Trust me, Phoenix. I will fix this.
She barely had time to nod before the world had gone black.
Through the colorful fog, someone ran toward her. The lights of the grotto still stung her eyes, cloaking the figure in darkness. Zofia tried to throw up her hands, but they were bound with rope. Was Enrique still safe? Where had Séverin gone? Had anyone in Paris remembered to feed Goliath?
“You’re alive!” shouted the figure.
The person dropped before her: Laila. Her friend grabbed her in a fierce hug, her body shaking with sobs and then, unaccountably, laughter. Zofia did not normally like being hugged, but it seemed that Laila needed this. She held still.
“You’re alive,” said Laila again, smiling through her tears.
“… Yes?” said Zofia. Her words came out as a croak.
Séverin had told her she would be paralyzed for a few hours, that was all. Such a thing was not deadly.
“I thought Séverin killed you.”
“Why would he kill me?”
Zofia searched Laila’s face. From the trail of salt down her cheeks, she knew her friend had been crying. Her gaze dropped to the garnet ring on Laila’s hand, and Zofia stilled. Séverin had refused to play the divine lyre, which should have saved Laila’s life. There was no reason to do that unless the lyre could not save Laila’s life. But where did that leave their plan to save her? There were still only ten days left before Laila’s body failed.
“He said the paralysis was part of the plan.”
Laila’s expression changed. From relief to hurt and then … confusion. A loud groaning sound caught Zofia’s attention. It took great effort to turn her head, for her neck ached terribly. To her right, Enrique was pushing himself up. At the sight of him—alive and frowning—warmth surged through Zofia’s chest. She studied him. Dried blood was spattered down his neck. One of his ears was missing. She did not remember that happening, although she did remember many loud screams. At the time, she had tried to ignore everything around her. She had been running through the scenarios, trying to find a way to escape.
“What happened to your ear?” she asked.
Enrique clapped one hand to the side of his head, wincing before he glared at her. “I nearly died and your first question is what happened to my ear?”
Laila threw her arms around him, then drew back.
“I don’t understand. I thought—”
From the oval pool came a churning sound, and they turned as one to look. The water frothed, steaming as a mechanical pod breached the surface and slid onto the icy floor. Zofia recognized it as an escape pod that had once been inside David the Leviathan, who had held the Fallen House’s treasures all these years. The pod, which was fish-shaped and equipped with several windows and a winnowing fan of blades where its tail might be, steamed and hissed as a section of it flapped open.
Hypnos, dressed in his brocade suit from the Midnight Auction last evening, stepped onto the ice and waved happily.
“Hello, friends!” he said, grinning.
But then he paused, his gaze darting to Laila’s blank face and the blood on Enrique’s neck, to Zofia’s bound hands and finally to the colorful fog at the edge of the ice where, for the first time, Zofia noticed the smashed-up mechanism of a Mnemo bug.
The smile slid off Hypnos’s face.
* * *
FOR THE PAST eighty-seven seconds and counting, Hypnos had not said a word.
Enrique had just finished explaining what happened between them and Séverin, how he’d taken the divine lyre and left with Ruslan before faking their deaths. Hypnos wrapped his arms around himself, staring at the floor for another seven seconds before he finally raised his head, his eyes going straight to Laila.
His voice broke. “You’re dying?”
“She will not die,” said Zofia sharply. “Death depends on variables that we will change.”
Laila smiled at her, before giving a small nod. She had not said much since Hypnos arrived. She’d barely looked at him either. Her eyes kept going to her garnet ring and the smashed Mnemo bug on the ice.
“The lyre doesn’t work how we thought it would,” said Enrique. “Remember the writing on the grotto wall? To play at God’s instrument will summon the unmaking. In this case, the unmaking is everything Forged, unless the lyre is played in a specific location, but we don’t know where—”
Hypnos cut in: “Somewhere beneath Poveglia, one of the islands near Venice—”
“Poveglia?” repeated Enrique, paling.
Zofia frowned. She knew that name. Years ago, Séverin had referred to it as Plague Island. They had almost accepted an acquisition there before deciding against it. Enrique had seemed very relieved they did not go because he found graveyards unsettling. Zofia remembered Tristan playing a joke on Enrique while they’d discussed the matter, sending creeping vines to wrap around his ankles. Enrique had not found it amusing.
“The matriarch told me,” said Hypnos quickly. “She said the maps to the locations of other entrances have been lost and this is all that’s left. I know the Tezcat routes to Italy. We could be there by tonight. The matriarch even has a safe house waiting for us in Venice, a place she said will have all the answers we need, but the location is mind Forged.”
“Then how will we find it?” asked Enrique.
“She gave me a hint about where we could find the key and its address,” said Hypnos. “Once we’re settled, we can meet Séverin. He left instructions on the Mnemo bug about how to…”
His eyes went to the smashed Mnemo bug on the ice.
“… find him,” he finished, wide-eyed, then looked around them. His gaze fixed on Laila. “I still don’t understand why you broke it!”
Laila frowned and color rushed to her face. “He took a knife to Zofia and then Enrique, and I thought he … he…”
Hypnos’s eyebrows shot up. “How could you believe Séverin wanted us all dead?”
“Because he lost his mind and his current plan is to turn into a god?” said Enrique.
He winced, touching his ear. Earlier, Laila had ripped part of her dress to fashion him a bandage that wrapped around his whole head. The bleeding had stopped, but Zofia noticed that Enrique looked paler. He was in pain. Zofia did not know how to help him, and it made her feel frustrated.
“But if the matriarch mentioned a map, then maybe she’ll know where it is,” said Enrique.
Hypnos’s mouth tugged downwards, and his shoulders fell.
“She went down with … with the machine,” he said.
Laila gasped, covering her mouth with her hands. Enrique went silent. Zofia bowed her head. She knew she should be thinking of the matriarch—and she did feel sorrow that she had died—but her thoughts flew to Hela. Slowly, Zofia touched her heart where the sharp, jagged point of Hela’s unopened letter lay against her skin. She had received the letter a few days ago, but the script was not in Hela’s hand. And if Hela could not pen a letter to her on her own, then that increased the likelihood that her sister was dead. Even the possibility of Hela’s death hurt far worse than the matriarch’s actual death. Zofia felt that familiar tightening panic in her chest. She reached for the pocket in her dress where she kept her matchbox, but it was gone. She stared around the room, trying to count things and center her thoughts—twelve icicles, six jagged edges in the ice, three shields, four drops of blood on the ground—but Hypnos and Enrique had started raising their voices.