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CHAPTER NINETEEN

ALIE

We all must band together in heavy storms.

—From a letter to the Balgian front lines

A lexis sent a note to her apartments the day after Apollius revealed Himself.

Please meet me in the Priest Exalted’s office to discuss wedding preparations at noon.

They were acting as the Priest Exalted in enough capacities to allow the use of the office, apparently.

She wondered why Apollius didn’t go ahead and make it official.

That line of thinking made her wonder what, exactly, the god’s plans for the Church were.

Alie stopped herself before she got too far along that road.

Honestly, the cover of the note was unnecessary. No one noticed Alie leaving her apartments, walking over the green toward the Wall, slipping out the storm drain. The guards were far too busy with the crowds.

Hundreds of people gathered just outside the Citadel Wall, waiting for another glimpse of Apollius. Word had spread fast, all of Dellaire knowing now that the day they’d been taught to pray for was finally here. Their god, in the flesh. Their god as King.

For such a large crowd, they were docile.

A few enterprising folk had set up makeshift stalls, selling the same replicas of the sun-rayed crown that had been sold in the Wards on Bastian’s Consecration day, touched up with gilt paint so the cheap metal below didn’t show.

Some murmured prayers or sang songs, broken melodies in rough voices.

Others just stared at the Citadel doors, as if willing them to open and emit the Sainted King into the throng.

They’d probably get their wish soon. If there was one thing Alie had learned about Apollius, it was that He didn’t often give up an opportunity to be worshipped.

There was no real reason for her to be out in Dellaire today.

She had no meeting planned with Lilia, she was no longer plotting out an escape route for imminent use, and she could get to the Church through the Citadel green.

Part of her was just… curious. Wanted to see how people would react to the news of gods, to the proof of them.

Lereal’s power thrummed beneath her flesh, urging her to grasp threads of wind, twist them to her will.

It was oddly exhilarating, seeing people clasp their hands in prayer, seeing the tear tracks on their cheeks, and knowing the magic that so moved them reflected what she held.

She kept her hood up as she wove through the crowd.

It extended into the South Sanctuary, the usually abandoned corridors now packed with the newly faithful.

The hallway with the stained-glass windows of the pantheon was almost too full to walk down, penitents staring at the glowing panels as if it were their first time seeing them.

They looked fearful, gazing at the glass gods as if expecting Them to leap from the windows, to drag them screaming into a collection of hells.

Apollius had His scapegoats.

Thankfully, the guards hadn’t let the congregation into the back hallways, where what remained of the Presque Mort did business. The staircase she’d climbed so many times before was empty, the nubby carpet warm from the light in the windows.

The statues were still there, one on every landing. Apollius Avenging, the moon-stone and sun-stone held in His hands. She stopped a moment, considering them, the obvious conclusion clicking into place in her head. Two of the pieces of the Fount. That was what they looked like.

And maybe…

Casting a surreptitious look behind her, Alie grabbed the stone held in Apollius’s outstretched hand, the one with the sun. She pulled. It didn’t come loose.

It wasn’t the right one, anyway. She knew that as soon as she touched it. The power in her didn’t leap, didn’t recognize anything. This was just a rock.

“Worth a try,” she muttered, and continued up the stairs.

Down the dark hall, to the familiar door.

Alie pressed her eyes closed, just for a minute.

Prayer had been a hard habit to break after a lifetime of being told she was blessed by birthright.

That all she ever needed was to ask Apollius for what she wanted, and due to her station, He would be inclined to listen.

It’d worked, sometimes. But now Alie knew the god had nothing to do with it. Answered prayers were just chance.

Still.

“Let them be all right,” she muttered, thinking of Gabe and Malcolm in Caldien, Lore in the Isles.

She opened the door.

Alexis sat on the edge of the desk, nervously bouncing their knee. They stood when Alie entered. “You got my note. I wasn’t sure it’d made it through the crowd.”

But Alie wasn’t listening. Alie was looking at the person seated at the desk behind them. “Lilia?”

“Excellent.” Alexis ran a hand through their pale hair. “You’ve already met.”

Lore’s mother looked exhausted. The skin beneath her hazel eyes was bruised, and her white-gold hair frizzed around her temples. “We’ve met,” she said shortly. “Alienor knows what we’re looking for. She helped me get into the storeroom.”

“Right,” Alexis said. “Good. It’s far less conspicuous for you to go with her than with me.” They seemed extremely relieved not to have to explain everything. “Well then, we can—”

“Wait.” Alie held up a hand, then waved it between the two of them. “How do you know each other?”

“We’re colleagues, technically,” Lilia said drily. “Alexis and I met when Gabe was drawing up the resolutions to reinstate the Buried Watch.”

A resolution that had never made it all the way into law. It almost made Alie want to laugh, thinking about the mundanity of filled-out forms, how they’d once lived in a world where something so simple actually fixed anything.

“I got in contact with Lilia after all the Mortem disappeared from the catacombs,” Alexis added.

“Under Gabe’s orders?”

“Not exactly.”

All of them conspiring without Bastian, the Presque Mort conspiring without Gabe. It made sense, she supposed. No one in the Citadel was an upstanding sort. “So I assume, if you two are working together, that you’re no longer loyal to Apollius.”

Blasphemy still felt strange on her tongue, and it still made Alexis flinch. “No,” they said. “I’m not. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.”

They’d all been taught that whatever Apollius wanted was the way things were supposed to be, the morality of the world dictated by one god’s desires. But they were far beyond that now.

Lilia had no patience for religious dithering. She sat forward in Gabe’s chair and steepled her hands on the table. “Has Bastian managed to get a location for the Fount piece yet?”

“If he has, he hasn’t had a chance to tell me.” Alie snorted. “What with Apollius suddenly deciding that He wants to blow His own cover.”

And kill Olivier to do it. Cecelia had shown up in court the next day, miraculously healed.

At least Olivier had gotten his sister’s health back through his bargain, though she couldn’t forget the look on his face as Apollius raised him into the air, pumped his heart until his veins burst. He hadn’t known he was going to die.

“I was afraid of that,” Lilia murmured. “We need to move fast. Our contact in Caldien—”

“Your contact in Caldien ?” Alie looked incredulously at Alexis. “Exactly how involved is this?”

They sighed, sitting once again on the corner of the desk.

“Soon after the dock explosion, when I took the debris to Farramark, I met… someone.” They didn’t say who, and that annoyed Alie to no end, but she didn’t press.

“Someone who has been in and out of Auverraine, and has become a close companion to the Prime Minister. They’re invested in making sure Caldien stays free of the Empire.

And since Apollius has possessed our King and is using the Empire to make the Holy Kingdom… ”

“That means they’re working against Auverraine,” Alie concluded. “So we’re all traitors now.”

“Thrilling,” Lilia deadpanned.

“This contact claims that the Prime Minister knows where the piece of the Fount is,” Alexis continued. “Apparently, Eoin is extremely interested in the elemental gods.”

Dread shot from the top of her head to the pit of her stomach. “Does he know about Gabe and Malcolm?”

“He does,” Alexis confirmed. “But that’s a good thing in this scenario, I think. He’ll keep them safe.” They shifted on the desk. “As long as Gabe and Malcolm play along with what he wants.”

Neither one of them said what they were thinking, though Alie was sure it was the same thing. Gabe had never been good at playing along when it didn’t align with his moral compass. He held his convictions as close as he held his heart inside his ribs.

“Caldien was supposed to be in talks with Apollius,” Alie said. “At least, that’s what Jax told me.”

If the implication of her being Jax’s confidante fazed Alexis, they didn’t show it. “I think,” they said, “that in this particular case, no one is being exactly forthcoming with anyone else.”

Lilia’s eyes were sharp on Alie. “We need that location. Once the pieces start being found and brought to the Mount, Apollius will feel it. He’ll know what’s happening, and there is no length He won’t go to in order to stop it.”

“Good thing no one has the means to bring the pieces to the Mount yet,” Alie said.

“Lore does,” Lilia replied. “She’s closer than anyone else. If she can find the piece on the Isles, that’s at least a start.”

“And according to certain myths, the Fount pieces can act as a compass,” Alexis added. “Whoever has them can navigate to the Mount.”

Lore was one of the people Alie couldn’t quite break the habit of praying for, hoping she was as safe as she could be on the Burnt Isles, hoping she was holding on.

“It seems presumptuous to think Lore is able to do much other than stay alive.” She didn’t mean to make it snap, but the words cracked like whips, and part of her hoped Lilia could feel the sting.

“I told her that she needs to find the piece, but her schedule is full, what with the mining .”