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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

BASTIAN

For all his faults, the boy has incredible strength of will.

—From the personal writings of August Arceneaux

N o pain.

That, in itself, was remarkable. Every time he’d managed to wrest bodily control away from Apollius, it’d come with immense pain, his head aching like it would burst, every bone determined to twist the wrong way as the god fought him like an untrained rider on an unbroken horse.

Bastian twirled his wrists. He flexed his fingers. He bent his neck from side to side.

Then he grinned.

There was no real time to enjoy being back in his own body. It wouldn’t last long. Already, the back of his mind was stirring, the place where Apollius waited, where he’d felt Him taking root right after the eclipse ritual, back before he knew what it was.

He had to find Alie.

He’d come to in his bedroom, blessedly empty—he could feel enough impressions of Apollius’s emotions in the golden sea to know that was a rarity. For a being who’d been so singularly focused on making sure His wife had no other options but to stay by Him, Apollius had no issue with sleeping around.

The stray thought brought Lore to the forefront of his mind. Thinking of either of them—Lore, Gabe—and where they were, the dangers they could be facing, was enough to quicken his heartbeat.

No time for that. They could take care of themselves. Well, Gabe, anyway. He loved her dearly, but Lore’s recklessness often got in the way of her common sense.

He had to hope she’d improved on that front.

Bastian threw on clothes and practically ran from his apartment. There was no guard outside the door; Apollius was in no danger from any mortal. Bastian kept to the shadows as he crept down the turret toward Alie’s room, staying out of sight.

When he reached her door, he tried to keep his knock from sounding frantic.

Apollius was fully awake, now, scrabbling at the back of Bastian’s mind, trying to claw His way back into control.

Bastian had practice keeping the god at bay, from those weeks when Lore was here and his affliction was mostly a secret, but it still wasn’t pleasant.

His head felt like it was being continually bashed with a hammer.

He could hold out now that he knew where the ring was.

Alie came to the door, brow creased. When she opened it, she flinched backward, made to slam it closed again.

“Alie, it’s me.” Bastian put out his hand, held it open. “It’s me.”

Her eyes searched his, closed in relief. Then she was all pragmatism. “How long do we have?”

“Not long. We have to go to the Church library.”

She didn’t question him. She just nodded and grabbed a shawl, wrapping it over her shoulders, toeing into slippers. “Let’s go.”

Miraculously, they didn’t encounter any courtiers as they went out the Citadel doors—also unguarded, as if Apollius was daring someone to try something—and moved quickly across the southern green to the Church.

The nobles that gathered there to try speaking with Apollius mostly kept to the North Sanctuary, and the majority of the others had already retired.

Having a god among them had renewed their sense of propriety.

They didn’t run into anyone until they reached the South Sanctuary.

It’d been stupid of Bastian to assume that there would be no one here, for all that it was the middle of the night. Honestly, it was lucky that tonight there was only one penitent, a young woman who couldn’t be much older than he was, kneeling in the first pew.

A Presque Mort melted out of the shadows.

Sophie, one of the monks he didn’t know very well, a thick scar running over her forehead.

“Holy One,” she said with a deep bow, “I can escort You wherever You need to go, so that You aren’t disturbed.

I know You don’t care to meet with anyone in this sanctuary.

” She glanced at Alie. “Should I send for the Emperor, as well?”

“No need.” Apollius’s voice sounded different from his own, brighter and more resonant, but Bastian didn’t try to imitate it.

He thought he’d spoken quietly, but apparently it wasn’t quietly enough. The woman at the front of the Sanctuary turned around.

Sophie moved in front of Bastian. “I’m sure You don’t want to deal with this—”

“God?” the young woman asked, her voice raspy. Tear tracks gleamed on her cheeks.

He should leave. Their clock was ticking down; whispers of pain began in his head, his chest. But she looked so sad.

And so hopeful.

Bastian waved aside Sophie and started down the aisle. Behind him, Alie followed, silent.

The young woman couldn’t decide if she should stand or kneel at his approach, getting halfway up before sitting down again. She finally landed on staying in her pew, her tear-shined eyes wide.

He didn’t know what to do here. Apollius was a god; Bastian wasn’t. And the last thing he should want was to give anyone hope that Apollius was good, to sink them further into the delusion that this world was a just place, run by just gods.

But what would it accomplish, to stomp out hope?

He cleared his throat. “Why are you here?”

She clasped her hands in her lap, knuckles blanched. “It’s my son,” she murmured. “He’s so ill. Has been since he was born. I’ve always prayed to You to make him well.” She smiled, as if this were a good thing instead of a tragedy. “I thought perhaps You could hear my prayers better in here.”

This was a bad idea. He could ask the woman to bring her son, try to heal him with Spiritum.

But what were the odds that he’d be the one in control when she did?

And what were the odds that, if he wasn’t, Apollius would bother with healing one small peasant boy?

If Bastian knew the god—and he did, intimately—it would be more likely for Apollius to make him sicker out of spite, to punish Bastian for these few moments of control.

So he’d better do it now.

“Bring him to me,” he said, feeling Apollius grow stronger, feeling their clock wind down to zero. He gritted his teeth and held on. Just for a little bit longer.

Behind him, Alie’s lips were a bloodless line.

The woman’s eyes widened. She stood, bowing, a babble of thanks, and headed toward the door, out into the night.

Sophie watched her go. “Do you want me to lock it behind her, Holy One?”

“No,” Bastian barked, one hand pressing against his temple. “I’ll be back in a moment. Don’t let her leave without me seeing the child.” He stumbled out of the Sanctuary, down the hall, toward the Church library. Hurry. He had to hurry.

Alie caught up with him. “While I appreciate the show of magnanimity,” she said, “that was probably not the best use of our time.”

“Couldn’t leave it.” Reduced to fragments of sentences. “Can’t choose what I do with it, most of the time. But I can right now.”

She nodded in understanding.

The library was unlocked. They blundered in gracelessly, and Alie turned the bolt behind them. “Where is it?”

Bastian didn’t try to speak, just headed toward the tiny alcove in the corner, the one where Malcolm had told him some prophecies were kept, the unimportant ones. This was what he’d seen in the memory, the sliver of light through that door just enough to tell him where Apollius and Gerard had been.

He pressed his palms against the wall.

The mechanism here was not magic, not like the doors Lore had opened with Mortem in the catacombs.

Opening this door was just a matter of knowing where to place his hands, and though Bastian had never known about the secret chamber behind this wall, it was a fairly simple thing once you knew there was something to look for.

He inched his hands over the wall until he found a place that stuck out, a stone not flush with the rest. He pressed down.

The door creaked open.

Beside him, Alie’s eyes widened. “Myriad hells.”

Had he not been preoccupied with the god trying to chew His way back into his brain, Bastian would have been stricken by the contents of the room.

He was no stranger to obscene wealth, but the tangle of gold in here, the boxes of gems rough as if pulled straight from the Burnt Isles, was still mind boggling.

As was the state of the ring. It sat on top of a closed box, no case to speak of, as if it had been thrown there in a hurry.

Bastian guessed it had. He’d never stopped trying to fight his way free of Apollius; it seemed the god was warier of him succeeding than He’d let on. He must have tossed the ring in here right after taking it from Lore, before sending her to the Isles.

He picked up the ring and handed it to Alie. “Sunrise,” he said through gritted teeth. “Hold it up at an angle. Should show… something.”

She nodded, slipping the ring into her pocket. “Come on. You don’t have much time.”

There was no energy left for speaking, every bit of him oriented toward fighting off Apollius. Just long enough to heal the boy. Just long enough to do one good thing.

He was there with his mother, small and bony, tired bruises around his eyes that would be more at home on an old man than a child.

Bastian’s vision was narrow, the sound in his ears soupy and hard to suss out into individual words.

He heard Alie’s voice, speaking softly to the mother.

Sophie glowered at the end of the aisle.

Bastian put a hand on the boy’s forehead.

Like this, pushing so hard against Apollius he felt like he might pass out, Spiritum and Mortem were easy to see.

It was something in the boy’s lungs, the star-map of gold there marred by a growing bruise of black threads, slowly alchemizing.

It was easy to channel that Mortem, turn it back to Spiritum.

Even though he could feel that the well of power was dwindling. Being pulled away, somehow, a spool slowly spinning out.

But he’d done a good thing. The only one he was guaranteed. He’d wasted so many opportunities for goodness, and damn him if he’d let this one pass by, too.

“You’re fine,” he murmured. “You’ll be fine.”

His vision went black, then gold. Bastian went under.