Hands left waists, came to face height and hovered within an inch of each other, palms flat as Lore orbited around him. “How fortunate,” Bastian murmured, “to have such a close contact in the Church.”
The dance ended. Around them, other couples were in a pose with their right hands together and the other curved above their heads, but Bastian and Lore still stood with their palms facing between them, almost touching but not quite.
“I look forward to having you around, Lore.” His voice was low, breath brushing her temple as he leaned forward to speak into her ear. “It certainly has the potential to be interesting.”
“Do you think so, Your Highness?”
He was close enough that she felt the brush of his lips curving. “I know so.”
Across the room, Alie watched them, giggling behind her hand. Next to her, Gabe caught Lore’s eye, arched a sardonic brow. She tried to make a face that communicated what else am I supposed to do? but mostly just succeeded in looking nauseous.
Bastian stepped back. He reached into his coat, and for a wild moment, Lore thought he was going to pull out a dagger or one of those tiny pistols, prove himself the Kirythean informant his father thought he was by taking care of her right here in the middle of his own party. The courtiers would probably love it. They’d all bring in peasants to murder at their own balls; it’d be the next big trend in masquerade hosting.
But all Bastian pulled from his coat was a pressed flower, a line of pale-purple blooms on a green stem.
“A foxglove for a foxglove.” Bastian handed it to her with a bow and a flourish. “Beautiful and poisonous. Much like yourself, if I may be so bold as to make an assessment after our brief acquaintance.”
Gingerly, Lore took the bloom. The dry petals crunched slightly between her fingers.
“Until next time, Lore.” Bastian turned and walked away, a drop of ink in a sea of color.
Lore closed the door to the apartments behind her and leaned back against it. “I suppose that went about as well as it could.”
“You performed your assignment admirably,” Gabriel said, sitting down on the couch with a long sigh.
“It seems ingratiating myself with Bastian won’t be the hard part.” Lore pulled off her mask and let it drop. “Getting any kind of information out of him will be. He’s not going to tell me he’s a traitor just because he thinks I’m pretty; he’s smarter than his father or his uncle gives him credit for.”
Gabe snorted.
Lore toed off the heeled slippers that had come with her costume, pale purple and embroidered with serrated leaves. Foxglove leaves. The dried bloom Bastian had given her was still in her palm. If she’d been found with something like this on the streets of Dellaire, it’d be at least three days in the Northwest Ward stocks if it was a first offense, and a ticket to the Burnt Isles if it wasn’t. But here, in this gilded palace full of money and excess, it was a prince’s idle gift.
She thought of the courtiers in the corner with their belladonna tea, physicians on call and no reason to worry. Her fist closed, crushing the flower into pastel dust. She brushed it from her hands and let it fall to the floor with her mask.
Feeling coming back into her feet now that her slippers were off, Lore walked over to Gabe and stood in front of him, gesturing to the buttons down her back. “Help me out here, I can’t reach.”
He hesitated a moment before setting to work. For a monk, he was a clever hand at undoing a woman’s buttons, a thought that flashed across her mind unbidden before she resolutely shut it out.
“Did he say anything important while you were dancing?” Gabe asked.
The only things she’d learned while dancing with Bastian were about Gabe. But some tug of intuition told her that if she tried to talk about that, he’d shut down. She’d only known Gabe for two days, but it was enough to know that he wouldn’t take lightly to disparaging Anton or the Presque Mort. People who thought they’d been saved tended to deify the savior.
“Not really. Certainly not anything that made it seem like he’s a Kirythean spy.” With a sigh, Lore flopped on the opposite end of the couch and propped up her aching feet on the ottoman. “I don’t understand why August is so convinced the informant is Bastian.”
“He told you. Because Bastian doesn’t want to be King.” Gabriel stared into the dying embers in the fireplace, head propped on his hand. He’d loosened his cravat, revealing a triangle of pale, freckle-dusted skin. “When we were young, he used to tell me he wanted to be a pirate.”