Lore didn’t try to look again.
In the sky above the warm ocean, smoke twisted sinuously, gray against blue. It took Lore a moment to notice that the smoke was coming from her, streaming out from her chest, reaching dark tendrils over the water. As she watched, it stretched farther and farther, arcing over the sky.
Perfect, said the figure next to her, the one she couldn’t see. Much easier, this time.
Lore shot up from the too-soft bed, pressing her knuckles against her eyes until stars danced behind them. The mental barrier Gabriel had helped her make had finally failed, as if the strange nightmare even now fading from her memory had burned through her forest. She sensed Mortem in everything—the walls, the bedding, the furniture. It made her every limb feel leaden, made her head pound, the symptoms of suffocation even as she heaved lungfuls of air. The moment of death, crystallized and endless, all the pain with none of the peace.
Lore stood on shaky legs, hissing against the throbbing in her head. Between her mad dash away from the Northwest Ward, being tied to a chair for all of one night, and nearly dancing through another, her body felt like the end of a fraying rope.
With a lurch, she forced herself forward, through the bedroom door and into the shared sitting room. She nearly hit the wall, reeled back, gritted her teeth. Touching anything felt like a punch to her brain, and part of her wanted to claw off her perfectly tailored nightgown. She stayed her hand, but only just. Gabe would have to help her with this, and he wouldn’t be much assistance if his celibate heart gave out at the sight of her naked.
The one-eyed monk was still half propped against the threshold that led to the hallway, like a human doorstop. She prodded his shoulder with her foot; her head hurt too much to crouch down, she’d probably be sick all over him if she tried. “Gabe. It’s back.”
He went from sleep to wakefulness in an instant. Gabe sat up, his sheet slipping down to his waist, concern scrunching the skin around his eye patch—he slept in the thing, apparently, at least when he was guarding doors. His one blue eye flickered over her, took quick stock of the situation, thankfully knowing exactly what she spoke of without Lore having to explain. “Did you ground yourself before you fell asleep?”
“Did I what?”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“How the fuck would I have known to do that?” Pain made her sharp; Lore’s teeth were nearly bared.
Gabe took it in stride. He shifted his position so he sat cross-legged on the floor, palms on his knees. A sweep of his hand indicated he wanted her to do the same.
Lore did, slowly, hissing a string of curses. Her legs prickled with pins and needles; trying to move them felt like hauling sacks of unresponsive meat.
“Grounding,” Gabe said when she was settled, “is visualizing your barrier, setting it in place. Making it as real as possible in your mind, so that you don’t have to be actively concentrating to keep it up.”
“I haven’t concentrated on it all day, and it held up fine.” It’d only been a problem since her nightmare. Lore could still feel it tugging at the edges of her mind, at her heart, as if she hadn’t really woken up at all. As if the nightmare were a living thing, full of malice and trying to trap her.
But she couldn’t quite fix it in her mind. When she tried to recall exactly what happened in the dream, all she got were flashes—white sand, blue water.
His brows drew together, a fleeting expression of puzzlement. “That is odd.”
“Can we discuss the oddness later, please?”
A troubled light still shone in Gabe’s eye, but he nodded. His hands relaxed on his knees. “Think about your barrier,” he said, low and calm. “Every detail, no matter how small. Settle into it, so it seems as real as anything else.”
The only thing Lore felt like settling was her fist into her own face—anything to stop this headache. But she gradually calmed her breathing, unclenched her jaw. Untangled her thoughts from the unpleasant sensations of head pounding and a sweaty brow and death on every side, and thought instead of a forest.
Trees. Lots of them. Growing around her in an impenetrable green wall. She heard Gabe breathing in a deep, even cadence; her breath came in counterpoint, like she took in what he let out.
Slowly, slowly, the awareness of omnipresent death dimmed, faded. Not entirely, never entirely. But enough that Lore didn’t feel like she was drowning in it. In her state of deep concentration, where the forest in her head seemed as real and present as the dusty carpet below her, she could almost see something moving beyond her wall of trees. Smoke drifting sinuously in a blue sky.
The image itched at her mind, but she couldn’t fit it to a memory.
When the pounding in her skull subsided and her nightgown felt merely like cotton instead of a chthonic shroud, Lore opened her eyes.
Gabe was looking at her. He’d looked at her a lot over the course of their two days stuck together, but in light made only by a fire’s embers and with so much freckled skin visible, it seemed heavier now. Like he could really see her, a person, not a Mortem channeler or a pretender in a foxglove gown or a stone hung around his neck. Just a woman.
“Has it always been this bad?” His voice was hushed. “The awareness?”
Lore swallowed. “No.”
He stayed quiet, expecting her to go on. But when she kept silent, he didn’t press. “Our minds are most vulnerable in sleep,” Gabe said. “They’re more open, more receptive.” His eye fixed on her, shining with empathy in the moonlight through the window. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
As if this was what she’d be ashamed of, out of everything she had to choose from.
Abruptly, Lore stood. “Well. Thank you for helping me.” She rushed into her room, ready to fall asleep again, to lose herself in tree-shrouded oblivion. Eyes clenched shut, she imagined her forest, filled it out with as much detail as she could.
Branches swayed. Trunks grew thick. Through the emerald leaves, sinuous smoke snaked over an azure sky.
The Church was just as impressive as the Citadel, albeit in a different way. Where the Citadel was all opulence and gilt, the Church was austere, with whitewashed stone walls that nearly glowed, gleaming oak rafters, and pews polished to high shine. Gemlike windows of stained glass cast the gathered congregants of the North Sanctuary in shards of colored light as the sun slowly climbed the sky.