Hypnos clutched his heart. “Will it come after us?”
“I don’t think it can fit through the door,” said Zofia.
Enrique crossed himself. “Laila, did you—”
But he stopped. All of them stopped when they looked at Laila. Tears streamed down her face. The sight twisted inside Séverin.
“Laila,ma chère, what is it?” asked Hypnos.
“Those s-statues,” she choked. “They’re not statues.”
She raised her gaze, her eyes finding Séverin’s. “They’re dead girls.”
18
ENRIQUE
Enrique caught his breath.
He knew they had just gotten attacked by a mechanical leviathan, but it was the statues—no, thegirls—who kept pushing to the forefront of his mind. There was something across their mouths, something that demanded noticing.
“Did anyone notice the symbols—” he started, only for Séverin to whirl on him, his eyes feral with anger.
“Notnow,” he said harshly.
Shame spread hot through his stomach. He was only trying to help. There was something about the arrangement of those girls that reeked of intention. Follow the intention, find the treasure. That was what Séverin used to say. Enrique was only trying to do that, and not for himself and whatever glory it might buy him, but for Laila. Out of the faith that what he did could have meaning to the people who mattered most.
What if what he’d seen could help them findThe Divine Lyrics?Then she would live. His research on the book had sometimes mentioned the lore of female guardians. Between that and the dead girls in the grotto, Enrique sensed the possibility of a connection. It called to him like a kernel of a secret, and he needed to root it out.
By now, Eva had rushed to meet them in the atrium of the Sleeping Palace. Séverin quickly told her what had happened in the ice grotto.
“A mechanicalleviathan?” Eva repeated, staring back down the hallways.
“And all those girls,” whispered Laila. “Strung up like…”
She couldn’t finish her sentence. Enrique tried to reach for her hand, but she startled when the matriarch rushed into the atrium. Delphine Desrosiers never had a hair out of place. He didn’t even think her shadow dared to stretch across a sidewalk without her permission. But when she ran in now, her eyes looked wild and her steel-colored hair frizzed around her face.
“They said there was an attack,” she said breathlessly.
Her eyes went straight to Séverin, but he wasn’t looking at her.
“Are you hurt?” asked Delphine.
“No,” said Séverin.
Finally, she wrenched her gaze from Séverin and glanced over everyone else. When she caught sight of Laila, her face softened. She took off her own cloak and draped it around Laila’s shoulders.
“I’ll take her. She needs some hot broth and a blanket,” said Delphine. She narrowed her eyes at Séverin when he moved to block her. “Not you.”
Laila looked so frail, the great fur coat hanging off her shoulders. Beside him, Séverin watched her a beat too long… and then he turned his face and stared down the hallway.
“We need eyes on whatever is inside that room,” he said darkly. “And we need to make sure it can’t getout.”
Zofia nodded. “I’ve got an incendiary net prepped and ready. There are Mnemo bugs already positioned to record its movements inside the grotto.”
“I’ll get the Sphinxes,” said Eva. “They’ve got motion-sensitive thread and enough weapons to alert us if it makes it past the door.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Hypnos, looking at Eva. “For all we know, thatthingmight already be planning to sneak into the atrium—”
