“How?” Her mouth still tasted like sour cotton. Behind Gabriel, Malcolm stood with his arms crossed, expression equal parts intrigued and disturbed.
“It’s your head.” His one-eyed gaze was stern. “Nothing can stay there unless you let it. You make it leave.” The words came out like a lesson often repeated.
Lore tried to laugh, but panic still had its teeth in her, and it sounded more like the start of a sob. “You’re gonna have to give me step-by-step instructions, Mort.”
He nodded smoothly, like this was a perfectly normal request. “Imagine a wall. Make it a thick one, soundproof. Imagine a barrier around your mind until it’s so solid you feel like you could touch it. And then don’t let the sense of death in. There’s no way to not be aware of it, not when you can channel so much Mortem. But it doesn’t have to take you over. It doesn’t have to rule you.”
It sounded too simple, but desperate times and all that. Closing her eyes tight, Lore imagined a wall. At first it was stone, and she quickly discarded it—she’d had enough stone walls to last a lifetime, and stone was dead, and she’d had enough of that, too. So trees, instead, thick trunks growing close.
Lore had never seen a forest up close. Her power wouldn’t let her get too far from the catacombs, and there were certainly no forests in Dellaire, just ornamental copses of manicured trees in some of the more affluent districts. But she could imagine a forest, a real one, full of green and growth.
So her mental barrier wasn’t a wall, exactly. It was just her, in the middle of a forest. A peaceful one, with a blue sky beyond the leaves, and the bizarrely comforting scent of a fire. It felt natural for her head to settle here, like this forest had been waiting for her.
Slowly, the sense of imminent death crowding all around her faded away, became the background buzz she was used to.
Lore opened her eyes. The Presque Mort stared into them with a gaze made fiercer for having only one outlet. His right eye was very, very blue.
“Thank you.” She wanted to say something cutting. She should—helping her before turning her over to a pyre was a special kind of cruel. But the thank you was all Lore could muster.
Gabriel nodded, once. “It’ll be a useful tool for you.”
She huffed that half laugh again. “I don’t think I’m going to get another chance to channel much Mortem before I get executed for necromancy.”
His brow furrowed over his eye patch, an expression she couldn’t quite make out, but he didn’t comment on her fate. Instead he held up the gag. “This was on the Priest Exalted’s orders.” Apology was thick in his tone. “I’m going to have to put it back.”
She thought about fighting, but she was too tired. Lore nodded.
Carefully, Gabriel refastened the gag, though she noticed it was looser this time. Then he stood, towering over her, and stepped back to Malcolm. The other monk’s face remained unreadable.
“Do you have to do that?” he murmured to Gabriel. “To… to make the awareness stop?” Malcolm’s gaze darted to Gabriel’s eye patch, then away, as if he was embarrassed.
“Sometimes. Anton taught me that trick with the wall. Right after my initiation.” Gabriel paused, reaching up to itch at his eye patch. “Since my injury was nearly as severe as his own, he knew that the potential for me to channel large amounts of Mortem was high.”
Malcolm shook his head and itched at his own eye, almost like an afterthought. “Damn.”
Gabriel said nothing.
Lore cringed. The Presque Mort attained their power to channel Mortem the same way anyone else might: dying, just for a moment, and then coming back. Usually, it was due to accident, injury, or illness. Because channeling Mortem was against holy law, someone who’d survived such an experience had two choices—avoid Mortem as best they could, or join the Presque Mort. The manner of the near-death experience mattered, though. Those who’d sought death out—gone to deathdealers—weren’t eligible, since the Presque Mort were technically part of the clergy.
In the first few years after the Godsfall, there’d been another option. There still was one, far beneath the earth, in the deepest tunnels of the catacombs. But no one talked about the Buried Watch anymore, not since the last Church-recognized Night Priestess went mad.
Malcolm jerked his thumb toward the door. “When should we expect him?”
“Any minute now.” Gabriel crossed his arms. “He had to collect the informant first. So she could make sure we had the right one.”
“We definitely have the right one,” Malcolm scoffed.
Lore frowned, the expression twisted to grotesquerie by the gag. An informant?
The door opened. An older man with iron-gray hair and a long white robe glided in first, a golden pendant formed like a heart with sun’s rays hanging around his neck, a large teardrop-shaped garnet at the heart’s apex. He turned to face her, and Lore bit down on the gag, hard.
One side of the man’s face was handsome, almost angelically so. But the other side was a mass of burn scars, dark purple with age, carving twisted runnels from chin to hairline and turning that side of his mouth to a permanent smirk.
She’d heard of this man’s face, though she’d never seen it up close. The Priest Exalted, Anton Arceneaux, leader of the Church and the Presque Mort. King August’s twin brother.
And behind him, a woman with graying blond hair under a familiar faded scarf. A woman who wouldn’t look at Lore, even when she made a sharp, disbelieving sound behind her gag.
Val.
She must be dreaming. With all the drugs and Mortem still in her system, the Bleeding God Himself must somehow have reached into her brain to play out a nightmare.
Val flinched. “You didn’t have to gag her,” she snapped, eyes shooting daggers at the Priest Exalted. “Afraid she’ll make fun of your face?”
The Priest Exalted simply arched his unscarred brow. “Supplicants are making prayers upstairs in the South Sanctuary.” His voice was silk-smooth, cultured tones that made sense for the Sainted King’s brother. “And the Church is more crowded than usual as we prepare for my nephew’s Consecration this evening. I’d rather not have them disturbed.”
“Then tell her you’ll stick her if she makes noise.” Val stood directly between the Bleeding God’s tapestried hands on the wall, as if He was welcoming her home, reward for a job well done. “Don’t gag her.”
A pause, then the Priest Exalted—Anton—nodded. Gabriel moved behind Lore, untying the knot that held the gag in place.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, then moved away.
Even ungagged, Lore didn’t have anything to say. Words had left her. She just sat there, sore mouth agape, staring at Val.
Val, who still wouldn’t look at her. “It’s her,” she sighed wearily. “Just like I said.” Her piercing gaze went from the floor to Anton. “Is that all you needed?”
The Priest Exalted nodded once. “Your inventory will be returned to you,” he said, “and the certificate of pardon can be picked up from the court justice in the Northwest Ward at your convenience.” The side of his mouth that could move quirked up. “The first official crown-sanctioned poison runner. What an honor.”