That soured her stomach. But she kept her tone light. “You seem far closer to the Priest Exalted than any of the other Presque Mort.”
“Anton was like a father to me. I know some of it was because of his vision—that I needed to be in the Presque Mort, that it was Apollius’s will—but he was also kind. Helpful. He traveled back and forth to see me, to make sure I was doing as well as I could.” Gabe shrugged. “If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here.”
She didn’t know if he meant here as in part of the Church, or here as in the land of the living. She didn’t really want to.
“Why did you ask if I believed in the Shining Realm?” Gabe asked, after a long few minutes of not-exactly-comfortable silence. “Do you not?”
Lore shrugged. “I don’t often think about what happens after we die, really. There’s enough to worry about right now.”
He made a rueful noise of understanding.
“But if I do think about it…” Lore kicked at a stray pebble. “No. I don’t think I believe in the Shining Realm. At least not the way the Church teaches it.”
Gabe raised a brow, wordlessly asking for further explanation. But he didn’t brand her a heretic and run to find Anton, which seemed promising.
She sighed, tipping her head up, as if the summer sky would give her language to explain it. “Mortem, to me, feels like the absence of everything. An end. So I guess it doesn’t make sense that I would believe in an afterlife at all… but I do, I think. I believe in something, anyway. But in all honesty, the idea of the myriad hells makes more sense to me than the Shining Realm does. I think that whatever comes after this, it’s of our own making. Whatever we sowed in life is what we reap in death, good or bad.”
“The worst part of the myriad hells would be the loneliness,” Gabe said quietly. “Being trapped in the world your own sins made, and utterly alone. I understand your point, but I can’t believe that someone who lived piously would be alone in death. And it wouldn’t make sense for anyone else to be caught up in the place your own actions made.”
She trailed her hand along a bank of stone geraniums. “I don’t know. But if Mortem feels empty—lonely—doesn’t it make sense that death would be, too?”
They lapsed into silence. Voices called in the distance, courtiers at play in the inner walls of the Citadel, sowing things they must eventually reap.
“I don’t think how Mortem feels and how death feels are the same,” Gabe said finally, almost to himself. “One is twisted magic leaking from the body of a dead goddess, and one is something that awaits us all. The first comes from the second, but they aren’t the same.”
“Why is Her magic called twisted?” If it weren’t that they were alone, that the hushed stone garden felt like a place removed from reality, Lore wouldn’t have spoken. But as it was, the words came tumbling from her mouth nearly dripping venom. “She and Apollius were equals. Her magic might’ve been dark and night and death, but it wasn’t twisted, not any more than His was, or any of the elemental minor gods you like to forget existed. It was just different.”
Gabe made a hmm sound, brows drawn thoughtfully down. “Do you know the Law of Opposites?”
A Tract teaching, a simple one that children were taught soon after learning to walk. Well, children that weren’t Lore. Still, she knew of the law and gave him a curt nod.
“If something is good, then its opposite must be evil.” Gabe shook his head. “I don’t believe that.”
“You don’t believe in something from the Tracts? You’re rapidly careening toward a vacation on the Burnt Isles.”
It was his turn to knock into her shoulder. “I believe the Tracts are up for interpretation,” he said. “And in this, I feel like our interpretation has to be wrong. Opposites are not always in opposition; the day and night are equals. One isn’t good and the other bad.” He paused, mouth pursed. “But one does illuminate things, while the other obscures. And that has to mean something, too, I think.”
Lore didn’t respond. She crossed her arms, stared at her feet as they walked over the cobblestones.
“I don’t think Nyxara is evil,” Gabe continued. It sounded like he had to push it through his teeth, though, like calling the Buried Goddess Her actual name was a difficult task. “She made a mistake by trying to kill Apollius, for reasons none of us know, and She was struck down for it. I can’t think She’s in the Shining Realm with Him—that wouldn’t make any sense—but I hope, wherever She went after Her life here was done, it’s not too terrible.” He paused. “And I wish She’d taken Her magic with Her, instead of letting it leak out all over Dellaire. But I suppose that wasn’t a choice She could make.”
Lore slid her eyes toward Gabe. “I feel like hoping Nyxara’s afterlife isn’t terrible might be some kind of blasphemy.”
“If grace is blasphemous, build me a pyre.”
He said it half like a joke, but they both knew it wasn’t. They walked on in silence, both lost in thought.
“Are you hungry?” They’d made their way around the perimeter of the garden, and now Gabe headed for the gate again, the one that would lead them back into the Citadel. “If lunch still happens the way it did back when I was a child, there should be food for the taking in the front hall.”
Gabe was right. A long table stretched the length of the hall when they entered through the Citadel doors, piled with more food than Lore had ever seen in one place. The wine fountains from Bastian’s masquerade were back, and stacks of small sandwiches, and what looked like an entire roasted boar, complete with an apple in its mouth.
She gaped. “They just leave this out here?”
“Most courtiers send their staff to come make them a tray,” Gabe said, picking up a plate and carving off a piece of the boar. “But since we don’t have staff, we’re on our own.”
“Such a hardship,” Lore lisped around the macaron she’d just shoved in her mouth.
Not all courtiers delegated their lunch preparations—Alie stood at the bend of the hall, dressed in a long dress of lavender chiffon, understated and elegant. She waved when she saw them, gracefully breaking away from the other ladies she stood with to come give Lore a very tight and very unexpected hug. “You two! Where have you been? We just came from a croquet game on the back lawn; I was sure I’d see you there.” She wiggled her pale brows. “You’ll need to practice if you’re going to make it a good game when we play.”
“We were taking a walk,” Gabe answered, just as Lore said, “Bastian took us to the stables.”
Gabe’s one eye shot daggers. Lore gave him an apologetic look over Alie’s shoulder. She’d always been told that lies were more believable when you laced them with truth, so didn’t it follow that lying about as little as possible would serve them well here?
Alie’s eyes widened. “Well, then. I don’t blame you for picking Bastian over croquet.” She raised a delicate brow at Gabe. “And I assume you felt you had to go along as a chaperone? Probably wise.”