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“Wonderful,” Malcolm said, sarcasm thick in his voice. “At least our criminal enterprises won’t be harmed.” He scrutinized the page beneath the glass, straightened the book, then stepped back. “Here’s a myth for you. The Fount of the Golden Mount.”
“Who named it that?” Gabe scrunched his nose in distaste. “The rhyming is unnecessary.”
“Clearly, they didn’t let that person name anything else,” Lore said. “The Sapphire Sea would be ‘the sea you want to flee.’ The Ourish Pass would be ‘the pass that’s a pain in my ass.’”
“If you aren’t going to be helpful, don’t talk.” Gabe sat down across from Lore, peering through the glass to read. “Lo, I tell of the Fount of Power, the source of all magic—”
“The lo is also unnecessary.”
“Attempting to hide your fear through humor is never effective. Also, that wasn’t funny.”
Lore shut up.
Malcolm gave her a sympathetic glance from the other side of the table. “The bit about the Ourish Pass was funny, though.”
“Got one,” Lore muttered.
Gabe ignored them. “The Fount of Power, the source of all magic, was found on the Golden Mount by He who would become Apollius. And feeling the weight of all power, He invited those He loved most to the Mount, to partake of the Fount and receive power in turn.”
“The weight of all power…” Lore repeated slowly. “Does that mean what it sounds like it means?”
“Yes.” Gabe sat back, a thoughtful look on his face, though there was no hint of surprise. “In the beginning, Apollius was the god of everything. Just like He is now.”
No, said the voice in the back of her head. That’s just what He wanted them to think.
“That doesn’t tell us anything about what happened with Lore and the Mortem.” Malcolm stepped forward, flipped through the book again, looking for another myth. “Here. This one is about the Dissolution.”
The capitalization was clear in his tone. “What’s that?”
“When the gods first left the Mount, before the Godsfall,” Gabe answered. “All of Them but Nyxara and Apollius, anyway. He couldn’t leave. Had too much power to be far from the Fount.”
Not true, again, the voice said. Not like that, anyway.
Malcolm read aloud, this time. “When eons of time had passed upon the Golden Mount, with the power of the Fount shared among the pantheon, the gods grew restless and wanted to leave Their paradise. Even Nyxara, who had wed Apollius, desired to leave with Hestraon and the others. Apollius, stricken with woe, begged Them to stay. Nyxara did, but the rest departed and left Him alone. This was when Nyxara began to plot Her husband’s demise, and when Apollius began to realize He was better as the only god.”
She expected another negation from the voice, but it remained silent. Lore twisted her fingers in her gloves. “Rather harsh.”
“That’s gods for you.” Malcolm was already turning pages again, his agitation clear. “And that’s why I can never understand why we’re supposed to try to be like Them. It’s not like They were paragons of morality.” He gave another one of those rueful snorts of laughter. “I guess August took that in the opposite direction, didn’t he? Apollius’s flaw was that He was too loyal to His wife, and no one could accuse August of that.”
A muscle in Gabe’s jaw twitched at the word flaw, clear discomfort with the idea of a god having such a thing. But he just sighed and rubbed at his eye patch. “No, they certainly couldn’t.” He shook his head. “I heard more than one tale about August ordering people to his bed. Nobles’ wives, servants, whoever caught his eye.”
“You don’t have to use force to be a rapist,” Malcolm said, still flipping pages. “I hope his hell is particularly gruesome.”
Lore thought of the brief stories she’d heard of Gabe’s boyhood, of his mother and Bastian’s mother, Ivanna, their friendship. Ivanna was an unhappy woman in an unkind marriage. Extremely unkind, apparently. August was even more repugnant than Lore had known.
Malcolm reached the back of the book, flipped it to the front again, his ire rising. “The only other myth in here is about the sacred grove on the Mount burning the night the elemental gods left.” Mindless of its age, he slammed the book shut. It made Lore start, made her lean back from the table. Malcolm must be beyond furious, to manhandle a book like that.
With rough movements, Malcolm took the book from beneath the glass. “This is useless. The most religiously significant events to happen since the Godsfall are happening right under our noses, to us, and we have no reference points because—”
His voice died in his throat as he spun on his heel to take the book back to the alcove.
When Lore looked at the bookshelf behind him, she saw why.
The pothos vine had grown. Grown was too tame a term, really—it’d rioted, spreading more leaves, more green tendrils, climbing up the shelf and down to the floor. It’d happened soundlessly, and so quickly none of them had noticed it until now.
A moment’s shocked silence. Then Malcolm whirled, his dark eyes wide and fixed on Lore. “Did you do that?”
“No!” She clenched her hands tight, as if stray magic might leak from them. Maybe it would. “I didn’t feel anything.”
