Page 116

Behind him, Bastian said nothing.

A swallow worked down her dry throat. “I can get into any chamber we find. Just trust me.”

She knew it like she knew the shape of the catacombs, like she knew her name and the crescent edges of the scar on her palm. No part of that world beneath the earth would remain closed to her.

The war in Gabe’s mind played out on his face, cut through in silver moonlight. They circled trust, but never quite landed, carrion birds with a body dying slowly.

“She was a poison runner,” Bastian said, cast in darkness beneath the lip of the well’s roof. His arms were crossed, his voice low. “She knows how to pick a lock.”

Gabe could tell there was more to it, and could tell she wasn’t going to share. Lore could read it in the line of his mouth, hard and unyielding and shaped like well-hidden hurt.

Gabriel Remaut had lived a lifetime of subtle wounds, and she just kept giving him more.

But he shook it off. Nodded. “Fine.”

Bastian’s eyes never left Lore. The moment she felt steadier, tamped down the guilt in her gut, he seemed to know. A tiny inclination of his head, then he stepped up to the well. “Right. Lore and I will go in and search. I don’t know how long it will take to find the bodies, but I would imagine we’ll be back before dawn. Remaut, you stay here and—”

“Absolutely not.” It was near a growl. “You think I’ll let you take her down there alone?”

“I think you’re going to have to,” Bastian said, his voice smooth and courtly and more weapon-like for it. “Someone has to keep watch, and you make the most sense.”

“Why do I feel like you planned this?”

“I can assure you I didn’t, Mort, seeing as neither of us knew until five minutes ago that you were even coming. You left Lore alone all day.”

“I’m sure you didn’t.”

Bleeding God and His absent heart, these two were going to drive her mad.

“Bastian is right. Someone has to stand watch.” Lore said it quick and firm. Whatever territory Gabe and Bastian were edging into, she wanted them out of it. “And people will question you being here a lot less than they’ll question him, Gabe.”

The moon reflected off the gilded roof of the Citadel, gleamed in Gabe’s blue eye. He stared at her a moment, then rubbed at his patch. “Think, Lore,” he murmured. “If I have to stand watch, so be it, but I’d honestly feel better if you went on your own instead of with him.”

“You left.” The words recalled the wordless—her dark room, bodies fitting together before coming decidedly apart. “I know you prefer me alone, Gabriel, but I don’t.”

He shifted back, away from her. The gleam of moonlight left his eye; shadow fell over him like a cloak.

Bastian hopped up onto the lip of the well, then crouched down to peer into the dark. A click, his pearl-handled lighter flaring to life in his fist. The tiny flame didn’t do much, but it did illuminate a short, narrow staircase, spiraling down the side of the well. “Any idea how far this goes before you reach the bottom?”

“The well is about ten yards deep.” No emotion in Gabe’s voice. It was flat as placid water.

“Excellent.” Carefully, Bastian stepped onto the first stair. “See you at dawn.”

Lore could feel Gabe’s eyes burning into the back of her neck, scrutinizing, knowing there was something she hadn’t told him.

Something she wouldn’t. Even if his silence, his unwillingness to ask, made her conversely feel like maybe she should.

The top of Bastian’s head slowly disappeared as he wound around the stairs. Lore climbed up on the well’s lip.

“Lore.”

She half turned. Gabe stood with his arms crossed, a handful of inches shorter than her from this new vantage.

“I didn’t want to leave,” he said finally. “Last night. I didn’t want to stop.”

Her fingers twitched, half a reach. She clenched them tight. “Then why did you?”

His eye flickered away. “Because it didn’t feel… right, being with you. It felt dangerous. Something I should get away from while I had the strength to do it.” He worried the corner of his lip with his teeth, as if he wasn’t sure how to phrase it. “It felt like a mistake, but one I’d made before. One I knew would end badly.”