Long enough for Alie to see that she was soundlessly screaming.
She could hear everything, and everything was so loud.
She didn’t hold all the world’s soul—only half of it, the half that had been contained in the still-broken Fount, death and life and water—but even that was enough to drown in. Not everything should have sound, have a song, but it did. Life was the trill of high voices, death the rasp of someone singing from deep in their throat, water a sinuous weave of harmony between it all. The melody of the universe, clamoring through her, vibrating her bones.
This is good, beloved.Apollius, in her head, sounding almost lascivious.This is so good.
Her vision gyred in and out, too unstable for her to move in any significant way. She lay on the broken tiles beside the Fount, panting from a mouth that still tasted like cool, sweet water.
She’d won. Apollius was here, she held all His power, trapped Him within herself. Bastian was free. Soon her friends would be, too. Once they came here, once they gave her the magic they’d unwittingly stolen. She would have everything, and she would be better.
She’d won, hadn’t she?
You did, you did, Apollius murmured, soothing.And now, there are things to do.
It was so dark, choked with fog, with ash. She was tired of it; He was, too. Lore stretched out her hand, fingers spread. The fog was water, the ash was death, and she spun them both into herself and tucked them away, her body made reliquary.
The sun shone bright on every inch of the Golden Mount for the first time in five hundred years.
But there was no time to revel in it, to lose herself in thesensations of the present and those of memory, the way the island had been and the way it was now. Lore was a kaleidoscope, becoming someone different with every slight movement. Seeing the island through her own eyes, Apollius’s.
Her vision split. Not the way it had been, scoping in and out from looking down at herself to looking out of her own staring eyes—wider, expanding, the Mount growing small as her consciousness raced over the waves.
Until it came to a stop in front of warships.
A fleet of them, covering the ocean as far as she could see. Lore drifted high above, the masts pointing at her like accusing fingers, emerald pennants with the golden flute of Caldien snapping in the wind. A blink, and she was in the water below, the hulls slipping past her like the bodies of slick beasts.
An army, headed not for Auverraine, but for the Isles.
And Gabe and Malcolm weren’t on these ships. She knew that like she knew the catacombs, the lines on her own palms, the curves of her eclipse scar. They’d been here, but now they were gone, leaving only faint scents of their power—a snap of green, a lick of smoke. There was enmity here in their places, anger at them brewing somewhere within this fleet. She could feel that, too, the thrum of life gone hot with rage.
They’re coming for you, Apollius whispered.Coming for them. War is in your fist, beloved. How will you twist it?
So many ways she could. The world was shredded to ribbons, and she could tie them in so many knots.
But there was one power she knew better than all the others.
Lore reached out and grasped the black threads on the bottom of the ocean, Mortem once again coming when she called. So much life down here, but so much death, too. Forgotten people, those thrown away, rotting down in the sand.
But with Mortem, with Spiritum, she could put them back together just enough.
Lore gathered the threads of death from every drowned body she could reach. She wound life through her fingers, wove them together.
And she pulled.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
GABE
If you are to be paired, strive to be known in your fullness, to find your perfect match.
—The Book of Mortal Law, Tract 3469
When he woke, he spent a few minutes just looking at Bastian.
It was very hard for him to believe that they were here. Here, on a ship headed toward the Golden Mount, but also here, together in this bunk, sleep-sweaty and pressed together, Bastian’s morning breath hitting him full in the face. The Sainted King slept like the dead, so much so that Gabe had tightened his grip on him more than once in the night, just to feel him breathing.
They are not alike.
