Anton gave his brother a gentle, almost pitying smile. “And you know I cannot put our earthly desires over those of Apollius.”
Every courtier August had invited, everyone he’d thought was on his side, watched the Priest Exalted walk slowly toward him without raising a finger. The Presque Mort holding Lore and Bastian backed away as Anton came forward, bringing them off the throne’s dais and down to the floor. Lore’s knees buckled, so they dragged her. Bastian stepped in a pool of his own blood, tracking it in boot prints across the floor. Behind them, Gabe was still unconscious, sprawled against the wall in a boneless heap.
“But he isn’t worthy.” To August’s credit, he didn’t sound afraid. His voice remained clear and ringing, even as his illness-dulled eyes went wary. “We’ve discussed this, Anton. The boy cannot be the chosen, there has to have been some mistake. He isn’t ready, and time grows short.”
Anton climbed the stairs to stand before his brother. “But he will be,” he said. “He can be, with the proper training. The leadership he needs.”
“But he cannot hold this power.” Even now, when things were so clearly going sideways, August looked stronger than he had, the promise of magic invigorating his sickened body. He stood straight, his head tipped upward to gaze at the eclipse-darkened sky, as if he could see Apollius Himself somewhere in it. “It would be too much for him.”
They were of a height, the King and the Priest, near-perfect mirrors, differences marked only by their clothing and the scarred half of Anton’s face. So when Anton stared at him, their gazes were perfectly level. “Then someone else will have to guide him. To show him the way.”
“I can be that leadership.” For a moment, a sly smile tugged at August’s mouth; the sense of an opening, a way he could still spin this how he wanted. “I’m his father.”
“But you never acted like it,” Anton said.
When Anton plunged his own knife into August’s side, he barely had to lift his hand to do it.
CHAPTER FORTY
Behold my return.
—The Book of Holy Law, Tract 896 (green text, spoken directly by Apollius to Gerard Arceneaux)
Lore didn’t know what she’d expected. Anton had said he’d stop August from completing the ritual, and killing him certainly did that. She considered this fact with aloof detachment, even as death and life still rushed through her in a heady mix, making her vision blur from color to grayscale and back again.
Bastian’s eyes were wide, his face pale. His mouth hung open, but no sound came out. At some point, he’d been forced to his knees, and now he knelt in his own blood, like a supplicant at an altar.
No one else could see what had happened, not yet. The way the brothers stood blocked the view of everyone behind them. Anton dropped the knife, the blade streaking the white fabric in crimson on the way down before landing in the folds of his robe by his feet, keeping it hidden. His hands gripped his twin’s shoulders, holding him up so they stayed eye-to-eye even as the King’s knees went out from under him.
Pinkish fluid burbled on August’s lips. He made a choked, gasping sound.
From the corner of her eye, Lore saw Bastian flinch.
“You never understood,” Anton said, low and soothing, like one might talk to a scared horse. “Apollius does not make mistakes. Ever. About anything.”
“You’re right. I was wrong.” August’s words were broken things, tripping jaggedly from a failing mouth. A last bid to save himself. “I didn’t know just how holy—”
“You didn’t want to know,” Anton snarled. “You didn’t want to understand, because you wanted that power for yourself. A prophecy come to bear, and you closed your eyes against it.” He shook his brother, spatters of blood flying from August’s mouth, staining his cheek. “This is the price of treason.”
“No,” August said quietly, using the last of his strength to speak. “It’s the price of jealousy. Who’s sinning now, brother?”
Anton’s blood-speckled face went cold. In one motion, he let go of his twin’s shoulders, stepped back. The Sainted King crumpled to the ground.
August was still gulping in useless air, still twitching as Anton turned to the crowd. None of the gathered courtiers looked surprised. They’d expected this. Everyone August had trusted had turned their loyalty to Anton instead, the Church finally winning over the crown.
The only stricken face was Alie, still in Bellegarde’s grip, hand clapped over her mouth. Alie, and Bastian. Bastian looked like he’d collapse at any moment, still kneeling in his own blood. His head had stopped bleeding, crusting the side of his face in rust, the lurid color making the whites of his widened eyes stand out.
Anton raised his hands, the exact same stance August had taken. “Faithful,” he intoned. “We all knew that August wasn’t the one to lead us into our new—”
A scream interrupted him. Lore didn’t realize it was her own until she felt her jaw stretch.
Pain bloomed in her abdomen, white-hot and burning. The Presque Mort holding her let go, startled; she slid to her knees.
The knife. August’s knife, silver and gold and sticking out of her side.
Behind Anton, the bloody heap of the King listed over, hand outstretched from where he’d thrown the blade. His palm hit the dais with a meaty thump, a smile revealing gore-streaked teeth.
“It won’t be him,” he said, the words slurred with blood and bile, with all the fluids a dying body releases when the balance finally tips. “Not if I kill her.”
Lore’s vision seeped to monotone, everything colored black or white or a gray in-between. Her own body was a chaos of black and white glow, Mortem and Spiritum tangled together, both from the ritual August had performed and from the wound in her gut.
Distantly, she heard someone calling her name. Bastian.
But Anton didn’t seem fazed. He lifted his eyes to the sky, sighing like a parent with an unruly child, then turned around to the fallen King. “A gut wound takes time to kill someone,” he said. “A fact I’m beginning to regret.”
Anton lifted his foot, clad in heavy boots, and brought it down on August’s head. The white light around the King billowed away like a breeze, a cloud of darkness taking its place.
Brain matter caked the sole of Anton’s boot as he lifted it from the ruin of August’s skull.
Lore heaved up wine. It puddled sticky in her lap, mixing with blood from her stomach.
More shouting, but it sounded like it was coming from underwater. She couldn’t focus her eyes, couldn’t organize her thoughts into straight lines. All was pain, and all was fading.
Bastian’s voice cut through the din, the timbre recognizable even if the words weren’t. Gabe’s, the same, soundless roars, growls, clashes of steel and the meaty sound of fists in flesh. He must’ve woken up. That was good. Maybe they’d both live. Two out of three wasn’t bad.
“Take her to the gardens,” Anton said, and distantly, Lore felt hands beneath her knees, around her shoulders, lifting her like a fainted noblewoman. “She’s waiting for us there.”
Lore’s eyes fluttered closed.