The wood around the glowing splinter yielded with a sound that reminded him of someone riffling through the pages in a book. Enrique held his breath. Whatever he had grabbed hold of gave way with little resistance. Light burst across his vision, and something fell, the sound was like a dish clattering to the ground.
“What is that?” asked Zofia, moving closer.
It was a silver demi-mask. Perhaps there had once been ribbons affixed to the side, but they had long since disintegrated. The mask itself looked plain and unfinished, the metallic paint chipped in some places. And yet, the moment Enrique touched it, he felt a presence invading his thoughts… a glimpse of the inside of a salon, masks dangling from the ceiling, the soft glow of chandeliers. There was only one place it could be, themascherarisalon that hid the location to House Janus.
Maybe it was nothing more than fanciful imagination, but in that moment, Enrique wondered if something of that old Roman god had moved through the room. After all, Janus was the god of change and beginnings. And in that second, Enrique could almost taste the change in the air. It tasted of silver and ghosts, like the resurrection of an abandoned hope that was stirring, once more, to life.
10
LAILA
Laila watched the wedding party approach the bridge. Behind them, a moon as pale as the bride’s neck rose over the cathedral’s sloped roofs. Bleary-eyed stars winked in the sky and bore witness to the lovers. Laila’s throat felt tight as she watched them. She told herself not to look, but she couldn’t help it. Her eyes hungrily roved over every detail of the bride and groom.
They moved in tandem, as if to a song sung only for their ears. The bride’s frost-colored gown trailed over the cloud-white steps of the Bridge of Sighs. She had light brown hair, neatly pinned beneath a capped veil, and pearls wrapped around her forehead. Her groom, a weak-chinned man with wide eyes who became nearly handsome when he smiled, stared at her as if he had never beheld color until this moment. Behind the bride and groom, their friends and family cheered and laughed, throwing rice and petals in the air.
Laila moved back against the railing as they passed. She hadn’t meant to end up at the Bridge of Sighs, but her walking path away from the Piazza San Marco and past the Doge’s Palace had led toher being caught in the rain, and this was the fastest way back to the safe house. Beneath her, the white stones were still rain slick. The bride, unheeding in her joy, tripped and would have sprawled onto the stone if her husband hadn’t caught her. As her bouquet of snowdrops tumbled from her hand, Laila, unthinking, reached out and caught hold of the blue ribbon that held the flowers in place. The wedding party cheered, and she blushed without knowing why.
“You dropped this,” she said, trying to hand it to the bride.
But the girl shook her head, grinning. “No, sua buona fortuna per te.”
Laila had very little grasp of Italian, but she understoodbuona fortuna. The bride was saying it was good luck for her. Laughing, the bride folded Laila’s hands over the bouquet.
“E tuo,” she said.
It’s yours.
The bouquet’s memories knifed through Laila. She saw the snowdrops bound by a blue ribbon that had once adorned the bride’s blanket as a child. She saw the bride’s mother weeping softly into the flowers, whispering prayers into the petals. She heard the bride laughing as she took it from her sister—
Laila yanked her consciousness back. When she glanced down, her garnet ring looked like a fat bead of blood.Five. Five days were all she had left.
She stared at the snowdrops in her hand.
Laila tried to imagine a future where she was a bride. She tried to picture her mother, still living and weaving jasmine through her hair. She imagined aunts she had never known sliding gold bangles onto her wrists. She conjured the scent ofhenna, like rain-sweet hay, adorning her hands and feet, her bridegroom’s name hidden in the design as a secret invitation to touch her skin for the first time. Laila imagined theantarpatcurtain that separated them slowly falling, her bridegroom’s face concealed behind asehraofpearls. In her daydream, a pair of violet eyes met hers, and in his gaze, Laila felt that she was all the wonder and color in the world.
Laila nearly dropped the flowers.
“Foolish,” she told herself.
She would never be a bride. With every hour that passed, Laila realized the garnet ring would be the only ring she ever wore. Laila clung to her hope, but every day she felt it collapsing a little more. Every minute, she felt the space between her consciousness and the dark waters of oblivion vanishing. Sometimes, it was as if those dark waters were whispering to her, taunting her that it would be so much easier to let go. To drown.
Somewhere, a bell tolled, startling her from her thoughts. It was nearly midnight, and the others would be wondering where she had gone. There was work to be done. Objects that needed reading, plans that required finalizing.
But for that moment, Laila wished she could unfasten herself. She wanted to let in the moon and the clouds, the roofs of the cathedral and dim stars, and let it all burn and scrape inside her.
Around her, the sky deepened to shadows and velvet. Her mother used to tell her the oncoming night was the god Krishna wrapping them up in his arms, for his skin was the color of midnight. Laila used to love hearing tales of Krishna, the god of preservation reborn as a mischievous, human child.
One day Krishna’s human mother suspected he had eaten something he should not, and told the boy to open his mouth. Eventually, she convinced him. Behind Krishna’s teeth—in the lightless dark of his throat—burned suns and moons, dying stars and ice-rimed planets. His mother did not ask him to open his mouth again.
Laila knew some people could carry such things inside them.
Some people could walk with galaxies tilting at their heart,planets grinding against their ribs, whole worlds dragging in their wake and never stealing their balance.
Her mother used to say Laila was one of those people. She was born to carry more than herself. She could hold up, and cherish, the weight of others—their worries, their mistakes, their hopes of who they might be.
All this time, she had tried not to think of Séverin, but that foolish daydream had summoned his face to her thoughts. Now she knew for certain that he was the one person she could never hold.
She didn’t doubt that he cared for his friends in his own way. She didn’t even doubt that he felt deeply for her, or that it must have hurt him to forsake her and pretend to kill the others just to keep them safe.
