“In bed,” said Séverin curtly.
“How do you know?” demanded Enrique.
“Because I was there,” said Séverin, adding quickly, “What about Hypnos?”
“I haven’t seen Hypnos since last evening and—wait a minute, what did you just say?”
“I didn’t see him out there with the others,” said Séverin.
“You were with Laila ‘in bed’?” asked Enrique. “Like… beside her or—hold on, what do you mean out there with the others? What others?”
“The paralyzed members of the Order are lined up all around the atrium. Must have been a blood Forging artist,” said Séverin. Then he frowned, running through what Enrique had said. “Why would Ruslan need to deliver a lyre to the matriarch?”
Enrique eyed him warily.
It hit Séverin then: Enrique didn’t trust him. Enrique, who had once willingly walked into a volcano beside him and emerged on the other side craving marshmallow and bars of chocolate. Thiswas the cost of what he had done, and to stare at it full in the face and have nothing to offer in return: no godhood, no protection, no recompense…
It was its own kind of death.
“Later,” said Enrique curtly.
Séverin forced himself to nod and then turned to the door of the library.
“The ice creatures are drawn to heat and movement. There’s a heat net blocking the grotto entrance, and they can’t cross it. We just have to get there before them.”
“And how, exactly, do we avoid getting mauled?”
He couldn’t care less what happened to him so long as the others were safe, but he’d be useless to them if he was too wounded to help. Séverin looked around the library, then walked to one of the tables laden with treasure. There were statue busts, woven tapestries that shimmered and sang at his touch… but that wasn’t what he was looking for. His gaze zeroed in on a handheld mirror the size of his palm.
Enrique moved behind him.
“That’s a fourth-century replica of Amaterasu’s mirror. It’s a relic all the way from Japan, so bevery—”
Séverin smashed it, eliciting a strangled choking sound from Enrique.
“…careful,” finished Enrique weakly.
Séverin picked through the shards, gathering a couple for himself, and then a couple for Enrique.
“Follow me.”
Séverin opened the library door slowly, and they walked down the hall to the atrium. Beside him, Enrique muttered something about the “tyranny of indifference.” Morning light changed in theroom, silvering the interior of the Sleeping Palace. The ice creatures weren’t true animals; they couldn’t see. Yet their Forging function was identical to that of a Mnemo bug. It could track and record movement like any ordinary pair of eyes… and respond in kind.
Séverin weighed the mirror shards in his hand.
“Do you remember Nisyros Island?”
Enrique groaned. Séverin knew that Enrique, in particular, held a special grudge against the island.
“Remember the mechanical sharks?”
“The ones you said wouldn’t attack?” shot back Enrique.
In the past, Enrique had always mentioned this jokingly, but there was no humor left. Now, Enrique’s eyes dulled, as if whatever joy he’d found in the past had snapped beneath the weight of the present. Séverin wanted to shake his shoulders, to tell him that everything he’d done wasforand not against him. But disuse had turned his tongue clumsy for truth telling, and the window for truths slammed shut at the distant growl of an ice animal.
“Those sharks followed patterns of light,” explained Séverin.
“Which would carry a very faint heat signature to the ice animals,” finished Enrique, nodding.
