Branches swayed. Trunks grew thick. Through the emerald leaves, sinuous smoke snaked over an azure sky.
The Church was just as impressive as the Citadel, albeit in a different way. Where the Citadel was all opulence and gilt, the Church was austere, with whitewashed stone walls that nearly glowed, gleaming oak rafters, and pews polished to high shine. Gemlike windows of stained glass cast the gathered congregants of the North Sanctuary in shards of colored light as the sun slowly climbed the sky.
Not for the first time since rising at an ungodly hour—a phrase Gabe had taken as a pun when he woke her up, though she meant it in all sincerity—Lore gave silent thanks that she’d shown restraint with the wine fountain at Bastian’s masquerade. Her eyes still felt gritty from lack of sleep, but at least she didn’t look as haggard as some of the courtiers silently filing in through the wooden double doors. The parade of red eyes and missed streaks of glitter made an easy-to-follow guest list of who’d spent the night dancing with the Sun Prince and who hadn’t.
It would appear that most had. Among the younger courtiers, at least, Bastian was a popular man. She wondered if that was part of the reason why August was so eager to think him a spy. Men in powerful positions were unsettled by popular heirs waiting to take their places. In that regard, the Court of the Citadel wasn’t that much different from a poison runner crew. She’d seen more than one upstart assassinated by their own captain.
A yawn stretched her mouth so wide Lore’s jaw popped. She’d barely taken in the walk from the back entrance of the Citadel to the North Sanctuary, too tired to pay much attention. It was a good mile and a half, by her counting, the path cobble-paved and smooth, lined with rosebushes—a stark contrast with the rubble-strewn walkways in Dellaire proper leading to the South Sanctuary, the one meant for commoners. On either side of the path, the Citadel’s massive green spaces rolled, manicured fields and pseudo-forests, rich land fenced in by the fortress of the Church’s walls.
Something nudged her shoulder. Gabe. “Wake up, cousin.”
“I’m awake, cousin.” But another yawn cramped her jaw as she said it. “Why in all myriad hells are First Day prayers right at the ass-crack of dawn? Surely Apollius can still hear them around noon.”
Gabe inclined his head to the stained-glass window at the very front of the sanctuary. The Bleeding God’s Heart, set out in panels of red and gold and ocher. As the sun rose, its gleam traced up the window, slowly illuminating the glass until the whole thing blazed with color.
“That’s why,” he answered. She couldn’t tell if he sounded reverent or resentful. Maybe a little of both.
For sleeping against the doorframe all night, Gabriel seemed positively refreshed. Dressed in plainer clothes than he’d had for the masquerade—dark doublet, dark breeches, and a linen shirt beneath, this time with sensible sleeves—this was the handsomest he’d looked in their brief acquaintance.
Lore, on the other hand, had carefully avoided the mirror this morning, even as she brushed out her hair. The bags under her eyes were probably deep enough to smuggle hemlock.
The double doors at the back of the sanctuary remained open, emitting the last straggling courtiers. Alienor glided down the thick tapestry carpet running through the center aisle, the sun through the windows making her nearly white curls glow the same colors as the stained glass, a halo-like nimbus around her head. Her eyes were clear and her gait steady as she approached the altar at the front of the sanctuary, knelt, and kissed its polished wood. Lore and Gabe had done the same when they entered. Lore tried not to think about all the lips that had been on it before hers.
When Alie straightened and went to find her seat, her eyes met Lore’s. She smiled, threw a tiny wave. Lore returned it with a genuine smile of her own. Gabriel didn’t look at Alie at all.
An older man walked close behind Alienor, close enough that they had to be arriving together, though they looked nothing alike. His skin was milk-pale to her warm-copper, his hair wood-brown and pin-straight instead of white-blond and curling. His expression was dour, and the lines around his mouth said that rarely changed. The man’s gaze flickered to Lore, as if taking her measure.
“Who’s that?” she murmured to Gabe out of the side of her mouth.
“Severin Bellegarde.” Gabe didn’t have to move to answer the question; he’d been watching Alie already. “Alie’s father.”
Lore arched a brow. Alie must take after her mother, then, in every way.
She looked away from Bellegarde, made a show of studying the windows. Apollius, again, in various scenes both imagined and taken from the Tracts. Healing a mortal wound with a touch. Stepping through a door of cloud into what she could only assume was supposed to be the Shining Realm, leaving the world behind. Lore frowned and turned her attention to the crowd instead.
For all her resentment at being here, the North Sanctuary glittering with the gathered finery of the Court of the Citadel was certainly a sight to behold. They all knew exactly what to do, where to go, how to sit and wait and look holy, even with their eyes spiderwebbed in red from drink and poison the night before. As a non-noble, Lore had never been permitted in the North Sanctuary, and she’d only been in the South Sanctuary for common prayers a handful of times, mostly when she got caught in the shuffle while doing reconnaissance for a nearby drop.
The last of the courtiers filed in. The double doors leading to the green space and the Citadel beyond closed, booming in the silence.
At the front of the sanctuary, a small door on the raised platform behind the altar opened, emitting Anton, dressed in a robe so white it almost hurt Lore’s eyes, his Bleeding God’s Heart pendant swinging from his chest. Another of the Presque Mort emerged behind him, dressed in the usual black, holding a thurible spilling with thick incense smoke. She was missing a hand, the stump riven with lurid scars. It was rare to see women in the Presque Mort—before, anyone who wasn’t a man and could channel Mortem would’ve joined the Buried Watch, if they didn’t choose to simply try ignoring the call of their new death magic—but it did happen. Anyone of any gender could become a Mort.
And the Buried Watch wasn’t an option anymore. At least not officially.
Lore slid her eyes to Gabriel, still and stoic next to her. She probably would’ve tried to ignore her abilities, were her circumstances more conventional. The Presque Mort didn’t exactly make being a monk look fun.
Next to the Mort, a priest Lore didn’t recognize stepped up to the braziers lining the front of the dais and lit them with the flame of his beeswax taper. He was dressed in white, and unscarred. Just a general clergyman, then.
She watched Anton carefully as the braziers were lit. She’d think someone who’d been scarred by them so horribly would look at least a little nervous, but the Priest Exalted stepped right up to the smoking embers without so much as a momentary flinch.
Another door opened on the opposite side of the dais, larger than the first, inlaid with a sun’s golden corona around the lintel. August strode through, rayed crown on his head, a deep-orange cloak over his shoulders. The inside lining of the cloak was golden cloth, winking as he moved down the short stairs to the altar before the dais and sank to his knees, facing the gathered crowd.
The Sainted King’s movements looked slightly unsteady. A tremor in the knee, a tiny quake along his fingers. He scratched once at his neck, concealed by the high collar of his shirt, then clasped his hands in an attitude of prayer.