“What is it?” asked Laila.

Séverin winced as he pushed himself up and flashed a weak smile.

“I haven’t felt like this in a long time.”

“I hardly believe that,” said Laila tightly. “How many near-death traps have you escaped? You should be accustomed to the feeling by now.”

“That’s not what I’m feeling.”

“Then what?”

She had not moved from her spot by the door, and though it hurt that she was instantly prepared to bolt, he knew he deserved it. He touched the bandage at his side, breathing deeply.

“Taken care of,” he said.

“No one’s ever cared for you?” she asked mockingly. “Are you saying that all the times I’ve tried to pull you back from grief, or Hypnos tried to be there for you, or Enrique and Zofia—”

“This is different,” said Séverin.

As the room brightened, he recognized the furious color in her cheeks and the hard set to her mouth. Séverin felt something unhinge inside him, a door swinging open that he’d long kept shut. The things he had no desire to say spun out of him.

“All those things you have done for me, which I so ungratefully cast aside, shame me. And yes, those were acts of compassion. But this is different. I was bleeding in the dark, and you brought me somewhere safe. When I could not think for myself or act for myself”—he looked into her swan-dark eyes—“you protected me.”

The fury abated in her eyes, but the hard set to her mouth remained.

“I didn’t come here to fight,” she said. “We’ve been taking turns checking your bandages. I thought you would be unconscious. If you’d prefer someone else—”

“Why would I prefer someone else’s touch to yours?”

Her eyes widened. Color flooded her cheeks, and his panic ebbed away. Something else seeped in.

Laila had changed out of her costume from the Carnevale, and into a blue dressing gown embroidered with a hundred sequins at the hem so that it looked like she was a woman of the waters, crafted from moonlight hitting the sea. Belatedly, he realized he was staring.

Laila scowled, looked down at her dress and sighed. “We trusted Hypnos with procuring garments and food. I told him to buy something ‘subtle.’”

“You look beautiful,” said Séverin.

“Don’t,” said Laila tiredly.

She sat beside him, and the faint scent of sugar and rose water drifted through his senses. He lifted his arms. Laila did not look at him as she worked with cold efficiency, making quick work of his bandages and drawing out a clean set. Every brush of her fingers felt like fire inside him, and perhaps that was what woke up some corner of his memory. He remembered the sudden, crushing pressure against his skull … the stench of the lagoon water sloshing up the sides of the gondola, dampening his pant leg. The world dissolving to black until he heard her voice.

“If you die, I can’t stay mad at you, Majnun, and if I can’t at least be angry with you, I’ll break.”

She’d called him Majnun.

Perhaps it had been nothing but days since she’d uttered that name, but Séverin felt their absence inside him like years grown old and mossy.

“I heard you,” he said.

“What?”

“I heard you call me Majnun.”

Laila’s hands on him stilled. He felt the slightest tremor of her fingers on his skin. Foolish or no, he couldn’t lose the chance to speak plainly to her.

“I am yours, Laila … and you can fight it or hide it as much as you want, but I think part of you belongs to me too.”

She looked up at him, and there was such grief in her eyes that he almost felt ashamed for speaking.

“Perhaps,” she admitted.

His heart leapt at the words.

“But that small part is all I can spare,” said Laila. “I have so little of myself left. I cannot give any more to you.”

He reached for her hands. “Laila, I have been a fool. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to see this, or say this, but I love—”

“No. Please, don’t,” she said, pushing his hands aside. “Don’t put that burden on me, Séverin. I cannot hold it.”

A terrible weight settled in his chest.

“Would it truly be that?” he asked. “A burden?”

“Yes!” said Laila fiercely. “What I feel for you is a burden. It has always been a burden. I move closer, you step back; you move closer, I step back. I don’t have the time to play this with you! We may have gotten this far, but what about everything else? Plague Island and the lyre and everything. You’re still convinced that somehow you’ll get these powers of divinity, and what if it doesn’t work? Do you really want me to divide my attention between keeping myself and my friends alive and loving you based on whatever whim guides you for the day? Because I can’t.”

“Laila—”

But she wasn’t done.

“You once offered me impossible things, Séverin. A dress made of moonlight, glass slippers—”

“And I’d make that happen!” said Séverin. “Laila, you don’t understand the power I felt when I touched that instrument. Anything you ask, I could give you—”

Laila wrapped her arms around herself, shaking. “Can you give me safety, Séverin? Can you give me time? Can you carry my trust?” She paused, taking a deep breath. “Are you even capable of ordinary love?”

He felt slapped. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that when I go to sleep, I dream of someone who knows which side of the bed I favor, who sits across from me in happy silence, who argues over which dishes belong in which cabinet,” said Laila quietly. “Someone whose love feels like home … not some insurmountable quest ripped from a myth. Someone whose love is safe … Do you understand that?”

He did.

Because that was how she made him feel.

Safe.

He wanted to make her feel safe.

“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 number three stared 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 your majnun, 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 at Enrique’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.