Page 41

The doors to the vaults closed softly behind her. When Lore turned, Anton peered at her from his one gleaming eye. Then, with a tilt of his chin, he asked, “How old are you, Lore?”

Her brows drew together, confusion bringing a quick answer. “Twenty-three.”

“And your birthday is near midsummer, correct? Your year of Consecration.”

It still made her uneasy that he knew so much about her. Lore nodded again and started walking toward the end of the gilded hall, toward the rest of the Citadel.

Anton fell into easy step beside her. “We’ll have to make sure you’re given a proper ceremony, since you’re part of the court now. Even if it is currently under false pretenses.”

“That’s really not necessary.”

“Oh, I think it is.” He swept past her in a rustle of pale robes, opening the door before she could reach it. “Bastian is probably out on the green somewhere. Go find him.”

With that order, Anton glided away into the depths of the Citadel, headed to whatever holy duties occupied him during the day, leaving Lore alone in the vault corridor.

For a moment, she just stood there, among all those stone Apolliuses with empty chests and hands full of garnet blood. Then, Lore drifted to the end of the hallway, out into the expanse of the Citadel proper. She retraced her steps, going back to the door that led to the green space and the North Sanctuary. No one else was in the halls, all the courtiers dispersed to wherever they spent their innumerable leisure hours. Just as well. Her mind was too tangled up to make a convincing duke’s cousin.

She’d been given a direct order to find Bastian, but she’d take her time. She had scads of it, apparently.

The sun was high in the sky, now, and bright enough to make her squint. Lore wandered off the path immediately, her feet pointing toward the manicured forest to the left of the cobblestones. Not a real forest—it was planned down to the leaf, designed just so, nothing wild about it. But it was close enough.

Lore stopped once she was under the trees, closed her eyes, took a deep breath of green and dirt. It smelled so clean within the walls of the Citadel, a difference she hadn’t really noticed until now. She was used to the scents of people crowded together, of sea brine, of soot and trash and grime. But here, the air smelled crisp and sharp, as if it were fresh-scrubbed every morning.

With a sigh, Lore sat heavily down on the grass. Green stains marred her knees nearly instantly, and she cursed, situating her legs in front of her though the damage was already done. Another sigh, and she let herself fall back, head cradled by the soft loam. Her eyes closed; the summer sunlight filtering through the branches above lit the network of veins in her eyelids, a lurid map of capillaries.

It reminded her of the catacombs. Of that awareness waiting at the edge of her grasp, pushed just far enough away to let her function. She almost couldn’t believe she’d lived so long without the barrier Gabe had helped her build. It was as if by finally channeling Mortem when she raised Horse, she’d opened a floodgate. Being within the walls of the Citadel tempered it a bit, but her sense was still stronger than it had ever been before, increasing as the days marched on.

Each day that drew her closer to her twenty-fourth birthday.

Raising the dead child had battered against her mental shield, and though it still held fast, she could almost taste Mortem at the back of her throat, empty and ashlike. Her fingers itched, as if the threads she’d wound around them had left an indelible burn on her skin, as clear as her moon-shaped scar. It pushed on her from all sides, an encroaching void, a vast and terrible storm of nothing.

That’s what was so awful about it, really. The lack of anything. Death was a yawning chasm, a hole with no bottom. Lore wished she was capable of the easy faith the Church taught, capable of thinking there was a Shining Realm waiting once this life was through.

Pointless. Even if there was, she’d never see it.

Lore shuddered. Despite the clean air and the nice clothes and the plentiful food, despite the illusion of safety being here under the King’s protection brought her, the prospect of raising another dead body was nearly enough to make her run for the docks, for Val and Mari, and beg them to take her back. She’d forgive them everything, if she just didn’t have to use Mortem again.

“Fuck me,” she swore softly.

“You’ll have to ask more nicely than that.”

Her eyes flew open—a dark human-shape bent over her, the sun behind it blurring their features. But then the unnamed shape sat back, and she caught the edge of an irreverent grin, the toss of a dark curl.

Bastian’s eyes went to the grass stains on her knees. “Though perhaps someone already took you up on it?”

Well, she wouldn’t have to go looking for Bastian. The Sun Prince had found her.

Lore scrambled up, brushing grass out of her hair and trying in vain to find a position that hid the green stains. “My deepest apologies, Your Highness—er, Sainted—”

“Just Bastian, please,” the Sun Prince supplied, cutting short her stuttering search for the proper honorific. “And no apologies needed. One’s first season in court is generally laced with indiscretions.”

“I’m afraid my only indiscretion here was… was falling asleep.” Lore waved a hand at the bower the trees made, lit in soft golden light from the sun above. “It’s such a nice day, and we were up so late only to wake at sunrise…”

“You’ll get used to it.” Bastian’s smile crinkled his eyes. They weren’t black, like she’d first thought. Up close, they were maybe a shade lighter than his dark hair, whiskey-colored. “I heard my father took you to the vaults. I’m surprised he indulged your curiosity, to be honest—many courtiers want to see them when they first arrive in the Citadel, but generally, August denies requests for tours.”

He was far more observant than was convenient. “He was asking me about my mother,” Lore said quickly, barely thinking the words through before they left her mouth. “She’s… she’s in poor health, and was considering the possibility of a Citadel vault when she passes.”

Bastian’s brow arched. “I’m sorry to hear it,” he said. “Pardon me for being so uncouth as to speak of money, but I didn’t know the Remaut family had relatives well-endowed enough to consider a vault within the Citadel. Most minor nobles opt for the common vaults just outside the Northeast Ward—they’re by far the nicest of the exterior burial grounds.”