“What’s next?” she heard her father scoff in his study. “Did you see the petition from the women of Malolos?”

“They want to go to night school,” said one of his friends, laughing.

“Have they forgotten their place so completely?” asked another.

From behind the closed door, Esmerelda scowled. She had read all about the women who had delivered a petition to allow them to study. They’d delivered it straight to Governor-General Valeriano Weyler himself. She wished she could have walked alongside them, inked her name, and watched it dry on the paper. She wished she could follow in the footsteps of her brothers and cousins and learn.

And that was when it came.

Years later, Esmerelda secretly imagined that the angels above had heard her that day. That perhaps the sound that ripped through her home was the celestial trumpeting of a thousand horns, the kinds that she saw painted on the inside of cathedrals … the kinds that signaled that God was on her side.

37

SÉVERIN

It had happened.

* * *

SÉVERIN STANDS AT the top of the ziggurat.

A short distance away lies a jewel-encrusted platform draped in translucent silks. It is surrounded by the melting stubs of candles that flicker like so many caught stars. An attar of roses fill the air, and a hum of distant lutes and chiming bells adorns the evening sky like precious ornaments.

This, Séverin understands, is hallowed ground.

But why is he here?

In your hands lie the gates of godhood, let none pass.

He knows this is not godhood, but it is something sacred all the same. Séverin blinks, and feels the heady weight of responsibility filling his chest. Though he has played the divine lyre, this is the highest status he might attain.

He is here as an emissary to the heavens.

He is here to commune with something higher than himself.

He is here, fully mortal, to touch the eternal.

And nothing more.

“Sire,” says a voice at his elbow.

Séverin looks to his right. A light-skinned man wearing a veil offers him a candle. Another person steps before him, holding a large polished circle of bronze that acts as a mirror. In it, Séverin can see an ancient city in the midst of revels behind him. He sees himself and realizes he has been dressed in the raiments of a king. An ivory tunic and a finely dyed scarlet mantle of worsted wool and silk covers his body. A ribbon of thinly hammered gold twists about his brow. Someone has rubbed kohl around his eyes.

“She is beyond,” says the veiled man.

She.

As he moves to the platform, he sees a slender silhouette behind the candlelit drapes and realizes the platform is, in fact, a bed. There is a woman waiting for him there, and he understands that sometimes she is a priestess and sometimes she is a goddess … but always she is out of reach.

Slowly, he parts the silks and sees her reclining against rich cloths and pillows embroidered with silver thread. There are gold coins strung through her hair. She wears a shift of thinnest linen dyed a rich red. Her hands are adorned with henna, as if she were a bride, and he knows that tonight, she is one.

“Majnun,” she says.

Séverin remembers himself. All of his selves. He remembers staring down at Laila’s lifeless body, their friends hollowed out by grief beside them.

“Laila,” he says, and her name melts like a prayer on his tongue. “What’s happened?”

A shadow crosses her face, but then it vanishes. Instead, she moves a little, patting the place beside her.

“Come to me,” she says.

He does. He is almost afraid to touch her, terrified that she’ll dissolve beneath his fingertips. But he is spared from decision when Laila reaches for his hand. Her skin is warm. When he looks into her face, she smiles and it is the smile he has dreamt of many times.

In this moment, Séverin knows peace.

“All will be well,” says Laila. “They are safe, Séverin. No one will hurt them. No one can touch us here.”

This certainty moves through him, and though Séverin had imagined any failure would sting, this time he feels it like a pressure easing off his chest. He is not resigned to mortality, but oddly relieved by it, for in this moment, he knows he has done all he could, and even in failing, he has succeeded in keeping the people he loves safe.

Séverin blinks and remembers his losses. He thinks of Tristan’s gray eyes, the orange fragrance of his mother’s hair, the hard set of Delphine Desrosiers’s mouth. He once thought that all that pain must be in service of something greater, but now he knows that it was never for him to understand. And when he looks at the fathomless night sky, he feels a serene contentedness in not knowing.

He turns to Laila. “Are we dead?”

Laila bursts out laughing. “Why would you think that?”

“Maybe because this feels remarkably like heaven,” he says, stroking her hands.

Laila entwines their fingers, and his rib cage feels as though it might burst from joy.

“And what makes you so certain that you would be granted admittance to heaven?” says Laila.

Séverin grins. “Merely the hope that you’d be so awfully lonely and bored without me that you’d find a way to sneak me in.”

Laila laughs again. She faces him. He notices that there is a line of gold at her throat, and that when the breeze shifts, the candlelight snares on the lush curves of her body.

She tips up his chin with one finger. “And how would you cure such boredom, Majnun?”

Séverin reclines against his cushions. He has not felt so light in ages, so untethered from sorrow. “Are you asking for a demonstration?”

“Or two,” says Laila, leaning over to kiss him fully. After a moment, her lips move to his ear. “Or three.”

Séverin does not waste time. In the back of his head, he knows that this heaven cannot last. That, eventually, the reality he has left behind will assert itself once more, inevitable as the dawn. He thrusts his hands into her hair, holding her against him, savoring each quick gasp and each small sigh. He kisses the line of her neck and traces her every curve with wonder and frustration, as if she is holy calligraphy in a language he cannot speak but longs to decipher. Eventually, Laila pulls him down to her, slinging her leg over his hip, guiding him to her. The world falls away. They come together like a hymn, the sacred set to song, and though Séverin knows he is not a god, their brief possession over the eternal makes him feel infinite.

Later, much later, Laila curls against his chest. He reaches for her hand, kissing the henna on her wrist. The city below is silent. A seam of gold touches the sky, and Séverin cannot account for the slow dread working its way through his body.

“You know, don’t you?” asks Laila softly.

There is a lump in his throat. Yes, he has guessed, but he cannot make himself say it.

“It was the only way, Séverin,” she says. “Once the lyre was played, the world changed. The temple was both the beginning and end of Forging, and as I am both Forged and human, the temple asked me to stay and guard it. I will oversee its power as it removes Forging from our world. In return … I will heal. I will live.”

Séverin has always been in awe of her, but in this moment, his awe borders on reverence. The temple can indeed grant powers of godhood, but it has not chosen him. It’s chosen her. He reaches for her hands, kissing the pulse at her wrist, and they lie like this for a few moments longer until Laila speaks once more.