenhouse to complete her first errand.
The scent of roses and blood was thick in the humid air. Lore breathed shallowly through her mouth as she searched the shelves of dusty gardening equipment, but that just made her tongue taste coppery, which wasn’t much improvement.
Once she found what she was looking for, she entered the back room.
