By the Fount, Dani let out a quiet, humorless laugh. She stood and turned to face Lore, jerking a thumb at the moon-carved stone, nestled back into its place. “I was wondering if you’d found it.”
More threads of gold gathered in Lore’s fist. Dani stiffened, her face going a few shades paler.
“I know what you are,” Lore said. “The journal was in the hut.”
“Of course it was. A souvenir from my long-lost ancestor.” Dani rolled her eyes. “Yes, Lore, my family was supposed to guard Apollius’s body. We didn’t do a very good job—the wayto navigate to the Mount was forgotten a few generations back, I assume by those silver things being gambled away. There were some premature deaths before directions could be passed on, all the general ways a legacy is lost. But you’re correct, this was supposed to be my job all along.”
“Yourjob?” Lore stalked closer to Dani as she spoke, a hunter circling prey, spooling out Spiritum as she went. “Not your father’s?”
Dani deflated a bit, the contemptuous smile losing its edge, something like genuine fear in her eyes. “He didn’t last long once we got to the Isles. He wasn’t made for this. Him, or my mother.”
Lore didn’t want to feel sorry for her. She shoved the feeling away. “So you used me to get here. To guard Him from me.”
“No, you idiot,” Dani spat. “I don’t stand a chance against you. You can literally pull my life out of my body. You’re doing it right now, even if you’re too much of a coward to finish the job.”
For that, Lore gave the Spiritum a tug. Dani’s spine pulled straight, as if her life force were a rope lifting her from the ground. She rose to her toes.
“If I was going to work against you,” she said, strained, “I would have done it by now, don’t you think?”
A fair point. But Lore wound another strand of Spiritum around her fingers.
Dani’s face paled further. “I know that you’re trying to put the Fount back together,” she said. “My family has known about the broken pieces for centuries, though we never knew where they were, other than the one in the catacombs.”
It made sense. And after Nyxara’s memory of the Godsfall, she knew why the goddess hadn’t been able to tell her.
“Could you repay me for that tidbit with a looser grip?” Dani said.
At first, Lore tightened her hold again, just to make the other woman remember she could. Then she let one of the strands of Spiritum loose.
“Thank you,” Dani said, her shoulders straightening. “Like I said, we know about the pieces. We were supposed to keep them from ever being reunited with the Fount, and find the other two wherever the pantheon hid them. I assume this one was at the Harbor?”
Lore didn’t answer.
It didn’t seem to faze Dani. “I don’t know how many times I’m going to have to prove I am on your side, Lore. I want you to fix the Fount. I want Apollius dead.”
The statement seemed unfinished, like something else should come after. Like this wasn’t the sum of her goal, but it was all she’d share.
Lore nodded. Then she held out her hand. “Give me the dagger.”
Dani didn’t waste time pretending she didn’t have one. “Seriously?”
A whole handful of threads, this time, enough to make Dani gasp.
“Fine,” she wheezed, nearly collapsing as she bent over to root around in her boot. She pulled out the knife, useless against Lore’s magic, but effective enough if she’d managed to catch her off guard.
Lore took it, slid it into her own boot. Then she let go her fistful of Dani’s life.
Dani bent at the waist, pulling in great gasps of air. “That seems like overkill,” she said between breaths.
“Maybe.” Lore turned and walked back into the ruins again, intending to find somewhere to sleep. “But if you’re going to stab me in the back, I’d like to return the favor.”
Footnotes
1 Better known as the Night Witch.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
GABE
