The tugging feeling in Lore’s chest became unbearable, as if her body was trying to turn itself inside out. She screamed as smoke plumed gracefully across the sky.
“Shit.”
Lore sat up, pushing tangled, sweaty hair from her eyes. Her neck felt like it was on fire—she’d fallen asleep with it angled on the chair arm. Cursing again, she rubbed at the ache and stumbled into the main sitting room, squinting at the clock.
After a day of isolation, the darkness outside the window told her it was the very early morning of her birthday.
Tonight was the eclipse.
Food was on the table behind the couch. Easy things, apples and bread and cheese, things that could be set out and forgotten.
She read it like it was a code. No one would be opening that door, not until they were ready to escort her to the eclipse ball.
Escort her to her Consecration, and whatever ritual August had planned around it to make her magic his own. A ritual she had to trust Anton to stop, or she and Bastian would both be dead.
It was almost funny, how easily she accepted that Bastian was magic. That he was born to channel life the same way she was born to channel death, that she was his dark reflection. Down there in the catacombs, with the unquiet dead making their slow way to the door and threads of Mortem tangled in her fingers, she’d felt it when Bastian pulled the clinging threads away. Life, rushing, her veins flooded with too much blood, her lungs full of too much air. In that moment, he’d commanded both life and death, he’d held them both in his hands.
She’d been his lightning rod, the darkness that made the light shine brighter after his Consecration. And now, hers approached. She’d felt her power growing stronger as she spent more time with Bastian, as time marched her down to twenty-four years. A moment that, for others, meant holy celebration.
For her, it meant possible murder.
That figured. Lore grabbed a piece of cheese and flopped back on the couch.
A tear rolled down her temple and wet her hair. She didn’t realize she’d shed one until it dripped into her ear, warm and wet and distinctly unpleasant.
“Fuck you, Gabe,” she murmured into the air, hoping he was still outside the door, hoping he heard. Half of her wanted to try to open it, see if he was on the other side. See what he would do if she tried to walk out. Would he tie her up? Knock her out? Kiss her?
All of those options seemed possible.
Thinking of Gabe made her mind turn to Bastian yet again. Where he was, whether Anton was being cruel. She didn’t think so—the strange conversation they’d had while chained made it seem like Anton had been keeping Bastian safe for longer than they realized; she couldn’t shake the memory of his near-reverent voice. Still, leaving him at the mercy of his uncle made her nervous.
None of them were safe here. None of them could leave.
Her mind drifted, but she didn’t let herself sleep again. The light through the window brightened to morning, deepened to midday, began the slow, golden melt of a midsummer afternoon.
She ate a little more, mostly to settle her sloshing stomach. She opened a bottle of wine from the sideboard below the window, and briefly thought of the first night she and Gabe had pilfered through it before giving a violent shake of her aching head, like the memory was a fly she could slap.
Lore drank half the bottle and swam pleasantly in the warm buzz of it as another hour ticked past and the window dimmed. It still hadn’t rained, and the dryness of the air gave the sunlight a brittle quality, like just-polished glass.
When the clock noted half an hour to eight, the door opened. Gabe. He looked at her wild hair and her flushed face and didn’t comment on either of them. He held a garment bag in his hands and thrust it at her.
“Get dressed.” He sounded like he hadn’t spoken in days, like the last words he’d said were to her and in anger. “We’ll leave in twenty minutes.”
“Such a man of his word.”
His jaw twitched. Gabe laid down the bag and backed out the door, clicking the lock behind him again.
Carefully, still feeling some aftereffects from the wine, Lore made her way over and picked up the bag, pulling out a gown. It wasn’t heavy—panels of sheer dark lace made up the skirt, with a simple black bodice that dipped low in the front and back and left her arms bare. No appliques, no embroidery. Just black lace and black silk.
“Showtime,” Lore muttered.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
To hold both darkness and light—to hold everything the world is made of—should be the burden of only one god. All powers will come into My hand, and then the world will know the hour of My return.