“Well done, Eva!” said Ruslan. “And well done, me, for not dying.”

Eva rolled her eyes, but she looked pleased with herself. Ruslan walked back up the stairs. When he reached them, he took off his boots and handed them to Séverin. His eyes shone with unnerving sincerity.

“I am so deeply eager to see what you will find,” he said, clapping his hands excitedly. “I can still sense it, you know, that pulsing thrumming deliciousness of the universe waiting for her secrets to be unearthed.”

“What, exactly, do you expect us to find?”

“I expect knowledge. That’s all,” said Ruslan, stroking the sling of his injured arm. “That is all I ever want. It is in knowledge, after all, that we find the tools to make history.”

“A rather ambitious goal to make history,” said Séverin.

Ruslan beamed. “Isn’t it? I’m delighted. I never had the head—or perhaps the hair—for ambition, and I find that I like it.” He smiled and patted Séverin on the head. “Goodbye, then.”

Annoyed, Séverin smoothed his hair. When he turned around, the others had been fitted with their new boots. Zofia had first designed a pair of shoes for traction on ice and an ability to shift from shoe to ski at a moment’s notice. But Eva had now Forged it to conceal temperature, which turned them glossy and iridescent, like an oil slick on a frozen pond.

“No thanks from you, Monsieur Montagnet-Alarie?” asked Eva, sidling up beside him.

“You have my thanks already,” he said, distracted.

“So taciturn!” Eva laughed. “Is that how he thanks you, Laila?”

“Not at all,” said Laila, her fingers grazing the diamond necklace at her throat.

Eva’s gaze narrowed, and her smile sharpened. Her hand went to her own throat and to a slender silver pendant hanging from a chain. She tugged it sharply. “Diamonds for services rendered. You must be exceptional—”

Out the corner of his eye, Séverin saw Enrique’s head snap up in fury, while Laila’s fingers stilled on her necklace.

“Leave,” said Séverin sharply.

Eva startled, her sentence left unfinished.

“Your help is much appreciated, but for this next part, I need to be with my team. Patriarch Hypnos will serve as Order witness. It’s nearly noon, and we have no time to waste.”

Eva’s eyes flashed.

“Of course, Monsieur,” she said tightly, before stalking down the hall.

Enrique coughed awkwardly, nudging Hypnos beside him. Laila stared at the floor, her arms crossed. Only Zofia serenely continued to lace her boots.

“You know, I really do adore this sheen,” said Hypnos, pivoting on one heel. “Très chic. I wonder, though, what other garments might work as ice? Ice robe? Ice crown? Nothing too cold, though. One’s tongue tends to stick to these things.”

Zofia frowned. “Why is your tongue relevant to this discussion?”

“You mean: ‘When is my tongue not relevant?’”

“That is not what I mean,” said Zofia.

Laila straightened her coat, then looked down the hall. “Shall we?”

One by one, Laila, Enrique, and Zofia walked down the narrow aisle and into the ice grotto. Séverin was on the verge of following when he felt a touch at his arm. Hypnos.

The other boy stared at him with concern, his mouth pulled down.

“Are you well? After yesterday?” he asked. “I meant to ask, and I waited with the others but then … then I fell asleep.”

Séverin frowned. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

He started moving away when Hypnos lowered his voice. “Have I done something wrong?”

Séverin turned to look at him. “Have you?”

“No?”

But there was a flicker of hesitation behind his eyes. As if he knew something.

“Is it so impossible for me to express some concern about you?” demanded Hypnos. His blue eyes flashed, nostrils flaring just slightly. “Did you forget that we were practically raised together for some time? Because I haven’t. For God’s sake, Séverin, we were practically brothers—”

Séverin squeezed his eyes shut. That terrible memory in the Jardin du Luxembourg bit into his thoughts, and for a moment he was a small boy once more, calling out to Hypnos, with his hand outstretched. He remembered the moment when Hypnos saw him—their eyes meeting across the park—before the other boy turned.

“We were never brothers,” said Séverin.

Hypnos’s throat moved. He looked at the ground. “Well, you were the closest I had to one.”

For a moment, Séverin could say nothing. He didn’t want to remember how he and Hypnos had played next to each other, or how he had once cried as a child when Hypnos had to go back to his own home.

“Perhaps you felt I’d forgotten you after your parents died, but I never did, Séverin. I swear it,” said Hypnos, his voice breaking. “There was nothing I could do.”

Something in Hypnos’s voice almost convinced him … but that thought held terror. He could not be trusted with another brother. He could barely survive Tristan dying in his arms. What if that happened to Hypnos next? All because he had let him get too close? The thought pinched sharply behind his ribs.

Séverin turned from him. “I only had one brother, Hypnos. I’m not looking for a replacement.”

With that, he walked down the hall.

* * *

“TAKE A LOOK AT this!” called Enrique.

Enrique held up a lantern. Finally, the sunken platform was truly illuminated. Séverin staggered back in disgust as the light caught hold of the female statues. From their recessed niches in the wall, they leaned out, extending their arms severed at the wrist. They looked grotesque. Their jaws had been ruined—or clawed—and designed to look unhinged.

“They’re downright eerie to look at, don’t you think?” asked Enrique, shuddering. “Almost lifelike. And, wait, I believe those markings on their mouth are symbols…”

Enrique held up his Mnemo bug, recording the statues and talking rapidly, but Séverin was no longer paying attention. He was watching Laila’s face as she moved toward the statues, utterly transfixed. She’d slipped off one of her fur-lined gloves, stretching up on her toes as her bare hand reached toward the statues.

Above them, the giant moon changed shape with each passing minute, gradually growing full. He glanced at his watch and realized it would show a “full moon” right at noon. Séverin glanced over the room. He was missing something. If this place was supposed to be a sanctum, then why keep an eye on the time? What was the point?

His watch struck noon.

From the still pool of water came the sound of distant churning, like a submerged roll of thunder. The ground quivered. Hardly a moment ago, that great oval of water had lain smooth and flat as a mirror.

It wasn’t smooth and flat anymore. It rippled, small waves sloshing out the side.

Something was coming.

“Move! Get back!” shouted Séverin.

Out the corner of his eye, he saw Laila’s hand splayed against the statues, her eyes wide and shocked. He lurched forward, grabbing her and pulling her backward just as a creature made of metal shot out of the water. A biblical word rose to his mind: leviathan. A sea monster. It surged out of the oval, sinuous, snake-like, with a sharp snout like that of an eel shooting from the waves as steam plumed from the steel-fretted gills at its throat. When it cracked open its mechanical jaws, Séverin saw a hellscape of iron eel teeth. Its bulbous, glass eyes roved wildly as it dove back down—