“What is it?”

“I haven’t received word from Hela in eight days,” she said.

Séverin frowned. There was no reason for a delay in messages. He had paid an exorbitant price so a courier would travel through the Order’s inroads and fetch Hela’s letters of health. Perhaps the man had gotten turned around in Irkutsk.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said.

Zofia hesitated for a moment, and then nodded. “I know.”

Something flickered behind his heart, and the rime of ice he’d placed around it slipped for an instant. How did she know he’d take care of it? How could she trust his word after he’d made sure she couldn’t go back to her family? After she’d seen what happened to the last person who trusted him so blindly?

Séverin clenched his jaw, and the cold in his heart reasserted itself. He had found the best physician in the area to treat her sister. By all accounts, the girl was responding to treatment better than expected. It was Zofia’s trust that inexplicably annoyed him. This was a business transaction. It had no room for hope, and yet she’d shoved that burden on him.

Beside him, Laila touched his arm. As he readied to leave, he heard Ruslan call his name. He looked up and saw the patriarch of House Dazbog still seated at the table, dragging one finger across the dessert plate to collect what little powdered sugar remained.

“I can’t decide if going into that leviathan’s mouth makes you brave or mad,” he said, with a small shake of his head. “But perhaps it’s fitting.” Ruslan looked to Laila, smiling. “With a name like ‘Laila,’ and a madman for a lover, I do hope you call your Séverin ‘Majnun.’”

Laila’s hand stiffened on his arm. “What did you say?”

Ruslan looked confused. “It’s a reference to the sixth century poem ‘Laila and Majnun’ composed by Nizami Ganjavi—”

“I know what it is,” said Laila quietly.

“Ah! Good, good,” said Ruslan. “Do you, Séverin?”

Séverin almost didn’t realize he was shaking his head. He felt numb all over.

“‘Laila and Majnun’ is one of my favorite tragedies,” said Ruslan. “I’ve always considered it such a shame that they are overshadowed by their later counterparts, Romeo and Juliet.”

Séverin fought to listen to their conversation, but his awareness felt pulled to every instance when Laila had called him Majnun. Madman. She’d told him what it meant, but he’d never known his nickname came from a poem. A tragic one, no less. Inexplicably, he felt like a fool. Once, that name had been a talisman to him. Now, it tasted bitter and prophetic.

“Ah, Majnun. The madman who lost himself to an impossible dream,” said Ruslan. He laughed softly, then glanced at the clock. “I wish you both a good night, and am honored to have spent such an illuminating evening in your company. Good luck tomorrow, Monsieur Montagnet-Alarie.”

He bowed once and turned back to his dessert plate.

* * *

SÉVERIN DIDN’T REMEMBER climbing to the top of the stairs, but he must have.

He didn’t remember opening the door to their suite either, but he must have done that too, for here they were. The silence lay thickly around them, and perhaps that was why when he finally spoke, it seemed louder than he intended.

“Is it true?”

Laila startled. She had taken a seat at the ice-and-marble vanity in the corner of the room, her back to him as she drew off her gloves and removed her jewelry.

“Is what true?”

“My—” He stopped, gathered himself, started anew: “The name you called me. Did you take it from that poem?”

“Yes,” she said.

It struck him then that even before she had kissed him and tangled up some roots inside him so deeply that he would—without thinking—choose her over his own brother … she had already marked him for someone who she would never belong to, an attachment that could only end in disappointment. How well she’d chosen his name.

He was mad, then, to think fate would let him be happy.

Perhaps he was mad, now, to try and change it.

Laila fumbled with the zipper at the back of her dress. Slowly, he went to her. He almost didn’t realize what he was doing … all this time, he’d only ever tried to put distance between them. To get close to her now flew in the face of all of that, and yet he knew there was some transaction to be made if he wanted the truth. When he stood too close to her, he felt weak. No doubt she would feel weak by parting with her secrets, and so he must meet her on equal ground.

“Tell me what happens at the end of the poem, Laila,” he said.

Laila closed her eyes, as if armoring herself. None of that, he thought. He reached out and swept her hair across one shoulder. Goose bumps prickled along her skin as she bowed her neck, graceful as a swan. His hands brushed against the caught zipper. Its teeth had gotten tangled up in the silk. At his touch, Laila flinched a little. She usually hated for anyone to see her scar, but this time she made no move to hide herself, as if just this once, she too was willing to be bare.

“Tell me, Laila,” he said.

The zipper slid down an inch. In the reflection, Laila opened her eyes.

“Once, a boy and a girl fell in love, but they could not be together,” she said. “The girl married another. The boy went mad, and—”

Her breath caught as he pushed the zipper farther.

“And?” he echoed.

“And he abandoned himself to the wilds of the desert,” she said. She refused to look at him. “At the end, they had a chance to be together, but they chose not to.”

Séverin slid the zipper farther. Now, he could count the delicate bones of her back. If he wanted, he could trace that glassy scar that some fiend had once led her to believe was a mark of her very unnaturalness. Once, he’d kissed his way down the line of it.

“In the end, they chose to preserve the thought of the other, uncorrupted, in their hearts.”

Séverin’s hand stilled. In the vanity’s reflection, Laila finally met his eyes. “I don’t think Laila could stand to see how much her Majnun had lost himself to the wilderness in his soul.”

She made no move to cover herself or leave, even with her dress almost completely unzipped. He recognized the tension in the line of her shoulders, the lift of her chin … the taut stillness of waiting.

For him.

Unthinking, Séverin bent toward the hollow of her neck. He watched her eyes flutter shut, her head tilt back. Laila called to him like a long night’s dreamless sleep after months of unrest. His lips were almost at her skin, when he stopped.

What was he doing?

Laila was a mirage glimpsed through smoke. A temptation in the desert that lulls the soul into thinking of false promises. Séverin had his promise, scrawled inside the jaws of the mechanical leviathan slumbering beneath the ice grotto. His promise lay behind the teeth of the devil. Tomorrow, he would have it, and he would be free.

Her words rang through his head.

I don’t think Laila could stand to see how much her Majnun had lost himself to the wilderness in his soul.

Séverin drew back from the curve of her neck and met her eyes in the mirror. Whatever lay in her gaze instantly shuttered, all weakness replaced with wariness.