Chapter Twenty-Nine

At dusk, Lore leaves the Church, trading barbs with Nyxara’s distant voice, and navigates the quiet Citadel. Hiding from passing courtiers, she overhears gossip that questions Bastian’s sanity, his secrecy about captured enemies, and his devotion to Lore. The slight stings, especially when Amelia Demonde is mocked as a “churchmouse.”

Lore reaches the apartments and finds Alexis on watch, then enters a hushed, wrecked bedroom where Bastian lies exhausted and scratched after a day suppressing Apollius. They share a fragile, intimate moment: Bastian admits a terrifying post-explosion dream and his slipping control; Lore urges him to rest, concealing news about other awakening gods. She leaves before she can cry, planning for midnight.

Near midnight, Lore slips out; the expected guard is gone. Crossing the southern green and the burned Presque Mort garden, she meets Gabe in the greenhouse. Anton, rooted in thriving roses and torn by thorns, jeers that “six broken, battered cups” cannot be reversed and calls Gabe the avatar of traitorous Hestraon. He hints the Buried Goddess is “not so buried,” needling Lore.

Pressing for options, Lore rejects fatalism and pushes Anton on the prophecy. Catching a discrepancy—Anton once claimed Apollius spoke her name though their copy lacked it—she concludes there are missing lines or unread markings. She pulls Gabe away, deciding they must re-examine the document immediately.

Anton snarls that they are doomed, which Lore takes as confirmation of hidden text. Outside, Lore urges mercy-killing, but Gabe, bound by painful history, cannot kill his former mentor. They leave the greenhouse with a new objective: return to the prophecy for what they missed.