“I’m trying out new hobbies,” said Enrique. “Pensive brooding, dramatic walking … I might even take up long, aggrieved exhales.”

“Sounds like an excellent use of time,” said Séverin. “I happen to excel in pensive brooding if you ever wish for instruction.”

“How generous of you.”

“Generosity is my new habit of late,” said Séverin, eyeing the collected boxes. “Though I doubt the Order sees it that way. I believe they still think I’m after my old inheritance. They even offered it to me once more, which was … odd.”

“What are you after?” asked Enrique.

Séverin’s gaze turned distant, and he fell quiet. He had changed considerably in the past two months. Every day, he insisted that they all ate together. In the evenings, he would ask questions about their lives and sometimes he even laughed. True to his word, Séverin had not disappeared inside himself, and yet there were moments when it seemed that in his new lapses of quiet, he was somewhere else entirely.

“I think I’m after peace … whatever that might look like,” he said, before gesturing at the assembled boxes. “My purpose feels clear enough.”

There was a soft clarity to Séverin’s voice. A sort of wistfulness that made him seem older. Séverin reached into his jacket, popping open his tin of cloves. Enrique wrinkled his nose.

“Must you?”

“I’m afraid I must,” said Séverin. As he returned the tin of cloves, he tugged out an envelope. “Also, I thought you’d want to see this. I believe this would be, what, your sixth letter from them?”

Enrique recognized the script on the envelope. It was from the Ilustrados. Since the Great Silence, it seemed that some of the Ilustrados groups were finally interested in Enrique’s treatises about the cultural power of objects.

“Something like that,” said Enrique.

Séverin sighed. “I thought this was what you wanted.”

It had been, thought Enrique. But no longer.

“At the risk of sounding exceptionally pompous, I must ask whether any perceived … weakness on my part is holding you back,” said Séverin. “I will support you no matter where you go, Enrique.”

“I know that,” said Enrique, and he meant it.

“Do you no longer support their cause?”

“Of course I support it!” said Enrique, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I still believe in the sovereignty of colonized nations. I still want to see the Philippines treated as more than some vassal state to Spain. I just … I don’t think I need to belong to them to make a difference. I’ll write back, of course, and continue to pen things for La Solidaridad … but I think I must find my own way.”

“I see,” said Séverin quietly.

“I had a change of perspective,” said Enrique.

In the silence, he knew they were both thinking of the ziggurat.

None of them could ever fully describe what they’d felt that moment when the light from the final Tezcat portal washed over them. With every passing day, the memory seemed softer. And yet, sometimes the feeling ghosted through him, and Enrique would remember that he had touched vastness and felt the pulse of the universe dance across his bones. He would remember what it felt like to comb his fingers through the infinite.

“How do you plan on finding your own way?” asked Séverin.

How strange, thought Enrique. He had asked Laila something similar last night in his dreams.

Sometimes, he dreamed of her. Sometimes, he and Laila merely walked peacefully along a shore that Enrique had once visited as a child. Enrique looked forward to those visits. Whether it was really her or not didn’t seem to matter, for the feeling afterwards was always the same. It was a sense of peace.

Last night, they had spoken in a room that looked like the library of L’Eden.

Are you happy, my friend? she’d asked.

I am … happy, Enrique had confided. Which was true. He was spending more time with Zofia and Hypnos, and together the three of them seemed to have stumbled upon a unique happiness. But sometimes I feel lost. I don’t suppose you have any advice or heavenly insights.

I don’t think you’re lost, said Laila. You’re just searching for the thing that fills you with light.

Enrique had scowled. Just because it’s a dream doesn’t mean you have to be so enigmatic, you know.

Laila had sipped her dream tea and arched an eyebrow. If I didn’t sound odd and prophetic, then the dream wouldn’t be memorable.

Touché. He’d laughed and they’d clinked their teacups together.

“Enrique?” asked Séverin.

Enrique jolted out of the recollection.

“Perhaps I should leave you to your thoughts,” said Séverin, warmly clapping him on the back. “Oh, and do be careful to lock up when you go. There are children in the hotel. Best not to let them run around in here.”

Enrique’s jaw dropped. “Children? Since when do you allow children to step foot in here?”

“Since I discovered how much more lucrative it is to allow families to visit,” said Séverin. But there was a practiced distance to his voice.

There was something Séverin was not saying. Enrique opened his mouth to ask when Séverin cleared his throat abruptly:

“I’ll see you at supper,” he said. “Enjoy your brooding.”

“I will,” said Enrique, frowning as Séverin beat a hasty retreat down the hall.

For the next hour or so, Enrique tried to avoid brooding altogether by triple-checking the state of various artifacts, and yet the same question kept cropping up in his thoughts.

How did he plan to find his way?

Dream Laila had suggested searching for the thing that filled him with light, but what did that mean? Traveling out into the world? Taking up a new hobby?

It was around then that Enrique heard soft footfalls behind him. He turned to find that a young boy, about ten years old, had found his way into the hallway and was now poking the wings of the golden half-human, half-bird kinnara statue.

“Do not touch that!” said Enrique, striding over to him.

The boy, a rather serious-looking child with pale skin and a mop of icy-blond hair, stared defiantly back at Enrique. “Why not?”

Enrique opened his mouth, then closed it. For some reason, the boy reminded him of Zofia, golden and stubborn. And his curiosity reminded Enrique, oddly enough, of himself. He knew there were plenty of wonders to be found on L’Eden’s premises. To venture into this particular gallery meant that the boy had first chosen to spend time in the library instead of outside on a bright, early spring day.

Enrique nearly winced to remember the trouble he had gotten into when he’d been this boy’s age.

“You’re lucky I don’t have a tsinela,” he muttered.

The boy frowned. “A what?”

“Never mind,” said Enrique, sighing.

The boy scowled, and Enrique remembered making a similar expression whenever he anticipated that someone was about to yell at him. He had hated being scolded and much preferred when someone would explain something to him instead.

“Do you know how old this statue is?” Enrique asked, pointing at the gold kinnari.