He said it almost like an accusation.
“We can. But I don’t know what it means.” She sighed, rubbed at her tired eyes. “I tried to call Mortem when he first pulled me away from the ring. It was impossible. When he was touching me, I could barely sense it at all.”
His brows drew low. “I couldn’t sense it in the vault, either. Maybe something about him being an Arceneaux repels it, somehow.”
“But I’ve never had that problem around August or Anton.” Just Bastian, who didn’t want to be an Arceneaux at all.
Gabe’s expression darkened. “He could be using some kind of stolen elemental power to—”
But Lore was already shaking her head. “No one has had that kind of power in generations. And if Bastian had any means of consciously repelling Mortem, he’d be using it to help Auverraine.”
Here was one more thing she just knew, one more place where she needed his trust but had no means to explain why she deserved it. Gabe angled his head so she couldn’t see his eye, just the patch over the empty socket, the harsh line of his jaw. His stubble had grown in.
“We can look in the Church library,” he said finally. “Anything about the Arceneaux line and their effect on Mortem should be in there. And if we find nothing, we’ll know it’s something Bastian is doing on his own.”
It seemed to comfort him, this idea that they might be able to find some blame to pin on the prince. A concrete plan that would tell him whether he could trust his childhood friend.
Lore nodded. “We’ll go look.”
“And we’ll look for the bodies, too.” Gabe said it like a concession. “But give it a couple of days. More than one person saw us leaving with Bastian last night; August will undoubtedly be summoning us soon.”
Lore nodded. She didn’t like the idea of waiting, but she couldn’t deny it was wise, especially if there was an audience with August in their immediate future.
Gabe stood, stretched. “I’m going to get some sleep.” When Lore looked pointedly to the morning-bright window, he shrugged. “Everyone else in this gods-damned court sleeps in. We might as well, too.”
He went to the threshold, stripped off his shirt, started making his pallet before the door. Lore stood in the doorway of her own room with its too-soft bed, shifting her weight from foot to foot. Then, decision a crackle of lightning, she marched across the room and flung herself down on the couch.
“Bed’s too soft,” she muttered, leaving out the part about wanting to trust him despite his words about manipulation, about feeling cast adrift, about not wanting to be alone and having only him to keep her from it. All that feeling was strained into those three words, though, and the quick look he gave her said he heard them.
Lore thought of that moment when he’d wanted her to kiss him. When she’d thought about it, when she’d decided not to. She thought about her decision to keep her true origins from him, and how nothing about the want coursing through her made her question that decision.
She thought of vows.
Gabriel sighed, then she heard the telltale signs of him bedding down against the door. Lore turned her face into the couch cushions, inhaled their scent of dust, and imagined her forest, grounding herself in her own mind so death couldn’t slip past.
Green-and-brown branches, azure sky. Black smoke curled against the blue, and distantly, she thought it looked thicker than before.
It took a whole day for Lore to feel like a human again. Gabe kept to the study off the main room, reading musty manuscripts and snippets of the Compendium, occasionally going down to the front hall to get them some food. Lore mostly napped on the couch, falling into the rest her body had been denied while traipsing around after the Sun Prince.
Gabe finally bedded down next to the door when night fell. It was a comfort to know he was there, close enough for her to reach in two steps if she wanted. Not that she would.
They slept late the next day, too, so when the knock came on the door, it took Lore a minute to wake.
She sat up, chemise twisted around her stomach, hair in tangles. “Gabe,” she muttered from a sleep-hoarsened throat, not wanting him to get bashed if the knocker happened to have a key.
She needn’t have worried. Gabe flinched, rubbing at his back, turning over to stare at whatever had been poked through the gap between door and floor as outside, footsteps receded down the hall. Pressing the heel of his hand to his still-whole eye, Gabe moved to sit cross-legged, a stiff white envelope in his lap.
“I do not recommend awakening by paper cut,” he mumbled as Lore crossed the room and sat in front of him. It was the same position they’d taken that first night, when he taught her how to ground herself. She shifted uncomfortably and wondered if he noticed.
Remaut swirled over the creamy back of the envelope in Gabe’s lap. A small flower was drawn next to the t.
“Alie,” he said quietly.
Lore took the envelope from him and ripped it open. A simple white page, with words written in the same flourishing hand as Gabe’s surname.
A laugh tickled at the back of Lore’s throat. “A reminder about that croquet game. It’s today, after lunch.” She glanced at the window, lit with midday glow. “Which is probably right about now.”
Gabe was already shaking his head, but Lore straightened her spine with new resolve. “We’re going.”
“Do you even know how to play croquet?”
“No, but you can teach me, can’t you?” Her eyes felt gummy, her stomach sour from days of no rest followed by too much of it. Lore needed out of these apartments.
It also sounded nice to pretend at normality for a while, and a croquet game was probably as close as she was going to get.
Grimacing, Gabe rubbed at his eye. “I was rather good at it, once.” He stood, offered her his hand.
She took it and let him haul her up. He let go as soon as she was upright, too quick to be casual. Things between them seemed mostly steady, now that they’d decided on a course of action, but all that heat still shimmered right out of reach, embers waiting for the right breath of air.
Lore dressed quickly, in a lavender gown with a high waist and sleeves that covered only her shoulders. The skirt was long and full, but not as much as some she’d seen the courtiers wear—she was in no danger of taking up the entire width of a hallway. She had no idea what appropriate clothing was for a croquet game, but this would have to do.
Her hair she frowned at for a moment before partially braiding it in a crown around her head, leaving the rest of it down. Its color wavered between brown and gold, most days, but the gentle shade of her dress made it look darker. A pause, then she pinched at her cheeks, bit her lips to coax some color into them. She told herself it had nothing to do with Gabe, and absolutely nothing to do with the chance of seeing Bastian.
Gabe was dressed when she came out of her room. Wordlessly, he offered her his arm. She took it.
They marched down the hall like they were headed to a sentencing.
Lore had grown used to the crosshatched iron bars set into the floors, so much so that she barely noticed them anymore. But after last night, the bars stood out again, incongruous and dark. A reminder that things like her did not belong here.
The lunch spread was in the same place as the day before, on a massive table groaning beneath the weight of pastries and hundreds of tiny sandwiches. Alie lingered with a knot of other courtiers, her cloud-pale hair making her easy to spot.