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“I think that’s a splendid idea.” Bastian set down his coffee, stood from the table. “A tour through the grounds. Bellegarde, you’ll show us?”
Quiet panic bloomed in Bellegarde’s eyes, but he stood, too. “I can, certainly,” he stammered, “but, Majesty, we should really speak on other matters, both regarding Kirythea and your future rule—”
“Your future Queen desires a tour, and a tour she will get.” Bastian’s eyes were still on her, molten. He smiled, and she tried to smile back.
Bellegarde’s mouth thinned. “As you wish. We can begin with the gardens.” A quick flick of disapproving eyes in her direction. “There are a variety of poison plants that I’m sure will be of interest to your betrothed.”
“She has a name,” Bastian said idly.
“Of interest to Lore.” The way Bellegarde said it was strange. A pause, then landing hard on its one syllable.
“Better.” Bastian held out an arm for Lore, smiling. “Lead the way.”
Lore wasn’t sure what time it was, but as Bellegarde led them out of the gloomy manor and into the stone-walled gardens beyond, the light had the brassy shine of midmorning. She was half afraid that the reason Bastian—not really Bastian right now, her brain reminded her—had conceded to a tour so easily was because he’d already spoken with Bellegarde, started making plans for Auverraine as Apollius. Bellegarde’s attitude made that seem unlikely, but she was leery of putting too much trust in that alone. The man would be unpleasant if Apollius Himself came down and made him a birthday cake.
All she had to do was keep them occupied until night fell and Apollius went dormant in Bastian’s brain. As dormant as He ever went, anyway. Then Bastian could speak to the old lord about whatever he wanted, but as himself.
And then she’d have to find something else to keep him distracted tomorrow.
Gods dead and dying, how long could she keep that up?
No time to worry over it now. Lore lifted her hand, squinted against the sunlight. It hurt her eyes.
“Too bright for you?” Bastian pitched his voice low, tugging her a bit closer to his side. All her muscles tensed. “It always was.”
She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. The words were meant for someone else.
He looked in her eyes, his own turned golden by daylight. The alien consciousness behind them was obvious, not quite drowning out the man she knew, but coming too damn close.
Whatever he found in her face made him grin. He didn’t speak but tucked her arm into the crook of his again and ambled on after Bellegarde.
“Foxglove.” Bellegarde was not a very involved tour guide. He simply threw his hand out at the banks of flowers and announced their names. “Hellebore.”
“It’s strange that the hellebore is still blooming.” Lore peered at the dark-red blooms. “They’re usually in season around early spring.”
“Courdigne is north of Dellaire.” Bellegarde sounded rather disgusted that he had to point this out to her, Lore’s ignorance of geography just one more way she didn’t measure up. “It doesn’t get quite so hot so quickly. Spring flowers stay longer.”
Well, there was one item of conversation to stall him with, and it’d used up barely a minute. Lore cast her eyes around, searching for something else to comment inanely on, but Bastian interrupted her just as her mouth opened to ask what different colors of foxgloves bloomed every year.
“As much as I love a horticultural exposition,” he said, “I find I’d prefer a stroll with less botany.” He started down the dirt path, the heels of his boots kicking up dust clouds. Her hand slid out of the bend in his elbow, but he caught her fingers instead. “Come with me, Lore. You can tell me about the flowers if you really want to.”
She glanced over her shoulder. Bellegarde’s expression was a mask of gentility, but fury lived in the slash of his mouth. He knew exactly what she was doing.
So why not drop the charade? Tell Apollius that Lore was clearly stalling, trying to run them out of time? The only answer she could come up with was that Bellegarde didn’t think her plan would work. That, for whatever reason, Apollius was purposefully allowing her silly indulgences, her vain attempts at fixing this.
That terrified her.
The gardens really were lovely, despite the spots of browning leaves that pointed to the lack of rain plaguing the whole continent this summer. A stone wall hemmed the grounds, containing a disorganized chaos of greenery. It had been cared for once, she thought, and meticulously so. But at some point, the garden had been left and gone to seed, only to spring up again in a wild, tangled profusion of flowers, both poison and not. It must’ve belonged to Lise, Alie’s mother, left to ruin when she died just like the rest of the estate.
Bellegarde had left his mark here, though. Those unsettling statues of Apollius lurked in corners and at the sides of benches overgrown in creeper vines. In one of them, next to the stone wall, a creamy datura bloom opened directly in the center of His chest, poison where His heart should be.
Fitting.
“Is he following us?”
Bastian’s voice ripped her from her consideration of creepy religious icons. It was his, unadulterated, tinged with fear. Her Bastian, Apollius momentarily contained.
Lore turned, sweeping her eyes over the path. “Doesn’t look like it.”
