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Of course he wanted to talk about Bastian. But it was a genuine question, so she gave it a genuine answer. “Very good.” She still felt the phantom breath of his kiss on her forehead, that sweetness she didn’t feel equipped to accept or show. “It’s not like that with us, though. Not really.”
He looked up, brow arched over his blue eye. “But you want it to be.”
Not a question. Just a statement. Lore gave a slight shake of her head, but it wasn’t a negation. It was an attempt to heal the look on Gabe’s face, to glaze it over and make this easier. She didn’t want to hurt either of them, and that seemed impossible to hold, a knife that was all blade and no hilt.
Gabe straightened, physically shaking off the conversation and steering it elsewhere. “Is anyone else here with you? I thought I heard two voices.”
“No,” she said before she could think about it too hard. “Just me. Talking to myself.”
“New habit?”
“Have to pass the days somehow.” She gave him a wobbly smile. “I’m better company than most courtiers.”
“Never thought you’d be good at all that,” Gabe said. “Rubbing elbows with the elite.”
“You’re one of those elite, Mort.”
“And look at us now, skulking around in the dark.” Still a joke, but with a sharp end to it, offered gingerly.
He scratched at his chin, the reddish-gold stubble growing in there, angled his eye at the ground. “Alie said you were doing well,” he said. “When I asked her last. But I’m glad to hear it from you.”
“Alie’s helped.” Her friend’s direction during official state functions was a lifesaver, and that was not an understatement. Lore’s strange, precarious position in the Citadel meant that no one really knew how to treat her at things like balls and dinners, of which there had been far too many since Bastian became King, and of which there would be many more after his official coronation. He hadn’t hosted any, but the invitations inevitably came. He didn’t turn them down, not even from the courtiers that treated them both with suspicion, and Lore sometimes with outright disdain. Alie’s calming presence at Lore’s side had diffused many a situation that could’ve ended with wine to the face, or a fist if the mood hit.
They lapsed into silence again.
“You know I’m sorry, right?” Gabe finally said, whisper-low. “I don’t… I don’t know that what I did was wrong…” His eye darted to the corner of the stone garden, the shadows of the greenhouse lurking there by the overgrown walls. “But I’m sorry it hurt you, Lore. I was just trying to do the best I could.”
“We all were.”
Tell me it’s for the greater good. She didn’t forgive him, but she wanted to, and the want came so much easier for Gabe than it did for her mother. Lore knew that wasn’t fair. She couldn’t change it.
Gabe nodded. Then he turned, headed back in the direction he’d come, the lantern swinging in his hand. Briefly, she considered calling after him, but the conversation had come to a natural close, and she didn’t know how to pry it open again.
Lore stood alone in the garden, a million stars staring down at her. First her mother, then Gabe. Already everything felt surreal, her thoughts as churning as the fog. The night had often seemed like a time outside of reality, when things were more ethereal and less concrete.
What a time for awkward conversations.
Dew soaked her hem, dragging it along the ground as Lore let herself out of the stone garden, wound her way through rosebushes and topiaries, pushed open the Citadel door. A soft trek back up through the mazes of wealth to Bastian’s apartment, to her own bed.
Something in her was unsettled. Some pull that hadn’t been answered.
Catacombs, the back of her mind whispered again, but Lore was already falling asleep. This time, it was dreamless.
CHAPTER FOUR
Does it matter if he hasn’t married her? The boy treats her as his Queen. It’s as if he doesn’t understand what we’ve done for him. Though things did not go as planned, he has still been installed in the position we desired.
The situation can be remedied, if the girl is taken care of.
—Correspondence from Count Alphonse Levett to Duke Alan Lavigne, while the former was on house arrest following the eclipse ritual. Intercepted and presented to Bastian Arceneaux, the Sainted King. Reports say he smiled.
Time to wake up, dearest.”
The words might’ve been gentle, but the way Bastian pulled the covers off the bed decidedly was not. Lore curled up on her side with her arms over her face to block out the light. “Why?”
“Because it’s another delightful summer day in the Court of the Citadel.” Bastian put a delicate mug of coffee on the table with an audible clink. He waved his hand over the steam, wafting it toward her face as if the smell would entice her from her mattress. “And because we have to go to the farmlands today. Or did you forget?”
She had forgotten, what with the chaos of yesterday. But the reminder of a royal appointment out on the very edges of Dellaire—in the farmlands that she’d had a hand in destroying—did not make her any more eager to wake up. Quite the opposite, in fact. Lore pulled her pillow over her head. “Why do I have to go?”
