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CHAPTER FOUR

LORE

Abandon not your fellow faithful.

E very day on the Burnt Isles was mostly the same, which was comforting, in a way.

Wake up at least an hour before dawn, wipe at streaming, reddened eyes.

Eat the tasteless porridge slopped into the same tin cups you used for your allotted water breaks, the only meal you didn’t pay for.

Covering your mouth to filter the ash, wrapping your hands if you had the cloth to spare, grabbing a pickax, heading to the mine.

Lore had spent last night thinking about trying to use Spiritum again, somehow finessing the power into a mode of escape.

But the only idea that came was to overwork the heart of every guard on the island, and Lore wasn’t sure she was capable of that.

Besides, what would she do afterward? Even if she took a prison barge and followed the steel guidelines, she’d just end up back in Dellaire, surely caught before she could escape elsewhere. Useless, just like she’d told Jilly.

And she was pretty sure that Apollius would notice if she kept using Spiritum, anyway. She’d like to keep Him as far away from her as she could.

So instead, Lore thought about her dream.

Alie was there. She’d reiterated this fact to the goddess in her head at least ten times by now. So she’s using her power, right? That’s how dreamwalking works.

So it would seem. Nyxara’s voice was always thin and faded in waking hours, weakening as the sun grew brighter.

Sometimes, Lore could still hear Her in the sunlight, a fact that should have sparked intense worry but instead felt like security.

Something to do with her proximity to the Golden Mount, probably. I do hope she’s being careful.

Alie is always careful. Lore adjusted her grip on her pickax and brought it down on a chunk of rock. Nothing. She kicked the pieces aside and moved on.

Nyxara paused, an apprehensive lull in the conversation Lore could feel even if she couldn’t see. If you dreamwalked , Nyxara said, then it means you’re using power now, too.

They hadn’t talked about Lore using Spiritum. They had barely talked about her losing Mortem. Sure, when Lore first arrived on the Isles, first reached out in a panic and tried to wind death around her fingers, she’d asked the goddess why it was gone. Why Nyxara remained when Her magic had fled.

The Fount , Nyxara had said, sounding just as fearful as Lore felt. It must have gone back to the Fount. You relinquished it, somehow. Wanted it gone.

On the boat, when she’d slammed her mental door on Nyxara. When she’d rebuked Her power. Lore hadn’t expected it to actually work. It seemed too simple, that the solution they’d spent frantic weeks searching for was just to… wish the power away.

Though that wasn’t quite right. It only worked when you were close to the Fount, apparently.

But the Fount left You here? Lore had pressed her hands against her temples, like she could force the goddess out, make Her follow Her power back into its source. Her new scar had felt rough on her fingers, spiderwebbing over her temple.

I suppose , Nyxara said, that we’re holding on to each other a bit tighter than we thought.

Now Lore mulled over what Nyxara had mentioned before.

About her wanting Mortem gone, her rejection sending it away once she was close enough for the Fount to take it.

Her whole life, Lore had wanted to be free of her innate magic.

Even in the Citadel, where it’d brought her a measure of safety, Mortem had never been a thing she wanted.

It was a millstone around her neck. Something she’d built the muscle to live with but could never really welcome.

Spiritum, though… yes, the eclipse ritual that gave it to her had been awful, violating. But Spiritum felt good . Life, health, vitality. Apollius might be a power-hungry asshole, but His magic was something Lore couldn’t help but crave now that she had the distance to think of it objectively.

Or thought she’d had the distance. For all that her Mortem had apparently been relinquished back to the Fount, it seemed she hadn’t let go of Spiritum so easily. Some part of her had wanted to keep it.

The ash was thick on the air today. Lore coughed into her sleeve before moving on.

So what do I do about it? It looks like dreamwalking is my only way to communicate with the others.

And we have to make some kind of plan. We can’t keep just— She paused and brought her pickax down again, harder than necessary, shattering yet another useless rock.

—waiting around. Even if using magic makes Apollius pay attention.

In her head, Nyxara gave a wry-sounding sigh. It is foolish to think you don’t already draw His attention, Lore. With or without using His power.

Lore didn’t want to think about that.

The sun finally rose, cutting weakly through the miasma. Lore could never figure out how it was so gods-damned hot here when sunlight barely broke through the ash.

Nyxara faded from her head, a dark presence at the back of her skull.

Logically, Lore knew Apollius was somehow watching her.

Their connection was still in place while she was this close to the Fount.

Now that she realized how entrenched Nyxara was in her mind, Lore was half convinced that the only escape from feeding His power was her own death.

Permanent, this time, not the half measure she’d taken when she brought the North Sanctuary down.

A path she still refused to take, after everything.

Seed of the apocalypse, indeed.

Still, her brief bout of dreamwalking brought a rush of relief.

For weeks, she’d rotted here, with no way to check on Bastian or Gabe or any of her friends.

She tried to listen to the guards, but their gossip rarely turned to the mainland.

More prisoners arrived every day, but very few of them seemed interested in what was happening in the upper echelons of Auverrani society.

None of them had any real information, other than whispers about Alie being Bastian’s half sister, now engaged to the Emperor of Kirythea. Nothing new.

What could you do with it, even if you did hear something new? she asked herself as she broke another rock. A sliver of gold; she licked her finger to pick it up and put it in the worn pouch at her waist. It’s over. He won.

But just like she couldn’t resign herself to dying, neither could she resign herself to letting the God of Everything take over… everything.

Lore’s grip tightened on her pickax. If she had to use Spiritum so that she could walk in her friends’ dreams, go back to making some kind of difference, she’d do it. Damn the consequences.

Shouting drew her attention. Over by the lift down to the mine, Jilly was towering over someone down on the sand, an extra tin cup held in her fist. “You won’t need it now.

Not when you get a pass to the third tier where the good shit is.

How many of them did you have to fuck for that?

Did they at least let you rest in between? ”

The person on the ground—whose cup Jilly was apparently holding—said nothing. A woman Lore recognized, a face in the crowd that stood out. Rosie, she remembered, a prisoner who’d arrived shortly after Lore. She’d slept in the same cave a handful of times.

Rosie made a swipe for her cup, but Jilly kicked her hand away. “If you get thirsty, I’m sure one of the guards will give you something to suck—”

Jilly stopped, her voice strangled out into nothing. Having your heart race like a runaway horse would do that.

Lore calmly took the cup from Jilly’s spasming grip, the fingers of her other hand crooking as she twisted strands of the woman’s Spiritum around them. She didn’t say anything as she gave it back to Rosie.

Slowly, Lore let the strands go, releasing Jilly’s heart to shudder back into regular rhythm. Jilly gaped at her, gasping, the fear of a cornered animal glinting in her eyes.

“Go ahead, Rosie,” Lore said calmly. “Hope you find something good down there.”

Rosie scrambled up from the sand. She looked from Jilly to Lore, decided against getting involved further, and scurried to the lift.

Jilly just stared. Lore stared back, waiting to see if this would escalate into a brawl, trying to ignore the exhilaration that sang down her veins at this use of her power.

Trying to ignore the sense of being observed. Marked by something larger.

With a final shudder, Jilly turned away, hurried back to her own forgotten pickax.

For the first time since she’d been on the Isles, Lore grinned.

The day passed quickly, sweaty and largely fruitless, though she did find enough to turn in for a pallet.

At the end, Lore gave the guards her pickax and submitted to the pat-down to make sure she hadn’t smuggled out any particularly sharp rocks.

She wasn’t sure why they bothered; the guards were more likely to bet on inmate fights than break them up.

When the guard was satisfied she had no contraband, Lore handed over a chip of ruby and two gold slivers for a pallet and a plate of limp potatoes and headed for the cave at the base of the cliffs, her paltry dinner finished before she was across the beach.

There was never a fight for space, and the other people who frequented the cave left her mostly alone. It wasn’t roomy, but it was the only place where Lore felt safe enough to really sleep.

And if she was going to dreamwalk, she needed to really sleep.

Lore twitched her fingers, pulling at the bare threads of life she found in the sand. Mites, tiny insects. Their golden threads were thin, not rope-thick like Jilly’s. Easier to grasp, to twist and snap.

They didn’t have hearts, not like humans did, but she sped up their processes, channeling so much life through them that their microscopic bodies gave out. Cruel, maybe, but she was nearly past caring about that. The only strengths she had here were her vices.

Her breath came harder, filling her lungs; her face flushed with pumping blood. Gods, it’d been so long since she’d felt this alive. Since she’d felt anything but downtrodden and helpless and afraid.

Lore hated feeling afraid.

Using her power on Jilly today had felt… right. A good deed, even. Gods knew she needed to add some to her ledger.

Ducking into the cave, Lore placed her pallet over by the damp stone wall. No one else was in the cave yet, which was unusual, but maybe she’d just gotten here early.

Wincing against the pain in her back, Lore stretched out on the thin pallet. Her eyes drifted closed, her mouth held in a determined clench, focused on that beach where she’d seen Alie.

“There she is.”

Her eyes popped open.

It took a moment for them to adjust to the gloom. Three men, looming over her. All of them scarred.

Lore’s heart jackknifed against her ribs.

“Jilly told us you slept here. You were never good at making friends.” One of the men crouched next to her. A spark in his hand—a lighter, illuminating his face. It was gaunt, his eyes wild. “Recognize me, Your Majesty?”

She did, almost. Like someone you often passed on the street, whose face became a familiar part of the scenery.

But Lore was still flush with power, from Jilly and her experiment on the beach, and it made her overly confident. Her fingers bent. “Can’t say I do.”

“You ruined us.” He was their spokesperson, apparently; the other two men behind him said nothing. “We were only following orders. Doing as the King and Priest Exalted willed. What our god willed.”

Ah. So they were Presque Mort, then. Or had been. As if to drive the point home, one of the other men turned his palm to face her in the lighter-light, a flash of inked candle.

A slow grin spread across Lore’s face. “Oh, I remember you now. Has it been hard, adjusting to no magic? Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to take it all.”

Stupid, to taunt three angry men when she was all alone. But that flare of power burned through her, beacon-bright.

“You poisonous bitch.” The hand not holding the lighter moved upward, something else in it. A rock, sharp.

It happened quickly. Lore’s hand shot out as she rolled aside, barely missing the blow, the sharp rock coming down where her head had been. Her fingers twitched, tugging at Spiritum, the golden threads in the former monk twisting around her hand.

Or they would, if the damn things didn’t keep slipping from her grip. The other times she’d used Spiritum, it’d jumped to her easily, but now trying to grasp the strands felt like trying to hold on to an oiled rope. They pulled away, as if her power were a tide pool that someone else was draining.

And who else could that be but Apollius? Knowing she was trying to use their shared power. Keeping it from her.

Lore snarled, an animal sound. She thrust out her hands, grabbed the strands, and pulled with every ounce of determination she’d ever had.

They came to her this time, overcoming Apollius’s hold.

She didn’t finesse it. She just twisted and twisted, the only application of her will the desire to make him stop, make him leave her alone.

The Mort’s heartbeat sped in his chest, almost audible; she felt his veins pop as too much blood crowded them, saw them swell in the confines of his skin.

His eyeballs bulged from their sockets, his muscles twitching.

The monk fell to the ground. Blood leaked slowly from his ears, pink foam from his open mouth.

Lore stared at him. Mortem couldn’t be used to cause outright death; all it could do was encase someone in stone, like she’d done with Milo long ago in that alley. Stop life in its tracks, but not obliterate it.

It was almost funny, that the power of life was the one you could use to kill.

The other two monks stared at her. She could do the same to them; her fingers itched for it, the golden lines of their lives begging her to snatch and pull.

But whether from a desire not to draw undue attention, or a latent wish for goodness, she didn’t. “Get out of here,” she whispered. “And tell your friends to leave me alone.”

They nearly fell over each other trying to leave the cave. Just outside, Lore heard an oof , the sound of one body smacking another before two pairs of Isles-issue boots pounded sand down the beach.

At first, Lore assumed they’d run into one of the other women who normally slept here, her conscience pricked by leaving Lore alone for whatever the Mort had planned. But then the figure stepped into the cave, close enough for Lore to make out her face.

“I was going to help you get rid of them,” Dani said. “But it looks like you did just fine on your own.”