Laila felt weary.
“I don’t particularly care whether you know me or not, Eva. It doesn’t change that we follow certain protocols, which you are notfamiliar with, and so we must decline your well-intentioned offer to provide services.”
Eva smirked, tugging at a silver pendant around her neck. “Are you jealous, is that it? I don’t blame you.” Eva leaned close, lowering her voice. “What artistry do you have to offer other than your body?”
Laila schooled her features blank. She understood how the world cultivated malice between girls, teaching them to bare their teeth when they might have bared their souls. Her own friendships at the Palais des Rêves had started out with cruelty—one girl adding a dye to her face cream and another cutting the heels from her shoes in the hopes that she’d snap her ankle on the stage.C’est la vie.It was Paris. It was show business. And they were scared of losing their livelihood. But the difference was that at least the cabaret girls had treated her as a formidable opponent on the same battlefield.
When Eva deigned to speak to her, it was as if she didn’t see her at all.
“I see nothing that inspires jealousy,” said Laila.
And she meant it. Eva was beautiful, but bodies were just bodies. Easily broken, and unfortunately, not so easily made. Laila had never had control over her physical features, and she never felt it right to hold another’s against them.
But at her words, Eva’s face turned bloodless.
“You say that because you think you have a protector in Mr. Montagnet-Alarie,” she said. “But don’t think it will stay that way. Even I noticed he didn’t bother defending your honor.”
With that, she stalked off.
Laila sank her nails into her palm. Eva was right, but wrong. IfSéverin had wanted to show that she was something he could speak for or speak over, then he would have. But Laila had watched him consider speaking before choosing to step back. She wished she’d never seen that.
For in that second, her mind had conjured up fairy tales and curses, myths of girls instructed not to behold their lover at midnight lest they glimpse their true form. What Séverin had done then and how he’d flung out his arms during thetroikafire were all cruel glimpses of the boy he had truly been. The boy who had rescued Zofia and given her a world of comfort, taken a chance on Enrique and given him a platform to speak, seen Laila for her soul and not just the flesh that encased it. She hated that glimpse because it reminded her that he was like a cursed prince, trapped in the worst version of himself. And nothing she possessed—not her kiss freely given, nor her heart shyly offered—could break the thrall that held him because he had done it to himself.
When she turned to Séverin now, he was staring hungrily at the Sleeping Palace. He swept his dark hair away from his forehead. The barest smile touched his face. Before, he would have reached into his coat pocket for his tin of cloves. He once said they helped him think and remember, but he’d stopped reaching for them after Tristan had died. Laila wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as though not eating them would help him forget.
Laila returned to the others, and they watched as Séverin turned around the main atrium. Observation was his domain. She could hate him all she wanted, but she couldn’t deny that when it came to treasure, Séverin had a knack for understanding its context. Its story, in a way.
“We’ve been calling it a ‘palace,’” he said slowly. “But it’s not. It’s like a cathedral…”
Séverin made a note in one of his papers.
“What’s the holiest part of a cathedral?” he asked, more to himself than to the others.
Laila neither felt particularly qualified for nor interested in answering the question.
“The thing with the wine,” said Hypnos.
“How should I know?” shrugged Zofia.
“The altar,” said Enrique, shaking his head.
Séverin nodded, his chin turned so the winter light glowed across his face.
“Someone wants to play God.”
Laila’s mouth twisted into a hollow smile. Sometimes she wondered whether Séverin thought to do the same.
Ahead, four hallways branched out from the main atrium. Rather than risk being separated, they traveled as one unit, documenting things as they went. In the western hall was a library where nine female statues served as pillars. At least, itshouldhave been a library… but all the shelves were empty of books.
“They might be hidden,” said Enrique longingly, his fingers twitching to explore the room. But he dutifully followed the rest of them.
The southern hall broke off into the kitchens and a small infirmary. At the entrance to the eastern hall, goose bumps prickled along Laila’s arm. In the distance, she thought she heard… growls? No,snoring. A pair of arched double doors etched with designs of wolves and snakes opened up into a dimly lit room where huge, jagged bumps covered the marble floor. Zofia broke off a phosphorous pendant, and the light revealed that she wasn’t staring at bumps at all, but a menagerie of dozens of ice Forged animals. Lions with delicate ice whiskers, peacocks with a train offrosted feathers, wolves whose glassy fur bristled and gently rose and fell as if they lived and breathed.
Laila instantly recoiled, but none of the creatures moved. She studied them a moment longer, her fear giving way to awe.
“They’reasleep,” she said.
The animals slept with their paws bent, hooves tucked, and wings folded upon a creamy marble floor. Only one animal—an ice rhino—bothered to open its eyes at the sound of the doors. Its gaze flicked toward them, but it did not move.
