“I cannot,” said Hypnos quickly, his eyes going to the door. “Séverin needs me—”
“What ifIneeded you?” asked Enrique. And then, softly, “Would it even matter?”
“Séverin is the closest I have to family,” said Hypnos. “I have to go to him.”
Pity flashed through his heart.
“I don’t think Séverin sees it that way,” said Enrique gently. “Trust me, Hypnos… I recognize what one-sided affection looks like.” His hand fell to his side. “At least, I recognize it now.”
Hypnos went still. In his stillness lay all the answer Enrique needed. He saw, with a weary clarity, everything he hadn’t wanted to notice. How he had reached for something Hypnos wasn’t willing to offer. How the other boy seemed happiest when he was with the group, instead of just him. Hypnos had told him from the start that this was casual, and yet Enrique had kept trying to make it…more. An ache settled behind his rib cage. The room felt larger, and he felt all the more diminished.
Hypnos’s mouth twisted with guilt.
“Ohmon cher, it is not one-sided, it is merely—”
“—Not enough,” finished Enrique, looking down at his shoes.
Hypnos moved closer. Dimly, Enrique felt the other boy’s warm fingers tipping up his chin.
“I am quite charmed by you, my historian,” said Hypnos. “You and I… we understand each other’s pasts.”
But a shared past didn’t make a future. And Hypnos seemed to know this too.
“I think, with enough time, I could learn to love you,” said Hypnos.
Enrique reached up, slowly removing Hypnos’s hand from his face. He held the other boy’s hand, then curled it into a fist, brushing his lips once against Hypnos’s knuckles.
“Perhaps we both deserve someone who is not so hard to love,” said Enrique.
“Enrique—”
“I’ll be fine,” said Enrique. “You broke no promises to me. Just go.”
Hypnos opened his mouth as if he’d say more, but in the end, chose silence. He met Enrique’s eyes, nodded stiffly, and left the room.
Enrique stared out the empty door. He felt hollow, as if a stray winter wind would blow right through him. Haltingly, he took a deep breath. The library smelled of paper and ink… and possibility. And that, in the end, was where he turned his attention. He needed the sanctuary of work, and judging from what he’d glimpsed of the treasures, there was much work to be done. It was only when he turned fully from the door that he realized he wasn’t alone. Zofia stood there, twirling a lit match between her fingers and eyeing a table full of treasures. She’d stayed, and he didn’t know what to make of that. She looked him in the eye, her blue eyes fierce.
“Do you need help?” she asked.
AROUND THEM, THE LIBRARYseemed to take on new meaning. The caryatids of the muses had folded their hands against theirbreastbones, the iconography of their particular fields gleaming on their person and wrought in stone. Enrique saw the lyre of Calliope, the chief of the muses and the muse of epic poetry; the cornet of Clio, muse of history; the aulos of Euterpe, muse of music; the kithara of Erato, muse of love poetry; the tragic mask of Melpomene, muse of tragedy; the veil of Polymynia, muse of hymns; the lyre of Terpsichore, muse of dance; the shepherd’s crook of Thalia, muse of comedy; and the compass of Ourania, muse of astronomy. A shiver ran down his spine as he regarded them. Once, they had been revered as the goddesses of inspiration, but what had they inspired in this place except murder? And why were all their objects broken?
“What are we looking for?” asked Zofia, walking to one of the tables laden with treasure. “Where else could the book be?”
Zofia reached out, touching a delicate Medusa crown, a Forged object from ancient Greece capable of rendering small objects to stone. One of the little stone serpents recoiled at her touch, and its body tightened to a sharp crimp… the shape struck Enrique as deeply familiar. Like a figure eight. It looked like something he’d seen only moments ago. He walked to the nearest muse, studying the sign he’d found etched on each of their palms days ago:
He held his notebook up to the symbol, and then… turned it to the side, the way he’d seen the Forged snake only moments ago.
His pulse fluttered. When the symbol was turned, it wasn’t a backwards three at all, but the lowercase form of the last letter of the Greek alphabet, omega.Alpha and omega. All he had to do was extend and curve the linesjust so, and it was nearly identical to the lemniscate symbol, which was the mathematical representation of infinity. Supposedly, the lemniscate’s figure eight shape was derived from the lowercase form of omega, which in Greek translated to only one thing:
“The first and the last, the beginning and the end,” whispered Enrique.
The literal power of God, the power thatThe Divine Lyricswas supposed to access. And he knew he’d seen it before somewhere.
“Zofia, can you get the tome?” he asked.
Zofia reached for it on the table and brought it over. There, embossed on the surface was that identicalWshape… a buried lemniscate.
“See that?” he asked.
