“Here,” she said, reaching for the tin of cloves on the tray. “This might be useful.”
She tossed it in the air, and Séverin caught it one-handed. He stared at it in disbelief. Her face turned hot.
“It’s to help you think,” explained Laila.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She could hear the mechanical tonelessness in her voice, and she sensed everyone—except Zofia, who was preoccupied with her third cookie—shifting uncomfortably. Let them, she thought. She had told Séverin the truth. Yes, he had a corner of her heart. But he had no claim to her dwindling time, and if these ended up becoming her last days, then she would spend them the way anyone should spend their life: giving herself what she deserved.
“What happened to your hand?” asked Séverin, his voice darkening.
Laila stared down at the bandage. By now, a black spot of blood had stained the wrapping. It ached a little, but not nearly as much as it should have.
“Nothing.” She glanced once at Séverin and knew immediately he was not convinced. “How soon can we leave for Poveglia?”
“We just need a couple more supplies from a night market and we can leave within hours,” said Enrique.
“Transport?”
“Already arranged,” said Hypnos.
Séverin nodded, not taking his eyes off Laila. “Then we leave before dawn.”
24
SÉVERIN
In the early hours of dawn,La Rialto Mercatoseemed like a place that should only be visited by denizens of the Otherworld. As Séverin walked around, he imagined bright-eyed fae creatures with spindly fingers hawking a necklace of dreams for the price of a kiss or rattling jars full of scales plucked from a fish that could speak prophecy. Around them, the predawn air whispered frost over the empress plums and dusky figs. Piles of currants in the fruit stands gleamed like cut rubies. Miniature Venetian masks chimed together, and women with hunched backs and blue-veined hands draped delicate lace beside carved brass keys. The glass artists had only just begun to set out their wares, and Séverin watched in wonder as Murano glass ornaments blown into stained-glass swans flew from one stall to the next while delicate bouquets of crystal flowers wilted and bloomed by the hour.
Séverin, Hypnos, and Enrique walked to thepescheria, where Hypnos had made arrangements for a local fisherman to take them to Poveglia. Back at the matriarch’spalazzo, Laila and Zofia werefinishing up final preparations. All the while, Séverin found himself turning to Enrique, wholly expecting the historian to wax poetic about the Gothic architecture and the Byzantine cathedral or go into extraordinary detail about an algae-covered statue until he was forcibly dragged away from the spot. But every time Séverin worked up the courage to speak to him, Enrique would turn his head, and the sight of that bandaged wound would hit him like a physical blow.
Séverin had let that happen to his friend.
Worse, he’d let Enrique believe he was unwanted… when he was anything but.
While he was still trying to work out what to say and how to say it, Enrique fell into step beside him. He looked tense… hesitant.
“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?” he asked suddenly. “Reminds me of something you’d commission in L’Eden.”
On Séverin’s other side, Hypnos grumbled, pulling his ermine furs more tightly around his neck. “It’scoldis what it is.”
“Perhaps something for a spring commission,” he found himself saying. “It could be an interesting installation in the lobby. A magical Night Bazaar perhaps.”
Enrique’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. A wary grin touched the historian’s mouth and he nodded. “Perhaps.”
Before, Séverin’s hopes had felt massive and vague… but this was small. This was a hope that could fit inside a room. That at the end of all this winter there would be a spring and something beautiful to mark the occasion.
Smiling to himself, he reached into his breast pocket, past the divine lyre sewn into his jacket by Zofia’s Forged steel threads, and grabbed his tin of cloves. He popped one of them into his mouth, its powerful, burning flavor flooding his senses immediately.
Enrique wrinkled his nose. “I hate that smell.”
“Laila doesn’t mind,” said Hypnos with a knowing grin at Séverin.
In the past, Séverin would have brushed them off and gone silent… but had he not promised them transparency in all things? And were not issues such as this supposed to be discussed among friends? He turned the clove over, letting the bitterness flood his tongue before he said, “Laila minds quite a lot of other things. Including, but not limited to, the reckless disregard of her feelings, faithlessness to our friends, and—her opinion, not mine—an egocentric and zealous pursuit to right my wrongs and protect my loved ones. I doubt she has the space to mind my clove habits.”
Enrique winced, and Hypnos sighed and shook his head.
