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Lore sighed. “I’m serious. He seems… distracted, lately.” She thought of the night before, when she’d moved to kiss him and he’d moved away. “Maybe channeling is affecting him, too. Maybe he’s also having weird dreams and just won’t tell me about them. I know we have to focus on ruling, on war, but I want to make sure he’s fine before—”
“Before you marry him?” There was another question behind that one. Are you really going to marry him?
Lore chewed her lip. Nodded.
He stared at her, a slight slump to his shoulders. Then, with a curt nod of his own, he pushed aside the curtain, strode to the front of the room. “I’ll see you at the King’s dinner this evening. I assume we’ll all be discussing your betrothal.”
Her eyes narrowed at his back. “Shouldn’t we make plans to study this more? I can meet you in the library—”
“No.” He stopped in front of the door, turned to face her. Any trace of softness in his face was gone, any hint of what had almost happened behind that curtain completely wiped away.
That was for the best, probably.
“Then what’s your plan?” she asked.
“I told you I would give you some trust,” Gabe said wearily, headed for the priest’s side of the confessional. “Not all of it.”
She supposed the fact that she couldn’t sleep shouldn’t be a great surprise.
After the fifth time she’d changed positions, flopping over in bed and throwing her pillows down to the floor, Lore admitted defeat and got up. Part of her was relieved that sleep was so elusive. The last thing she needed was another strange memory-dream.
Go find him.
The voice was faint, a slither through her head that could easily have been imagined.
She knew it wasn’t. She’d heard it too many times, now.
The deep of night made everything feel unreal, not quite as tethered to reality. Once, that line of thinking had led to her kissing Gabriel Remaut. It would’ve led to more if he hadn’t suddenly recovered his monkish sensibilities when she was reaching for his belt. Now, she was sure, it would lead to something equally reckless.
What are you?
The question was fired off into the darkness of her mind before she could overthink it. Before she could decide if it was an answer she actually wanted, much less needed.
But not before she knew it was necessary. There was something else in the dark of her head with her. She’d tried to ignore it, hadn’t mentioned it when she was telling Gabe about the dreams. But there was a voice in Lore’s head, and it was stupid of her to pretend like she didn’t know what it was.
When the answer came, it sounded almost bemused. Do you really need Me to tell you that?
Lore slammed her mind closed as if it were a trapdoor, hunkering down like a burrowing animal. She’d wanted this, wanted an answer, but now that she had it, she wanted to hide. Before, when the voice just whispered catacombs in her head as she wandered at night, it’d been easier to ignore. Full sentences were a different matter.
Something like a sigh echoed through her, gossamer-thin, then gone. Lore tried to grow her grove, tried to make dense trees and blue sky. But that just reminded her of the dreams, and the barrier never solidified.
Lore took a moment, breathing in deep. She opened the teeth of her mind, just a bit. So now You’re telling me to go find Bastian, instead of telling me to go to the catacombs?
I’m adaptable.
She closed off her mind again, as well as she could when her tree-barrier seemed out of reach. Slowly, Lore sat up, painstakingly extricating herself from the tangle of her sheets. A glass of water sat on her bedside table, and she gulped it, rivulets running down the corners of her mouth to wet her nightgown.
Upstairs, a crash, like something heavy falling to the ground.
Myriad hells.
Lore pushed up, stalked across the room, into the hallway. She wasn’t sure of the time, but it was full night, the windows black velvet cut by white moonlight.
Her stride became a stomp as she reached the spiral staircase leading to Bastian’s rooms, an anger she didn’t really understand seeping through her nervous system, making her palm tingle where the eclipse scar interrupted her life and heart lines. It felt like an echo, an emotion reverberating back from some past moment when it’d been suppressed, only fully realized now in the dark.
When she reached the top of the stairs, her eyes were filmed with tears that felt like they didn’t belong to her.
Bastian was awake, though the sheets of the bed were knotted and pillows tossed to the floor, as if he’d fought his mattress before rising. Bare-chested, wearing only a pair of trousers in the same white gauze as Lore’s nightgown, he stood at the window, his scarred hand flexing open and closed. His dark hair was tousled, his cheeks flushed, like he’d woken from either a nightmare or a particularly good sex dream.
