Enrique felt a hard lump in his throat. It took him a while before he could muster the strength to talk again.

“I’m glad I’m not alone.”

“You most certainly are not,” said Ruslan kindly. He thrummed his fingers against the sling of his injured arm, then turned about the room. He let out a sigh. “Eva told me all about your rather disturbing discovery. Young women dead in these halls?” He shuddered. “I don’t blame you for escaping into the quiet of this room.”

Escaping? Was that what everyone thought he was doing? His cheeks warmed.

“I didn’t come here to be alone with my thoughts,” he said, fumbling with the Mnemo bug. “I came here to research and study what I saw in the grotto. I think there’s a link between those girls and the Fallen House’s treasures. And I’m quite certain those girls are the truth behind the ghost stories here.”

Ruslan blinked at him. “Ghosts?”

“The … ghost stories about this area?” clarified Enrique, but Ruslan’s face was still blank. “Hyp—I mean, Patriarch Hypnos—told me that this area terrified the locals so badly that House Dazbog even investigated. Nothing was ever found, though.”

“Ah, yes,” said Ruslan, shaking his head. “If those really are the same victims, I am glad they can be laid to rest. Though what does it have to do with the Fallen House’s treasures?”

Enrique had his ideas, but maybe they were foolish. He was about to say so when he caught the way Ruslan looked at him. Wide-eyed and excited. Tristan used to be like this, eager to hear what he had to say, even if he hadn’t the faintest clue what he was talking about. It was intoxicating, he thought, to be so clearly seen by someone else.

He slid the Mnemo into the projection. He did not want to go straight to the image of the girls. He needed to think through his process before jumping to a conclusion that could change the course of how they treated the ice grotto. Instead, he brought up a couple of images that had cropped up throughout his research in Paris. One was of the Matsue Castle of Japan. Another image followed, this time of a bridge, then another temple, then a design torn from the pages of a medieval book on Arthurian legends showing a tower balancing atop a red-and-white dragon fighting beneath the ground.

“All of these buildings have one aspect in common,” said Enrique. “Foundation sacrifice. In Japan, they called this practice hitobashira, an act of human sacrifice specifically done around the construction of institutions like temples or bridges. In this area, in and around the Ural Mountains, the ancient Scythians and Mongolians had similar constructions with their kurgan burial sites, where warriors would be buried with all their riches and sometimes various servants and guards, so that the spirits of the sacrificed went on to act as guardians.”

As he spoke, he saw the stories he referenced stretch out before him. He saw them linking back to the girls in the ice grotto and their ruined mouths. He wondered at their pain and their fear, all of it sliced through with the taste of snow and blood, metal and cold.

“In terms of the positioning of the girls … it feels similar to that ritualistic sacrifice, though we need more concrete proof before I can make that leap,” said Enrique.

“But you think that the presence of the dead girls might be proof that there’s treasure in that room? That there’s something to be guarded?”

Enrique nodded hesitantly and then maneuvered the Mnemo bug to the last and final image, the one of the dead girls above the three shields. It was bad enough they had been murdered and strung up, but if their jaws held a symbol, then it might be a clue.

“Dear God,” breathed Ruslan, his eyes widening in horror.

Enrique stared up at the image, his heart twisting. He made a quick sign of the cross down his body. He wasn’t like Séverin or Zofia, who could separate the human story from the treasure hunt. All he saw were stories … lives cut short, dreams withered from cold and forgotten, families torn apart. How many girls had gone missing for this? How many people had been left wondering where they’d gone? When all this time, they had been here, and no one could find them.

Across the mottled skin of the girls’ mouths and cheeks lay precise and terrible slashes and puncture wounds, a grisly and unmistakable cipher that weighed down Enrique’s next words:

“Those girls are the key to the treasure.”

19

ZOFIA

Three days until Winter Conclave …

Zosia,

Do you remember the chicken soup Mama made with eyerlekh? You used to call it “sun soup.” I crave that so dearly right now.

I do not wish to worry you, but my cough has returned, and though I feel weak, I know I will get better. The boy delivering my medicine left me a flower today. He’s handsome, Zofia. Handsome enough that perhaps I don’t mind having to stay in bed all day if it means he comes to visit. His name is Isaac …

* * *

ALONE IN THE GROTTO, Zofia decided to test a theory.

“Seventy-one, seventy-two, seventy-three,” she said aloud, counting the leviathan’s teeth.

For the past three days, Zofia had tracked every movement within the ice grotto. Every day at noon the grotto moon turned full, and the mechanical creature surged out of the water, placed its head onto the ice, and opened its jaws. For sixty minutes, it would stay still before sliding back into the water.

Zofia considered the leviathan a calming presence. The machine never deviated from its schedule. It was not alive, but the quiet whirring of its metal gears reminded her of a cat’s rumbling purr.

As of this morning, Zofia’s recorded observations had convinced Séverin that the leviathan followed a pattern, and that the grotto was safe to explore. From there, Order members had removed the dead girls from the walls, leaving behind a Mnemo projection that outlined their original positioning and the symbols carved into their skin. Laila had not watched the removal process, but Zofia knew that she would be with the girls now.

The thought turned her stomach, reminding her once again that Laila could die. She couldn’t let that happen, and yet she didn’t know what to do. Lately, Zofia suspected she had more in common with the mechanical leviathan than anyone in the Sleeping Palace. She understood what it meant to be powerless, treading the same routine, the same path. She had felt it with Tristan. The night he died, she had sat in her laboratory for hours, counting all the objects that could not save him. She had felt it with Hela when she had gone back to Poland, unable to do anything but hold Hela’s hand and watch as her sister fought to breathe.

She would not do that with Laila.

Zofia reached up and held onto one of the leviathan’s fangs as she took one step into its mouth. The waters of Lake Baikal rushed around her ankles. Beneath her shoes, the surface was flat and grooved for traction.

Zofia snapped off a Forged button from her coat, and it lengthened into a small unlit torch. Ignite, she thought, and a flame rasped alive. For the first time, she could see down the metal creature’s throat. The terrain changed, opening into a flat space, then a steep drop, followed by another flat space … like a staircase. Above her, splayed against the back of the creature’s throat lay deep grooves, symbols clearly engraved in the metal—