“I’ve bought him a teacup in which he can put his wine. He was, also, not enthused.”
“And try not to lecture them the moment they ask a question about anything on the premises,” said Séverin.
Enrique looked highly affronted. “Would it really be a lecture?” He raised his hands and wiggled his fingers. “Or would it be anunhingingof their known world?”
Séverin stared at him. “Perhaps there is enough that is unhinged in this household.”
“Hmpf,” said Enrique. As he turned to the door, he cast a scathing glance at Argos, who was napping beside the fireplace. “You are an overpriced and overpainted chicken, and you are lucky you are not evenremotelyedible. I hope you know that.”
Argos slept on.
Séverin laughed. When Enrique left, he stroked Argos’s feathers and then returned to his desk. On the wooden surface lay a tarnished ouroboros that had once been pinned to his father’s lapel. Séverin traced the shape slowly, remembering the sneer in Lucien Montagnet-Alarie’s voice as he imparted what he considered the most precious piece of advice to his son:
We can never escape ourselves, my boy… we are our own end and beginning, at the mercy of a past which cannot help but repeat itself.
“You’re wrong,” said Séverin under his breath.
But even as he said it, he didn’t truly know whether he had spoken the truth. There was much he could not claim to know. He did not know what it meant when Laila had said they would always be connected so long as she lived. He did not know whether she would keep her promise and return to him. He didn’t know whether his efforts would make a difference, or whether the world would turn on indifferently and leave his legacy in the dust.
Outside the window came the crunch of hoofbeats over gravel. Séverin’s heartbeat sped up as he looked through the glass and saw them for the first time in months: Luca and Filippo, the orphan brothers from Venice. It had taken ages to locate them, and a mere month for the adoption papers to be drawn. Séverin had been preparing for this moment for the better part of a year, but right then, the sheer weight of what he was undertaking knocked the wind out of his lungs.
He swallowed hard, his grip on the windowsill turning white-knuckled as he held his breath and watched Luca and Filippo step out of the carriage. It was not a large step, and yet Luca held out his hand to the younger Filippo and did not let go even when they both stood on the gravel. Though he had arranged for food and shelter, they were still far too thin and rather small for their age. In their too-big clothes and new haircuts, they looked like changelings who had tumbled into the human world. When Luca wrapped his arm around his brother, Séverin felt a sharp ache knifing behind his ribs.
Slowly, he released his breath.
Slowly, he let go of the windowsill.
Behind him, Argos made an inquisitive screech.
“It’s time,” he said.
Séverin took one last glance at the ouroboros brooch. Maybe his father was right. Maybe he was fooling himself, and all he was doing was taking his place in an endless loop outside his control. Maybe his last kiss with Laila was nothing but a delusion brought on by the crumbling temple. Maybe she existed in the fringes of dreams and nothing more.
But faith was a stubborn thing, and the world’s turning only acted as a lathe that made it that much sharper as it cut through the fog of all he did not know.
Could he live with this unknown?
Could he make peace with it?
Yes, he thought, although he often felt more certain on some days than others. Nevertheless, he would do what most mortals did.
He would try.
EPILOGUE
The first time Séverin made a cake, he used salt instead of sugar.
It was, as Enrique kindly put it, an absolute disaster.
Even so, Séverin was delighted. Laila had considered it impossible that he would ever make a cake. To do so, no matter how awful it was, made him think that perhaps other things that seemed impossible could come true.
And in some ways, they did.
Time treated Séverin with a light hand, and with each passing year, he began to understand what Laila had meant when she promised they would always be connected.
No gray touched his hair. No wrinkle marred his face. It had astonished Enrique and outright annoyed Hypnos, who believed that out of all of them, he was the most deserving of eternal youth.
Séverin himself didn’t necessarily care for eternal youth. If anything, it only complicated his life in Paris and guardianshipover Luca and Filippo, and yet it was a sign too. A sign he didn’t understand until he spoke with Zofia.
