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He looked at Lore, worry in his eye. “Is he… I mean, how bad…”
She wanted to reassure him. Didn’t want to infect him with the same endless dread she felt every time she thought of Apollius forcing Bastian out of his own body. But ignorance wouldn’t help anything.
“Bad,” she murmured.
Gabe pulled in a shaky breath.
A few strides ahead, Alie’s lips pressed together, her eyes finding the floor before flickering up again. Lore wondered if she was thinking of her father, of what Apollius had done in Bastian’s body.
Maybe she wasn’t quite as cold to Severin’s fate as she wanted to appear. Even though he wasn’t her father, even though he’d been cruel, he’d still been part of her life for twenty-four years. Those knots were hard to untangle.
Gods, Lore’s birth mother had only been in her life for thirteen years, none of them pleasant, and she still didn’t know how to navigate that maze. Her mind kept dredging up images of the Night Priestess—Lilia, her name was Lilia—in the stone garden under the moon, begging her to run. Telling her that she could throw a rose into the well to signal for help. Was she waiting down there? Checking the packed dirt floor every day, waiting for a crumpled bloom?
It didn’t matter. Lore didn’t want her help. Lilia wouldn’t know any more than Anton would, and Lore would rather deal with Anton. She’d rather do just about anything than ever have to deal with the catacombs and who lived in them ever again.
Even if Nyxara wanted her to go there. Especially if Nyxara wanted her to go there. Lore had to keep reminding herself that she couldn’t fully trust the Buried Goddess, for all that they seemed to have largely the same goal.
And maybe that felt a little bit like an excuse. But it was an excuse she would cling to.
In her head, something like a sigh.
The thin cloister hallways opened back up into the soaring ceilings and stained-glass alcoves of the Church proper. Gabe looked at Lore. “Tonight.”
“Do you want to come see him?” she asked.
Malcolm and Alie looked away, pretending not to hear.
Gabe wavered. His eye fixed to the wall, like he didn’t want to look at her; his tattooed hands twitched. “No,” he said finally. “I can’t… no.”
And she couldn’t make him.
With a final glance, Gabe turned away. He’d gotten rid of his torch when they reached the top of the stairs, but the sunset light in the windows still outlined him in flame colors, lit his hair like a wick.
Malcolm gave her and Alie a nod and headed in what she assumed was the direction of the library. Lore sighed when he was gone. “You might have to lead us out of here,” she said to Alie. “I’m all turned around.”
“I’m not going back to the Citadel just yet, I don’t think.” Alie sounded distracted, a line drawing between her brows as she turned in the opposite direction Gabe had gone. Lore peered at their surroundings, getting her bearings again—Alie was headed toward the hallway with all the stained-glass windows of the pantheon, one for each god.
“Where are you going, then?”
A pause before Alie answered, and when she did, there was a hoarse chuckle in her voice, something that could resolve into a laugh or a sob. The same light that gilded Gabe in fire made her ethereal, made her seem not-quite-there, a mist you could walk through. “To pray. Maybe. I’m not sure yet.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Unsanctioned Mortem users who weren’t physically strong enough for the mines on the Burnt Isles were often executed and dissected instead. Many medical discoveries were made this way, including the life-extending powers of poison, though the most interesting discovery the physicians made was, strangely, in the throat. According to records, every Mortem channeler had a small pool of water emit from their mouth in the minutes after death. Early accounts of the deaths of other elemental channelers record the same phenomenon.
—Archived reports from Kettleburgh University, Ratharc
It took Lore a moment to find her way out of the Church—damn whoever had designed it and the Citadel, what did they have against easy navigation?—and once she did, finally spilling through the doors and onto the southern green, the sun was half sunk below the horizon, the sky bisected in swaths of pink and gold.
Will you actually be any help tonight? she asked Nyxara as she trekked through the garden, the lattices of roses and leaf-choked arbors. There’d been hardly any rain, and the sun burned too brightly, leaving the edges of petals curling and brown, the vines rattling dry.
I have only ever wanted to help. Her answer was faint, still bound away by the sliver of sun. I never wanted this.
This, meaning the prophecy, Apollius reigning again. This, meaning everything that spun from Lore’s refusal to die.
Sorry to inconvenience You by not getting murdered, Lore snarled, stomping up to the double Citadel doors.
Don’t be, She said. This has to end, one way or another.
