“Bastian, my boy!” the Priest Exalted called. “I’m sorry you were hurt; I told them that you weren’t to be harmed, but when things get chaotic—”
“Your monks are all hurt far worse than I am.” Bastian held a short sword he must’ve taken from someone; he turned it so the bloodied edge caught the firelight.
The Presque Mort scattered around the garden seemed uneasy; hands fell to the harnesses around their chests. They glanced at their Priest, waiting for instruction, ready for violence if it was called for.
“It’s good that you’re here,” Anton continued, oblivious to the low, dangerous tone in Bastian’s voice. “Things have gone a bit off schedule with the girl. But now that you’ve arrived, we can move forward. Perhaps you can convince her to see reason.”
Bastian’s eyes swung to Lore, panic flashing bare and jagged across his features. “Are you hurt?”
“She’s fine,” Anton said dismissively, waving his hand. “Better, even; she channeled Spiritum and used it to heal herself.” A sharp laugh echoed over the stone roses, the hiss of flames. “If her magic has been heightened to such a level, imagine yours!”
Across the well, the Night Priestess stood still as a carved icon. Her expression wavered in the growing flames, but she didn’t look at Bastian with fear. It was closer to resignation, as if his appearance here marked a sea change, diverted the flow of her plan. She turned her eyes to Lore. There was no pity to be found in her face.
Slowly, she made her way closer, close enough for her whisper to be heard. “You care for him,” her mother whispered. “Don’t you?”
Lore didn’t answer.
“If you care for him,” she murmured, hazel eyes sheened in tears, “if you care for anyone in this world, you will let this happen. Please don’t make it harder than it has to be, Lore. You don’t understand what hell you could bring on the world.”
“I’m sorry for keeping you in the dark.” Anton moved toward Bastian the way one would approach an altar, Lore and the Night Priestess cast completely from his mind. Bastian stood still. The fire gilded him, made him look cast in gold rather than flesh.
“There was much I didn’t understand, not until recently,” Anton continued. “And I know you were fond of the girl—for that, I’m sorry, but you must understand it’s a weakness, an echo that cannot be allowed to continue for all our sakes. You must overcome it, must be ready to sacrifice old feelings and remake the world in Apollius’s image.” A tear broke from the line of his lashes and spilled down his cheek. “In your—”
“You won’t be sacrificing anyone.”
Gabe.
He appeared behind the Priest Exalted, flame-wreathed, his dagger in his hand. The blade pressed against Anton’s throat, and his hand didn’t shake as he took the Priest’s wrist, twisted it to make him drop the knife still caked in August’s blood. Gabe looked worse for wear than Bastian, his eye patch lost, bruises forming on nearly every inch of visible skin.
“Ah, Gabriel,” Anton sighed. “Your loyalties are ever-shifting. I suppose I should expect that.” A snarl lifted his mouth. “Part of you knows, I think. What you could become if this is allowed to continue. An abomination. Recurring sin.”
Gabe’s throat worked as he swallowed, as he shoved the blade close enough to pucker skin. “Be quiet,” he said, the ghost of something broken in it. “Please, Father, be quiet.”
“I’m not your father, boy,” Anton hissed.
A flinch, Gabe’s one blue eye fluttering closed, then open again.
“Lore.” Her mother’s hand was cold on her arm. “Lore, please, before this comes to a point we can’t return from.”
The sky was lightening, slowly. The moon edging away from the sun.
The knot of Mortem that Anton had been molding was still rotating in the air, a mass of death and darkness held in stasis. Annihilation, waiting for its target.
Anton’s bright eyes tracked to Lore and the Night Priestess. “I’m still owed a village,” he said, almost irritated, as if he didn’t have a knife to his throat.
Lore reached up, eyes fixed on the Priest Exalted’s, and called her Mortem back in.
It felt the same as before—the deadened limbs, the grayscale vision, the lurch of her heart in her chest. But as she unraveled the knot of Mortem and let it funnel back into herself, she realized what was different. What made this something more.
This death was hers, spooled from her own bones, the meat that made her up. Its power was hers. She wasn’t just channeling it, she was absorbing it: sewing it between her vertebrae, braiding it into her veins.
The knot unspooled in the space of two heartbeats, tangled threads that slid into her fingers, settled alongside the current of light that was Spiritum. Both she could sense, both she could use.
The more powerful you grow, the more like Her you become.
Her mother let loose a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a sob. “This is what I saw, in the reflections of the tomb.” She whispered it almost to herself, broken-voiced. “It’s what the goddess dreamed, but I thought I could prevent it. I thought you would choose the world over yourself.”
“I’m far too selfish for that,” Lore whispered.
The Presque Mort did nothing as their leader’s carefully wrought twists of power unraveled, watching with wary eyes. It seemed like they were all looking to Bastian, not Anton, as if the Sun Prince held their loyalty.
“Bitch,” Anton spat. “One way or another, Apollius will prevail. You only—”
“Shut up.” But Gabe’s voice was shaky. He looked around at the other Presque Mort; their passivity seemed to unsettle him as much as it did Lore. Gabe’s one eye went to Bastian; the empty socket of the other made a pit of shadow. “He’s a mad old man, Bastian.” His tone was pleading. “Strip him of his title, and he can’t hurt anyone.”
Bastian didn’t answer him. Instead, he turned to face Lore and her mother, and held out his hand.
“If you touch her,” he said evenly, dark eyes trained on the Night Priestess, “I will go into the catacombs and haul all of you out myself.”
“Lore,” the Night Priestess said, a last-ditch effort. “Please.”
Lore looked up at her mother. Then she walked forward and took her place next to Bastian, kicking Anton’s dagger away as she went, sending it skittering into the fire.
The Night Priestess loosed a shaking breath.
Lore tore her gaze from her mother, looked around them at the Presque Mort, ringed in flame. “Why aren’t they doing anything? What are they waiting for?”
“I don’t know,” Bastian said. “I don’t care.” He took a step toward his uncle.
Gabe hauled the Priest Exalted back, away from the approaching prince. “Bastian.” Warring emotions twisted his face, fear and sorrow and anger. “We talked about this.”
“You talked about this.” Bastian was doing something strange with his hands. They flexed back and forth, fingers curling, as if he was trying to wind in an invisible rope. Gold light glimmered in the space around him.