“It’s been three days—”
“You saw what she did.” There was no real accusation in the tone, but the words still hung ax-bladed. “Something like that takes time to recover from.”
Silence from the other voice, the one she knew.
Lore went back under.
Time passed. She didn’t know how much. She was suspended in inky darkness and saw nothing, felt nothing.
Then, sand. Ocean. Sun and blue sky.
She knew this dream, at least.
The same figure sat next to her as always. Lore turned her head, wondering if this time she’d be able to see them clearly. For a brief moment, there was a spark of recognition, the smoky effluence solidifying into a shape she should know. But then it was gone, only shadows again.
Something tugged at her chest. Lore didn’t like it, so she crossed her arms, hiding her heart away. The tug hurt, felt like it wanted to pluck the organ from her chest, but Lore kept it all to herself, something wholly her own.
No smoke spilled into the sky. It was nothing but clear, shining blue.
The figure seemed startled; at least, as startled as something essentially noncorporeal could be. “Curious,” murmured the empty voice, void of any emotion or texture. “It seems more power begets more control. But we have time. We’ll try again.”
Lore wasn’t listening. She was drifting again.
Surfacing. A sheen against her eyes, unbearably bright after so much darkness, the vague impression of a room that should be familiar. The sensation of her limbs, heavy and limp but present. This was the closest to alive she’d felt in what seemed like ages.
It was because of the person next to her. The person whose hand she could feel on her arm, a sun-blaze of heat. The darkness and death that had settled in her fled from him, repelled. The vast cavern her center had become, a hollow vessel for something else to fill, seemed to churn itself inward and knit itself whole.
“How long has she been like this?” She knew this voice, too, coming from whoever touched her. Warmth and life, honey tinged bitter. It twisted up her insides with mingled love and hatred and fear and hope.
“Nearly a week.” The first voice she remembered, the one that burned and crackled. “Anton says it’s to be expected, but—”
“Fuck Anton.” The grip on her arm tightened. Lore wished she could say it hurt, but she couldn’t move her mouth. “You should’ve let me in the first time I came, instead of making me go tell on you to your priest like a petulant child.”
“You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” Coals and embers, low smoldering.
Silence. Lore wished she could open her eyes and see if they were about to kill each other. It felt like something that had come close to happening before.
“I let you in now,” the fire-voice said, finally. “Though it’s not like you can do anything to help her.”
But he was. Something about the hand on her arm was chasing out darkness and death, repelling both in a way that felt simultaneously wonderful and horrible, but Lore couldn’t tell them, because her mouth still wouldn’t open, because this moment of lucidity was fading, because she was drifting again.
Unpleasant didn’t begin to cover the way Lore felt when she woke.
Her mouth tasted rank, like she’d gulped a glass of storm-drain water. Her fingers ached as if she’d kept them bent for hours. When she looked down at her hands, they were knotted into tight fists, so perhaps she had.
Not hours. Days.
And all of that unpleasantness was merely a precursor to the memories of the Presque Mort whose foot had turned to bone, all living tissue eaten away by stray Mortem.
Lore concentrated on loosening her fists, one finger at a time, bending them back and forth. It was painful, enough so that her mouth bit around an animal noise, but she didn’t let it out.
The voices she’d heard—Gabe. Bastian. She hadn’t been able to conjure their names, in that in-between state where she floated with her mind and body barely tethered, but they’d been here. Now her room was empty. Bowls with traces of leftover broth she didn’t remember drinking were stacked on her vanity, and a half-empty glass of water stood on the bedside table. Lore took it, drained it. The taste in her mouth slightly improved.
The look on Gabe’s face before she’d passed out was stark in her mind as Lore forced herself out of bed, nearly stumbling on numb legs, putting a hand on the bedpost to steady herself. He’d looked horrified. Horrified of her, horrified of what she’d done.
But he’d been here. Despite what she’d done, he’d been here.
What had she done? There’d been no straight answer, though the looks on the other Presque Mort’s faces, that mingled fear and disgust, said it was her fault. But if the other man had gotten in the Mortem’s path, somehow, gotten tangled in the strands that tied her to the leak, she couldn’t have stopped it. That part wasn’t her fault, and she didn’t care if the Presque Mort thought otherwise.
But if Gabe thought it…
That felt like a spear through the gut.
Her mind kept spinning up that last image of Anton, looking at her with placid curiosity. Anton, who’d shaped Mortem in a way she’d never seen before her untrained fingers channeled it through her veins. Had he done something to it? To her?
She wanted to believe that, but it felt like an excuse. And she knew Gabe would think the same thing.
The burning in her chest wasn’t quite sadness, and it wasn’t quite anger, and it had more shame in it than she’d care to admit. But at least it gave her something to concentrate on as she hobbled toward her bedroom door, something other than the voice she’d heard as all that Mortem coursed through her hands, into her heart.
They’ll force you to be stronger, and then break you down.
Lore shook her head and pushed open the door.
Someone sat on the dusty couch, the fire before them teased to roaring. Not Gabe.
Bastian.
She stood silent and confused in the doorway as the Sun Prince looked over his shoulder, golden-brown eyes reflecting flames. He stood, stretched casually, the hem of his pristine white shirt riding up to reveal an abdomen still bruised from boxing. “Morning,” he said. “Or, evening, as it were. You slept through dinner, which I suppose isn’t a shock, since you slept through a whole week, too. I brought you something to eat.”
His voice sparked in her, like the connection she’d always felt in his presence had sunk deeper, insinuated itself into muscle and marrow. An image flashed across her mind, roses and sunlight in a mountaintop garden, but then it was gone.
A tray stood on the small table behind the couch, covered with a gleaming silver cloche, wafting a rich scent Lore didn’t immediately recognize. She pulled off the cloche, barely registering what the dish was before shoving a forkful in her mouth. A bird of some kind, roasted with vegetables.
“Peahen,” Bastian offered with a flip of his hand, settling on the arm of the couch to watch her eat. “I hate it, but it seems you don’t.”