“Goodbye, Laila,” said Ruslan, waving sadly. “You might not be a true muse, but you will live on as inspiration to me.”

He blew her a kiss and then glanced to Eva.

“Knock her out.”

* * *

HOURS LATER, LAILA WOKE UP sprawled out on the ice.

Beside her, she caught the faintest stirring of colorful wings. She blinked, her senses slowly flowing back into her as she saw what lay beside her head: a Mnemo bug and a single diamond pendant from the necklace Séverin had given her.

Laila touched her throat. The rest of her choker was gone. Maybe Eva had taken it, ripped it off her like some prize. Laila wished her throat didn’t feel so bare. She wished she didn’t recognize that Mnemo bug lying on the ice. Once, it had been on Séverin’s lapel. Laila stared at the thing, her hand twitching to reach for it, but she refused. This had always been the risk. That she should offer her heart, only to be told it wasn’t as precious as she had thought it to be. The last thing she wanted to see was the moment when Séverin had come to that realization himself.

Across from her, Laila saw the broken forms of Enrique and Zofia. They almost looked asleep, if it hadn’t been for the red seeping into the ice beneath them. And Hypnos … where was he? What had Séverin done to him? Laila pinched her nose, feeling sick. When she looked at them, she was reminded of every moment they had spent in L’Eden. Every moment they had sat beside her in the kitchens. When she closed her eyes, she could almost smell those memories, fresh bread and—unmistakable to her wrung out senses—the tang of raspberry jam.

It was this scent, biting and sweet, that made her reach for the Mnemo butterfly. Its colorful wings burned with Séverin’s memories. She held that knowledge lightly in her palm for a few seconds. And then, in one swift movement, Laila dashed it against the floor. The images in its wings rose up like smoke. Whatever memories the moth held soaked into the ice and vanished, leaving Laila alone in the frigid Sleeping Palace. Around her, the icicles chimed and the ceiling quivered so that a light snow sifted to the ground, and Laila thought of Snegurochka. She wished she were like her, a girl whose very heart could thaw and unmake her on the spot. Perhaps if she had been a girl made of gathered snow, she would be nothing but a puddle of water. But she was not. She was bones and pelt, and though every part of her felt broken, she wrapped her arms around her knees as if it might hold her together.

36

SÉVERIN

Séverin Montagnet-Alarie knew there was only one difference between monsters and gods. Both inspired fear. Only one inspired worship.

Séverin sympathized with monsters. As he walked out onto the hard ice of Lake Baikal, his heart humming, his body numb … he understood that perhaps monsters were misunderstood gods; deities with plans too grand for humans; a phantom of evil that drank from the roots of good.

He should know.

After all, he was a monster.

Ruslan and Eva flanked him on either side. The slow crunch of footsteps behind him reminded Séverin that they weren’t alone. The Sphinx of House Dazbog—no, the Fallen House, he corrected silently—followed, casting reptilian shadows across the ice. And that was to say nothing of the members spread out and hiding across Europe.

“Séverin, I have no desire to rush you, considering the events that just transpired…” said Ruslan. He tapped his chin with the severed hand of the former House Dazbog patriarch. “But … when, exactly, do you plan on playing the divine lyre?”

“As soon as we’re in the right place,” said Séverin.

At the back of his mind, he saw the way the room had begun to fall apart … at the mere touch of his blood to the strings. He remembered Laila lifting her bloodied face, her wince of pain. Séverin was so lost in thought that he almost didn’t hear Eva speak.

“I thought you loved them,” said Eva quietly, so quietly that Ruslan—consulting with his Sphinx—did not hear.

“And?” he asked.

“I…,” Eva said, before trailing off.

Séverin knew what she would say.

What he had done had not looked like love.

But then again, love did not always wear a face of beauty.

One hour earlier …

“I’ve made my choice,” said Séverin.

“And?” asked the matriarch.

“And I like neither option,” said Séverin, turning toward the leviathan’s entrance back to the ice grotto. “So I will make a third.”

“And how will that work?” demanded the matriarch. “You’ll give yourself over to them, and then what? Let them become gods and lay waste to the world?”

“I’ll figure it out,” said Séverin.

Delphine grabbed hold of his sleeve, and he shook her loose.

“If you go up there, the leviathan may not hold!” she said. “It may crumble out from beneath you, and then what?”

Then the reward is still greater than the risk, thought Séverin, even as he said nothing. Ruslan had only given Laila ten minutes. Already, their time dwindled.

“Wait,” said the matriarch.

Something in her voice made him stop.

“I know where the lyre will take you,” she said. “It will lead you to a temple far away from here … There might still be ancient Tezcat routes that lead to it, but I don’t know where those are. All I know is the location of this temple activates that lyre. Once its true power is ripe, all the Babel Fragments of the world are at risk of being torn out of the earth and joined once more. It was what the Fallen House always wanted … that they might rebuild the Tower of Babel, climb it, and claim God’s power for themselves.”

Séverin did not turn around.

“How do you know this?” he asked.

Delphine paused and then exhaled. It was a sound full of relief, as if she’d finally shoved off the weight of this secret.

“Your mother told me,” she admitted. “Your mother wanted to make sure I would be able to protect you, and that—if you needed—you would know the secret she carried with her.”

Your mother. All this time, Kahina and Delphine had known that the cost of protecting him meant harming him. And for the first time, he felt like he could finally see inside the choices Tristan had made.

For too long, Séverin had wondered whether Tristan’s … habits … would have turned on them. But what if his habits were his version of mercy? All those demons at Tristan’s throat, pushing his hand, warping his thoughts. What if it meant that all he could do was displace his horror onto something else rather than them?

Tristan’s love had worn the face of horror.

Delphine’s love had worn the face of hate.

Kahina’s love had worn the face of silence.

No sooner had he thought that then he felt the pressure of his brother’s blade against his chest. The knife was all he had left of Tristan. Since he’d died, Séverin had held the knife close like a ghost he could not let go, but now he saw it as something else … a gift. A final blessing. What he would do next was no less monstrous than Tristan’s actions … and yet it held its own version of love. Séverin touched his Mnemo bug and breathed deep. For the first time in a while, he no longer caught the scent of dead roses. He smelled the freshness of fallen snow, the scent of a new beginning.