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“They wanted you dead,” Bastian continued. “You dead, and me…” He trailed off. The hand not on her leg opened, turned to show his palm, the eclipse carved there. “They were trying to scare you. Scare me. Make us think that there was no way forward together, no way but the one they wanted. But there is, and we’ve proven it. We’re here, the world is fine, and they were wrong.”
Her mother in the dark garden, surrounded by slow-churning fog. Endings take their time.
“Still,” Lore said quietly. “I want to keep working at making my barriers stronger. Keep things as contained as possible.”
Bastian’s lips flattened, but he nodded.
“And next time you want to invite an enemy contingent to watch, please tell me first.”
He slid her a look from the corner of his eye. “Feel free to punish me as you see fit.”
“I think you’d like that too much.”
“My ruse is found out,” he said, and he did sound slightly disappointed. He stood, stretched, reached out his hand to her on the floor. “It’s still a few hours to dawn. You should rest while you can.”
“I guess I’ll need it,” Lore said, looking forlornly at her unmade bed. “I have an appointment with Gabe in the morning, before your coronation.”
Bastian’s eyes flickered from her to her bed. “I could…” But he trailed off, shook his head. “Good night, Lore.”
“Good night.” He slipped out the door, taking the tray with him.
She knew what he’d been about to ask. He was going to ask if he could stay.
And she didn’t know how she would’ve answered.
The walk into the Church had never gotten more comfortable. Lore always felt like an interloper there, something to be quickly cleared away, like a scuff on the marble floor or a smudge on the windows. The feeling had only magnified, for all that she was the King’s deathwitch. Bastian made her safer, but the Church still held no love for her.
Lore wore a hooded cloak, pulled up to obscure her face. It was Burnt Isles hot, despite the near-dawn hour, but the confessional where she and Gabe met was in a little-used room off the South Sanctuary, and there was always the chance she might meet someone in the commoners’ section of the Church who’d known her as a poison runner. By now, everyone in Dellaire knew her name, but she still tried to avoid her old life crashing into her new one. They were too oppositional to hold at once.
The Church confessionals were near the library, and the only way there was past the wall of stained-glass windows depicting the pantheon. Usually, Lore tried to walk past them as quickly as possible, but today, for reasons unknown, she lingered in front of Hestraon, the god of fire.
She’d never spent much time thinking about the elemental gods. Most people didn’t. They were relics of the past, slowly dying off one by one before the Godsfall, leaking out trace bits of magic from the corpses left behind. The powers of the elemental deities were small compared with the huge, consuming magic of Nyxara and Apollius, so even when They were alive, They were overshadowed. They’d come to the mainland right before the Godsfall, rather than staying on the Golden Mount like Apollius and Nyxara. Lore wondered if that was part of the reason why They were less regarded. Familiarity breeding contempt, and all.
Lore frowned up at Hestraon. His hair was reddish, the same color as the flames of His forge, His hammer raised to beat down the metal sword on the anvil. The stained glass didn’t provide much detail to His face, making it nothing but a white blur glowing with weak light.
She didn’t look at Nyxara’s window at all, a shapeless swirl of deep blue and black and purple. She kept her eyes on her feet, instead, on the way the light through all that darkened glass cast the shadow of a bruise on the floor.
The door to the confessional room was closed. Lore took a deep breath, calmed the nerves that always sparked to attention right before she was going to see Gabe.
Well. Talk to Gabe. He never let her see him during these meetings, staying hidden behind the lattice that divided priest from penitent. They could be civil during council meetings, but something about being alone together made them both skittish.
Lore pushed open the door.
The confessional room wasn’t as ornate as the Sanctuary, but neither was it plain. Whitewashed ceilings soared far over her head, crossed by solid oak beams and lit by rose windows in shades of blue and red. Rows of empty pews lined either side of the room. Confession wasn’t a required part of devotion to Apollius, and only a few people still held to it, so the confessional rooms remained empty. The clergy kept them up, though, on the off chance someone might want to list their sins to an anonymous ear.
At the front of the room, the confessional itself took up the entire wall. One half was covered by a dark velvet curtain, and the other half was solid wood. Inside, the wall between the two halves was a swirling metal lattice, worked like lace. The priest and the confessor could hear each other, but not see each other clearly.
Lore walked to the curtained half like one might walk to a noose, gripping the fabric and tearing it aside. Behind it, a simple stone bench and a single lit sconce on the wall. Next to it, the metal lattice, spanning the length of the booth.
He was there, sitting on the opposite side of the lattice. She could hear the faint in-and-out of his breathing, see his slow movement from the corner of her eye as he lowered himself to the matching bench on his side. If Gabe noticed her, he didn’t give any indication. He never did.
The silence stayed. Lore didn’t know how to break it. Things had seemed… well, not easy, when she’d seen him in the garden, but easier. The night blanketed things and blunted the sharper corners. Now, in the light, everything could cut.
But surely that night in the garden meant something.
On the other side of the lattice, Gabe sighed, long and weary. “Close your eyes.”
Or maybe it didn’t.
