Enrique groaned. He knew he was still sore, but now a pleasant hum settled through his blood. Eva’s work, perhaps. When he turned his head, he saw Zofia and Ruslan on the left side of his bed, while Laila and Séverin stood near the foot.
“Bravery is physically exhausting,” he managed.
“You’re awake!” cried Laila, hugging him.
“You’realive.”
“And your hair remains exceptional,” said Ruslan kindly.
“C’est vrai,” said a warm voice.
Enrique turned to his right, and there was Hypnos, one warm hand at his shoulder. That cold knot of rejection that had coiled in his heart the moment Hypnos had left him at the library eased into warmth. He could’ve been at Séverin’s side, but he’d chosen him.
“What did you find out?” asked Séverin brusquely.
“Can’t this wait?” asked Laila.
“No,” said Enrique, pushing himself up on his elbows.
The longer he looked at Laila, the more the world sharpened with urgency. In that second, he felt the weight of their eyes on him. The irony of it was almost funny. Finally, he thought, they were all listening to him. Except it happened to be at the exact moment when all he wanted was silence. And sleep. But he didn’t want to imagine what nightmares would chase him through sleep. He’d given those dark dreams too much to feed upon—the dead girls in the grotto, the piled-up hands behind the stone-faced muses. A shudder ran down his spine, and he forced himself to sit upright.
“We were wrong about the Lost Muses,” said Enrique.
Ruslan tilted his head. “The women who supposedly guardThe Divine Lyrics?”
“Not just guard,” said Enrique. “There was apparently something in their bloodline that allowed them to read the book itself. I don’t think it’s a myth. Not anymore.”
“But that’s impossible, mon cher,” said Hypnos. “What woman has a bloodline like that? And what does that have to do with those poor girls?”
Enrique stared at his lap. He could think of only one woman with a bloodline that let her do the impossible: Laila. And her very existence depended on findingThe Divine Lyrics. He avoided her eyes.
“Enrique?” prompted Séverin.
“I don’t know who would have that bloodline,” said Enrique, forcing his thoughts back to the conversation. “But it’s clear the Fallen House believed in it. In the portal courtyard, I saw depictions of women without their hands, offering them to the muses. And none of those girls that we found—”
“—had their hands,” finished Laila softly.
“I think once the Fallen House gotThe Divine Lyrics, they tried to find women of the bloodline necessary to read the book. And when they couldn’t do that, they… they sacrificed them, arranging them like a shadow of the Lost Muses, like guardians for their treasures andThe Divine Lyricsthat they couldn’t decipher. They might have kept finding more girls, but then they were exiled.”
Laila’s hand flew to her mouth. Beside her, Zofia and Eva looked sick.
“And it’s not just blood,” said Enrique, thinking of the old man’s gouged-out eyes. “I think there’s more to it, like sight.”
“The old man,” said Eva, her eyes narrowing. “He said something about how if you cannot see the divine, then you don’t know where touseit? I didn’t understand what that meant.”
“I didn’t either,” admitted Enrique.
Séverin turned a small knife in his hand, and spoke slowly, as if to himself. “So to readThe Divine Lyrics, someone would need a girl of the bloodline.”
A frisson of cold traveled down Enrique’s back. The way Séverin said it… as if. No. No, thought Enrique firmly. He would never do that. He wanted the book to avenge Tristan. Anything else was madness.
“But what about the other treasures of the Fallen House?” asked Ruslan. “Did the symbols lead to anything?”
Enrique shook his head. “I believe it’s a coded alphabet, but without more symbols or a key, I can’t crack it.”
At this, Zofia cleared her throat. She held up a Mnemo bug, and he remembered that she’d seen something inside the leviathan.
“I found more symbols,” said Zofia. “I think we can crack the code.”
