The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves #1)(26)

“I have learned that something does not have to be animate in order to use the word ‘kill,’” said Zofia. “Like how some people say ‘kill time.’ Perhaps these women you are referencing are killing their expectations?”

Tristan snorted half his cocoa, then looked at the clock and blanched.

“I have to go,” he said. “I’ve got a commission due.”

Enrique sighed. “I need to do more research on the artifact. Zofia, you might as well come with me. You’ll need to know this too.”

Zofia scowled and slid off her chair, leaving Séverin and Laila in the kitchen. Séverin reached for his tea. He was glad the kitchen was bright and that they sat on opposite sides of a wide table. It wasn’t as though the circumstances of that one night had ever repeated themselves, but every time he was alone with her, it was as if his thoughts slipped over a cliff … where images best left forgotten reared up like ghostly waves.

“Laila.”

“Majnun,” she said mildly.

Only Laila called him Majnun, or madman. Usually, it was said with something like affection, but her tone was cold.

Séverin looked around the kitchen. Laila preferred warm, bubbling chaos in her workspace. Stained recipes papering the walls. Chipped mixing bowls that she insisted had soaked in happiness and were therefore superior to something new. Wooden spoons engraved with the names of the people she cared about, swinging and clanging from the ceiling. But today, everything looked pristine. Nothing on the surface. Everything tucked away. It was the opposite of happy.

“You never learn,” she said, sipping her tea. “Perhaps this could have been avoided had you just let me read your correspondence.”

“The letter was Forged, there’s no way—”

“The seal was Forged. The paper itself was ordinary. I could have told you where it had been, how many homes it had traveled to before finding you. I could have told you it was a trap.”

She was right, and he knew it. But sharing it with everyone would have only proven that he’d placed them in danger.

“What would you have me do?”

“I would have you trust me,” she said. “As I have trusted you.”

That trust was the reason why there was no contract or oath tattoo between them. Two years ago, Laila had saved his life by reading the pocket watch of a hotelier who wished him dead just so he could take over the property. She’d proved her abilities to him by reading an old ouroboros pendant passed down from his father … and once she’d drawn out the depths of him, she’d offered her own secrets in return. She could have lorded her findings over him, but instead, she gave him a knife of his own, and that was how it was. The two of them smiling, the damning unknown things held like knives at each other’s throats.

Barring Tristan, it was the most secure friendship he’d ever known.

“You’re making this a far greater deal than it is,” said Séverin.

One look at Laila, and he knew he’d said exactly the wrong thing.

“It’s my life, Séverin,” she said stonily. “And it means a great deal to me.”

He flushed. “I didn’t mean it like that—”

“I don’t care what you meant. I care about something getting in the way of my search,” said Laila fiercely. “Your ego included.”

Always, Laila returned to her search for the Forged book with the answers to her existence, though not even Laila knew its contents. Just as she was unstoppable and relentless for the ones she loved, she embodied that with her search too. Nothing could hold her back. Not the family she’d left behind in India and, some day soon, not the family she’d made here.

“All I’m asking is that you trust us the way we trust you,” she said. “Do you know what I am?”

“Angry?” he tried, with a weak smile.

Laila was not amused. “I’m an instrument. I know that. You know that.”

“Don’t call yourself that—” he started.

But Laila spoke over him. “And yet you refuse to use me even when I ask it of you. So, it would seem like you’re in need of reminding.”

Her hand darted forward, reaching for his wrist.

“Laila—” he warned.

“You spilled your box of cloves on your sleeves this morning. You hid one of Zofia’s incendiary devices in Hypnos’s hall. You stared at the bone clock in your office for nearly an hour. Want more? Because I can do more,” said Laila, her voice nearly breaking. “This suit was made by a woman who sobbed into the cloth upon finding that she was pregnant out of wedlock. This suit—”

“Stop,” he said, standing so fast that his chair smacked the glass behind him.

He looked down to where her fingers still touched his wrist. Neither of them moved. He could hear her breath, shallow and fast, from across the table. Not once since they had agreed to work together three years ago had she read his objects. At her touch, he felt dangerously exposed. He had to leave. Now.

“You’re not an instrument. Not to me,” he said, not looking at her. “But if you’re so insistent, then put yourself to use. Get me on that guest list to the Palais des Rêves.”



* * *



AS EVENING APPROACHED, Séverin heard commotions outside his office. This was nothing new. He ignored it and focused on the papers before him. For some reason, he thought he could smell sugar and rosewater in the air. The perfume Laila kept in a rose quartz bottle. Morning and night, she’d swipe the crystal stopper across her wrists, down the line of her bronze throat. It was a faint scent … one he’d only caught when his lips had skimmed down her neck.