“You’re welcome.”
6
SÉVERIN
All night, Séverin turned the divine lyre in his hands, counting down the moments until dawn. He could hear the Fallen House members standing guard outside his chamber. Carmine and garnets studded the four walls. A Forged chandelier of red Murano glass rotated slowly overhead. There were no windows, but dozens of candles flickering in bronzed sconces conspired to make the red walls look shiny with blood.
In the center of the chamber stood a claw-footed golden bed with a scarlet canopy and matching silks. Every time Séverin looked at it, he remembered a different bed, one carved of ice and draped in frost and gossamer. He remembered Laila astride his lap, looking down at him the way a goddess beholds a supplicant.
On that night, he wondered if his touch was the inverse of alchemy. One touch, and she was no longer as golden and distant as paradise, but human and earthly and entirely within reach. When he touched her, he felt her heartbeat beneath the hot velvet of her skin. When he rose over her, he watched her eyes widen, her teethcatch on her bottom lip, turning it a red so vivid, he had to know what it tasted like. Even now, the flavor haunted him. Rose water and sugar, and the faintest trace of salt from where she’d bitten down on his lip, drawn blood, and apologized with a kiss a moment later.
Séverin knew she must have read the Mnemo bug he had left beside her on the ice by now. He’d had only moments to record it, barely enough time to give her the name of the meeting place in three days’ time. But before he had ended the Mnemo recording, he had said one last thing:
Don’t forget that I am your majnun. Always.
Even without sleeping, he dreamt of her face and the faces of Tristan, Enrique, Zofia, and Hypnos. By now, they would understand he’d manipulated them. They would be furious at his lies and all his cruelty until that moment… but they would forgive him, wouldn’t they? They would understand that all he had done, all the ugliness he had committed, it was all for them. Or had he gone too far? He knew he’d made terrible mistakes and broken their trust, but he hoped what they’d seen in the Mnemo bug was enough to earn back a sliver of their belief in him. And once they were together, he would begin to make full amends.
In his hands, the instrument of the divine weighed as much as a bird’s nest. For him alone, the ten strings on the lyre glowed like threads of sunlight, like a hope and a promise real enough to touch. With this instrument, the world would never be able to hurt him or his loved ones again. With this, Laila could live and perhaps even love. With this, Tristan could come back to life. Séverin could remake them all with a touch. He could pour sunlight down their veins and fashion them wings if they wished to fly. And he would. All he had to do was get to the temple beneath Poveglia, enter it, play the lyre.
“I will make us all gods,” Séverin vowed.
As the candles burned down to their stubs, Séverin weighed his next steps. He needed to get rid of Ruslan, but he couldn’t do that until the patriarch of the Fallen House revealed where he could find the map to the temple’s entrance hidden beneath Poveglia. In that time, he also needed to establish an excuse to leave Casa d’Oro… perhaps Eva could be of use.
Outside his bedroom door, he heard the Fallen House members moving down a hallway. He expected them to follow his every move, and if it looked as if he were cataloguing the home, it would be too suspect.
Ruslan had barely let him glimpse what lay inside Casa d’Oro before he had him escorted to his room. Séverin had walked slowly, feigning exhaustion, but all the while, he noted all that he could. He’d caught the scent of tilled earth and heard the distant flap of wings. A courtyard garden, perhaps? Or a menagerie? Past the entrance, he’d spied a grand, curving staircase disappearing to uppermost balconies, and a door halfway open revealing a kitchen on the main floor. It wasn’t enough to make a plan… but it was a start.
Though there were no windows in his chamber, Séverin could hear the boats on the water, and, just beyond his wall, the scamper of small feet and fighting orphans. Slowly, a plan began to form.
AT DAWN, SÉVERINstepped outside the bedroom door. A pair of guards stood, unmoving, not two meters from him. In the dimness, Séverin could just make out the shape of Casa d’Oro. His bedroom branched off from a bloodred hallway with multiple arches. Mirrors lined the walls. Not six meters away, he spied the kitchen entrance. Excellent, he thought. He turned to his guards and smiled.
“Is Patriarch Ruslan awake?” he asked.
The Fallen House member refused to speak. Or perhaps he couldn’t. Thevoltomask covered everything but his eyes, and even those had a curious milkiness to them, as if he were blind. Or dead. In place of his lips, a golden Mnemo honeybee whirred. Séverin waved at it.
“Well, if you won’t tell me that, will you at least tell me where I might find the kitchen?” he asked.
As if on cue, his stomach growled. The man said nothing, but turned and walked some paces down to the half-opened door Séverin had seen the night before. When he stepped inside, Séverin felt a gnawing absence. He was used to the kitchens of L’Eden, bursting with Laila’s latest baking experiments. He imagined Enrique and Tristan fighting over the mixing bowl of cake batter, Zofia licking a spoon of white frosting while Laila hollered at all of them to leave her alone for a moment. He expected sugar on the countertops, a jam bubbling on the stove… but the kitchens of Casa d’Oro were entirely empty save for a bowl of red apples on a low-lying table. Séverin took a loud bite of one, then pocketed two more.
“I’ll wait to break the rest of my fast with Patriarch Ruslan, but in the meantime, I’d like to watch the sunrise,” he said. “If you have no objections, you’re welcome to join.”
Once more, the man said nothing. Séverin walked to the front door. As he did, four more members of the Fallen House seemed to melt from out of the shadows, falling into step behind him.
“A morning entourage,” he said. “I am flattered by the company.”
“Stop!” called someone loudly.
Séverin turned to see Eva striding toward him. She wore a yellow-silk morning robe that trailed over the red tiles. Around herneck lay that familiar silver pendant in the shape of a ballerina. Eva was the daughter of Mikhail Vasiliev, a St. Petersburg aristocrat, and a dead prima ballerina. Séverin remembered Laila pleading with her about her father…
“We can protect you,” she had said. “You don’t have to do this… we can bring you back to your father and we promise Ruslan will never be able to hurt him.”
He remembered Eva’s hesitation, the way her gaze dropped to the ice as Laila pleaded.
“I know you love him,” Laila had said. “I saw it in your necklace. I know you regret that you left his home… we can bring you back to him.”
So that was Ruslan’s hold on her. If she didn’t follow his commands, her father would pay. Séverin tucked that information aside for later.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Eva demanded.
