She’d wounded him. She’d meant to. Still, the subtle deflation of his shoulders, the way his face turned so all she could see was that infernal eye patch, made all her organs tie themselves in knots.
“I’m afraid it’s a bit more complicated than you and my nephew think.” Anton peered at her, the rising sun behind him making the scarred side of his face a mass of runneled shadow. “Questions of betrayal and treason often are. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.” He turned sharply, headed toward the door cut into the wall of the garden that led back into the Church. “Come. We have much to discuss.”
The Presque Mort deposited Lore and Bastian in a large antechamber, empty other than a long table and a handful of chairs, hung with one simple tapestry of Apollius clutching His bleeding chest. It reminded Lore of the room she’d been taken to after accidentally raising Horse.
Her bonds were a bit more intricate this time. So were Bastian’s. Instead of ropes, their hands were manacled, and those manacles attached to thick iron rings in the floor. A slanted echo of the iron bars crossing the floor in the Citadel.
She supposed no one needed that particular reminder of their holy purpose in the Church. There were reminders everywhere.
It was Malcolm who locked the manacles around her wrists. “Why?” she asked as he worked, not bothering to whisper. “I thought you wanted things to change, Malcolm? I thought you were on our side?”
She didn’t mean to sound so wounded.
The head librarian took a moment to answer. When he did, it was with a sigh. “Anton will explain,” he said. “Gabe came to him, then they both came to me, and what they told me let me know that we have to work together.”
Lore scowled. Next to her, another Presque Mort shackled Bastian, but the Sun Prince stayed silent, staring at the floor.
An hour later, and that silence still held. In that hour, she’d observed that they both handled betrayal differently. Lore iced over, letting no emotion cross her face. Bastian, by contrast, cycled between looking like he might attempt to pull the iron ring out of the floor with his bare hands, and looking like he’d just lost a friend.
She supposed he had, in a way. The thing between her and Gabe and Bastian wasn’t friendship, not really—it was both deeper and less complicated than that, somehow, a primal knot none of them could untie. Gabe’s betrayal stung, but in a way, it also felt inevitable.
“I’m sorry, Lore,” Bastian murmured.
Her brows knit. “Sorry for what?”
“If Gabe betraying me feels this bad,” he said to his bound hands, “then I can’t imagine how it feels for you, when you care for him the way you do.”
“I don’t care for him like… like anything.” It came out breathy, not enough power behind the words to make them a truth or a lie. They just hung there.
The door opened. Both of them looked up.
Anton and Gabe, as expected, and Malcolm with them. The librarian darted a quick, furtive look at Lore, apprehension coiled in his expression.
The Presque Mort parted, revealing another figure behind them.
Severin Bellegarde.
“Well then,” Bastian said, sitting back in his chair with a clanking of chain. “It seems like everything we theorized is true. But what do you get out of war, Severin? Money? You’ve already got more houses than family members, and your style of dress makes it clear you care nothing for current fashion—”
“No one wants a war, Bastian.” Anton had changed out of his robes and into the close, dark clothing he’d worn the day of the leak, matching Gabe and Malcolm. He sat down at the table and crossed his arms, looking suddenly like a much younger man despite the gray shock of his hair. “That is, in fact, precisely what we’re trying to prevent.”
We. Apparently meaning him and Bellegarde.
Bastian’s eyes slid to Lore’s, the same realization hitting them both—the door to the chamber was closed. No one else was coming.
And August wasn’t here.
Bellegarde watched the thought spark on their faces, a thin smile creasing his dour face. “The only person trying to start a war is August,” he said. “And we are not in accord.”
“My brother believes we are on the same side, but we haven’t been. Not for a long time.” Anton shifted on the table, rested his elbows on his knees, and looked to Bastian. “I’m sorry, nephew.”
“Sorry for what?” Bastian had wiped all emotion from his face, donned the mask of careless prince. He tipped up his chin, dark hair falling down his back. “Bit late for regrets, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry,” Anton said slowly, ignoring him, “that sickness and jealousy have made your father a bad man. I am sorry that you have borne the brunt.” A pause. “I’m sorry he wants you dead, when you, of all people, do not deserve his ire.”
A muscle twitched in Bastian’s jaw. His manacled hands tensed, just enough to make his chains click together, and something sorrowful flickered across his face. His father was dying; his father wanted him dead. Both things that sat heavy.
The half-tender and half-unsettling moment ended when Anton turned Lore’s way. “What happened when you tried to raise the body in the chamber?”
Her mouth opened to lie on instinct, to claim no knowledge of a chamber or a body in it. But they were long past that. Lore slumped in her seat, manacles clanking.
By the door, Gabe winced, just a bit. She thought of him that first day, loosening her restraints, trying to make her as comfortable as she could be, and pushed the memory viciously away.
“We know that’s why you went there,” Anton said wearily, taking her silence as reluctance. “And that’s why we didn’t stop you. Why we left the note, why Danielle was instructed to tell you about the docks—her family also realizes what kind of threat August has become, and is loyal to Church over Crown, to gods over humans. We need to know what happened, Lore.”
The note Bellegarde had planted, Dani at Alie’s tea. Lore had been led along like a child holding a parent’s hand; they’d been brought here so easily.
Beyond Anton, Gabe closed his eye, tilted his chin away. Had he known? Had he been part of Anton’s plan from the start?
The rest of them looked at her, the Presque Mort and Bellegarde and even Bastian, with varying levels of confusion and expectation. Lore shrank in on herself, suddenly self-conscious of her failure once again. “It didn’t work. They didn’t say anything new.”
“Nothing new,” Anton repeated. “So the same thing as last time.”
She nodded.
A quick look slid between Anton and Bellegarde, so fast she might’ve imagined it. “And what else happened, Lore?”
“I had to get past your lock, first,” she said petulantly. If he was going to talk to her like a child, she could play the damn part.
A slight smile bent the Priest Exalted’s thin mouth. “Yes. That was quite a feat. It took much practice to bend Mortem in such a way. Practice, and research.” He nodded briefly to Malcolm. “It is fortunate that we’ve kept such a wealth of knowledge in the library.”
Malcolm’s lips pressed flat. He said nothing.