“My friends—” said Séverin, unable to tear his eyes from the screen.
“I will send them after you,” said the matriarch, grabbing his shoulders. “I have been planning for this ever since your mother begged me to protect you. They will have everything they need to come find you.”
It had taken Séverin a moment to understand.
“You know,” he’d said angrily. “Youknowwhere the map is to reach the temple beneath Poveglia, and you won’t tell me—”
“I can’t. It is too dangerous to speak aloud, and I have camouflaged it even from the safe house,” said the matriarch. “If the others fail, you must find the answer from Ruslan. And once you do, you must find a way to be rid of him. He will do everything in his power to keep track of you.”
“I—”
The matriarch had grabbed his chin, directing his gaze to the screen. Laila had crumpled to her knees, her hair falling across her face. Enrique lay sprawled out, bleeding on the ice. Zofia’s hands clutched at her dress, her grip white-knuckled. Even Hypnos, lying unconscious behind Séverin, would be destroyed if Ruslan succeeded. Something cold and inhuman coiled in Séverin’s stomach.
“What will you do to protect them?” asked the matriarch.
Séverin stared at his family, lingering a moment longer than he needed to on Laila. Laila and her warm smile, her rose water and sugar-scented hair… her body that would cease to house her soul in ten days’ time. She’d never told him how little time was left and now—
The matriarch’s grip on his chin tightened. “What will you do toprotectthem?”
The question jolted through him.
“Anything,” said Séverin.
Now, on the marble threshold outside Ruslan’s home, Séverin schooled his expression to blankness and regarded the kneeling man. He forced himself to answer Ruslan’s question. He didn’t know what the kneeling man had to do with Ruslan’s home, or how to enter it, which made his every word hold a strange balance.
“Indeed,” he said. “This man should be flattered.”
The kneeling man whimpered, and Séverin finally looked at him. On closer inspection, he was not a man at all, but a boy that looked to be in his late teens, perhaps only a few years younger than Séverin. He was pale, with blue eyes and dirty-blond hair. His limbs were skinny as a colt’s, and a flower poked out of the top button of his shirt. A lump rose in Séverin’s throat. The hair and eyes and flower… it was a flimsy echo, but for a moment, it was as if Tristan knelt at his feet.
“My father had a keen sense of understanding about the world,” said Ruslan.
The longer Séverin stared at the kneeling boy, the more he began to suspect the uncanny resemblance to Tristan was no mistake. His fingers twitched to reach out to the boy, to untie his hands and throw him into the stinking water so he might escape whatever Ruslan planned.
“Most importantly,” said Ruslan. “My father knew that nothing was without sacrifice.”
Ruslan’s hand blurred forward so quickly that Séverin didn’t have time to react. Séverin bit down on his tongue, tasting blood. It was the only thing that kept him from lurching forward to catch the boy and break his fall. The boy’s eyes widened for an instant before he slumped forward. Blood pooled from his slashed throat, spreading slowly over the marble threshold. Ruslan stared down at him, the knife in his hand now glossed with crimson. Wordlessly, he handed the blade to one of his followers.
“Sacrifice was built into the very design of our ancestral home,” continued Ruslan casually. “Father always knew it was our destiny to become gods… and all gods require sacrifice. That is why he named itCasa D’Oro Rosso.”
House of Red Gold.
Before, the house had seemed pale and nondescript. But the touch of blood had changed it. What had once been a colorless mosaic floor leading to the pale door, had begun to transform. As the blood seeped into the ground, the translucent stones shifted—a faint hue of crimson deepening to ruby. Cherry-dark garnet flecked the stones, haloed by patterns of pink quartz that formed a decorative geometric design. The color lazily bloomed outward until it hit the door. The white door blushed pink, swirls of dark gold crawling up from the marble and across the Forged wood that smoldered away,revealing the gold and iron scrollwork of a grand entryway. In one smooth motion, the door swung open.
“I believe the inlay stonework is in a style calledcosmatesque,” said Ruslan, gesturing at the threshold. “It’s beautiful, is it not?”
Séverin couldn’t stop staring at the body sprawled out on the dock, the blood steaming in the cold air. His palms turned damp, remembering the hot slip of Tristan’s blood on his skin when he’d held his brother’s body to his chest. The matriarch’s voice echoed in his head:He will test you before he trusts you.
Séverin swallowed hard, forcing his thoughts to Hypnos and Laila, Enrique and Zofia. They were counting on him to find the map to the temple beneath Poveglia. His instructions on the Mnemo bug he had left by an unconscious Laila had been clear: in three days’ time, they would meet at the appointed location in Venice. By then, they should have cracked the matriarch’s riddles and discovered where the map lay. If not, then it was up to him to find the answer. Once he had the answer, then he needed to figure out a way to be rid of Ruslan.
“It’s beautiful, yes,” said Séverin, arching an eyebrow. He wrinkled his nose. “But the reek of blood hardly agrees with this stinking Venetian air. Come, let us go, before it puts us off our appetite. One day soon, we shall demand more elegant offerings than blood.”
Ruslan smiled, gesturing him inside.
Séverin’s hand twitched. He pressed his thumb against the hard, crystalline strings of the divine lyre. He still remembered what it felt like to touch those strings with a bloodied hand… as if the pulse of the universe had run through him. In his hand alone lay the gates of godhood.
And in a matter of days, Séverin Montagnet-Alarie would be a god.
2
