“I can be that person.”
Laila laughed, but it was a hollow sound. Séverin felt a chasm opening up inside him. He stared at the inside of his wrists where his veins stood out, full of the only bloodline that the divine lyre answered to. For all his power, he was powerless to stop her grief.
He watched her, his eyes drawn to the garnet ring on her hand where the numberthreestared accusingly at him. Shame snapped through him. All she had was two days, and he was forcing her to spend even a minute justifying why she wouldn’t be with him? What was wrong with him?
“Gather the others,” he said, forcing himself up on his elbows. “I won’t waste any more of your time by telling you how I feel.”
Laila looked away. “Séverin—”
“I am yourmajnun, am I not? My hopes may make me foolish, but it is something I cannot help.” He reached for her chin, turning her face to his. Her eyes were wide, full of hope and wariness all at once. “My hope is this… that I may show you that I can be the person you deserve.”
WITHIN TWENTY MINUTES,Enrique, Hypnos, Zofia, and Laila gathered in the library. Séverin felt a familiar pang of recognition atEnrique’s research documents—paintings, maps, statues—strewn across the long table. He could almost see the historian hunched over them, delicately turning the frail pages of an ancient scroll of paper. At the end of the table was the small, golden box holding the map to Poveglia. Beside it, the lyre. The moment he saw it, a pressure inside his chest unknotted.
Séverin glanced at his crew. He had longed for this for days, and now he had it. And yet the image seemed knocked askew from his wishes. They did not smile. They did not recline on the chairs, balancing sweets on their laps, and joking.
Enrique’s face was stony. He looked caught between wanting to scream and wishing to stay silent. Zofia looked wary. Laila refused to look at anything except the ring on her finger, and Hypnos kept grinning at him, then grinning back at the others—to no avail.
“Ruslan’s gondola exploded,” said Zofia suddenly.
Séverin felt a little stunned. It was as they’d planned, was it not? And yet, out of nowhere, came the last memory he had with Ruslan… of the patriarch staring up at him, wild-eyed with hope.
“Yes,” said Séverin.
“He did not survive it,” said Zofia.
“No,” said Séverin slowly. “He did not… but Eva—”
“Eva got out,” said Laila, still not looking at him. “She took a third of Hypnos’s funds—”
“Emergencyfunds, I might add,” sniffed Hypnos.
“And she said that when the time came, she would call on you.”
Séverin nodded, and they stood in silence for a minute.
“He was not a good man,” said Zofia quietly.
The unsaid part of her sentence hung in the air:And yet…
And yet they had killed him.
It left Séverin with a cold sense of awareness. But not guilt. He did not regret what he had done to keep them safe, but he mourned the man Ruslan might have been had power not corrupted him.
“We did what had to be done,” Séverin said. “We’ll carry the weight of that always, but we didn’t have a choice. Weneedto get to the temple beneath Poveglia, and now we can. But… before we make any more plans, I owe all of you an apology.”
“And an ear,” snapped Enrique. He touched his bandages. “What gave you therightto do what you did? We trusted you, and you threw it all in our faces. You manipulated me. You might’ve killed Laila. You blackmailed Zofia into staying with you when her sister was sick—”
Séverin frowned. “I thought Hela was healed?”
“I don’t know,” said Zofia, her face bleak. “I lost the letter.”
Séverin frowned. He had no idea what she was talking about.
“Though it’s been days, you might as well have missed years,” snapped Enrique.
Séverin held himself still. He forced himself to look each of them in the eye.
“I had no right to act as I did,” he said. “I thought I was protecting you, but I went about it the wrong way. Forgive me. When I lost Tristan—”
