Everything Forged was failing.

Enrique forced his gaze to the lyre … there, the once dull and metallic strings shone iridescent. At least, Enrique thought it was iridescence. It was a sheen the likes of which he’d never seen. Something like the cross between a spill of oil on the surface of a pond and the ocean backlit by the sun.

“Amazing,” said Ruslan. He tilted his head as he looked at Séverin. “How?”

And then he paused.

“Your mother,” he said softly. “The woman from Algeria … I remember tales of her. And her name … Kahina. I wonder if the old patriarch of House Vanth knew what a treasure he’d managed to smuggle out of that country.” He smiled, and then looked eagerly at the lyre. “Well, don’t hold us in suspense any longer! Don’t just pluck a string, play the thing!”

Enrique thrashed again on the ice, trying to catch Séverin’s attention. No! Don’t do it.

Laila spoke, her voice breaking. “Please, Séverin … please. I need you to play it. I … I’m dying—”

“I know,” he said, cutting her off.

The ice in his voice would’ve frozen the room over.

When he said nothing else, Laila flinched. Her mouth opened, closed. Enrique watched the horror settling behind her eyes, and he wanted to tell her … no. Not that. He wanted Séverin to tell her that the lyre destroyed all that was Forged. That there was a reason behind this pain.

“Please,” she said.

“Yes, please, Séverin,” said Ruslan, like a child. “Play it.”

Séverin looked at Laila, his expression utterly blank, and then he turned to Ruslan.

“No.”

Laila hung her head, her hair curtaining her face, and Enrique—even as relief surged through him—felt his heart ache.

“I won’t play it here and risk my own chance at godhood,” said Séverin with a cruel smile. “You need me, so I suggest you follow my rules.”

“Play it,” insisted Ruslan. “Or…” His gaze slid to Enrique and Zofia. “Or I’ll kill them.”

Enrique’s pulse turned jagged. If he played it for them, Laila would die. If he didn’t play it, all three of them would die. But however much he struggled with his thoughts, Séverin seemed collected.

“I’ll save you the trouble.”

Séverin moved swiftly. His face was blank and cold, and Enrique thought he had never seen such empty determination in someone’s eyes. Enrique struggled against his bindings as Séverin crossed the room, standing before Zofia. She flinched back as he grabbed the nape of her neck. Something red glinted on his hand. And then, impossibly, Séverin’s dagger went to her heart.

Zofia’s heart.

The same heart that offered so much without hesitation. A heart full of bravery. Full of fire.

Enrique blinked. He had to be wrong. Maybe he’d lost so much blood, he couldn’t see straight … but no. Séverin stood so close to Zofia that he might have been whispering in her ear. Not that Zofia would see. Her eyes widened, her body slumping forward as she went utterly still. Séverin’s hands were cherry red. Laila let out a scream, just as Séverin turned to him with that same knife. His eyes held no humanity, but something older. Something feral.

Séverin moved closer. Enrique’s heartbeat thundered so loud in his ears that he almost didn’t realize Séverin was speaking. When he finally heard him, it made no sense.

“I wish my love was more beautiful.”

I don’t understand, Enrique wanted to say.

But Séverin didn’t give him the chance.

35

LAILA

Laila did not trust her body.

It had failed her by not lasting long enough. It had failed her by filling her soul with the wingbeats of false hope. It had failed her now by showing her something that could not be real. Each blink of her eyes, each beat of her heart rendered what she saw more sharply until she could not ignore her own senses.

Séverin had killed Zofia.

Séverin had walked to her, his gait unchanging, purposeful. He looked down at Zofia, and Laila wished she had not seen her friend’s face. She wished she hadn’t seen her blue eyes widening, hope glossing her gaze.

How many times had they done this? How many times had Séverin swept in at the last moment … and freed them?

Hope squeezed through the cracks of logic. There was a moment—bright and suspended—where Séverin bent down, as if to whisper in Zofia’s ear, and Laila thought all might still be well. She could not see her hope for what it was, nothing more than a silvered serpent.

“No!” she called out.

But it changed nothing. Zofia slumped to the ground, beside Enrique who squirmed and kicked out against the ice as Séverin turned to him. Then he too went still.

Gone.

They were both gone.

And for some reason, she was still here. The wrongness slanted through her heart. She was not supposed to outlive them. She thought about her mother on the day she died. For two days before her death, Laila had clutched her mother’s hand so tightly, she was convinced her soul wouldn’t be able to find its way out of the body. In that time, her father’s grief became a land of exile. One that, perhaps, he never left. Maybe that was why he knelt at his wife’s bed when he thought their daughter had gone to sleep. Maybe that was why he said: I keep praying they will take her instead of you.

Her mother had shushed him for saying such things: I would never wish for the pain to outlive the ones I love. Even in this, I can find God’s blessing.

To outlive the ones she loved.

She had not considered such a thing to be a curse until now. Though how long that existence would last, she could not say.

Laila had always wanted her last sight to be beautiful—and he was. He was moving darkness, and he was all she could see. Séverin walked toward her, rubbing his thumb across his mouth. Laila zeroed in on that mouth, the same one that had spoken such truths and whispered her name as if it were an invocation meant to save him. The same one that had just condemned her to death.

I’m dying—

I know.

Such words held all the finality of a thrust blade. He knew. He knew, and he didn’t care. Laila wanted to believe she had dreamt up all of the last hours’ tenderness—his kiss, his smile, his body curling around hers in sleep. But then, peeking out over the collar of his shirt, Laila glimpsed the evidence of last night: a smudge of her lip rouge. Wrong wrong wrong. How could she have been so wrong?

“Laila—” started Eva, looking stricken. “I never … I thought—”

Laila tuned her out.

“I take it killing her won’t make you play the lyre either, will it?” asked Ruslan.

“No,” said Séverin. “She’ll die soon anyway, and my knife is too slippery. I’d like to get moving before dark. I am sure we have a ways to travel.”

Ruslan nodded. He reached for the lyre on the ground. The strings still shimmered from Séverin’s blood, but the light in them had dulled. Laila stared after it. Her body had failed her once more, for while it might look like a member of the Lost Muses … that too had been a lie.