But she was not speaking to Laila.
Behind her, someone started to clap. Before Laila could turn, the person grabbed hold of her, pulling her against their chest. Eva lunged forward, grabbing her by the throat. Her ring talon dug into her neck.
“Be still.”
Laila’s limbs went numb. She couldn’t even speak. All she felt was a roiling sense of nausea.
“You must be wondering what the Fallen House wants with you,” said Eva.
“It’s the same thing your darling Séverin craves, my sweet muse, my divine instrument,” said a familiar voice.
Laila felt her arms yanked forward, her hands brought up to her face.
“Nothing but yourtouch.”
31
SÉVERIN
Séverin awoke to a cold bed and a panic that felt like a thunderstorm had taken root in his skull. Laila was gone. Of course she was gone. If he could, he would’ve cursed that blood Forging drink for unlocking him so thoroughly. He must have terrified her. He touched the empty space beside him. Every exquisite detail of last night burned through him. Including everything he’d said. Shame burned his cheeks… but then why did he remember Laila smiling at him, her laughter against his skin? Laila was many things, but not cruel. Pity wouldn’t have driven her to his bed. So then why had she left it so soon?
Séverin threw back the sheets, groping on the table beside him for Tristan’s knife hidden under one of his notebooks. The heft of the wooden hilt in his hand calmed him. He unsheathed it, staring at the blade and the thin, translucent vein in the metal where Goliath’s paralyzing venom ran thick. Perhaps more than the failure to protect Tristan was how he’d failed to know him fully. How couldTristan inflict hurt and give love in the same breath? How was he supposed to live knowing that all of this had been for nothing?The Divine Lyricshad never been there. He’d failed Tristan. He’d failed all of them, left them unprotected… and left himself unprotected too. What he’d done with Laila… he felt like a creature yanked from its shell, all exposed flesh and raw nerves.
Silence pressed all around, and… wait. Silence?
Dread grabbed hold of his thoughts. Séverin threw on his clothes, pocketed a couple of Zofia’s concealed weapons and Tristan’s knife, and then opened the door. A sickly sweet smell immediately hit his nose. Like blood and spiced wine. He crossed the stair landing. On one of the steps, he spotted a familiar necklace… Eva’s ballerina pendant.
Thinking of her brought a bitter taste to the back of his throat. She’d tricked him, and that mind Forging draught had turned him reckless, blurring the differences to show him who he wanted in his arms. Not who he had.
Far below came a strange scraping sound, like dry leaves on a road. Goose bumps pebbled his skin. The silence was all wrong. It wasn’t the intoxicated, full-bodied silence of a crowd passed out, but something more sinister. More absent.
Séverin kept to the side of the stairs. Immediately, a rounded shape met his eye. He stepped closer and his stomach dropped.
A person was sprawled out on the steps.
With a normal Order function, he would have assumed they were just passed out from drink… but this person’s eyes kept moving, roving back and forth wildly, his mouth frozen in an oval of panic. Paralyzed.
Séverin bent down, turning the man’s chin ever so slightly. A slight puncture wound marked his skin. This had to be anact of blood Forging. The paralyzed person—a white man in his late fifties—stared hard into Séverin’s eyes, silently pleading for help, but Séverin had no skill in blood Forging. And frankly, this man was not his concern. He cared about where Laila had gone; whether Zofia and Enrique were safe… and Hypnos.
As Séverin moved down the staircase and entered the atrium, he saw dozens of Order members slumped over, lining the frozen walls in neat rows. Scattered around them, the living animal-like treasure chests of the Order appeared as inanimate as rock, frozen just like their respective matriarchs and patriarchs. Hypnos was not among them.
The more Séverin looked at the paralyzed members of the Order, the more the details struck him. For one, they were too organized. Every single person had been arranged so that not one had their face toward the ground. It could have appeared merciful, a pose that allowed them to breathe… but Séverin had long practiced reading rooms full of treasure. This was personal. Whoever had done this to them had arranged them so they could see one another, so their own horror would be reflected back infinitely.
Someone wanted to make sure that everyone knew who had put them in their place. He needed to find out exactly who that person was, what they’d done with the others… and why they had chosen to spare him. The location of his suite was no secret. Clearly, he was meant to see this. He just didn’t know why.
The atrium now held a gruesome beauty to it. Silver confetti still spangled the air. The champagne chandeliers drifted aimlessly, frost creeping over their stems. Down the hall leading to the ice grotto, Séverin spied a heat net composed of slender, crisscrossing patterns in glowing red that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. It blocked Forged objects, but not humans. If the others were taken, they could’ve been dragged through the net easily.
To his right, he heard the creaking sound of a door. Séverin took quick stock of his position in the wide atrium. The sound was coming from the library, the place where he had last seen Enrique.
A low growl emanated from the podium. Séverin snapped his head to the stage where the Midnight Auction was supposed to have taken place, but judging from the confetti and untouched champagne, they had never made it that far before the attack.
From between the rows of paralyzed Order members slithered out crystalline snakes. A transparent jaguar prowled out from behind a grand piano. Several birds of prey broke off from the moonstone chandelier, their crystal wings chiming loudly. All around him, the crouched silhouettes of animals started to stir.Iceanimals, the same ones that had been hauled out of the menagerie, their internal mechanisms changed to turn them into docile, sentient tables.
The ice jaguar’s tail switched, its jaws lengthening.
They weren’t docile anymore.
Another banging sound came from the library door. As if someone was trying to get out. Séverin weighed the chances of death by the ice animals or death by whoever hid in the library… and then he took off down the hall.
