And Anton being a villain wasn’t something he could live with.
Lore didn’t know what to say. So she kept silent, kept her head pillowed on her arms, lulled by the flip of pages and the dim lights of the library, her eyes slowly falling closed.
White sand. Blue water. Blue sky.
Lore could sense the same insubstantial figure next to her as always. Something about them felt more solid, though, as if she’d drawn closer, though the distance between them appeared to be the same.
She turned her eyes, the movement taking far more effort than it should. But though there was a brief moment of corporeality, when the shape almost took a form she could recognize, it was gone in a heartbeat.
“Now,” the textureless voice murmured, slithering across her dream. “Let’s try this again, since you’ve had some time.”
A tug at her heart, painful this time, as if a hand had reached behind her ribs and plucked the organ like fruit. A soundless scream wrenched her mouth as smoke poured from her chest, twining into the sky, twisting across the blue.
“Lore.”
Something at her shoulder. A hand, shaking her. “Lore.”
With conscious effort, she opened her eyes.
Gabe frowned down at her from his place on the bench, but the hand on her shoulder was Bastian’s. He tapped her on the forehead, then straightened, making a show of looking at the clock on the wall. “If we hurry, we’ll still make it.”
Make it? She counted back the days, trying to think of what he might be speaking of—
“Shit.” She shot up from the table, running a hand over her mussed hair. “I have to go to a tea party.”
Bastian escorted her out. Lore could feel the needle-points of Gabe’s eyes on the back of her neck, but he didn’t make any excuses to try to accompany them. He and Malcolm kept poring over Compendiums and lecture texts to see if there was any scrap of helpful information, and he told her he’d try to be back in their apartments by the time she was done with Alie’s tea.
“Such a conscientious cousin,” Bastian said as they swept from the library.
Lore elbowed him lightly in the ribs, feigning a trip over her hem so it looked like an accident. The bend of his mouth said he didn’t buy it.
The transubstantiation book was tucked beneath Bastian’s arm, held close so as not to attract attention. When they entered the Citadel, Bastian unhooked his opposite arm from Lore’s grasp, then slipped a piece of paper into her hand. “A map to my rooms.”
“Not exactly the most opportune time for a proposition, but I respect the effort.”
“Get your mind out of the gutter, Lore.” Bastian chucked her under the chin. “Alie is hosting her tea in my apartments today. Her own are being deep-cleaned. I have to go return this book before my father notices it’s gone; I’ll meet you there.” He sauntered down the hallway, his stride giving no indication that he held contraband beneath his arm. In another life, Bastian Arceneaux would’ve made a good poison runner.
Lore studied the map, and started in what she thought was the right direction, toward the northwest turret—Bastian had helpfully drawn a winking face over what she presumed to be his apartments. After a hallway full of marble statues and another made entirely of windows, she reached a large, grand staircase, carpeted in lush crimson.
“Much nicer than the southeast,” she muttered as she mounted the stairs. “And no creepy statues.”
Though nicer, the turret was constructed in the same way, with stairs that ended on short landings leading to longer residential halls. According to Bastian’s map, his apartments were at the very top, up at least ten flights.
Where the hallways leading to Gabe and Lore’s quarters were kept dim, here everything was bright and clean, the hallways wider, illuminated by both gas lamps and natural light through crystalline windows. Vibrantly woven tapestries hung next to oil paintings in bright colors—clearly made with more care than the shabbier ones in her own turret. Lore found herself not minding the climb to the top as much as she’d anticipated; it was almost like being in a museum.
Somewhere on the third landing, Lore’s foot got tangled in her lavender skirt, sending her sprawling up the last few steps before she caught her footing again. “Shit on the Citadel Wall,” she hissed.
But the near-trip was serendipitous, because it made her look up from Bastian’s map, and it made her see the figure in the hall before he saw her.
It was easy to recognize Severin Bellegarde. His dark hair gleamed in an orderly queue, his clothing sleekly fitted to his tall, thin body in muted colors. He walked down the hallway in the opposite direction of the stairs with his hands behind his back, as if the tapestries he passed were prisoners trotted out for inspection. Each one, he stopped to peer at through narrowed eyes, examining it like he was reading the weave before moving on. One of the hands behind his back held a small, folded piece of paper.
He’d been holding a similar one that night she and Gabe ran into him on the stairs, Lore remembered. When they were running to the vaults.
She didn’t have time to puzzle over it right now, though. Lore straightened and turned toward the next set of stairs, hoping Bellegarde didn’t notice her.
“Eldelore Remaut.”
No such luck.
Lore arranged her face into pleasant nonchalance, spun to dip a clumsy curtsy as she returned his greeting in kind. “Severin Bellegarde.”
The other man had stopped in front of a tapestry near the stairs; apparently, he’d changed direction while her back was turned. A line formed between his brows, and he didn’t speak. But he did back up, slightly, the tapestry shuddering as his shoulder brushed against it. He stared at her with an expression Lore couldn’t place as admonishing or thoughtful.
She was almost ready to turn and walk away, dismissing herself if he wouldn’t do it, when Severin finally spoke. “Will you and Gabriel be attending the ball on the solar eclipse?”
Her brow furrowed. Bellegarde didn’t seem the type to be concerned with others’ social plans. “I assume so,” she answered, fighting down an involuntary shiver. The ball on her birthday, her twenty-fourth. The day she’d be Consecrated, if she’d been raised by people who believed in such things.
The involuntary shiver became an involuntary lump in her throat. Thinking of Val and Mari still hurt.
Bellegarde’s green eyes pinned her in place. “It is a great honor to be chosen.”
The word made her think of the Compendium, of everything she and Malcolm and Gabe—and Bastian, now—had been studying in the Church library. Wariness made her spine straighten. “Yes. It seems only a few were invited to the dinner after the ball, correct? Gabe and I plan to do our best to attend.”