The Priest Exalted nodded. “And once he has Spiritum, he can take Lore’s power and channel them both. Wield life and death like a sword in each hand.”
“You can’t have both.” Lore shook her head. “Mortem and Spiritum cancel each other out.”
“On the contrary,” Anton answered. “One strengthens the presence of the other. They can only be held simultaneously in certain circumstances”—his one seeing eye flickered between Bastian and Lore, unreadable—“but it can be done. On an eclipse, for example.”
Bastian in the catacombs, making her promise not to go to the eclipse ball, all because of a feeling. All of them knowing things they shouldn’t, knowledge slotting into place with no reasoning behind it.
“So it’s been you from the beginning.” Lore’s vision blurred, the iron ring that held her chains becoming a splash of gray against the floor. “You watching me since I came up from the catacombs, you organizing the raid so I would show myself. You bringing me here and planting clues that would lead me to raising the army, all to make the pieces of your vision fall into place. Stringing August along, too, until he decided he wanted a war.”
Anton nodded, smooth and unruffled.
So used to being used, all of them.
“And you?” Tears blurred her vision still; when she looked at Gabe, all she saw was a tall shadow, a shock of red-gold. “Staying with me, being with—being my friend?” She caught herself before she said something else, something more heated. “Was it all an act?”
“Gabriel was as unaware as you were,” Anton said. “When he came to me yesterday and told me your plan, he expected me to stop you. He was very reluctant to let you roam the catacombs.”
Lore dropped her eyes and concentrated very, very hard on the floor between her feet.
“I told him, then, what we needed to happen. What we’d been working toward. Our necromancer raising the dead, and my nephew’s powers being sharpened by yours, so he could step into his rightful place. Now, unfortunately, there is still the matter of the eclipse. Of your Consecration, Lore.”
“My Consecration?”
“Your power over Mortem will reach its height on your twenty-fourth birthday. Which happens to coincide with the eclipse.” Anton crossed his arms. “August plans to kill you both and take your power at the ball.”
“But how would he do that?” She directed her question to the floor; her head felt too heavy to lift. “Steal our power?”
The Priest Exalted’s scarred face was nearly pitying. “Killing you at the moment of totality, when the moon fully covers the sun. When the powers of life and death can be wielded together.” His eye glinted. “When chosen vessels are made manifest.”
“No.” Bastian and Gabe said it at the same time, their voices harmonizing against the marble walls. Lore’s head came up; the two men looked at each other with naked hatred, all that complicated feeling finally alchemized into something blade-sharp.
“He won’t kill Lore.” Gabe tore his gaze away from Bastian to look at Anton instead. “You said—”
“Peace, son.” Calm words, but Anton’s voice snapped. Gabe flinched. “Lore will be perfectly safe.”
“It still seems like the best course of action would be to hide her until the eclipse is over.” Gabe stepped up, a determined tilt to his chin; he expected another reason to flinch, and wanted to keep it from happening this time. He said nothing about Bastian’s safety. “Keep her here, or send her to her mothers.”
Mari and Val. Calling them her mothers, even now that he knew her true origins, felt like some kind of absolution.
But Anton shook his head before Gabe finished speaking. “It won’t work. We need things to continue as if we have no idea what August is planning, to keep him from getting suspicious.”
“So we go to this damn ball as if nothing has happened,” Bastian said, looking at Lore, “and we trust that you’ll keep my father from killing us and starting a war.”
Skepticism ran deep furrows in the words.
“You,” Anton murmured, “have no idea of all the things I’ve stopped your father from doing, Bastian. All the things I’ve shielded you from.”
It was enough to break his gaze away from Lore’s. The Sun Prince looked, for the first time since she’d met him, completely at a loss.
“Now then.” Anton turned to Gabe, as if the matter was concluded. “The ball is in two days. I suggest you all get plenty of rest before then, as it’s bound to be a long night. Lore, you stay in your rooms. Gabriel will take you there and keep guard.”
Keep her prisoner. Make sure she didn’t escape. Lore wished she had the energy to attempt it anyway, but she didn’t. The last few days had reached inside her and clawed everything out.
“Bastian,” Anton said, turning back around. “I think it best if you stay here.”
A bark of harsh laughter. “There it is.” Bastian sat back in his chair, shook his wrists so his chains clanked. “So I’m a prisoner now?”
“Think of it as being a guest,” Anton said.
Bastian didn’t respond, but his eyes glittered a cold, violent promise.
“I will keep you safe, nephew,” Anton murmured, almost reverently. “Everything will be revealed in time.”
Lore didn’t know what that meant. It looked like Bastian didn’t, either. She let Gabe unlock her chains, let him lead her silently to the door.
When she looked back, day had fully broken in the window behind Bastian, casting his features in shadow, limning their edges gold. It illuminated him like rays around a sun, like a halo.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Sometimes, you can see love coming. And when it takes a different path, you should be thankful.
—Fragment from the work of Marya Addou, Malfouran poet
The walk back to their apartments was silent. Gabe stayed behind her, a one-eyed shadow dogging her steps and making sure she went where she was supposed to. She no longer wore chains, but it was the first time Lore had truly felt like a prisoner in the Citadel.
Their room was locked. Lore had the key half fitted in the door before Gabe stepped up beside her. “It won’t work.” His voice was low. “Anton had the lock changed.”
She looked at him and said nothing. There was nothing to say.
Gabe swallowed. He unlocked the door with a key he produced from his pocket, then stepped aside to let her in first.
The apartments felt strange now—foreign and ill fitting, where before they’d been as close to comfortable as she could find here. Especially knowing Anton had changed the lock sometime after she left last night. Myriad hells, he’d probably had someone waiting in the halls, watching for her to leave so they could immediately set to work.
Because Gabe told him. Gabe told him everything.
Her wrists felt raw. The iron had made them itch. Lore rubbed and rubbed at them, trying to force the feeling out of her skin, trying to make it stop—
Gentle pressure, Gabe’s fingers interposed where hers had been. “Lore, you’re going to hurt yourself—”
It’d been the truth when she told Gabe and Bastian that she was no good at brawling, but instinct made do. Lore snatched her wrist from Gabe’s hand and struck out with the heel of her opposite palm, smacking him in the shoulder, pushing him off balance and away.