Her eyes slid to his. He gave her a tiny smile, rueful. Trying to warm the ice in here, but even Bastian’s sun couldn’t thaw the dead of winter.
Silence reigned a few minutes longer, the kind that held you in thrall, dreading what would come after but unable to escape it. Finally, Gabe straightened, looking first to Bastian, then to Lore. “All of this is assuming that Mari isn’t lying.”
His tone made it clear—he was starting a fight, and he didn’t care.
Lore could’ve stopped it. She could’ve let the words lie, not allowed them to be the catalyst Gabe apparently wanted. But she didn’t have the patience for that.
Slowly, she stood, spine straight, head angled so she could match the glare he leveled at her. “Are you calling Mari a liar?”
“I have no reason to believe she’s not,” Gabe said. The fight was gone from his voice now; it’d just been there to strike the flint. Now there was a blaze, and he kept himself expressionless, as if he was above it. “She’s a poison runner.”
“So was I,” Lore snarled.
Gabe cocked his head. “And see how loyal you’ve been to the crown that rescued you from your life of crime?”
She slapped him.
The sound cracked through the room like a gunshot, just as jarring. Gabe’s head wrenched to the side, the impression of her fingers blooming scarlet across his cheek, but he stayed silent, turning back to face her as soon as inertia allowed.
Behind the couch, Bastian did nothing. His eyes stayed on Lore, narrowed and calculating.
“It could be a trap.” Still in that low, expressionless voice, even as Gabe’s face burned a stinging red from the impact. “Your old friends could be trying to lure you into the catacombs.”
“Why would they do that?” He didn’t know about what was down there. Who. If someone wanted her back in the catacombs, it wouldn’t be Val or Mari. “They have papers from August. They’re privateers now. Does that change your estimation? Make them seem more loyal?”
“No,” Gabe said. “Just more easily bought.”
“And you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, Duke Remaut?”
His one eye blazed, as if some deep ember within him had finally sparked.
Bastian spoke up, voice quiet but carrying. “I think this is about more than a desire to protect our latent necromancer, isn’t it, Gabriel?”
Gabe glanced at him, and then away. It would’ve been dismissive if not for the fury clear on his face.
“The Church forbids entering the catacombs without special dispensation,” Bastian continued. “Which I doubt we’re going to get. I understand, friend. You feel as though you have plenty of sins already, and don’t want to stack another on top of your hoard.” Something like contempt bled through his casual tone. “What would Anton say to that?”
A muscle feathered in Gabe’s jaw. He said nothing.
“Lore and I will go,” Bastian said, with the air of a conversation decidedly closed. “I know the way to the stone garden; we’re both smart enough to make it there without being caught. We’ll figure out what’s going on, and the tatters of your honor won’t be further shredded. I know how dearly you hold them.”
Gabe was silent, still as the man Lore had turned to stone. He stared at the fire like it could tell him something as Bastian straightened and made to leave.
“Tomorrow night,” Bastian called over his shoulder at Lore as he pulled the door open. “I’ll meet you here.”
Then he was gone, slipping into the shadows of the hallway. The Bleeding God’s Heart sconce on the opposite wall had gone out completely, candle wax dripping over the golden arms like melting bone.
When Bastian was gone, Gabe looked at her. Just looked, didn’t speak, didn’t move. His face was blank, scrubbed clean of any emotion, though that smoldering heat in his eye still burned.
He’d watched her channel Mortem, watched her raise the dead. Those things he’d forgiven, moved on from; he still saw her as a person despite them. But turning a human being to stone—sending him to a place between life and death—was the last straw on his already-beleaguered back.
Gabe believed in the afterlife. Believed in the myriad hells, the Shining Realm. When they’d spoken of it in the garden, it’d been all in abstracts, an intellectual exercise. But he believed she’d sent Milo to his eternal reward, only to rip him back out again. And that made her the kind of monster he’d sworn not to be.
Lore swallowed. Her eyes pricked, and that mortified her, welled up anger that made her vision even blurrier. Damn her feelings. Damn her heart, still wanting to be seen as good, when that had never, ever been an option.
“Really?” It came out small and hoarse. “You’re going to stand there and not say anything? You’re going to leave it like that?”
He stood there. He didn’t say anything. He left it like that.
Lore fled into her room and slammed the door behind her.
Sleep was hard to come by, but when it did, it washed over her like a black wave. No dreams, thankfully. Just rest, a vast and blank well of it.
Still, when the door clicked open, Lore woke immediately.
She sat up, sleep broken like a brittle board, completely awake in the time it took for her head to rise from her pillow. Someone stood at the threshold, silhouetted by firelight, tall and broad-shouldered and short-haired.
Gabe.
He didn’t speak, still. Neither did she. Nor did he move, but Lore slowly swung her legs around and put her feet on the floor, walked toward him until there was barely a handspan between her chest and his. He was warm; it radiated from him as if from a fire, calling to her cold.
This didn’t feel real. Not in the ditch of night, when the light was gone and thoughts were blurry, unreal hours meant for sleep. It didn’t feel real, and that was why both their hands raised at almost the exact same time. Hers settled on his bare chest; his rested on the back of her neck, fingers threading through the tangle of her brown-gold hair.
No words, no sound but their breathing. Then he bent forward, and she raised her chin to meet him, mouths colliding in warmth and need.
Gabe didn’t kiss like seduction. He kissed like starving, a hunger born from ill-fitting vows and anger and want. She could feel his teeth against her lips, his tongue sliding against hers insistently, and the moan that hummed in his throat was no artifice. Heat pooled between her legs; Lore’s mouth opened, wanting more, relishing the nearly animal intensity of him.
He pushed her farther into the room; she felt the windowsill dig into the small of her back, a sharp pain that Gabe alleviated by lifting her to sit on it instead. She wrapped her legs around his waist; he trailed openmouthed kisses down her neck. “Bleeding God,” he cursed against her collarbone, hoarse and rough. “Gods dead and dying.”