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CHAPTER TWENTY

GABE

T he tide washed over his feet in a steady beat, nearly matching his heart. The same beach, the same ocean, the same cliffs at his back. Maybe, if he stood here long enough, he’d see one of them again. Alie, with more news of what was happening in Auverraine.

Lore or Bastian.

His longing for one was the longing for the other, a fact that he couldn’t quite wrap his head around even though his heart knew it.

He and Bastian had been friends, then rivals, then bitter enemies, all of it suffused with a passion that raised his blood.

He reacted to him in anger, always. But now, with the distance grown between them, he didn’t know what he would do if he saw the man before him. Didn’t know what he would say.

Something had changed. Or maybe it had always been this way, and he just refused to see it. At some point, the desire to punch Bastian Arceneaux square in the face had turned to a desire just to have him close.

And Lore—Bleeding God, it had always been Lore.

Fierce desire had knocked him flat the moment he saw her in that alley, snarling and feral and Mortem-marked.

She’d been the axis he and Bastian balanced on, the point to their triangle.

The rope in their tug-of-war, as Lore herself had once so elegantly put it.

But maybe it was time to lay down the rope. Maybe that’s what he’d really wanted all along.

“Gabe?”

He turned slowly, as if moving too quickly might banish her, a candle flame snuffed by a flash of movement.

But no, there she was—Lore, standing up the beach, dressed in the same billowing white he wore.

Her hazel eyes were wondering and her brown-gold hair streamed behind her, the scar on her temple only serving to add an edge to how soft she was.

One of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen.

Lore looked scared to see him here, just a momentary flash of apprehension across her face. As if she wished he couldn’t come, as if his arrival was the harbinger of something bigger.

Gabe didn’t think. He just ran for her.

Whatever fear she’d felt was gone as soon as it’d come; she met him halfway, and his arms closed around her, lifting her up and crushing her against his chest; he was kissing her before the thought moved across his mind, her lips, her cheek, her forehead, whatever he could reach.

Lore clung to him like someone drowning might hold fast to driftwood, something to keep them from slipping, something to keep them alive.

Even when Gabe put her down, he kept her in the circle of his arms, her forehead against his sternum. Lore was so short ; not small, though, not petite. She was rounded and generous, and he wanted to keep touching her, never wanted to let her move too far away for him to feel.

She rested there, the beach silent except for their breathing, the waves making no sound at all. “I’d hoped that maybe we would all be here,” she said softly. She didn’t mean all , though; he knew that. She meant him and her and Bastian, the three points of their triangle.

He felt her tense as she said it, as if she hadn’t meant to let the thought go. As if she were afraid he would take it as a wound, as her making a choice that he knew, now, she didn’t want to make.

He didn’t want to make it, either.

“Too much to hope for,” he murmured into her hair.

Tension bled out of her, a softening relief. “I guess I should have learned my lesson with that one already.”

Gabe twisted her hair in his hands. She sighed, leaning farther into him. Experimentally, he gave a tug.

Her sigh turned breathier, more of a gasp. Her chest heaved against him, and gods, he wanted her so badly.

Another gentle tug, guiding up her face. Gabe kissed her, tongue tracing against her lips. And for a moment, he thought this would finally happen, and everything in him turned liquid fire.

But then Lore flickered in his arms, going ghost before solidifying again. They didn’t have much time.

Her heat-addled eyes cleared; defeat crossed her face.

“Soon,” Gabe said, tightening his grip in her hair, strong on the back of her head.

She leaned into it. “Soon,” she agreed.

Then Lore took a deep breath, looking up at him with a determined tilt to her chin. “I have something to tell you,” she said. “Two somethings, really, and it seems like I need to hurry.”

Gabe nodded. There was no time to be together physically, and no time to just be , either. He wanted that even more, really.

“First,” Lore said, “you know what this place is, right? At least, why we’re here?”

“Something to do with the gods in our heads, I’d imagine.” The beach looked familiar, in a way. Not like he’d been there before, but like it was somewhere that had been described to him.

Though he had the fleeting feeling that he had been here before. Ephemeral and hard to hold on to, maybe a dream. The feeling of familiar fingers brushing his jaw.

“It’s the Mount. Before the Godsfall.” Lore looked over her shoulder, at the cliffs rising up to the blue sky. “It looks like what I saw in Nyxara’s memories.”

It should awe him to be here. But Gabe’s capacity for awe was at its limits these days.

“We come here when we use our power,” Lore continued. “At least, that’s what Alie told me, when she and I showed up at the same time. And I only dream myself here on days that I’ve used quite a bit of Spiritum.”

He arched a brow. “Not Mortem?”

Lore worried her lip between her teeth. Then, with a sigh, she held up her hand.

Gone were the charcoal-colored stars that had marred her palms that day after the explosion on the dock, when she knit the life back into nearly every courtier in the Citadel. Her skin was pale and unmarked, other than the eclipse carved into her hand.

Gabe took that hand, cradled it in his own. “What happened?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.” Her laugh was high, on the edge of hysterical.

“I wished it away on the barge to the Isles. Said I never wanted it. And once I got to the Isle, my wish was granted.” She closed her fingers.

“At least, that’s what Nyxara thought happened.

The Fount took it back. I could hear Nyxara for a while afterward, even though I couldn’t channel Mortem, but after…

after I used a lot of Spiritum, She was gone, too. ”

She sounded almost bereft at that, but something like hope leapt in Gabe’s chest. “Would it be that easy for the rest of us to get rid of Them? Just wish it away?”

But Lore was already shaking her head. “On the Isles, maybe. Close to the Fount. But not far away. It isn’t strong enough.” She sighed. “Which brings me to my next point. The Fount is weak because It’s broken.”

“I know,” Gabe said, then he told her about Eoin having the piece of the Fount in his Apollius Avenging statue. How he’d promised to give it to them, if they danced to his tune.

That part made her hold him closer, her hands fisted in the back of his shirt.

She didn’t speak, but the pitying look in her eyes said everything her mouth didn’t.

He was being used once again. At least this time he recognized it.

At least this time it wasn’t someone he’d once thought of as a father.

“Malcolm told me,” she murmured. “About what Eoin was making you do.” She paused. “About… hearing Them.”

The source of that momentary fear, when she first saw him. Gabe nodded reluctantly.

“I should tell you to stop. To find another way to get the Fount piece.” She closed her eyes and leaned into his chest. “But then I wouldn’t see you.”

“And I wouldn’t listen,” Gabe replied. “Because I have to see you.”

Another sigh, humid against his skin. “So we know where the pieces are,” she said after a moment. “At least, if Alie can find the one in the Citadel, and Eoin actually gives you the other. I found the one on the Isles.”

“I’ll do whatever I have to,” he said, leaning his cheek on the top of her head. “Whatever Eoin asks.”

So much for his dignity. He’d leave it in scraps. He’d burn himself alive if that’s what Eoin wanted, just to see if the flames hurt.

“Bastian once told me I didn’t realize when I was being used,” Lore murmured. “He said that I was so used to it, I didn’t recognize it, as long as it was done kindly.” She moved back, looked up at him. “The time for kindness is over, I guess.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Gabe reassured her, still stroking her hair. “As long as we can find the pieces and somehow get them to the Fount, it doesn’t matter. We’ll get our lives back.”

“Will we?” She wiped her eyes. He hadn’t realized she was crying. The sight of it set a deep ache in his heart; Lore hated crying, hated showing that weakness. “Seems more like we’re trading one kind of puppetry for another.”

His brow furrowed.

“One piece where I am, one where Alie is, one where you and Malcolm are.” She huffed an angry sound.

“Does that sound a bit too coincidental? Our strings are being pulled, still. You know how I found the piece? I heard singing. Something directing me where to look. It has to be the Fount. Interfering, but only sometimes. Calling to me now that I’m close enough.

” She shook her head. “Even if we win, we aren’t free. ”

Gabe thumbed away a tear track. He didn’t speak.

Here, in his dreams on the beach, his mind was solely his own. But he thought about those other dreams. Hestraon breaking off the flame carving, leaving it somewhere on the Mount. He should tell Lore about that.

But did it matter? They’d find it when they got there. There was no need to distress her further.

And it sounded like she might be thinking the same thoughts he’d been trying to banish. About power. About how giving it up wasn’t so easy.