Jilly stopped, her voice strangled out into nothing. Having your heart race like a runaway horse would do that.
Lore calmly took the cup from Jilly’s spasming grip, the fingers of her other hand crooking as she twisted strands of the woman’s Spiritum around them. She didn’t say anything as she gave it back to Rosie.
Slowly, Lore let the strands go, releasing Jilly’s heart to shudder back into regular rhythm. Jilly gaped at her, gasping, the fear of a cornered animal glinting in her eyes.
“Go ahead, Rosie,” Lore said calmly. “Hope you find something good down there.”
Rosie scrambled up from the sand. She looked from Jilly to Lore, decided against getting involved further, and scurried to the lift.
Jilly just stared. Lore stared back, waiting to see if this would escalate into a brawl, trying to ignore the exhilaration that sang down her veins at this use of her power.
Trying to ignore the sense of being observed. Marked by something larger.
With a final shudder, Jilly turned away, hurried back to her own forgotten pickax.
For the first time since she’d been on the Isles, Lore grinned.
The day passed quickly, sweaty and largely fruitless, though she did find enough to turn in for a pallet. At the end, Lore gave the guards her pickax and submitted to the pat-down to make sure she hadn’t smuggled out any particularly sharp rocks. She wasn’t sure why they bothered; the guards were more likely to bet on inmate fights than break them up. When the guard was satisfied she had no contraband, Lore handed over a chip of ruby and two gold slivers for a pallet and a plate of limp potatoes and headed for the cave at the base of the cliffs, her paltry dinner finished before she was across the beach.
There was never a fight for space, and the other people who frequented the cave left her mostly alone. It wasn’t roomy, but it was the only place where Lore felt safe enough to really sleep.
And if she was going to dreamwalk, she needed to really sleep.
Lore twitched her fingers, pulling at the bare threads of life she found in the sand. Mites, tiny insects. Their golden threads were thin, not rope-thick like Jilly’s. Easier to grasp, to twist and snap.
They didn’t have hearts, not like humans did, but she sped up their processes, channeling so much life through them that their microscopic bodies gave out. Cruel, maybe, but she was nearly past caring about that. The only strengths she had here were her vices.
Her breath came harder, filling her lungs; her face flushed with pumping blood. Gods, it’d been so long since she’d felt this alive. Since she’d felt anything but downtrodden and helpless and afraid.
Lorehatedfeeling afraid.
Using her power on Jilly today had felt… right. A good deed, even. Gods knew she needed to add some to her ledger.
Ducking into the cave, Lore placed her pallet over by the damp stone wall. No one else was in the cave yet, which was unusual, but maybe she’d just gotten here early.
Wincing against the pain in her back, Lore stretched out on the thin pallet. Her eyes drifted closed, her mouth held in a determined clench, focused on that beach where she’d seen Alie.
“There she is.”
Her eyes popped open.
It took a moment for them to adjust to the gloom. Three men, looming over her. All of them scarred.
Lore’s heart jackknifed against her ribs.
“Jilly told us you slept here. You were never good at making friends.” One of the men crouched next to her. A spark in his hand—a lighter, illuminating his face. It was gaunt, his eyes wild. “Recognize me, Your Majesty?”
She did, almost. Like someone you often passed on the street, whose face became a familiar part of the scenery.
But Lore was still flush with power, from Jilly and her experiment on the beach, and it made her overly confident. Her fingers bent. “Can’t say I do.”
“You ruined us.” He was their spokesperson, apparently; the other two men behind him said nothing. “We were only following orders. Doing as the King and Priest Exalted willed. What ourgodwilled.”
Ah. So they were Presque Mort, then. Or had been. As if to drive the point home, one of the other men turned his palm to face her in the lighter-light, a flash of inked candle.
A slow grin spread across Lore’s face. “Oh, I remember you now. Has it been hard, adjusting to no magic? Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to take it all.”
Stupid, to taunt three angry men when she was all alone. But that flare of power burned through her, beacon-bright.
