His voice sparked in her, like the connection she’d always felt in his presence had sunk deeper, insinuated itself into muscle and marrow. An image flashed across her mind, roses and sunlight in a mountaintop garden, but then it was gone.
A tray stood on the small table behind the couch, covered with a gleaming silver cloche, wafting a rich scent Lore didn’t immediately recognize. She pulled off the cloche, barely registering what the dish was before shoving a forkful in her mouth. A bird of some kind, roasted with vegetables.
“Peahen,” Bastian offered with a flip of his hand, settling on the arm of the couch to watch her eat. “I hate it, but it seems you don’t.”
“I’d eat anything right about now,” Lore said around a full mouth.
“See, had you not just gone through something rather traumatic, I’d be making an off-color joke about that. As it is, I will let it lie. Please admire my restraint.”
Something rather traumatic, indeed. Suddenly the roasted peahen tasted like ash. Lore chewed and swallowed what was still in her mouth, then set down the fork, crossing her arms, staring at a charred ring of onion instead of Bastian. “Did Gabe tell you what happened?”
“Of course Gabe didn’t tell me,” Bastian scoffed. “Malcolm did, and only because I was in the South Sanctuary when he carried you inside.” He paused. “Gabe wouldn’t let me come see you, but when I brought it to Anton, he insisted.”
The fact that he’d willingly gone to his uncle made her blink. “Why?”
“Why wouldn’t Gabe let me in, or why did I want to come in the first place?” But his face said he knew which question she was asking. Bastian crossed his arms, looked at a place on the carpet as he considered his answer. “Would you believe it’s because I care about you?”
It hung in the air, a firmly drawn line that Lore didn’t know how to cross. She stayed on the safe side of it. “I suppose that tracks. You’ve conscripted me into being your employee on threat of the Burnt Isles; it’s natural you’d want to protect your investment.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
She refused to do this right now, not when she was sore and trembling from a week spent in bed. “So you won’t send me to the Burnt Isles if I tell your father or your uncle you know their plans?”
Bastian was silent, and the silence was the answer. That felt right, too, felt familiar and expected. He cared. But not enough to loosen his hold.
Lore nodded as if he’d spoken.
“I don’t want you hurt,” Bastian murmured, sidestepping a true answer. “Believe what you want about me, but I don’t want you hurt. And not because you’re working for me. Just because it’s you.”
“We haven’t known each other long,” she said finally, barely a whisper.
The prince snorted. “No, we haven’t. But it sure feels like we have, Lore.”
She had no argument for that, but it wasn’t a conversation she wanted to wade through; it wasn’t one she knew how. A glass of watered wine stood beside the tray; Lore picked it up and took a sip before she tried speaking again, changing the subject. “Why were you in the South Sanctuary in the first place?”
He let the conversation bend in the direction she twisted it, as if he, too, was eager to leave questions of care and knowing. “Some of the people I like kissing live in the cloisters.”
“Bleeding God.”
“Not Him.” But jocularity faded quickly from Bastian’s face, his arms crossing over his chest. “I was there because I tried to follow you to the leak,” he said, after a moment of quiet. “I didn’t make it out before the Church doors were locked.”
“Why did you want to come? You couldn’t have done anything.”
His eyes raised from the floor, one dark curl falling from his forehead to brush his cheek. “To keep an eye on you.” A scoff. “And Remaut, too. Neither of you excel at self-preservation.”
Lore didn’t have the energy to bristle at that. She just sighed and ate another forkful of Bastian’s hated peahen.
“Did Malcolm tell you what exactly happened?” she asked after she’d swallowed. “With the other Presque Mort? I was there… it was my fault, I mean, but I don’t know—”
“It was not your fault.” It was the fiercest she’d heard him sound, barring that night in the alley, and it made her look up from the remains of her dinner. Bastian still sat on the arm of the couch, the lines of his body nonchalant, but there was a tenseness to him that belied anything casual. “You did what you could.”
You can’t flee from what you are.
She considered telling him about the voice. But the moment the thought came, it was dismissed, instinct telling her to keep that to herself. She had to have some secrets.
A moment of quiet, where she stared at her food and the Sun Prince stared at her, then Bastian sighed. “He told me,” he said. “But before I tell you, you should know that the Presque Mort whose foot was… injured… is recovering just fine, and the Church will pay for a prosthetic. He’ll be well taken care of.”
Lore nodded numbly.
“Apparently,” Bastian continued, “when you started channeling Mortem, it… surged. Like a wave. It ignored all the other Presque Mort and came only to you.”
Like it’d been waiting for her. Or directed toward her. “All of it?” she asked. “Or just the Mortem that Anton shaped?”
Bastian’s brow rose. “No one mentioned anything about Anton.”
Maybe she’d imagined it, both the knot and the voice. Maybe the Mortem flowing through her had made her see and hear things that weren’t there.
“Anyway, the Mort—his name is Jean—stepped up to you, presumably to help.” Bastian shrugged. “But he came too close. The Mortem was still seeping over the ground, and his foot got caught in it. Malcolm pulled him out before it could eat any further, and then they left you to it.”
They’d tried to help. A man who didn’t know her at all had stepped forward, and lost a limb for it.
“It’s honestly remarkable you’re standing,” Bastian continued, softer now. “You were unconscious for a week. There were more than a few times where we wondered if you’d wake up.”
She’d wondered, too, floating in that in-between, caught in dream and memory. Lore took another mindless bite of food.
“Gabe is recovering fine, too.” Bastian pushed a curl out of his eyes. “If you were worried.”
A flurry of panic swam through her stomach. “Recovering?”
“He reached for you and lost the tip of his finger.” A wicked smile twisted his mouth, but the look in Bastian’s eyes was almost… resigned. “Not that he was using it to any great effect, if you get my meaning. Not with those vows.”
Gabe had reached for her. It didn’t make up for the fact that he wasn’t here, but it was something.
They stood there, the only sound the merry crackling of the fire. A moment, then Bastian stood, brushing dust of the back of his dark pants and scowling at the mess of clothes and blankets Gabe had left on the floor. “No one has been allowed in here to clean since you’ve been ill, but I’m sending around a maid. Remaut is apparently unable to keep up with his own housekeeping.”