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It wasn’t exactly comforting.
The halls were nearly deserted as Lore made her way up to the apartment she shared with Bastian, most courtiers getting in some rest before a night full of parties and debauchery. She wondered if any of them thought it strange that Bastian had removed himself from such things when he became the Sainted King, if they’d expected him to continue on with his frivolity even after he had the crown. Maybe not. Maybe they didn’t spend much time thinking of him at all, now that he wasn’t their Sun Prince, now that he was Apollius’s chosen. Holiness was a cage they’d resigned him to.
She stopped at the bottom of the stairs, feeling aimless. Surely there was something else she could do, something other than wait around for midnight. Briefly, she thought of going down to the holding cells, trying to interrogate Caius and Maxon herself. She wasn’t much of a diplomat, but that could work in her favor.
A voice, coming around the corner. Lore ducked into an alcove on instinct, shoving herself into the scant space left between the wall and a statue of a mermaid on a plinth. Bastian had sold many of the art pieces in the Citadel to libraries and universities to fund the citizen payments, but apparently no library or university wanted this one.
“It’s strange, is all.” A voice she didn’t recognize, though that wasn’t saying much. Lore hadn’t had time to familiarize herself with every minor noble in court. “If I had two obviously high-ranking officials from an enemy Empire in custody, I would be crowing it from the rooftops. It’s almost like he doesn’t want Jax to know.”
“And why would he?” Another masculine voice, lazy and uninterested. “To start a war?”
“War has already started.” A loud swallow, the other speaker drinking from either a flask or a wineglass. “All I’m saying is it seems odd to lock them away for a fucking explosion and then do nothing. I know we were all surprised by the deathwitch’s stunt, but really, does no one else wonder what his plan is? Or if he’s just gone mad, like they say old August did at the end?”
Lore stiffened, the plinth digging into her middle.
“What do you think, Amelia?” the voice asked. “Is the King mad, or shortsighted, or just more interested in fucking the poison Queen than ruling?”
The Lady Demonde must have snuck out from beneath the eye of her husband for a bit of respite with people her own age. Despite herself, Lore was a little proud of her.
Amelia’s voice came soft. “I think that whatever the King is planning is above us. He knows what he’s doing.”
“High-handed words from the little churchmouse.” The first speaker chuckled. “I thought you’d let go of all that religious nonsense once your parents were out of the picture, but once a churchmouse, always a churchmouse.”
Amelia didn’t respond. The other two courtiers began speaking of something else, their footsteps fading away. Lore stayed in the cramped corner until she could be sure they were gone, then slid back out into the hall.
Churchmouse. It tugged at her, that her and Amelia’s childhood nicknames were so similar. That she’d been used and discarded by religion, too, if in a different way.
Rubbing at her hip, where the mermaid statue had undoubtedly left a bruise, Lore rushed the rest of the way to the apartments, not wanting to risk running into anyone else.
Alexis was the Presque Mort on duty at the top floor. They looked up from cleaning their nails with one of their daggers and arched a golden brow. “Did you run the entire way here?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.” Lore straightened her gown, which was now damp from sweat as well as standing water from the bowels of the Church. How queenly of her. “Exercise is important.”
“Hope you didn’t wear yourself out.” A sly smile crossed their face. “Your fiancé has been in his room basically all day. I can only assume he’s waiting for you.”
Bastian, locked away, battling the god in his head. Lore forced an answering smile. “I’m sure I’ll catch a second wind.”
Alexis snorted as Lore opened the door and stepped into the apartment.
The hush lay heavy, like a blanket smothering fire, even the burble of the fountain in the center of the solar somehow deadened. Long shadows stretched from the plants clustered by the windows, a trail that tracked the fall of the sun. In her head, Nyxara was silent, but it was an expectant kind of silence, one that wasn’t restful.
Lore took the steps up to Bastian’s room much more slowly than she’d taken the ones up the turret. She wasn’t sure what she’d find at the top.
The spiral staircase at the end of the hall spit her out in Bastian’s bedroom, her eyes narrowing to adjust to the dim.
The room was a chaos. A palm was overturned on the floor, spilling dirt across the tiles. The small table was similarly knocked over, like it’d been shoved too hard, and a vase that had been holding a bouquet of roses was now a broken jumble of pottery and petals. A tangle of blankets and pillows was heaped around the footboard of the bed, like they’d been thrashed apart.
And on the bed, curled into a ball beneath the remaining sheet, Bastian.
Quietly, scarce daring to breathe, Lore made her way through the mess to his side. Bastian’s face was flushed, his shirt discarded. Scratch marks ran down his temple, livid even in the dusky light. For all that, his expression was peaceful, the slackened ease of a body that had been tense for far too long, like his mouth had held a snarl for hours.
Lightly, she reached out and touched his face.
He woke instantly, starting up from the bed with every muscle held tight, expecting a battle. Lore fought not to flinch, had to keep her hand on his skin through force of will. She didn’t want Bastian to see her backing away from him.
“Shit.” Bastian saw her, relaxed. He shifted to sit up, wiping at sleep-gummed eyes. “Didn’t want you to see me like this,” he muttered. “I look like I got tied to the back end of a runaway horse.”
“Don’t be vain.” Even now, clammy and bloodshot as if recovering from a fever, Bastian Arceneaux was still one of the most unfairly beautiful people Lore had ever seen. She pulled her eyes away from him, surveyed the wrecked room instead. “I take it Apollius didn’t play nice today.”
