There was enough ice in that last statement to make her eyes find her clasped hands, even though Gabriel still wasn’t looking at her.
A minute, hanging. Then Gabe sighed. “I wasn’t supposed to be in Balgia that day. I was supposed to be here.”
That day. The day his father turned the duchy over to Jax and the Kirythean Empire. The day his father died, and Jax pulled out Gabriel’s eye.
“Bastian and I fought. It was over something stupid—I think he cheated at cards. But I was incensed, the way only a ten-year-old child can be. We fought, and I beat the shit out of him.” A wry smile twisted his mouth. “It wasn’t much worse than what we usually did to each other, but for whatever reason, that was the only time he went to his father about it. Ivanna had just died the year before. I think Bastian had exhausted every other way of trying to make August care about him. This was a last resort.” Gabe shrugged. “Didn’t work for getting August’s attention, but it got me banished back to Balgia for the rest of the season, sent there with all the attendants who were supposed to be my surrogate parents. The week after I arrived, my father surrendered to Jax.” His hand rose, rubbed at his eye patch. “My presence wasn’t enough to change his plans.”
Lore knotted her hands in her skirt. “Gabe… I’m…”
But he cut her off, like he was afraid of hearing anything that might be pity. “I’m not stupid enough to think what happened to me is Bastian’s fault. We were children. But I’ll admit that I’m jealous.” He huffed a rueful laugh. “I’m jealous that his actions never seem to have consequences, when I’m carrying the consequences of an entire family. I’m jealous that it would take a miracle for him to be left all alone and with nothing, when everything was taken from me in an instant.”
She’d seen it, all the things he listed, though she’d classify it differently. Bastian’s carelessness was artificial, a façade built to keep anyone from knowing just how much he cared. She still remembered the lightning-quick way he’d changed that night in the alley, how the lazy air of entitlement had fallen away like a discarded cloak. So many layers, so much crafted, careful nonchalance. Bastian was drowning in it, but he didn’t fool her, though the weak points she’d seen were only hairline cracks in the armor he’d forged over years.
It reminded her of herself. How she’d been Night-Sister-Lore and then poison-runner-Lore and now spy-Lore, each a persona she’d eased into, a different shell to wear. When she thought about what might be left when all that artifice was stripped away, she came up blank. Like all the things that made her were window dressings on an empty house.
And though Bastian had never had to run, had been born into his cage instead of molting into different ones over and over, she thought he’d feel the same. That all his careful personas might hide an emptiness the same shape as hers.
He’d weathered Gabe’s anger with what she’d thought was grace, let the other man’s barely leashed rage roll off his back. But maybe it wasn’t grace. Maybe Bastian held this memory just as closely as Gabe did, and maybe he felt like he deserved that anger.
Lore didn’t know how to articulate any of that, though. Not in a way Gabriel would understand. Where Bastian struggled against his cage, Gabe clung to his own, wanting the walls to shape him, shoving himself inside to make boundaries he knew. He’d built himself into something he thought the world wanted, and though it chafed at him, Lore still envied it, just a bit. There was a reassurance in knowing exactly how you were going to be let down.
Gabe mistook her silence for condemnation. “I know it isn’t fair of me,” he said, almost accusingly, like he could turn the finger he imagined she pointed. “I blamed him, before. I don’t now, at least not in the same way. But that jealousy is still there.”
“I understand,” Lore said. And she did.
That was all. They sat in silence, the only sound the hiss of the fire in the grate.
Finally, Gabe sighed, itching at his eye patch, straightening his shoulders. “Right,” he said decisively. “What harebrained plan are we following now?”
No moon, weak stars, and the gardens were dark as pitch. Lore crept along behind Gabriel, keeping close enough to his back that she felt the heat of him through his shirt. It was distracting, to say the least.
“I don’t like this,” he said, for the third time in ten minutes. Probably the fifteenth time overall. He’d started the litany when she told him the plan, there in that lull of vulnerability after talking about Bastian, and had kept it up intermittently since. If Lore hadn’t been so insistent that the two of them at least try to get some sleep before night fell, it would probably be the thirtieth time she’d heard the sentiment.
“Noted,” she muttered at his back. “Again.”
He huffed, the breath of it visible in the cool air. “It’s not safe. This could have nothing to do with the villages; we might be inserting ourselves into some poison runner feud for no reason.”
“We don’t know that, though, and this is the only lead we have.” Lore glared at his back. “Again.”
No retort but a low growl. They clattered over the cobblestones of the garden in their boots, slipped between the trees of the manicured forest. When they exited the woods, Bastian was alone at the culvert. Dressed dark, like they were, leaning against the stone and having a smoke, hair tied back and booted foot on the wall. He butted out the cigarette before tossing it into the culvert—it still hadn’t rained, and the grass was dry; the last thing they needed was to start a fire—and pushed off when they approached, beckoning them into the shadows. He didn’t speak until they were ensconced in stone walls and the roar of dirty water.
Bastian passed out the same plain black masks they’d worn before, sloshing through the storm drain as he tied his own over his eyes. “The primary plan is to lie low. We’re there to spectate. See if we can spot someone talking to people, recruiting. But if all else fails, we start asking around, like we’re looking to get hired.”
“What about those men who saw us a few nights ago?” Lore asked. “If they spilled about who you are, and you start acting like you want work moving mysterious cargo, whoever is doing the hiring will know immediately that they’re caught.”
“That’s why I’m not asking.” Bastian glanced over his shoulder. “You are.”
Next to her, Gabe stiffened.
“I can’t,” Lore stuttered, steps faltering until she stood still in the shallow rush. “People there might know me—”
“Which works out in our favor.” Bastian continued forward, waving a hand as if her protestations were just so much noise. “If they ask why you’re looking for a new job, you can say something went south with the team you were running for. You switched jobs quite a lot, didn’t you? That’s how a spy does their spying.”
Lore pressed her lips together and didn’t protest further.
They splashed through to the end of the tunnel, to the slick stone platform jutting from the wall and the crossbars of the culvert, replaced since they last used this route. Bastian climbed up and loosened the screws, then offered a hand to Lore.