When she turned around, Séverin and Enrique were still staring at her.

“You rescued us,” said Enrique, heaving. He smiled weakly. “This almost feels like a fairy tale, and I’m the damsel in distress.”

“You’re not a damsel.”

“I am in distress, though.”

“But—”

“Let me have this, Zofia,” said Enrique wearily.

“Zofia…” started Séverin, and then he stopped.

If anyone appeared distressed, it was Séverin. He fell silent, his brows pressing together as he pointed to the ice grotto.

“I’m glad you’re safe, but we’re still missing Laila and Hypnos,” he said, looking up at her. “Enrique said you’d gone to the leviathan. What happened?”

Zofia stared down the hall, unease creeping through her.

“I was attacked inside it.”

“Did you see your attacker’s face?”

She shook her head.

“What weapons do we have?”

Zofia touched her bare throat. Nothing. Séverin saw the movement and nodded. He looked to Enrique and then glanced down at the emptied arsenal of his belt.

“Stay behind me, and we’ll go together,” he said.

Zofia had hardly taken a step when she heard a low sigh from the end of the ice grotto. It was a sigh of reluctance, the sound she used to make when Laila would tell her to wash her hands before eating dinner or help tidy up the kitchens. But that sigh did not match the figure who stepped out of the shadows. A man wearing a golden bee mask … his hands steepled in thought, one hand pale and the other … the other gold.

She recognized the insect mask immediately. It belonged to the man in the catacombs, the man who the Fallen House had called “the doctor.”

“I know you’ll understand,” said the doctor. “It may not be easy at first … but you will understand. I will show you before the day is gone.”

“What—” started Zofia, just as three masked people stepped out from behind the doctor.

Séverin lunged at them, a mirror shard in his hand, but the man was too quick. He subdued him, forcing him to the ground. Séverin fought to turn his face toward them.

“Zofia, Enrique, run—”

The person kicked Séverin in the head, and he went still. A second masked man grabbed Enrique by the throat, holding a knife to his neck. Zofia raised her fists, fury gathering at the back of her skull when the doctor raised his hand.

“Fight back,” said the doctor, turning his masked face to her. “And I will cut his throat. I really do not wish to do that. First, it’s deeply unhygienic. Second, it’s such a waste of a person.”

Zofia looked down at her hands. Her veins still vibrated with the memory of power, and she hated that she could not use any of it now. Slowly, she lowered her fists.

“Very good,” said the doctor. “Thank you for doing that, Zofia. I’ve never found violence to be the answer.”

His voice …

There was something about it she recognized. And how did he know her name?

“Now,” said the doctor, as the third man stepped toward her. “I need your help, my dear. You see, my muse needs some inspiration before she can work. I think you, Enrique, and Séverin will help us accomplish that. I hope you will agree.”

When he stepped forward, Zofia noticed something tucked beneath his arm … something pale and white, bent at a strange angle. It was a hand. Attached to the finger gleamed a huge Ring. And then the doctor lifted up his mask, revealing a pair of kind eyes that she had grown used to, a curving smile that she had often answered with one of her own. For Zofia, it felt like two images that did not fit, and yet her observations could not lie.

The doctor of the Fallen House was Ruslan.

He grinned and then waved the hand that had never been his.

“Rather gruesome, isn’t it?” Ruslan said. “Anyway, I do hope you can all help. After all, friends make incredible sacrifices for one another. And I’ve come to consider you just that.” He smiled wide. “Friends.”

33

SÉVERIN

Séverin woke up with his head pounding and his hands bound. He was propped up against a metal chair in a dark silver room that pulsed. The smell was familiar, the salt rust scent of blood. Light wavered across the ribbed metallic walls. A familiar raised podium cut the center of the room. Séverin blinked. He was inside the metal leviathan. Only it looked different now that it had been stripped of its treasures.

Séverin tried to inch forward silently, but the slight movement sent a burst of pain through his skull. His head pounded. The last thing he remembered was lunging at a guard, only to be thrown to the floor and knocked unconscious by a sharp kick. The hilt of Tristan’s knife pressed against his ribs, and the sharp tip of the Mnemo moth pinned to his lapel pricked his skin.

Near-silence filled the room, broken only by the eerie, watery pulse of Lake Baikal sloshing against the metal leviathan. A slight stir to his left caught his attention. Hypnos. Séverin scooted forward. The other boy lay utterly still, and for a wild moment Séverin prayed that time itself had stopped because Hypnos lay far too still. He wanted to be like ice, but there were too many cracks in his armor. The closer he got to Hypnos, the more old memories slithered out from the fissures, scalding him. Séverin remembered the brothers they had been—cut from the shadows and resigned to them; Hypnos’s singing voice; sunlight flooding the false theatre in which they had played at being the wanted sons of pale patriarchs. With his bound hands, he nudged at Hypnos’s body, managing to flip him over. The other boy let out a low growl, curling his hand under his chin as he … sucked his thumb?

Hypnos was asleep.

“Wake up,” hissed Séverin.

The sleeping Hypnos merely scowled harder, but didn’t wake.

“He’ll be fine,” said another voice emerging from the darkened end of the leviathan. “I got to him before the second round of the blood Forging attack. The ice wine put the Order to sleep, and the blood Forging woke them up … though it won’t let them move for another twelve hours.”

The matriarch approached them. Her fur coat was clasped at her throat like a cape. But the rest of her attire was trousers and boots. She was the one who had knocked him unconscious. She gestured at her outfit and kicked lightly at a discarded mask on the floor. “Camouflage. I have you and your cohort to thank for the idea.”

“You’re—you’re not—”

“Affected by the blood Forged drinks?” she asked. “I’ve thoroughly immunized myself to them.”

Of course, thought Séverin, her little vials served with her suppers. The matriarch held out a tin of biscuits and a jar of the raspberry-cherry jam he had once loved.

“You took a bad fall … my apologies. Food will help. Besides, you need to eat before the journey.”

Journey?

“Wh-what are you—”

“Rescuing you,” said the matriarch abruptly. “You have no idea what’s going on up there, do you? Allow me to illuminate the situation.”

“Free me,” demanded Séverin, raising his chained hands.