“Enrique—” said Laila, starting after him.
“Sorry,mon cher,” said Hypnos apologetically, before he darted after Enrique and Laila.
Only Zofia was left. His engineer regarded him warily, twirling an unlit matchstick in her hand.
“Phoenix?” he said softly.
“I do not like what you did.”
Something inside Séverin shrank.
Zofia’s burning blue eyes lifted to his. “But I understand why you did it.”
“Do I have your forgiveness?”
Zofia considered this. “You have… more time.”
“I’ll take whatever you will give me,” he said, and smiled.
22
ENRIQUE
Enrique set off down the hallway, his ears—or rather his one ear and what was left of the other—burning.
“Enrique!” called Hypnos behind him.
Enrique whipped around, snarling. “Am I not allowed a single moment to myself?”
Hypnos looked stunned. His outstretched hand snapped back to his chest. Beside him, Laila rested a hand on his shoulder, a parental gesture that said “let him go,” which only made Enrique more furious as he stomped off.
Initially, it had felt sogoodto stomp out of the room—as if he was doing something productive, as if he really could just unfasten himself from all the chaos around him. But it was a false relief that faded almost immediately into cold and sticky shame.
What the hell was he doing?
He couldn’t walk away, and he didn’t want to. Every hour they lost put Laila’s life in danger. Still, he needed a moment to himself if he was going to function.
Enrique slammed the door of the music room behind him. He rarely came in here. It was, more or less, Hypnos’s domain. It was here that the patriarch of House Nyx released his beautiful, singing voice and perhaps something of that beauty clung to the walls because, finally, Enrique could breathe easier. Now what? he thought. Unbidden, his mother’s voice called him.
“One way or another, you’ll have to face thetsinela,” she’d say.
Enrique shuddered. Atsinelawas technically nothing more than a sandal, but in the hands of a Filipino mother, it gained an aura of inevitable horror.
Cirila Mercado-Lopez looked like a doll of a woman. Small-boned and spare, with bird-black eyes and fine, dark hair swept into a neat black bun, Enrique’s mother hardly looked like the kind of woman who could drive her three, tall sons into deadly stampedes trying to get out of the house.
But her anger was legendary.
It could be because one of them—usually Enrique or Francisco—had found the desserts earlier and gotten a head start before dinner. Or a prank on the neighborhood had been traced back to them—generally Enrique or Juan. Or one of the brothers—almost always Enrique—tried to skip church on the pretense of illness, only to be found swimming in the ocean. Sometimes, they’d get away with it. Other times, the house would be silent and then…thud. The moment the brothers heard the sound of their mother’s woodentsinelassliding off her feet and hitting the floor, the three of them would prepare to bolt.
“Buwisit!Go ahead and run!” Their mother would laugh. She’d pick up her sandal and smack the stair bannister lightly. “Thetsinelawill be here when you come back.”
Enrique almost missed his mother’s punishments. He would’ve much rather faced a wooden sandal than Séverin.
Part of him felt furious that Séverin would throw off the course of their plans by even asking for forgiveness, and the other part felt relieved that he wanted it in the first place. The moment he’d returned to them at Carnevale, Enrique felt dislocated. Every stilted interaction reminded him of how they used to be. But then he remembered the months of cold silence. He recalled, all over again, that weightless rush he’d experienced in the Sleeping Palace.
Séverin had known his dreams and used them against him. Séverin had let him imagine that he was unwanted, his scholarly work unneeded. For all that he’d once promised to lift him up, he had kept him small. Intentionally malleable.
It made Enrique nauseous all over again.
