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“You concentrate on staying safe,” Val continued. “Don’t worry about us.”
“You know I will.” The words came out mangled from where Lore’s face was pressed against Mari’s shoulder. She nudged back at Val. “Leave off, Ma, I can’t breathe.”
She so rarely referred to either of them by anything other than their names, even though they were her parents in every way that counted. Val hesitated a moment, then hugged her harder. “What’s that? Couldn’t understand you.”
Lore made a garbled sound, and all three of them were laughing, then, shaking from being pressed together. Finally, Val let go, straightening Lore’s gown and her cloak. “Gods dead and dying, this dress is far too nice for you to be wearing it down here.”
Lore grimaced. “I’ll sell it as soon as I get to Caldien. I miss wearing boots.”
Behind them, Alie watched, her lower lip between her teeth. As Lore broke away from her mothers, she thought of Alie’s own, and of Bellegarde, left rotting in Courdigne. She went over to her friend and wrapped her arms around her, half expecting the other woman to seize up and stand stiff, but Alie returned the embrace, pulling in a long, deep breath through her nose.
“We’ll be all right,” Lore murmured.
Alie just nodded.
They trooped out into the morning, thin fingers of pink streaking the sky. Lore studied the approaching dawn with nerves writhing in her gut. Last night, she’d left the Citadel with no problem, and the lack of guards busting down the door to Val and Mari’s warehouse meant that Bastian hadn’t given them the word—Alie said that he was already awake, already knew she’d left. Apollius was in control. Surely, Bastian knew where she’d gone. It all came down to whether he could hide that information in his head, seal it up somewhere Apollius couldn’t find.
Or maybe Bastian himself would give the order, no godly influence needed. Afraid to be left alone, afraid to let her go, even if it was the only thing that could save him.
Lore fell behind the others as she thought, mist swirling over her slippered feet. They were stained from trekking through the storm drain last night; part of Lore expected to be struck down with some hideous storm-drain disease before they even reached Caldien. Wouldn’t that be an anticlimactic second death for Nyxara.
Alie fell into step beside her, letting the others pull farther ahead, following the cobblestone road down to one of the smaller docks where merchants kept their galleys. “I’ve never been on a sea voyage,” Alie said, clearly trying to shine a positive light on things. “Or to Caldien. Or to a university.” She snorted. “So this should be full of new experiences for me. I’ve never really been farther from the Citadel than some noble’s house on summer progress.”
Strange, that even wealth could be a cage. A gilded prison rather than a squalid one.
“I’ve never been, either,” Lore said. “I’ve never been outside of Dellaire, until we went to the farmlands. Mortem wouldn’t let me.”
“But it will now,” Alie murmured, eyeing Lore’s hands. The gray skin of her palms showed when her arms swung. It seemed like it covered a larger area of her skin than it had before, like it was spreading ever since Nyxara died her first death.
Lore’s instinct was to close her hands to fists, but she fought against it. “It will now,” she agreed.
They walked in silence for a moment. Until it was broken by a gunshot.
Cold spread through Lore’s body. It took a moment for her to realize it was because a bullet had ripped through her middle.
“Oh,” she said, almost annoyed, then dropped.
Her knees barked against the cobblestones, her breath coming in a long gasp. The bag she’d quickly packed last night before going to Bastian spilled out over the street, shimmering gowns not fit for traveling, things she’d shoved into her pack without thinking. The glimmer of them caught her eye, expanded, became nearly all she could see, the only thing her brain would latch onto.
Shouting. Running feet. “You weren’t supposed to shoot her, you fucking idiot, he wants her back! If she dies he’ll have you drawn and quartered!”
Lore looked down.
Blood on her stomach. An echo from the past. She would laugh, if she could gather up the breath for it.
Breath. Life. Spiritum.
Next to her, Alie screamed, but then she was pulled away, the bloodcoats suddenly flooding the street from where they’d hidden in warehouses, taking anyone prisoner they could reach. Lore couldn’t pay attention to that right now. Instead, she closed her eyes, forcing herself to focus past the cold-burning pain. Winding in golden threads around her fingers, concentrating them over the gunshot wound in her stomach, almost exactly where August had stabbed her months ago.
It was harder to heal, this time. The bullet was savage in a way the knife wasn’t, a contradictory truth—one was so much more personal, but the distance of the other lent it violence. Her insides were mangled around the thing’s trajectory, and it was still lodged in her, caught somewhere between organ and rib. Repairing it took so much more effort than healing her stab wound had, and it fucking hurt, the bullet drawing slowly out of the bloody cavity, sucking at muscle and flesh.
The chaos around her faded to background noise; she had to concentrate to see what was happening, quite a feat when she was also trying to reverse a gunshot.
Bloodcoats held Alie as she shrieked, the sound of it echoing through the empty morning. A guard had clapped irons around her hands, fighting against the gusts of harsh wind she summoned with twitching fingers. Farther down the road, Malcolm and Gabe fought off other guards, but not just with daggers, and not in the subtle way Alie did. Their hands were outflung—thin blades of grass surged forward where Malcolm pointed, surprisingly strong, latching around polished boots. Fire torrented from Gabe’s hands, catching on red coats, the smell of burning meat and hair billowing into the seaside air, chased by hoarse screams.
Well. If Apollius hadn’t known that the other gods had found vessels, He would now.
“Idiots,” Lore mumbled, the blood in her mouth slopping over her numb lips, her chin. They had to leave. Had to go.
