She gaped. “They just leave this out here?”
“Most courtiers send their staff to come make them a tray,” Gabe said, picking up a plate and carving off a piece of the boar. “But since we don’t have staff, we’re on our own.”
“Such a hardship,” Lore lisped around the macaron she’d just shoved in her mouth.
Not all courtiers delegated their lunch preparations—Alie stood at the bend of the hall, dressed in a long dress of lavender chiffon, understated and elegant. She waved when she saw them, gracefully breaking away from the other ladies she stood with to come give Lore a very tight and very unexpected hug. “You two! Where have you been? We just came from a croquet game on the back lawn; I was sure I’d see you there.” She wiggled her pale brows. “You’ll need to practice if you’re going to make it a good game when we play.”
“We were taking a walk,” Gabe answered, just as Lore said, “Bastian took us to the stables.”
Gabe’s one eye shot daggers. Lore gave him an apologetic look over Alie’s shoulder. She’d always been told that lies were more believable when you laced them with truth, so didn’t it follow that lying about as little as possible would serve them well here?
Alie’s eyes widened. “Well, then. I don’t blame you for picking Bastian over croquet.” She raised a delicate brow at Gabe. “And I assume you felt you had to go along as a chaperone? Probably wise.”
“Oh, no, it’s nothing like that,” Lore said. “He was just being courteous.”
The other woman grinned mischievously. “Bastian doesn’t really do courteous. He does, however, like to begin illicit propositions by leading his hopeful paramour to the stables.”
Lore fought down a mad giggle. Bastian might be in the habit of taking people he wanted to sleep with to the stables, but she was absolutely certain his seduction didn’t usually involve an undead horse.
Still, the mere implication was enough to give Gabe a long-suffering expression similar to the boar on the table. “Thank you for the information, Alie.”
“Anytime. I have years of court gossip to catch you up on.” Alie turned her grin from Gabe to Lore. “I’ll tell you all the best bits at our game next week. I find rumors go down best when you have a mallet to swing.”
Lore, who had not actually decided on any of the invitations in the stack back in their suite, swallowed a mouthful of wine and nodded. “We’ll be there.”
“Excellent.” Alie waved over her shoulder as she turned back to her friends, a gaggle of beautifully dressed women whom Lore was trying very hard not to make eye contact with. Cecelia was not among them, and she didn’t recognize anyone from the group taking poison at the masquerade. “See you then!”
The smile melted off Lore’s face as she turned back to the food. “At least we know Bastian wasn’t taking me to the stables for his usual reasons.”
It was a joke, and she expected Gabe to react to it with his usual eye roll, but the Presque Mort just stabbed another strawberry and knifed it onto his plate. “I wouldn’t be so sure,” he muttered.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
To each person is given knowledge according to their station; it is not holy to try to rise above the lot the gods have given you.
—The Book of Mortal Law, Tract 90
The afternoon whiled away in a sunlit haze. After eating, Lore made Gabriel give her a tour of the Citadel—somewhat difficult, as he hadn’t spent significant time there in years, but their shared unfamiliarity almost made it better. Two interlopers in a thick fog of luxury they didn’t belong to. When thoughts of Bastian and what he might or might not know loomed in her mind, Lore thrust them out, behind that wall of trees Gabriel had helped her grow. She needed time to make a plan, to frame her possible compromise to August in a way that wouldn’t land her in a cell.
She also needed distraction, and Gabriel obliged. Their wanderings took them through gilded halls with soaring painted ceilings, celestial scenes scabbed with glittering chandeliers. One room was full of nothing but statuary, gleaming marble bodies caught in sword fights and kisses and dances. Another room, circular and made almost entirely of glass, held a reflecting pool with a fountain in the center and rose petals floating on its surface. They didn’t spend long there—a handful of courtiers lazed around the pool’s edges, and more than one was swimming in it, naked as the day they were born. Gabe’s cheeks turned scarlet beneath his eye patch as he turned on his heel and marched back into the hallway. Lore managed to swallow her laughter until they were far enough away from the door that none of the courtiers would hear it.