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Lore couldn’t live with either.
“I mentioned it to Gabe,” Malcolm continued, watching Bastian as he started working the crowd. His dark eyes narrowed, his jaw a firm line. “That Bastian seems… off. He knows it. Gabe doesn’t miss much when it comes to Bastian. But he didn’t want to talk about it.”
“He’s fine,” Lore said faintly, hoping that Malcolm and Alie hadn’t had a chance to talk since yesterday. That between Malcolm noticing Bastian’s change and her telling Alie that she thought something was wrong, they weren’t able to come to the same terrible conclusion knocking at the back of Lore’s skull. “Just tired, I’m sure.”
Malcolm made a skeptical noise.
Leaving the conversation where it was, Lore drifted toward the crowd.
The docks didn’t look anything like she remembered. The weathered wood had been cleared of barnacles and gull shit, the salt-lashed planks scrubbed until they didn’t gleam, exactly, but looked much cleaner than they’d been since they were nailed in place. Velvet ropes lined the edges, keeping the gathered courtiers from accidentally tripping into the sea.
Gods, it looked like the entire Citadel was here. At least four docks had been cleared, a perimeter established by bloodcoats and a few dark-clothed Presque Mort at the ends of the road that wound around the harbor. Keeping the rabble out, creating a sanitized space for the nobles to feel like they were experiencing the city.
“I thought it was a good idea to get the court out of… well, out of the court.” Bastian had apparently greeted everyone at the fringes of the crowd, and now came to Lore’s side, taking her arm. “It’s high time we actually interacted with Dellaire, don’t you think? Most of the nobility won’t set foot outside the Citadel Wall while they’re here in the summer, and gods forbid they make a stop on their way back to their winter holdings.”
“Looks like there’s still a wall.” Lore jerked her chin toward the bloodcoats and Mort clustered on the dock roads, blocking them. “Just a lower one.”
Bastian shrugged. “Slow progress is still progress.”
If Lore craned her neck, she could see people gathered on the other side of the bloodcoats, giving them a wide berth while still peering in on the courtiers. Were there people she knew in that crowd, people she’d drunk with or run poisons for? Her stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch at the thought, wondering what they thought when they saw her now.
She’d attempted to keep all the pieces of her life separate—catacombs, poison running, Citadel, three distinct phases, three distinct Lores. But they bled into one another more and more every day, those three pieces inevitably making a whole.
She thought of her and Bastian and Gabe.
Bastian tucked her hand into his elbow. “And we’re off.”
The first few rounds of courtiers Lore managed to mostly ignore, a flurry of pastel-colored summer clothes and refined accents that blurred into an indistinct wash. She smiled and made her clumsy curtsies, mostly kept up with banal small talk. Bastian was a good enough conversationalist that she didn’t have to engage much, riding the wave of his charisma.
The crowd parted briefly, giving her a glimpse of white, curling hair.
“I see Alie.” Lore disentangled herself from Bastian’s arm, not caring that she’d just interrupted Lady Whatsherface’s treatise on how to effectively grow flowers on the cold Caldien border. “I’ll be right back.”
Bastian let her go without a fuss, placating Lady Whatsherface with a charming smile as Lore wove through the teeming courtiers. Alie stood near the velvet ropes blocking the edge of the dock, talking to Brigitte with her head bowed low. The other woman’s saffron-yellow dress made her dark-brown skin glow; matching threads had been woven into the ends of her long locs. Alie wore blush-pink today, a short-sleeved gown that left her freckled shoulders bare, and her cloud of white curls was gathered into a bun on top of her head. She managed to make the hairstyle look effortless. When Lore attempted similar things with her own hair, she looked like she’d been in a terrible accident with an oil drum.
Brigitte saw her coming before Alie did. “Lore! It seems congratulations are in order.”
“I suppose they are.” Lore wasn’t sure how to navigate this part, whether she was supposed to act thrilled or serene. She would excel at neither, since her true feelings were a churn of anxiety and desire that mostly made her feel like screaming.
Next to Brigitte, Alie turned, subtly signaling a passing servant to take her empty wineglass. Her eyes snagged on Lore’s ring, and she smiled and gestured to Bri, though her eyes kept tracking nervously over the crowd. Probably looking for Caius. “Here it is, Bri. Take a gander.”
“Finally.” Bri held her own wine near her chest and leaned in close to Lore’s outstretched hand. “I’ve wanted to get a look at it for ages.”
“Look to your heart’s content,” Lore said, wiggling her finger. This was nice, acting like she was just a normal woman being normally excited about her normal engagement.
“Gods dead and dying,” Bri murmured, angling Lore’s hand back and forth to make the golden-hued stone catch the light. She eyed it as a scientist with a particularly rare specimen might, like she wished for a magnifying glass. “That diamond is, quite literally, priceless.”
“Aren’t most Arceneaux jewels?” Alie asked with an arch look.
“Well, yes, but that jewel in particular is special.” Bri smiled like someone finally being given an opportunity to expound on a beloved subject. “Ask me why, please. I get so few opportunities.”
A smile tugged at Alie’s lips. “Brigitte is an amateur jeweler herself,” she explained for Lore’s benefit. “And as such, she knows far too much about gemstones.”
“I made this.” Brigitte ruefully dropped Lore’s hand and held out her own, as if she were the newly engaged one. “Go on, ogle.”
The ring was gorgeous, a silver sunburst cradling a deep-blue sapphire. The band was carved to look like wind gusts, curling over Brigitte’s finger.
“It’s beautiful,” Lore said. “An earned ogle, certainly.”
