And Bastian didn’t. When he tried to take over, to wrestle back some physical control, it felt like flailing up out of the sea, grabbing whatever might help him float. A dying man’s last gasp.
But this time, Bastian dove deep. He kept his eyes open, his jaw clenched tight (not really, but his mind translated determination into parameters he knew), and arrowed through the gold. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but with his trademark stupid confidence, he figured he would know it when he saw it.
And he did.
A door. Small and unassuming, easily missed, seen through the shifting glimmer.
He swam to it. He jerked it open.
And climbed out onto a beach.
His not-quite-body didn’t care that it was just a mental construct, and Bastian braced his hands on his knees, gasping in air as if he’d actually been drowning. He fell forward, exhaustion catching him by the throat; his palms dug into white sand as he spat out mouthfuls of luminous water. Behind him, the door settled into the ground as if it had been there for centuries.
Bastian looked up.
White sand, blue sky, blue ocean, and gray cliffs. It wasn’t a place he recognized.
Though he recognized the man standing at the tide line.
“Gabe.” Bastian pushed himself up, his heart catching fire in his chest. “Gabe!”
The monk didn’t hear him. Gabe stared out at the ocean, a furrow between his brows.
“Gabriel?” Bastian stumbled up to him, still pulling in air like it’d been denied him. “Listen, I know you’re angry at me, but completely ignoring my existence seems rather shortsighted, given the circumstances.”
Gabe still didn’t respond, but the furrow between his brows went deeper.
Maybe this was a dream of some kind. A hallucination, Bastian’s mind showing him what he wanted to see.
Slowly, he made his way around his Priest Exalted, until he stood in the surf and stared up at him, that two inches of height that annoyed him endlessly; the man was alwayslooming.
“I never meant to hurt you,” Bastian said, even though he knew the other man couldn’t hear. Maybe because of it. “I know you don’t believe that. I know you think everything I do is to hurt you, somehow. But it’s not, and it never was.” He paused, the next words coming on the end of a rueful laugh. “I hate it, actually.”
No answer. Gabe sighed, tipped back his head, and closed his eye. A swallow worked its way down the long column of histhroat, emphasizing tendons. The muscles in his shoulders were tense, his large hands held in fists. Gabriel Remaut had never relaxed a day in his life, and apparently he didn’t when he was dreaming, either.
Bastian knew he was a handsome man—gods knew he’d been told often enough—and Gabe looked so different from him. But he was beautiful, too, a fact that came to him easily here, when they weren’t locked in conflict, when they just… were. The line of his jaw stubbled red and gold, his eye clear and blue as the ocean they stood in. As long as Bastian had known him, Gabe always had a look of thoughtfulness on his face, as if everything needed to be analyzed and cataloged, as if everything was trying to trick him.
Gabe couldn’t hear him, couldn’t feel him, and there was no one here to see. Cautiously, Bastian raised his hand, gently traced Gabe’s jaw.
The monk shuddered, just a bit, as if touched by a cold wind.
Bastian turned and trudged up the beach. His time was limited.
Another door, the mirror of the one he’d seen in the golden sea. Bastian pulled it open.
A long, dark hall, seemingly endless, lined with more identical doors. Bastian didn’t care about Apollius’s privacy—his own had been dragged out back and shot, after all—but he still hesitated a moment before tugging the first door open.
A burning house, seen from a distance. Small figures moved around it, throwing more fuel on the fire rather than trying to put it out. The sound of heavy breathing through tear-clogged lungs, the feeling of small, humid hands closing into fists.
Bastian shut the door, his own heart hammering. Memories. Moments in time burned into a god’s brain.
He traveled down a few more doors before trying another, not wanting to see the rest of that childhood. One door opened on Apollius’s memory of Nyxara and Hestraon, locked in a kiss. Thefeeling of a fast-beating heart, of heavy breathing, of ownership and knowledge that He was in control of the scene. Nyxara broke away from the fire god and reached out to Apollius in invitation, cheeks flushed and dark eyes bright. Bastian shut that door, too.
He passed a few more, picking at random now. More memories of Nyxara, playing and smiling and singing. A boat, gently rocking on the open ocean.
Behind one door, there was nothing but darkness, a sucking void of it that filled Bastian with a deep, unspeakable dread. He shut that one fast.
Time was running out. His vision feathered at the edges, his legs jellied. Apollius might have all these memories locked away, but there was no way to know if He could feel Bastian rifling through them.
