The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves #1)(18)

It wasn’t his intellect that made him unwanted.

It was his face.



* * *



ENRIQUE SAGGED AGAINST the bar counter. One should never drink champagne unhappy, so instead, he tipped his flute back and forth, watching the bubbles slosh down the sides. L’Eden’s secret bar was small, designed more like a crypt than a gathering place, and hidden behind a bookcase. Inside, flowering vines crawled down the walls. Their buds put forth no flowers, only dainty teacups or champagne coupes of cut quartz, depending on the time of day. Tristan and Zofia’s inventions dominated the room. When building officials deemed a glass chandelier a hazard, Tristan Forged one out of moonflowers and anemone. When the officials declared that lanterns would be a fire risk, Zofia collected phosphorescent stones from the Brittany coast and Forged them into a ceiling net that looked like softly blooming stars.

Looking at the designs, Enrique felt a familiar stab of envy. He had always wanted to Forge. When he was little, he thought it was like magic. Now he knew there was no such thing—neither fairies in the forests nor maidens in the sea. But there was this art, this connection to the ancient world, to the myth of creation itself, and Enrique longed to be part of it. He’d hoped Forging might make him a hero like the kind his grandmother told him about when he was younger. After all, if Forging could reshape objects of the world, why couldn’t it reshape the world itself? Why couldn’t he be the artist—architect—of change? But his thirteenth birthday came and went, and neither the affinity of mind nor matter called to him. When he realized he didn’t have the talent, he chose to study the subjects that felt closest to Forging: history and language. He could still change the world … maybe not with something as dramatic or grand as Forging, but in more intimate ways. Writing. Speaking. Human connection.

When he came to Paris, the rallying cry of the French Revolution fitted into the hollows of his dreams: liberté, egalité, fraternité.

Liberty, equality, brotherhood.

Those words sang to him as they sang to other students like him. Students who had begun to question the tight grip Spain had kept on the Philippines for nearly three hundred years. In Paris, Enrique had found others like him, but it was Séverin who changed his life, who took a chance on his abilities as a historian when no one else had. Séverin listened to his dreams of changing the world and showed him what needed changing. With one older brother primed to take over the family’s lucrative merchant business and the other older brother promised to the church, Enrique had been allowed to pursue whatever he wanted. He knew what he wanted … he just had to make the Ilustrados want him too.

Maybe threatening the Order with the Horus Eye’s secret was the answer. Enrique let himself daydream what might happen next: Maybe he and Séverin could tell the Order that civilization hung in the balance … maybe they could confront them on a stage. Lighting was critical for any dramatic showdown. And there had to be champagne. Obviously. Then Séverin would become patriarch—Enrique could make some speech about lineage resurrected, that would sound nice, perhaps with confetti raining down—House Vanth would be restored, and, naturally, the House would need a historian. Him. Then, the Ilustrados would clamor for his attention because they’d finally have an insider who could report on the Order of Babel’s workings. It was the only blindspot in their intelligence. After that, he and Séverin and their whole crew could change the world! Maybe they could get swords … Enrique had no clue what to do with one, but just holding one sounded rather epic. What if someone made a statue of him—

“Let’s go.”

Enrique startled, and his champagne flute fell.

“My drink!” he cried as it smashed on the ground.

“You weren’t even drinking. You were daydreaming.”

“But I liked holding it—”

“Come on.”

Séverin didn’t wait for him as he jogged up the short staircase. Scowling, Enrique muttered something in Tagalog that would have made his grandmother smack him with her slipper. It wasn’t like Séverin to be that brusque. His shoulders were up to his ears as they walked past the grand lobby and the entrance to the Seven Sins Garden.

Near the stables, a carriage discreetly pulled up to the road. Unlike the usual fleet of L’Eden’s carriages, this one bore neither name nor insignia. Enrique clambered in after Séverin. The driver closed the door, and dark curtains unraveled to block the windows.

Enrique fidgeted with his sleeves. “So … now do I get to know what’s happening?”

From his pocket, Séverin withdrew an envelope. The bloodred seal had been split down the middle, but the wax-stamped letter was clear enough. H.

Enrique stilled. A beat passed. “Hypnos?”

He knew the moment he spoke the name that it was true. The very air seemed to affirm his suspicions. Wind crept through a tear in the curtain, chilling his skin.

Séverin clenched his jaw. “He knows we stole from him. He’s asked for a meeting.”

“What?”

He thought the plan had been foolproof. No prints. No recording devices. Nothing to give away their presence in the auction’s holding room.

As an Order patriarch, Hypnos could have had them arrested. Or worse. That he wanted a meeting spoke of something else … a game of give and take and blackmail. Enrique wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that Séverin had chosen only him to come along. Was he expendable or invaluable?