Not a question.
“What of it?” the matriarch shot back.
Guilt flickered through her when she caught Kahina’s gaze: hungry. Hungry for all that the matriarch could do that was denied to her. Kahina had the power to give birth to him, but not the privilege to call him her son.
Power liked irony.
“Why did you choose that present?” Kahina asked.
The question threw the matriarch. What did it matter? Shesimply thought he’d like it. She could already imagine him crouched behind the toy theatre, moving the puppets, his face not on the wooden stage but the imagined audience. He had a knack for understanding how things fit together. How to draw the eye. Perhaps he would grow up to be an artist, she mused.
“Do you love him?” asked Kahina.
“What—”
“Do you love my son?”
My son.The words felt like a slap. The matriarch of House Kore could take him to the theatre, shower him with gifts, but he was not hers. And yet, her heart did not notice.
“Yes,” she said.
Kahina nodded once, as if steeling herself, and then said: “Then, please… you must promise to protect him.”
PART I
From the archival records of the Order of Babel
Master Boris Goryunov, House Dazbog of the Order’s Russian faction 1868, reign of Czar Nicholas II
On this day, I took my men to Lake Baikal. We waited until night fell. The men were scared and spoke of restless spirits in the water, but they are simple-minded and perhaps overly swayed by the reports of screaming girls. It is possible some Forged object of the mind has driven the locals insane, and for that reason I have investigated but found nothing. I have dutifully requested the assistance of the Order, but I doubt we shall find anything. I heard no haunting calls of dying women, which means they either never existed or are already beyond my help.
1
SÉVERIN
Three weeks before Winter Conclave…
Séverin Montagnet-Alarie looked out over what had once been the Seven Sins Garden. Rare, coveted blossoms once coated the grounds—milk-petaled aureum and chartreuse golden moss, skeleton hyacinths and night-blooming cereus. And yet, it was the roses that his brother, Tristan, loved most. They were the first seeds planted, and he’d fussed over them until their petals ripened red and their fragrance bloomed to create something that looked and smelled like melted sin.
Now, in late December, the grounds appeared stripped and barren. When Séverin breathed deep, cold seared through his lungs.
The grounds were almost scentless.
If he wanted, he could have asked his factotum to hire a gardener with a Forging affinity for plant matter, someone who couldmaintain the garden’s splendor, but he didn’t want a gardener. He wanted Tristan.
But Tristan was dead, and the Seven Sins Garden had died with him.
In its place lay a hundred Forged reflection pools. Their mirror-still surfaces held images of desert landscapes or skies quilted with dawn light when nighttime had already stolen across the grounds. The guests of L’Eden Hotel applauded his artistry, not knowing that it was shame, not artistry, that had guided Séverin. When he looked in those pools, he didn’t want to catch sight of his own face staring back at him.
“Monsieur?”
Séverin turned to see one of his guards striding toward him.
“Is he ready?” asked Séverin.
“Yes, Monsieur. We arranged the room precisely as you requested. Your…guest… is inside the office outside the stables, just as you asked.”
“And do we have tea to serve our guest?”
