Besides, no amount of mind Forging had been able to corral the pigeons of Venice.
All night, Enrique couldn’t sleep. He polished his shoes. He washed his hair and neatly set it with wax. He plucked at every stray bit of dust on his suit. He wanted to press the wordsI don’t need youinto every stitched line of his jackets and pants.
At first, Enrique had balked at being given the task to meet with him alone tomorrow.
“Why do I have to see him?” he had asked. “He’ll find us at Carnevale anyway.”
Laila hesitated. Her gaze flicked—there and away—to his wounded ear.
“It’s Ruslan,” she said. “We can’t leave for Poveglia with the Fallen House on our trail. They must be dealt with, and Séverin said he would come up with a plan. So. Who will go to the piazza tomorrow?”
“Me!” said Hypnos, raising his hand.
“And risk a Sphinx authority catching sight of the patriarch of House Nyx?” asked Laila.
Hypnos lowered his hand slowly. “… Not me.”
“I have work,” said Zofia, eyeing the folded up Forged masks that Laila had brought back.
“I already dealt with him last night after I got our masks,” said Laila stiffly. She turned the ring on her hand.
Enrique felt a shudder run down his back when he thought of the four, cruel-looking, mind Forged masks. When Laila had returned and brought them out, he was curious. Each mask lookedlike a monstrous skull. When he placed it over his face, he wasn’t prepared for the force of its power. It was like his consciousness had been yanked out of him, images flashing of paths through alleyways and past waterfronts, familiar to him as a memory… and yet not a memory he had ever made. The mind Forged visions ended before a mosaic-patterned wall in an alley, which he supposed would be the entrance to Carnevale tomorrow.
“And I still have things I need to read around the safe house,” said Laila. “I want to make sure we don’t miss anything.”
Which left Enrique.
When they had all agreed, Enrique looked to Laila, who hung back while the others exited the room.
“What is it?” she asked.
“You never said what he was like when you saw him. Should we truly trust him?”
Laila lifted her chin. An imperial indifference settled over her features.
“He was… contrite,” she said. “And Idobelieve he means to help us, but he seems possessed by his idea. Like a man half-maddened. And yet underneath therewereglimpses of…”
Laila broke off, shaking her head. Enrique knew what she had been about to say.
Glimpses of who he had once been.
But they both knew those were dangerous grounds for hope. And even if Séverin had found his way back to who he had been, Enrique refused to be the personhehad once been, the foolish, wide-eyed historian whose trust was easily bought simply by indulging him. He wouldn’t be that fool. And he didn’t want to look like it either.
In a few minutes, he would have to leave for the piazza. Enrique studied his appearance one more time, turning his chin this way and that.
“You know,” said a voice at the entrance. “You are perhaps the only person I know who could look ravishing with one less ear.”
Enrique felt a dull pang of warmth as Hypnos—beautiful and immaculately dressed as always—stepped into the room. For the past few days, they had circled each other cautiously. Even on the evenings when Hypnos tried to enliven the group with some music, Enrique would not let a smile cross his lips.
“One, don’t toy with me,” said Enrique. “Two… since when are you awake before dawn?”
Hypnos didn’t answer him. Instead, he walked toward him slowly. The closer he got, the more Enrique felt as though he were testing a bruise. Did this hurt? What about now? A part of him winced at the other boy’s closeness, but it was no longer a jagged wound.
The truth was that Hypnos had always been honest with him. It was Enrique who hadn’t been honest with himself. Which made it all the more confusing when Hypnos reached out to cup his face, his fingers circling the outer edge of his bandages.
Enrique went still. “… What are you doing?”
“I’m not sure yet,” said Hypnos thoughtfully. “I believe it’s called ‘comforting,’ though such emotional exertion seems exhausting. If you require a distraction instead, you know I enjoy distracting you.”
