“Ah,Majnun. The madman who lost himself to an impossible dream,” said Ruslan. He laughed softly, then glanced at the clock. “I wish you both a good night, and am honored to have spent suchan illuminating evening in your company. Good luck tomorrow, Monsieur Montagnet-Alarie.”
He bowed once and turned back to his dessert plate.
SÉVERIN DIDN’T REMEMBERclimbing to the top of the stairs, but he must have.
He didn’t remember opening the door to their suite either, but he must have done that too, for here they were. The silence lay thickly around them, and perhaps that was why when he finally spoke, it seemed louder than he intended.
“Is it true?”
Laila startled. She had taken a seat at the ice-and-marble vanity in the corner of the room, her back to him as she drew off her gloves and removed her jewelry.
“Is what true?”
“My—” He stopped, gathered himself, started anew: “The name you called me. Did you take it from that poem?”
“Yes,” she said.
It struck him then that even before she had kissed him and tangled up some roots inside him so deeply that he would—without thinking—chooseher over his own brother… she had already marked him for someone who she would never belong to, an attachment that could only end in disappointment. How well she’d chosen his name.
He was mad, then, to think fate would let him be happy.
Perhaps he was mad, now, to try and change it.
Laila fumbled with the zipper at the back of her dress. Slowly, he went to her. He almost didn’t realize what he was doing… all this time, he’d only ever tried to put distance between them. Toget close to her now flew in the face of all of that, and yet he knew there was some transaction to be made if he wanted the truth. When he stood too close to her, he felt weak. No doubt she would feel weak by parting with her secrets, and so he must meet her on equal ground.
“Tell me what happens at the end of the poem, Laila,” he said.
Laila closed her eyes, as if armoring herself. None of that, he thought. He reached out and swept her hair across one shoulder. Goose bumps prickled along her skin as she bowed her neck, graceful as a swan. His hands brushed against the caught zipper. Its teeth had gotten tangled up in the silk. At his touch, Laila flinched a little. She usually hated for anyone to see her scar, but this time she made no move to hide herself, as if just this once, she too was willing to be bare.
“Tell me, Laila,” he said.
The zipper slid down an inch. In the reflection, Laila opened her eyes.
“Once, a boy and a girl fell in love, but they could not be together,” she said. “The girl married another. The boy went mad, and—”
Her breath caught as he pushed the zipper farther.
“And?” he echoed.
“And he abandoned himself to the wilds of the desert,” she said. She refused to look at him. “At the end, they had a chance to be together, but they chose not to.”
Séverin slid the zipper farther. Now, he could count the delicate bones of her back. If he wanted, he could trace that glassy scar that some fiend had once led her to believe was a mark of her very unnaturalness. Once, he’d kissed his way down the line of it.
“In the end, they chose to preserve the thought of the other, uncorrupted, in their hearts.”
Séverin’s hand stilled. In the vanity’s reflection, Laila finally met his eyes. “I don’t think Laila could stand to see how much her Majnun had lost himself to the wilderness in his soul.”
She made no move to cover herself or leave, even with her dress almost completely unzipped. He recognized the tension in the line of her shoulders, the lift of her chin… the taut stillness ofwaiting.
For him.
Unthinking, Séverin bent toward the hollow of her neck. He watched her eyes flutter shut, her head tilt back. Laila called to him like a long night’s dreamless sleep after months of unrest. His lips were almost at her skin, when he stopped.
What was he doing?
Laila was a mirage glimpsed through smoke. A temptation in the desert that lulls the soul into thinking of false promises. Séverin had his promise, scrawled inside the jaws of the mechanical leviathan slumbering beneath the ice grotto. His promise lay behind the teeth of the devil. Tomorrow, he would have it, and he would be free.
Her words rang through his head.
