“Your loss,mon cher.” Hypnos shrugged and looked up at the clock above the office doorway. “Your birthday party is in full swing downstairs. You do know that, don’t you?”
“Mm.”
“Are you going to make an appearance?”
“This late in the evening, I doubt it will be remembered,” he said.
Hypnos rolled his eyes, bowed, and swept out of the office. Séverin forced down a yawn. He wanted to stay in his study, but there was nothing left to do. Happy birthday, indeed. Last year, Tristan had the bright idea of baking a livingentremetpie and filling it with four and twenty blackbirds as an homage to the nursery rhyme that Séverin had found funny when he was eight. Zofia built the cage-pie with a Forging mechanism to open when Séverin blew out the candles. Enrique found a first edition nursery rhyme book containing “Sing a Song of Sixpence.” Laila had made the jam. But once the candles had been blown and the cage sprang open, none of the birds wanted to leave as they vastly preferred Laila’s pie. And then Tristan had wanted to keep them. And Enrique was furious because there were bird droppings all over the library books. The pie was inedible after that, but Laila baked him a cupcake and left it on his desk the next day with a small candle.
Séverin almost laughed, but it died halfway past his lips.
There would never be another birthday like that.
Right before Séverin left his office, he grabbed an ouroboros mask from his desk. The brass snake mask formed an intricate figure-eight pattern that hid his eyes, so he could watch the revelries from the top of the bannister. L’Eden was in the grips of a masquerade ball. Acrobats spun down from the rafters, grinning masks plastered eerily onto their faces. Everyone had come out for the event.Zofia wore a mask with a pointed beak, her cloudlike hair fluffed around her like ruffled feathers. Enrique stood beside her, a grinning monkey mask on his face, complete with a tail. Hypnos had eschewed a mask in favor of a sweeping, phoenix train Forged into the semblance of twisting flames.
At the doors, a line of twelve women wearing peacock feathers poured into the lobby. They were utterly dazzling.
But they were not her.
Behind him, he heard his factotum call out: “Please welcome the stars of the Palais des Rêves, who are performing averyspecial dance in honor of Monsieur Montagnet-Alarie’s birthday!”
The crowd cheered. Séverin turned on his heel. His suite was just off to the western alcove, disguised behind a Tezcat door of a long, oval mirror encircled by an ouroboros. The snake was Forged so that it continually slithered, continually chasing after its own tail. It was only by catching it by the throat as if one were to throttle it that the snake would still. It was also how one could access his suites.
Séverin’s room was rather spartan, which he preferred. There was a large bed with an ebony headboard. A sheer, golden canopy Forged so that anyone who touched it between the hours of two in the morning and four in the morning—prime murder hours, he was told—would be snarled in the threads.
Séverin rubbed the back of his neck, dropped the snake mask on the floor, kicked off his shoes, and yanked his shirt out of his pants. When he breathed deep, he wondered whether he was beginning to lose his mind. Impossibly, he thought he could smell Laila. Sugar in the air. A faint aroma of rosewater. She was haunting him. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. What was wrong with him? He trudged forward a couple steps, ready to collapse into his bed when he stopped short.
His bed was already occupied.
“Hello,Majnun.”
Perched on the edge of his bed and wearing a gown that looked cut from the night sky was Laila. She shifted under his stare, and faint stars zoomed across the ends of her dress. Blearily, Séverin wondered whether it was really her. Or whether she was some phantasm scraped together from all his longing. But then the corner of her mouth lifted in a knowing smile, and he was jolted back to this moment.
They hadn’t spoken in weeks, and yet thewayto talk to her—the push-pull of jokes—floated back to him, as easy as breathing. She no longer looked wide-eyed and bruised, the way she had when they had last spoken in the study. If anything, she looked like an icon. Terrible and beautiful. Untouchable.
And here he was. Disheveled and tired and not willing to show it.
“And what brings the celebrity of the Palais des Rêves back to my bed?” he asked.
She laughed, and even though he was clothed he might as well have been standing naked.
“A proposition,” she said lightly.
He raised his eyebrow. “One that has to do with my bed?”
“As if you’d know what to do with me in your bed,” she said, glancing at her nails.
He most certainly did know—
“My proposition has to do with the Winter Conclave in Russia.”
“You’ll come with us?”
“On my own terms.”
“What do you want?”
Laila tipped forward. The light clung to her skin. “I want special access. I don’t want to hide in a cake. Or pose as a maid.”
