In all that he had seen, the word “awe” rarely came to him.

But now … now he felt fresh wonder.

The light illuminated a world teeming with exquisite treasures. It felt like the inside of a holy place. Even now, Séverin could make out the tattered edges of a rich, scarlet rug. There was a water-damaged roll of cushion, a side table with a candle. Whoever built this had intended it as a place of meditation. Beyond the small area of meditation, the room opened to a cavern. Egyptian pillars of lapis lazuli propped up the walls. Huge, half figurines of roaring, golden tigers swiveled their heads in his and Hypnos’s direction and narrowed their ruby eyes. Illuminated manuscripts Forged to the likeness of birds fluttered, shedding bits of gold leaf as they streamed overhead. There were statue busts and relics, necklaces of luminous stones, spinning orreries carved of jade …

“Dear God,” said Hypnos. “The Order would kill for this.”

Hypnos walked toward a pillar in the middle of the room. It was roughly four feet high and adorned with the international House symbols of the Order of Babel. Séverin followed after him. Each of the symbols bore a particular indentation. There, nestled among the thorns of House Kore and crescent moons of House Nyx, he recognized the ouroboros shape of the House that should have been his: House Vanth.

“Why have this here?” asked Hypnos.

Séverin followed the direction of the pillar to the low ceiling above which resembled a warped mirror. Or a Mnemo lens.

“I think it functions like a key,” said Séverin, pointing at the indents within the House symbols. He took out his ouroboros carving and held it up against the sunken shape of it in the stone pillar. A perfect fit. In one smooth move, he pushed in the ouroboros and then looked up at the ceiling.

Nothing happened.

“Let me try,” said Hypnos.

He pressed his House Nyx ring into the indent, and a ripple of light chased down the silver ceiling …

Séverin held his breath, wondering if it might reveal some proof that its final treasure lay here. Instead, the Mnemo screen showed the ice grotto above: Enrique pacing in a circle; Zofia burning a match; Laila stone-faced and unblinking.

“We can see them so clearly, but they can’t see us, can they?” asked Hypnos. He waved his hands wildly beneath the screen, but no one’s expression changed. “How is this possible?”

“The recording device must be on one of the leviathan’s teeth,” said Séverin, though that was not nearly as interesting to him as the Rings. He stared at the perfect fit of the ouroboros carving within the pillar. “My father’s emblem didn’t work.”

Hypnos looked curiously blank as he withdrew his Ring. Instantly, the Mnemo screen went dark. Séverin noticed that the lines of his mouth had tightened, as if his mouth warred with his mind. It was the expression of a secret fighting to be known.

“Perhaps it only works on active Houses?” suggested Hypnos, not looking at him.

“The Fallen House was exiled long before House Vanth fell,” said Séverin, pointing at the emblem of the six-pointed star in the pillar. “It works just fine.”

“Yes, well,” said Hypnos, shrugging. “Does it matter, mon cher? This is no treasure and holds no interest to us.”

Séverin eyed the pillar a moment longer and then withdrew his ouroboros pendant. In the end, Hypnos was right. The pillar held neither hidden truths nor hidden treasure. They needed to keep looking.

While Hypnos turned to the wall of treasures, Séverin moved toward the northern section of the room. Built into the wall was a great steering wheel, the spokes encased in white.

The leviathan didn’t just move, it could be steered. Controlled. Suddenly, the name of the Horowitz family in the well made sense. Each of those Tezcat portals had been routes for the leviathan to sneak through.

Hadn’t Enrique mentioned there was a lake in Istanbul? And the well was just wide enough for the creature to fit through. Séverin scanned the area nearest the steering wheel, nausea creeping through his body. The Fallen House must have used the leviathan as a transportation vessel. To his right, a metal bubble protruded from the wall, an escape mechanism of sorts, equipped with its own small steering wheel and clouded orbs that he recognized as Shu Gusts, Forged breathing apparatuses full of oxygen and named for the Egyptian god of the air. This part of the leviathan formed a partial narthex, which abutted the place of meditation. A table hunched half-hidden in the shadows. There, a stone slab—like an altar—jutted up from the floor. On it lay something dark and leathered.

Séverin took a step toward it. Something inside him hummed. The scar on his hand tingled.

“Thirty minutes!” echoed Enrique’s voice from far away.

This was it.

Séverin felt as though he were in a dream. That book called to him. Strange paraphernalia littered the surface of the altar. The book itself was as Enrique had described: huge and darkened, the leather eaten away on the sides. Old blood spattered the stone. A knife, now rusted, had fallen to the floor. There was a page of hymns, litanies in different languages and a small, strange harp pushed to the side; some of its strings glittered as if they had been strung with starlight.

In that second, Séverin felt as if he’d caught the tempo of the universe’s pulse, as if he stood on the verge of an apotheosis. He reached for the book. When he touched it, he thought he heard Tristan’s laugh echoing in his ears. He felt the pressure of horns, Roux-Joubert’s voice whispering to him: We can be gods.

He flipped open the book—

And then paused. It was impossible. And yet, the truth slammed into him with all the force of a bludgeon.

26

LAILA

Laila watched as the afternoon light seamed through the cracks of the ice, as if knitting the world back together in gold.

Or perhaps it wasn’t gold at all, but rich ichor, that nectareous blood of the gods that Séverin and Ruslan mentioned at dinner. The thought unnerved her. If she looked at the world that way, it turned the lake from something wondrous to something wounded. She couldn’t bear any more wounds, not from the dead girls and their stolen hands nor from the raw ache behind her chest every time she saw Séverin.

Near the entrance of the Sleeping Palace she found a slender gazebo Forged of ice and marble, the pillars twisted round with jasmine and bruise-colored violets to keep away the smell of fish carcasses left out on the ice by the sleek seals that lived in the lake. She breathed deep. Savoring all of it: the smell of life and death. The fetid sweetness of life expired, the unripe bitterness of life cut short. And always, that metal tang of ice.

In the distance, the jagged Ural Mountains appeared mirrored in the lake, as if an identical belt of them existed just beneath the surface of the water.

She hoped it was true.

She hoped there was another world pressed beside their own, a world where she had been born instead of made; a world where the girls bound to the Sleeping Palace had never died. Laila wondered who she might be in that other world. Perhaps she would be a married woman by now, like so many of the girls her age in Pondichéry. Perhaps a boy with skin as dark as hers and eyes that were not the color of sleep would hold her heart in thrall.