“I’ll let you know when they arrive,” said Séverin. “Please make sure that Zofia has put away anything too flammable—”

“Already done,” said Enrique. He frowned. “She was not enthused.”

“And tell Hypnos not to drink in front of them.”

“I’ve bought him a teacup in which he can put his wine. He was, also, not enthused.”

“And try not to lecture them the moment they ask a question about anything on the premises,” said Séverin.

Enrique looked highly affronted. “Would it really be a lecture?” He raised his hands and wiggled his fingers. “Or would it be an unhinging of their known world?”

Séverin stared at him. “Perhaps there is enough that is unhinged in this household.”

“Hmpf,” said Enrique. As he turned to the door, he cast a scathing glance at Argos, who was napping beside the fireplace. “You are an overpriced and overpainted chicken, and you are lucky you are not even remotely edible. I hope you know that.”

Argos slept on.

Séverin laughed. When Enrique left, he stroked Argos’s feathers and then returned to his desk. On the wooden surface lay a tarnished ouroboros that had once been pinned to his father’s lapel. Séverin traced the shape slowly, remembering the sneer in Lucien Montagnet-Alarie’s voice as he imparted what he considered the most precious piece of advice to his son:

We can never escape ourselves, my boy … we are our own end and beginning, at the mercy of a past which cannot help but repeat itself.

“You’re wrong,” said Séverin under his breath.

But even as he said it, he didn’t truly know whether he had spoken the truth. There was much he could not claim to know. He did not know what it meant when Laila had said they would always be connected so long as she lived. He did not know whether she would keep her promise and return to him. He didn’t know whether his efforts would make a difference, or whether the world would turn on indifferently and leave his legacy in the dust.

Outside the window came the crunch of hoofbeats over gravel. Séverin’s heartbeat sped up as he looked through the glass and saw them for the first time in months: Luca and Filippo, the orphan brothers from Venice. It had taken ages to locate them, and a mere month for the adoption papers to be drawn. Séverin had been preparing for this moment for the better part of a year, but right then, the sheer weight of what he was undertaking knocked the wind out of his lungs.

He swallowed hard, his grip on the windowsill turning white-knuckled as he held his breath and watched Luca and Filippo step out of the carriage. It was not a large step, and yet Luca held out his hand to the younger Filippo and did not let go even when they both stood on the gravel. Though he had arranged for food and shelter, they were still far too thin and rather small for their age. In their too-big clothes and new haircuts, they looked like changelings who had tumbled into the human world. When Luca wrapped his arm around his brother, Séverin felt a sharp ache knifing behind his ribs.

Slowly, he released his breath.

Slowly, he let go of the windowsill.

Behind him, Argos made an inquisitive screech.

“It’s time,” he said.

Séverin took one last glance at the ouroboros brooch. Maybe his father was right. Maybe he was fooling himself, and all he was doing was taking his place in an endless loop outside his control. Maybe his last kiss with Laila was nothing but a delusion brought on by the crumbling temple. Maybe she existed in the fringes of dreams and nothing more.

But faith was a stubborn thing, and the world’s turning only acted as a lathe that made it that much sharper as it cut through the fog of all he did not know.

Could he live with this unknown?

Could he make peace with it?

Yes, he thought, although he often felt more certain on some days than others. Nevertheless, he would do what most mortals did.

He would try.

EPILOGUE

The first time Séverin made a cake, he used salt instead of sugar.

It was, as Enrique kindly put it, an absolute disaster.

Even so, Séverin was delighted. Laila had considered it impossible that he would ever make a cake. To do so, no matter how awful it was, made him think that perhaps other things that seemed impossible could come true.

And in some ways, they did.

Time treated Séverin with a light hand, and with each passing year, he began to understand what Laila had meant when she promised they would always be connected.

No gray touched his hair. No wrinkle marred his face. It had astonished Enrique and outright annoyed Hypnos, who believed that out of all of them, he was the most deserving of eternal youth.

Séverin himself didn’t necessarily care for eternal youth. If anything, it only complicated his life in Paris and guardianship over Luca and Filippo, and yet it was a sign too. A sign he didn’t understand until he spoke with Zofia.

“It means she’s still alive,” said Zofia. “She promised connection, and she kept it.”

As long as I live, so will you.

Zofia smiled at him. For the first time, he noticed laugh lines around her eyes and mouth, and he was happy that life had marked her with joy. “Séverin … I think that means she will keep her other promise too.”

Her other promise.

It was a thing none of them ever dared to speak aloud, as if the promise was so fragile that to utter it again would snap the possibility in half.

And yet he carried the hope of it inside him every day: I will come back to you.

As the years passed, he began to dream of Laila. Sometimes she visited his dreams every night for a week. Sometimes she disappeared for years at a time. And yet every time she returned, she would say the same thing: I never got to finish what I began to say to you that night.

He knew what she meant. She had said, “I love—” and then the world had dragged him away from her.

Tell me now, he would say, and each time she would shake her head.

No, Majnun. I need something to dream about too.

* * *

THE WORLD TURNED. Wars erupted, kingdoms fell, fashions changed. The years blurred past, and yet Séverin found moments that seemed to anchor him despite time’s relentless momentum. There was the first time Luca threw his arms around him, and Filippo fell asleep with his head on his shoulder. Like him, it seemed as though the boys had many parents, and yet in this case, it was impossible to say which parent was more beloved.

Zofia conducted scientific experiences and taught Filippo numbers when he struggled in school. Hypnos snuck Luca his first drink at sixteen and spent the whole night by his side while he vomited and swore never to touch a bottle again. Enrique told them stories that kept them up at night, and Séverin did as his mother and Tante Feefee and Tristan had tried to do all those years: He tried to protect.

Even Argos grew to like the boys and did not seem to mind when they stuck his fallen tail feathers in the back of their pants and imitated the strange bird.

At first, Séverin could hide his continued youth with theatre makeup. But as every year passed, his youth became harder to disguise. After twenty years, he could hide no longer. On that day, he happily passed the reins of L’Eden to his adopted sons.

With Hypnos, he built museums and archives, funded visiting scholars, and loaned their pieces around the world. Enrique continued to teach and wrote books that found international acclaim. Zofia created and patented prominent inventions and was named an honorary alum of L’Ecole des Beaux Arts. Séverin was there when Luca married, and he was there when Filippo boarded a ship that would take him away from Europe and into the Americas. Séverin played with children and grandchildren, and spent countless evenings by the warm hearth where Zofia, Enrique, and Hypnos had made a home between the three of them.