“Good night, heretic.”
She had barely enough energy to laugh. Lore stepped out of her foxglove gown, leaving it in a lavender pile on the floor, and fell into sleep and darkness.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The goddess whispered in the Night Witch’s ear,
“It’d be so nice to see you, dear,
Open the door and let me go
There’s many stories you don’t know.”
—Children’s skipping rhyme
Lore sat by the ocean and felt, for the first time she could remember, completely fine.
The water was warm; it lapped against the white rim of the shore, splashing up her calves and wearing away at the sand she sat on. This wasn’t the beach by the harbor docks, cold and rocky—no, this was more like one of the beaches she’d heard about in the southernmost cities of Auverraine, where the rich sometimes went when winter bit too hard. There was no salt scent to the air. It smelled like nothing.
Like nothing.
Someone sat next to her. Lore couldn’t see who. When she turned her head, there was only a dark void, a person-shaped gap in the world.
A void, but if she looked too long, there were flashes of things in the dark. An obsidian block of a tomb. An iron brand, crescent-shaped, glowing orange. A woman with hazel eyes, just like hers.
Lore didn’t try to look again.
In the sky above the warm ocean, smoke twisted sinuously, gray against blue. It took Lore a moment to notice that the smoke was coming from her, streaming out from her chest, reaching dark tendrils over the water. As she watched, it stretched farther and farther, arcing over the sky.
Perfect, said the figure next to her, the one she couldn’t see. Much easier, this time.
Lore shot up from the too-soft bed, pressing her knuckles against her eyes until stars danced behind them. The mental barrier Gabriel had helped her make had finally failed, as if the strange nightmare even now fading from her memory had burned through her forest. She sensed Mortem in everything—the walls, the bedding, the furniture. It made her every limb feel leaden, made her head pound, the symptoms of suffocation even as she heaved lungfuls of air. The moment of death, crystallized and endless, all the pain with none of the peace.
Lore stood on shaky legs, hissing against the throbbing in her head. Between her mad dash away from the Northwest Ward, being tied to a chair for all of one night, and nearly dancing through another, her body felt like the end of a fraying rope.
With a lurch, she forced herself forward, through the bedroom door and into the shared sitting room. She nearly hit the wall, reeled back, gritted her teeth. Touching anything felt like a punch to her brain, and part of her wanted to claw off her perfectly tailored nightgown. She stayed her hand, but only just. Gabe would have to help her with this, and he wouldn’t be much assistance if his celibate heart gave out at the sight of her naked.
The one-eyed monk was still half propped against the threshold that led to the hallway, like a human doorstop. She prodded his shoulder with her foot; her head hurt too much to crouch down, she’d probably be sick all over him if she tried. “Gabe. It’s back.”
He went from sleep to wakefulness in an instant. Gabe sat up, his sheet slipping down to his waist, concern scrunching the skin around his eye patch—he slept in the thing, apparently, at least when he was guarding doors. His one blue eye flickered over her, took quick stock of the situation, thankfully knowing exactly what she spoke of without Lore having to explain. “Did you ground yourself before you fell asleep?”
“Did I what?”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“How the fuck would I have known to do that?” Pain made her sharp; Lore’s teeth were nearly bared.
Gabe took it in stride. He shifted his position so he sat cross-legged on the floor, palms on his knees. A sweep of his hand indicated he wanted her to do the same.
Lore did, slowly, hissing a string of curses. Her legs prickled with pins and needles; trying to move them felt like hauling sacks of unresponsive meat.
“Grounding,” Gabe said when she was settled, “is visualizing your barrier, setting it in place. Making it as real as possible in your mind, so that you don’t have to be actively concentrating to keep it up.”
“I haven’t concentrated on it all day, and it held up fine.” It’d only been a problem since her nightmare. Lore could still feel it tugging at the edges of her mind, at her heart, as if she hadn’t really woken up at all. As if the nightmare were a living thing, full of malice and trying to trap her.
But she couldn’t quite fix it in her mind. When she tried to recall exactly what happened in the dream, all she got were flashes—white sand, blue water.