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The other obvious option was finishing the job Anton had started that night. But the thought was only in her head for a heartbeat before Lore dismissed it. She’d fought for a life, gods dammit. Like hell would she throw it away.
Even if it meant she had to live the rest of it far away from everyone she cared about.
Mouth set in a determined line, she mounted the stairs.
Bastian wasn’t asleep. He stood at the window, his dark hair tousled, his eyes bright when he turned to watch her approach. That stopped her until she got a good look at them—tired and dark and his own. The ditch of night still kept Apollius buried in his head. That was something.
He turned from the window. Even in the dark, his eyes went to the place beneath her ear, the mark Gabe’s kiss left. Tentatively, he reached up, brushed his fingers over it. “You smell like him,” he breathed. “Church incense.”
Lore said nothing. Her pulse quickened under his touch.
Bastian’s hand dropped. “You’re leaving.” It wasn’t a question. He wore no shirt, bare-skinned in moonlight, so there was nothing to hide the feather of the tendon in his neck, reined-in anger.
“I have to.”
The muscles in his shoulders bunched. “I order you not to.”
“Good try.”
“I’m still your fucking King.” He grabbed her arms, his fingers digging into her flesh. They were warm, so warm, and he still smelled like that expensive cologne she’d never been able to place.
“I have to,” she repeated. Her hand wanted his skin; she allowed herself to lay her palm on his shoulder. “If I go, His hold on you will weaken. Power is made and broken in the same way. Your magic increased because I was here, it will diminish if I go.”
He shook his head before she’d finished speaking. “There has to be a different way. It’s not safe for you to leave, Lore, not with the Empire sinking in their claws, not when everyone knows who and what you are.”
“It’s not safe for me here, either.” Her hand on his shoulder flexed, just a little, just enough to dig in her nails. Bastian’s breathing quickened, and she was reminded, for just a moment, of when they were in the arbor. When he’d begged her to tell him exactly what to do, wanting her to take charge.
She couldn’t think of that now. “Apollius killed Amelia, Bastian.”
His eyes closed. A swallow worked down his throat. “No, He didn’t.”
Her brows drew together.
When Bastian’s eyes opened, there was a fierce light in them. Just as terrifying as Apollius’s, but all his own. “I did. He wasn’t in control when it happened. I was.”
Her hand fell away from him. He caught it, cradled it in his own. “She was trying to kill you,” he said, looking at her fingers instead of her face, telling her everything the corpse already had. “She came here, saw me. The sun was still shining; she thought I was Him.”
She let him keep holding her hand. She had no desire to pull away, even now, and that horrified her a bit.
“She had a knife,” he continued, head still tilted down, his hair hiding his eyes. “And when she saw me, she expected me to be… proud. Happy.” He shook his head. “She said she had been trained to be my Queen, His Queen. That she understood how I’d been led astray, how Nyxara was trying to bewitch me again as I’d been before, but she would take care of it.”
Amelia in the hallway, sneering at her, thinking she’d taken something away. The marriage with Demonde was supposed to be a sham, then, cover so no one would know the Devereauxs were plotting to install their eldest daughter as Queen.
But then all their plans had been dashed, Lore living when she wasn’t supposed to, Bastian sending everyone who’d conspired to make him King to the Burnt Isles. They’d married her off quick, keeping her safe, keeping her in the Citadel. Amelia probably thought it was only a matter of time, that she just had to be patient until Apollius took over from Bastian fully and cast Lore out.
“I didn’t think,” Bastian murmured. His voice had gotten smaller and smaller as he spoke, and now it was barely a whisper. “I used Spiritum. Sent it to her heart. Made it beat so hard it stopped.” He finally looked up, now, meeting her eyes. She expected to see regret in them, but there was none. “He came forward, then. Slashed her throat open, stabbed her eye. For no reason, she was already dead. Just because He could.” He shuddered. “Apollius took her power. Caeliar was inside Amelia the way He’s inside me. I don’t know what that means.”
But Apollius did. Apollius knew that if Caeliar had awakened, Braxtos and Hestraon and Lereal had, too. Maybe He knew who they were, even, and was just biding His time.
But if Lore left, they’d fade away, hopefully. Her stain on their world would be gone, the magnetism of her magic would let them go. The Law of Opposites reversed.
“So you don’t have to leave,” Bastian said, like he’d read her mind and wanted a counterargument. He pressed his forehead against hers and brought her hands back up to his shoulders, where they’d been before. He arched his fingers over hers and pressed her nails into his skin, wanting that pain, that pressure. “I told you I would make you safe, Lore. I made you Queen. You will stay here.”
“Not Queen yet.” She kept her voice quiet, but she dug her nails in harder, like she knew he wanted. “And you can’t order me.”
His eyes flicked up, fixed on hers, dark and liquid with heat. “But you can order me.”
They’d slipped into something else, no longer talking just about her leaving, though that was still hanging here. Now they also talked of the fire building between them, the way his eyes glazed when she pressed her nails in just a little bit more, dimpling his sun-bronzed skin, the way he caught his bottom lip between his teeth.
