Chapter Thirty-Three

Lore wakes late, sore and embarrassed after her near-intimacy with Gabe. Gabe has already left her rooms, while Bastian has sent breakfast and a suggestive note that reinforces their public pretense as lovers. Lore realizes that excuse may help cover her and Bastian’s planned midnight trip to the stone garden, where she expects to raise one of the hidden corpses.

Restless and hungry after spending the day confined to her rooms, Lore goes to the main hall. Alie greets her warmly and asks whether Lore and Gabe will attend the eclipse ball and exclusive dinner afterward. Alie reveals that August, Anton, her father, Dani’s family, Bastian, Gabe, and Lore are expected at the dinner, making Lore uneasy because the guest list may connect to the investigation.

On the way back, Lore encounters August, who looks sickly and drinks from his belladonna flask. August asks whether Lore has been spending time with Bastian and says there will soon be a resolution because “the whelp” will get what he deserves. His open hatred makes Lore pity Bastian and confirms that August’s hostility toward his son is not merely political.

At midnight, Bastian comes for Lore, dressed for stealth and serious about their mission. As Bastian leads Lore through unfamiliar Citadel passages, Lore asks whether Bastian is all right. In a moonlit atrium full of poisonous flowers, Bastian admits that August being a bad man makes August wanting him dead easier to bear. Lore answers with her own history: her mother and the Night Sisters feared what Lore could do, and although her mother never loved her openly, her mother saved Lore from being sent into the Buried Goddess’s tomb.

The two share a quiet moment of mutual understanding before continuing. When a bloodcoat nearly catches them, Bastian pulls Lore into an alcove and pretends to kiss her so they look like ordinary courtiers trysting in the hall. The guard passes, but the closeness unsettles Lore because Bastian seems close to making the kiss real.

Bastian and Lore reach the stone garden and open the gate, then move to the well that leads into the catacombs. Before they can shift the heavy Apollius statue covering it, Gabe appears. Gabe says he came because he could not let Lore do this without him, but Lore challenges him, saying Bastian was already with her and asking what Gabe will do when Anton is proven a liar. Gabe joins them to help move the statue.