Enrique turned to Séverin, his eyes cold. “I think he’s earned his place here by now.”

“He’s earned a place in your bed,” said Séverin. “Not at my table.”

Splotches of red appeared on Enrique’s cheeks. If Séverin noticed this, he ignored it.

“Besides, he’s still part of the Order.”

Laila thought of Hypnos carefully assembling snacks for them in the stargazing room, the sheen of his eyes when he surprised them with everything he’d made and the fall in his shoulders when he realized it wasn’t the surprise he’d intended. She glared up at Séverin.

“Hypnos is every bit as trustworthy as any of us,” she said, slamming her hand down.

All she’d wanted was to make a point. Instead, white-hot pain flooded her senses. Too late, Hypnos’s warning sounded in her mind: Do be careful. Blood welled onto her palm from the puncture of a loose nail.

“Gods, Laila, are you all right?” asked Enrique, rushing to her.

Laila’s hand pulsed as she pressed it to her dress, heedless that it destroyed the golden fabric. She was so careful not to cut herself. The last time she’d been twelve. The monsoon rains had swept through their village, and the bark of the lime tree she usually climbed was rain-slicked. When she fell and cut her hand, she’d run to her father, her ego bruised and her hand bloodied. She just wanted him to fuss over her, to tell her she would be fine. But instead, he’d recoiled.

Get away from me. I don’t want to look at whose blood the jaaduagar filled you with.

Whose blood was on her hands?

It made her sick.

“Excuse me,” she said, pushing away Enrique’s hand. “I need some air.”

Her breath felt tight in her lungs as she ran outside. The Sphinx merely turned his head, but otherwise didn’t acknowledge her. Too late, Laila realized she’d left her coat on the wooden crate. She thought she knew what winter was, but the cold of Russia felt … vindictive.

“Laila?”

She turned and saw Enrique and Zofia standing at the door. Enrique held out her coat.

Zofia held up a lit match. “Fire cauterizes wounds.”

Enrique was appalled. “It’s a tiny cut! Put that flame away!”

Zofia blew it out, looking mildly annoyed. In one of his hands, Enrique balanced a roll of bandages and a tiny shot glass full of vodka. He poured it over her hand. It stung so sharply that Laila couldn’t breathe.

Zofia took the bandage from him and started wrapping her hand. It was such a small thing. To be fussed over. To be the one treated tenderly. When she’d last cut herself, she’d merely stood in the rain, her hand throbbing as she let the water rush over her palms until there was no trace of someone else’s blood on her skin. Tears started running down her cheeks.

“Laila … Laila, what’s wrong?” asked Enrique. His eyes were wide with alarm. “Tell us.”

Tell us. Maybe it was the pain in her hand or the pained note in his voice, but Laila felt her secret slip out of her control.

“I’m dying,” she said softly.

She looked into Enrique’s face, but he only shook his head with a small smile. Zofia, however, looked shocked.

“It’s just a cut, Laila—” said Enrique.

“No,” she said sharply. She looked at them, memorizing their features. Maybe this would be the last time they would ever look at her like this—like they cared.

“There’s something you don’t know about me,” she said, looking away from them. “It’s easier if I show you.”

Laila’s heart leapt as she reached out, touching the rosary that Enrique wore around his neck.

“Your father gave this to you when you left the Philippines,” she said.

“That’s not exactly a secret,” said Enrique gently.

“He told you that he too once dreamt of running away … on the night before he married your mother. He thought of giving it all up, the Mercado-Lopez Mercantile Enterprise, everything … for the love of a woman in Cavite. But he chose to see his duty through, and he has never once resented it … He gave you his rosary and told you he hoped it would guide you on the right paths…”

Enrique looked stunned. He opened his mouth, then closed it.

“I can read the memories of objects,” said Laila, drawing back her hand. “Not all of them, of course. But strong emotions or recent ones. It’s because I … I’m Forged.”

Without looking at them, she told them the story of her making. Not her birth. Because she’d never really been born. She’d died inside her mother’s womb, and the rest of her was cobbled together.

“It’s why I need to find The Divine Lyrics,” she said. “The jaadugar who made me said I wouldn’t live past my nineteenth birthday without the secrets inside that book.”

The seconds of silence stretched into a full minute. Laila thought they’d turn around or step away, or do something, but instead, they just stared, and all she wanted was to run. Zofia’s blue eyes sharpened with a new light, and Laila nearly winced from the resolve she saw there.

“I will not let you die,” said Zofia.

Enrique gripped her hand, his touch full of warmth.

“We won’t let anything happen to you.”

You.

No conditions. No change in how they referred to her. No change, even, in how they looked at her. Laila held back, and it took a moment to realize that her whole body had seized up, ready to flinch. To flee. Knowing, for the first time, that she didn’t have to run made her stare at her hands, utterly lost. And then, as if he knew what ran through her thoughts, Enrique reached out. That touch shocked through her, and a second later, Laila threw her arms around Zofia and Enrique. Miraculously—more miraculous than a girl brought back from the dead or the terrible wonders of the Catacombs—they held her tight. When she finally let go, Enrique’s eyes were full of question.

“… So you could do that the whole time?” he asked, turning a little red. “Because if so, I know it may have looked like I stole that feathered boa from the cabaret, but I swear it—”

“I don’t need to know, Enrique,” said Laila, laughing despite herself. “Your secrets are still yours. I never read the objects of my friends.”

Unbidden came the memory of Tristan and all his hidden darkness, all the ways he’d needed help and all the missed times she could’ve figured out how to give him that. Maybe she should change that policy.

“Does Séverin know?” asked Zofia.

Laila clenched her jaw.

“Séverin knows that I was … made. And that I can read objects. But he doesn’t know why I need The Divine Lyrics,” she said, adding in a colder voice, “He doesn’t need to know. I don’t owe him my secrets.”

If he knew and it made no difference, she would be no wiser than Snegurochka whose thawed heart turned her to nothing more than a gathering of lacy snowflakes. Laila wouldn’t do that to herself. Maybe for girls made of snow, love was worth the melt. But she was made of stolen bones and sleek fur, grave dirt and strange blood—her heart wasn’t even hers to give. Her soul was all she had, and no love was worth losing it.