“What should I do?” Bastian asked brightly.
“I wouldn’t dare give orders to a prince.”
“Come on, Malcolm, are you salty about the Burnt Isles threat? I understand, but my hands are tied, here. Pardon the poor choice of words.”
Malcolm’s dark eyes rolled to the ceiling, as if beseeching Apollius for a moment of peace. “You look through the lecture notes. See if you can find anything.”
Everyone fell to their tasks with quiet focus. Lore hadn’t been given a job, and didn’t necessarily want to ask for one, so she drifted over to Gabe, taking a seat next to him at the other long table.
“I’m sorry,” she said, because she didn’t know what else to say.
“For what?” He didn’t look at her, eye fixed to a glass-protected page, but he wasn’t reading. Just staring.
“I don’t know.” A sigh, and she folded her hands on the table, rested her head on them. “You’re right that August and Anton wouldn’t bring me here to find out the truth if they already knew it, and I can’t think of another reason why they’d want me in the Citadel—like Bastian said, there’s certainly easier ways to frame someone. This could be a huge conspiracy, or it could just be a series of misunderstandings. But we have to know.”
Gabe was silent for a moment. Then: “There’s another option.”
“What?”
“Maybe they don’t want you here to find out about the villages.” He shifted on the bench. “Maybe Anton is planning something that will save us all—save us from Kirythea, save the villages, even save Bastian from August. And maybe you’re part of it.”
“That sounds extremely far-fetched.”
He shrugged uncomfortably. “I just want…” It trailed off into a sigh. “I just want this to end in a way that I can live with.”
And Anton being a villain wasn’t something he could live with.
Lore didn’t know what to say. So she kept silent, kept her head pillowed on her arms, lulled by the flip of pages and the dim lights of the library, her eyes slowly falling closed.
White sand. Blue water. Blue sky.
Lore could sense the same insubstantial figure next to her as always. Something about them felt more solid, though, as if she’d drawn closer, though the distance between them appeared to be the same.
She turned her eyes, the movement taking far more effort than it should. But though there was a brief moment of corporeality, when the shape almost took a form she could recognize, it was gone in a heartbeat.
“Now,” the textureless voice murmured, slithering across her dream. “Let’s try this again, since you’ve had some time.”
A tug at her heart, painful this time, as if a hand had reached behind her ribs and plucked the organ like fruit. A soundless scream wrenched her mouth as smoke poured from her chest, twining into the sky, twisting across the blue.
“Lore.”
Something at her shoulder. A hand, shaking her. “Lore.”
With conscious effort, she opened her eyes.
Gabe frowned down at her from his place on the bench, but the hand on her shoulder was Bastian’s. He tapped her on the forehead, then straightened, making a show of looking at the clock on the wall. “If we hurry, we’ll still make it.”
Make it? She counted back the days, trying to think of what he might be speaking of—
“Shit.” She shot up from the table, running a hand over her mussed hair. “I have to go to a tea party.”
Bastian escorted her out. Lore could feel the needle-points of Gabe’s eyes on the back of her neck, but he didn’t make any excuses to try to accompany them. He and Malcolm kept poring over Compendiums and lecture texts to see if there was any scrap of helpful information, and he told her he’d try to be back in their apartments by the time she was done with Alie’s tea.
“Such a conscientious cousin,” Bastian said as they swept from the library.
Lore elbowed him lightly in the ribs, feigning a trip over her hem so it looked like an accident. The bend of his mouth said he didn’t buy it.
The transubstantiation book was tucked beneath Bastian’s arm, held close so as not to attract attention. When they entered the Citadel, Bastian unhooked his opposite arm from Lore’s grasp, then slipped a piece of paper into her hand. “A map to my rooms.”
“Not exactly the most opportune time for a proposition, but I respect the effort.”
“Get your mind out of the gutter, Lore.” Bastian chucked her under the chin. “Alie is hosting her tea in my apartments today. Her own are being deep-cleaned. I have to go return this book before my father notices it’s gone; I’ll meet you there.” He sauntered down the hallway, his stride giving no indication that he held contraband beneath his arm. In another life, Bastian Arceneaux would’ve made a good poison runner.