His fingers lightly touched the patch again. “Bad,” he said, after a stretch of quiet. Then, low and vehement, “Really fucking bad.”
“You drink and you curse.” Lore arched her brow. “They apparently aren’t sticklers in the Presque Mort about anything other than celibacy.”
“Oh, no, they’re sticklers. But fourteen years of holy life hasn’t refined all the worldliness out of me just yet. A personal defect.” He tossed back the rest of the wine and strode to the fireplace. Cut wood was piled on a golden stand next to it, and he threw a few logs on the bricks, then set about searching for a match. “Holiness takes a while to set in, apparently.”
“If ever.” Lore watched Gabriel’s fruitless search for a match a moment longer, then set down her now-empty glass and headed for the doorway into the hall. “Hold on, there’s an easier way.”
In the hall, Lore grabbed one of the lit candles from the Bleeding God’s Heart candelabra. “Put this in the fireplace, then feed it wood,” she instructed as she came back in the room, passing the candle off before sitting back down on the couch. “Unfamiliar with setting fires?”
“Not necessarily.” Gabriel removed the wood he’d already set, then chose some smaller pieces, holding one above the candle’s flame. “Unfamiliar with stealing candles from depictions of the Bleeding God’s Heart to do it, though. That’s technically a sin.”
“Five minutes, and I have wholly undermined your divine sensibilities. And most of the candles had burned out, anyway, so clearly no one in this turret was feeling pious.”
“That’s the Court of the Citadel for you. If the piety can’t be seen, it doesn’t matter.” Gabriel sat back on his heels, watching flames lick up the kindling, catch on the logs. “So what’s your story, if that’s the game we’re playing? I’m assuming it’s nothing quite so dramatic as having your eye ripped out by the heir to the Kirythean Empire. So was it a more mundane near-death experience? Some accident that left you with power and your family afraid?”
And Bleeding God help her, for a moment, Lore considered telling him the truth. Her mouth was open to let it all spill out—well, you see, I was born in the catacombs and I’ve been able to channel Mortem for as long as I can remember—and she choked the words back just in time.
Dammit. That feeling of familiarity that plagued her when it came to this man was more than irritating. It was dangerous.
She recovered with a sip of wine. “Fell off a bridge, drowned for a minute. Came back. Family wasn’t into it, so they kicked me out when I was thirteen.”
Vague details. Easy lies.
“Some family,” Gabriel muttered to the flames. He stood, went to sit on the couch. “Though, granted, I have no room to judge on that front.”
“What about you?” Lore asked, eager to turn the conversation away from herself. “How’d you fall in with the Presque Mort, after…”
“After my father betrayed August to the Kirythean Empire and gave them a stronghold directly on Auverraine’s border?” Gabriel’s voice was flat and inflectionless. “Anton found me. Told me it was my destiny to join the Presque Mort, to make something holy out of something terrible.”
He’d been ten. She remembered him saying so in the throne room. He’d been ten, newly orphaned and horribly injured, and Anton had twisted that into loyalty. Her distaste for the man grew teeth.
She didn’t ask Gabriel how it happened, but he continued as if she had. Sometimes all you needed was a sign that someone was listening. “My father pledged fealty to Kirythea when they approached the Balgian border. August had denied military help; all his extra troops were guarding the Burnt Isles.” A pause. “They still killed my father, though. The Kirytheans. Jax said a man who’d betray one country would easily betray another, then cut off my father’s head.” He made a rueful noise. “Jax was sixteen. Still a child, and already ruthless.”
“You were there?” Lore murmured. Then she shook her head. “I mean, of course you were there, since then he…”
She didn’t finish, and swallowed against sudden dryness in her throat. Gabriel Remaut had watched his father beheaded, and then the person who’d done it had plucked out his eye.
Gabriel nodded. In the dim light, she could almost see the vestiges of that scared boy in the scarred man. “I’m not sure why Jax let me live, to be honest. He wasn’t the Emperor yet, and killing us all certainly would’ve made his point about traitors. But he sent me back to Auverraine—in a bad state, certainly, but alive.” A shrug. “Anton found me soon after. I was inducted into the Presque Mort, then I stayed in the Northreach monastery—I could sense too much Mortem to make staying in Dellaire a possibility. Anton traveled back and forth as often as he could, to help me learn to block it from my mind. The plan was always for me to come here, when I was ready.” He made a rueful noise. “It took until after my Consecration.”