“Don’t touch me,” she snarled. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
He stared at her, one blue eye wide. His jaw clenched beneath the reddish stubble on his chin. “I was trying to keep you safe.”
“By going to the very person we knew was lying?”
“He’s on our side! You heard everything I just did, you know that Anton is working against August!”
“But you didn’t.” Her fingers went back to her wrist again, itching, itching. “You had no idea what Anton was involved in, and it’s pure stupid luck you didn’t get all three of us murdered!”
“It was either that or watch you go to a far more likely murder in the damn catacombs!” Gabe ran his hands over his close-shorn hair, turned away. “I wanted him to stop you from going down there at all. Both of you. That seemed like a much more pressing matter than playing politics—”
“It’s more than playing politics! If we’d been right, if Anton and August were still on the same side, Bastian might’ve—”
“Forgive me,” Gabe cut in, nearly a snarl. “I forgot that one must always be thinking of Bastian first.”
“Save it,” Lore hissed. “We both know what happened here. You got overwhelmed with the thought that maybe, just once, you were wrong about something. You got scared.”
Gabe’s hands twitched back and forth to almost-fists. Instinct had ahold of him, too, and it told him to defend the man who’d stepped in when his father bled out. “Whatever side Anton was on,” he said, “I knew that would be the right one.”
She laughed, high and harsh. “Gods, Gabe, you’re like a kicked dog going back to the damn boot. Anton took you in because he hallucinated that a vanished god told him to. He doesn’t love you. He never has. He’s not your father, no matter what the Church wants you to call him.”
The Presque Mort took a step toward her, and she was reminded, against her will, of that night in her room, his mouth on her neck, his roaming hands. She wondered if he’d kiss her like that again now. It seemed to be what they defaulted to, the only way they could communicate when everything else piled up in jagged mountains, unable to be climbed.
“I wanted to keep you safe.” It rumbled from him, low and dark, but he stopped paces away and held himself there, not allowing his body one inch closer to hers. “And if that meant Bastian got hurt, so be it.”
Lore bared her teeth. “I am gods-damned tired of being the rope in your and Bastian’s tug-of-war.”
“Especially since you’ve already chosen the winner of the match, right?” He laughed just like she had: no joy in it, none at all. “You did the moment you told him where you came from.”
There it was.
“You didn’t know that until an hour ago,” Lore said. “Don’t act like it’s an excuse.”
“How long?” Gabe growled. “How long has he known? I asked you, that first day. I asked you how you came to channel Mortem, and you lied to me. Did you ever lie to him, or was he worthy of the truth from the beginning?”
He stood straight and unbowed as ever, but there was a crookedness to the line of his shoulders. Gabe worked so hard not to show hurt on his face; it came out in other places.
“I told him the night he took us to the boxing ring,” Lore answered. “The first time.”
His eye fluttered closed, then open. “That long, huh?”
She said nothing.
Gabe nodded, his lips twisted in a bitter smile. “You two have been laughing at me for a while, then.”
“It wasn’t like that, Gabe. The only reason I told him was because he threatened—”
“Maybe you weren’t laughing, but he certainly was. And maybe he did threaten you, Lore, but we both know you would’ve told him eventually. You trusted him enough to follow him into the damn catacombs.” He shook his head with a sharp laugh. “One more way he’s beaten me. One more way he’s better.”
“Bleeding God, not everything is about you and your guilt!” Lore shook her head. “You want to know why I didn’t tell you where I came from? Because I knew how you’d react. I knew you’d think I was some kind of monster.”
“You don’t know me at all,” Gabe said, and it was true. Him and her and Bastian were somehow bound, yes, but it didn’t truly make them known, not in all their intricacies. Their odd connections emphasized that point, rather than obscuring it.
“No. I don’t,” Lore said wearily. “And maybe it’s best if I keep it that way.”
As if she had a choice in the matter. As if she didn’t feel the walls of something closing in, trapping the three of them in its center.
There was no flicker of emotion on Gabe’s face—no hurt, no anger. He’d scrubbed it all out, left blankness in its wake.
“Get some rest.” Flat, cold. “I’ll be outside.” He skirted around her, opened the door.
Lore turned to follow him with her eyes. “And when can I leave?”
“Eclipse ball is two nights from now, at eight,” Gabe answered. “So about ten minutes before that.”
The door closed. The lock clicked.
She didn’t mean to fall asleep.
It almost seemed out of her control. One moment, she was sitting in the tiny study, curled up on the one chair, and the next she was by the vast blue ocean, white sand crumbling beneath her feet, the tide gently rolling in to slide against her bare ankles.
“Huh,” Lore said, and then realized it was the first time she’d been able to speak in one of these dreams. That felt important.
The figure beside her seemed to think so, too. Lore didn’t turn her head to look at them, but she felt them stiffen, as if they’d grown more corporeal. “Your time grows near.” Smooth, textureless, a voice that didn’t seem to go with a throat. “And I don’t know how the process will change, so we might as well get as much out of this as we can.”
The voice seemed to be convincing itself.
A tug at her heart, as if it was being pulled through her ribs. The stream of black smoke, spilling from her and across the sky.
It was an effort to turn her head. But Lore did.
The figure turned, too. And it was Cedric. Cedric’s perfect, unblemished face above the ruin of his body, his bloodstained teeth spreading in a wide smile.
But the figure shifted. The child from the vaults, mouth hanging open. Another blur, and it was her mother’s face staring back at her.
Her hair was long and straight and pale, her eyes the same bright hazel as Lore’s. With a gentle smile Lore had never actually seen her wear, she leaned forward, pressing a hand to her daughter’s cheek.
“She just never stops trying,” she murmured as her thumb brushed Lore’s skin, though the voice wasn’t right. It was unnaturally smooth, the same voice from before, everything human stripped out of it. “She doesn’t understand that He cannot allow Them to return.” The facsimile of her mother sighed, smoothed her hair. “It’s not your fault. At least we can use what She gives, this time. It will all be over soon.”
The tugging feeling in Lore’s chest became unbearable, as if her body was trying to turn itself inside out. She screamed as smoke plumed gracefully across the sky.