Hypnos flexed his fingers and played the scale. At once, the circumference of the lens lit up and so did the frame. The small, silver planets on the outside hummed and spun. Séverin fitted the lens into the empty frame, pressing hard. When Hypnos stopped, the lens had sealed into place. Across the glass, a liquid-silver script appeared:

55.55°N, 108.16°E

Hypnos turned around on his seat. “That’s how—” His gaze fell to the Tezcat spectacles and lens, and he fell quiet. Everyone’s gaze snapped from Hypnos perched on the piano seat to the Tezcat spectacles in Séverin’s hands.

“Those are longitude and latitude coordinates,” said Zofia.

Enrique leaned forward, his jaw slack. “An exact map to the Sleeping Palace.”

“Am I … am I a genius?” asked Hypnos. Without waiting for anyone to answer, he leapt from his seat and bowed.

Enrique clapped indulgently, and Hypnos beamed at him.

“Alert the matriarch,” said Séverin. “Let her know we leave at dawn to follow these coordinates.”

When he looked at the group, their faces shone with victory, and he wanted to let himself feel it too. But that faint stench of smoke clung to their clothes from the troika fire. Beneath it all, he caught a whiff of Tristan’s roses left to rot. He nearly gagged.

“Years of practice have led to this,” said Hypnos proudly, “… putting together broken glasses. Voila!”

“Years?” repeated Laila. “I can’t imagine you working at anything for years.”

The light in Hypnos’s eyes dimmed a little. He busily straightened his sleeves and lapel.

“Well, one had little choice in these matters,” he said brusquely. “I had to entertain myself quite a lot as a child … Music helped take away the silence.” He cleared his throat. “But enough of that. Let’s celebrate before certain doom, shall we?”

Hypnos looped his arm around Enrique’s waist, pulling him a little closer. Out the corner of his eye, Séverin caught Hypnos’s questioning glance, but he didn’t meet it. Let them go, he thought. For the sake of what he needed to do, he had to be apart, not a part. Séverin busied himself with the Tezcat spectacles, ignoring the chatter until the others left the room and he heard the door shut.

But when he looked up, a part of him jolted. Laila hadn’t left with the others. She leaned against the doorframe, and he noticed she’d changed out of her golden dress from the opera and now wore a cotton dress and dark blue robe.

“I need something to call you,” she said, crossing her arms.

He blinked. “What?”

“As your mistress.” Laila crossed her arms. “I need something to call you.”

Mistress. The fire and the tea salon had nearly made him forget. But she was right. The charade he thought she wouldn’t have to indulge for long had become real in a matter of hours.

“Séverin,” he said.

“A friend calls you Séverin.”

“Monsieur—”

“No. An employee calls you Monsieur Montagnet-Alarie. I am your equal. I need a pet name. Something humiliating.”

He raised his eyebrow. “Humiliating?”

“We debase ourselves for the ones we love.”

There was another name that seemed to hang in the space between them. Majnun. The name she had given him years ago. The name that had once felt like a talisman in the dark.

“I don’t know. Just pair a trait with an article of clothing,” said Séverin.

“Stubborn shoe.”

He glared.

“Bull-headed glove.”

“You can’t be serious—”

“Irrational brassiere.”

He didn’t mean to, and he had no idea how it happened … but he laughed. The sound rattled him to the core. Worse, was the softened expression in her eyes. Laila had made a habit of demanding weakness from him. He set his jaw. There would be no softness here.

Séverin’s gaze went to her bare throat, and his eyes narrowed.

“Start wearing that diamond necklace.”

13

ENRIQUE

Enrique awoke two hours before the morning meeting. As he made his way to the meeting place in the Oriental Room of the tea salon, he clutched his research material. Now that they knew the coordinates of the Sleeping Palace, his research had taken on a new light, and he couldn’t stop thinking about it. The coordinates confirmed his suspicions: The Sleeping Palace was somewhere in Siberia.

Today the matriarch of House Kore and the representatives from House Dazbog would be taking them to the Sleeping Palace where his research would either be proven valuable or—he prayed otherwise—worthless. Ever since Laila had told him and Zofia about her beginning and, possibly, her ending, all his knowledge gained a terrible new weight. It wasn’t just a career or a future depending on what he knew; it was a member of his family. After Tristan, he couldn’t lose Laila too.

To him, Laila was like a fairy tale plucked from the pages of a book—a girl with a curse woven into her heartbeat. In all the time he’d known her, part of her seemed to hum with the force of her secret. Who was she? What could she do? Last evening, he’d tried testing her abilities while they waited for Séverin and Hypnos to join the three of them.

“Enrique,” Laila had sighed.

“Now read this!” he’d said, pushing another object onto the table.

“Is this your underwear?”

“It’s freshly laundered! I just fetched it from my suitcase. Were you able to tell by touch? Or was it the shape—”

Laila threw it in his face. “Haven’t you had enough? You’ve already given me a watch, a briefcase, two teacups, and asked me to touch the couch, which I am still recovering from.” She feigned a shudder. “At least Zofia spared me.”

Zofia shrugged. “An object’s personal context does not affect its utility.”

“Not true!” Enrique had said. “It could be proof of something. Laila, you’re practically a goddess.”

Laila sipped her tea, assuming an expression Enrique had come to recognize as “smug cat.”

“I knew I was in the wrong era,” she said, before glaring. “But no more readings. I’m no instrument.”

“What about an instrument of destiny?” he asked, wiggling his fingers.

“No.”

“Instrument of—”

“Enrique.”

“Instrument of Enrique? Unorthodox, but I like it.”

Laila had swatted him, but they’d spoken no more of it once Hypnos had entered the music room.

Ever since, the conversation had lingered with Enrique.

Laila needed The Divine Lyrics to live. But did The Divine Lyrics need … Laila? His earlier research about The Divine Lyrics suggested that only someone descended of the Lost Muses bloodline could read the book.

What if … what if Laila were one of them? It wasn’t a thought he wanted to broach with the others. Not yet, at least. If the evidence within the Sleeping Palace fit, then he would tell her. The troika fire had unnerved him. He’d thought no one was watching their movements, and now he didn’t know who was. The last thing he wanted was to draw their eye to Laila.