The Foxglove King (The Nightshade Crown #1)

by Hannah F. Whitten

Her shirt made a small sound as it hit the floor, and Gabriel stiffened. She smirked. The dress was still too tight, but Lore was fairly certain it was the best she could do. Once clothed, she tapped Gabriel on the shoulder to sidle out of the room. “Such a gentleman,” she remarked, starting down the hall to where Anton and Malcolm waited, unfamiliar velvet swishing around her legs. “Celibacy has got to be a drag, but you didn’t even try to peek.” The Mort made a choked noise.

“They really got to you, didn’t they? Made you think the only way to absolve yourself of treason by association was to see it in everyone else.”

“His face has nothing to do with it.” It was a whisper, hissing into the scant air between them. “It has everything to do with being used by the King, the Priest Exalted, the Presque Mort. I came here through manipulation and it’s all I’ve known since. It’s all Bastian has known, and it’s all you’ve known, too. But at least the Sun Prince and I are smart enough to admit it.” Are you so accustomed to being used that you don’t realize when it’s happening, as long as it’s done kindly? Bastian’s words echoed in her skull. Gabe hadn’t been used kindly, but he didn’t think he deserved kindness. Maybe that was the root of it. All he accepted was constant penance for a crime he’d never committed.

When Gabe breathed, she felt it. And he was so close. So close, and all of him so warm, and there was a cold deep in Lore she was always trying to thaw. “That’s the thing about the manipulated,” Gabe said softly. “They become the best manipulators. There’s no teacher like experience.”

“Bed’s too soft,” she muttered, leaving out the part about wanting to trust him despite his words about manipulation, about feeling cast adrift, about not wanting to be alone and having only him to keep her from it. All that feeling was strained into those three words, though, and the quick look he gave her said he heard them.

“Like a bitch, huh?” She looked up and gave him the edge of a smile, but maintaining eye contact felt too difficult, so she focused on the slight freckles across his nose. “Two weeks out from under Anton’s thumb, and you start swearing like you were born to it.” The mention of Anton made him flinch, just a bit. But Gabe just shrugged. “I blame you.” Said lightly, but those three words could carry so many meanings between them, be the foundation for so many stones. They both seemed to realize that at the same time, and though neither moved, it suddenly felt like there was more space between them.

Lore lay down next to Gabe, and he let the blanket fall over her, turned so his back was to the door and his chest pressed against her spine. He was warm, and it seeped into her slowly, blotting out the numbness, reminders of life in a body that knew so much death.

It reminded her of herself. How she’d been Night-Sister-Lore and then poison-runner-Lore and now spy-Lore, each a persona she’d eased into, a different shell to wear. When she thought about what might be left when all that artifice was stripped away, she came up blank. Like all the things that made her were window dressings on an empty house. And though Bastian had never had to run, had been born into his cage instead of molting into different ones over and over, she thought he’d feel the same. That all his careful personas might hide an emptiness the same shape as hers. He’d weathered Gabe’s anger with what she’d thought was grace, let the other man’s barely leashed rage roll off his back. But maybe it wasn’t grace. Maybe Bastian held this memory just as closely as Gabe did, and maybe he felt like he deserved that anger. Lore didn’t know how to articulate any of that, though. Not in a way Gabriel would understand. Where Bastian struggled against his cage, Gabe clung to his own, wanting the walls to shape him, shoving himself inside to make boundaries he knew. He’d built himself into something he thought the world wanted, and though it chafed at him, Lore still envied it, just a bit. There was a reassurance in knowing exactly how you were going to be let down.

Three mothers, two betrayals, all for some greater good that Lore couldn’t bring herself to care about. She only cared about living. The greater good could hang.