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—The Book of Holy Law, Tract 893
Lore expected some resistance to the idea of her coming with them to see the well for themselves, but everyone was too shocked to give much protest when she levered herself out of bed and threw a thin robe over her thinner chemise, rushing to follow Marie back out into the open hall. Gabe shot her a slantwise look, his eye tracking from the top of her head to her hastily slippered feet, snagging on the slight tremble in her hands. But he said nothing.
As they approached the stairs that led down into the solar, Bastian reached back and took her scarred hand. Squeezed it. She couldn’t see his face, but somehow, she knew he was grinning.
She should be, too. This was a good thing, all the Mortem gone, none of it left to possibly surge. Wasn’t it?
Still, her stomach churned.
There was no breath for conversation as the four of them rushed through Bastian’s apartments, down the stairs of the northeast turret, into the southern expanse of the Citadel green.
Marie led them through the iron gate into the maze-like warren of the Presque Mort’s stone garden. Lore’s heart kicked up to her throat for just a moment when she thought the other woman might veer away from the well, head toward Anton’s greenhouse. But Marie kept to the path.
The well was open, the cover canted off the far side, the small statue of Apollius that held it in place pushed to its notch in the stone. One of the Mort she vaguely recognized—Alexis—leaned over the lip of the well, looking down into the shadowed depths as if they thought the Mortem was hiding. Next to them, Malcolm stood with his hands on his hips, his expression stricken.
“What happened?” Bastian had wiped the grin from his face; he was all business now, his voice stern. “Details, please.”
Alexis stepped back, waving their hand at the well. “Nothing happened, that’s the problem.” They pushed sweaty blond hair back from their forehead. “There’s always something when you open the well.”
“Especially on a lunar eclipse.” Another Mort, one whose name Lore didn’t know. He was nearly as tall as Bastian, his arms crossed over a barrel chest. A scar cut from his forehead down to the corner of his lip, narrowly missing the flinty eye he had trained on Lore. “And especially lately.”
Well, no one could ever accuse a Presque Mort of subtlety. Lore stared right back at the Mort, refusing to be the first to look away. Eventually, he caved, swinging his gaze back to the open well.
“I’d hardly call a lack of Mortem a problem.” Bastian walked to the lip of the well and mirrored Alexis’s stance, hands braced on the side, his head eclipsed in shadow from the roof. “In fact,” he said, the stone echoing his voice down into the dark, “it seems more like a solution.” He straightened, turned to Lore, beaming. “You did it.”
She took a step back on instinct, putting space between her and the well. When she blinked, she saw this place in darkness, the flames of dry flowers licking up into a sky where the moon had overtaken the sun. Her hands clenched closed, hiding her palms. “I did what?”
“This!” Bastian swept his arms wide, encompassing the well, the stone garden, the blank-faced Presque Mort with nothing to channel. “Somehow, when you saved everyone at the docks, you must have channeled all the Mortem left.” He came to her, hands on her shoulders, his forehead tipped against hers. His touch felt foreign, a golden glitter in his dark eyes. “You are a wonder.”
The same thing he’d told her after it happened, when they both realized they were still alive. The same pleased note in his voice, things going according to a plan no one else knew.
“I didn’t,” she said, because she didn’t know what else to say, and even though it wasn’t true it’s what came easiest to her tongue. “At least, if I did, I didn’t do it on purpose. It should be impossible for one person—”
“Impossible for everyone but you.” He was close enough that he barely had to give the words sound; they floated in the space between them like ghosts. “You were special before, but now you’re irreplaceable.” His gold-flecked eyes closed as if he were overcome. When in all the myriad hells had Bastian Arceneaux ever been overcome? “I knew I was making the right decision.”
He was talking about proposing, right? She wasn’t sure. It sounded like something that could apply to more than one instance, a chain of decisions that led them here.
“Wait.” Alexis stepped forward, their eyes wide. “You mean… if it’s all gone…”
“It is.” Bastian turned to the gathered Mort, away from Lore, but kept cradling her hands. She closed her fists tighter. “We’ve been liberated by our future Queen.” He shot Lore a dazzling smile over his shoulder. “If she didn’t hate socializing with the courtiers so much, I’d throw her a party.”
Malcolm had been silent since they reached the well. He stood with his arms crossed, staring at its open maw, expression blank. “I can’t feel anything,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Before, I could always feel at least a little, if I tried, but now…”
Lore pressed her mouth flat, directed her gaze to the cobblestones. This should be a good thing, but Malcolm looked almost pained.
Behind them, Gabe stared at the well with a similar lost expression, his one eye wide. He shook off whatever emotion had him pinned, glared at Bastian. “There’s no way to be certain unless we send someone down there.”
Bastian raised a brow. “I don’t think that’s necessary, but if you do, I won’t stop you.”
Surprise made Lore raise her head from her contemplation of the ground, her eyes meeting Gabe’s for a shared beat of shock. That was the easiest she’d ever heard Bastian concede to the other man.
The King noticed their quick glance, and his mouth lifted in the tight smile of someone who’d gotten what he wanted but wasn’t yet sure of the cost. There was something nearly pained in the line of his jaw, like he was fighting off one of those headaches again. His eyes slid upward, to a sky slowly sinking toward twilight. The attack had been this morning; Lore had only lost a few hours to recovery.
An improvement on a week. Especially since she’d channeled so much more Mortem this time around.
All of it, even.
“This should free up some of your time,” Bastian said. “Now that you won’t have to go to the Priest Exalted for help with your forest.”
