The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves #1)(35)

At the top of the staircase, she waited. In one hand, she carried a half-empty bottle of champagne. Her other hand brimmed with strings of pearls, a set of emerald earrings, and two crescent-moon cuff links. The two Sphinxes had not moved from their posts. Tristan and Séverin were nowhere to be seen.

“Hypnos!” she hollered.

The crowd turned. The French horn and piano music cut off sharply. Hypnos sat at a table, his arm around a beautiful man. When he looked up at her, he flashed a wicked smile.

Laila walked down a few steps, swaying her hips generously so the light caught on her spangled corset. She hadn’t faked a lover’s spat in six months. She owed it to the crowd.

Gingerly, Hypnos slid his arm off the other man.

“You lied to me,” she said loudly.

Hypnos stood, putting up his hands. “My darling, I can explain—”

Laila threw the champagne bottle in a wide arc. Some people dove out of the way. Others raced to catch it before it fell, but they were too late. The champagne bottle smashed to the floor, glittering shards spinning out across the dance floor. The Sphinx nearest the stage lifted its head. Its nostrils flared.

“She meant nothing to me!” cried Hypnos, dropping to his knees.

“She?” repeated Laila. “I was talking about a he.”

“Oh.” Hypnos winced. “Him too?”

“I am through with this!” announced Laila. “All of this!”

From her vantage point on the stairway, Laila broke the streams of pearls. They rained down on the audience. As the crowd dove for the pearls, the second Sphinx lifted its head.

“L’énigme is not performing today!” yelled Laila, and then she turned on her heel, disappearing up the stairs.

The stage manager huffed, but she didn’t care. Her contract allowed—and, frankly, encouraged—one outburst and cancelled performance a year.

She was just doing her job.

The moment Laila was in her room, she touched the mirror and watched the scene unfurling on the Palais floor. Séverin and Tristan weren’t there. But neither was the House Kore courier. On the floor, the two real Sphinxes crouched on their knees, pawing through the stray pearls and jewels, their hands wet with champagne. Tossed in with all that rubbish had been Hypnos’s House-marked cuff links and the crescent-moon brooch. Laila was fairly certain one of the cuff links had fallen between the floor panels, which meant they’d be searching for ages.

Laila changed out of her costume, and then selected a violet crêpe de Chine dress from her wardrobe. Polished amethyst pendants Forged to drink in the moonlight adorned the sharp V of the waistline and the tips of her billowing sleeves. Laila paused to swipe more rouge on her lips before taking a specially commissioned staircase behind her wardrobe that led to the servants’ exit and the cellar that served as a holding cell. At the cellar, she pressed her ear to the door.

Behind the wood, the voices were indistinct. After a moment, she heard a chair scrape back. Then, a door slamming shut.

If all had gone to plan, Tristan had finished interrogating the House Kore courier while Séverin discovered the Horus Eye location. Laila was still straining to hear more sounds when the door swung open. She lost her footing, and her head thudded against someone’s hard chest. She looked up, a scream caught in her throat. Sphinx. Its jaws were cracked wide. Reptilian eyes like a gold coin slit down the middle. It caught her with one hand, and then with its other, pulled back the mask to reveal a disheveled Séverin. He grinned.

“Had you there for a moment, didn’t I?”

“God,” said Laila, clutching her heart.

“A mere mortal, at your service,” he said, bowing.

The Sphinx mask had mussed his hair, and Laila’s hands twitched with the memory of her fingers combing through it, the surprising texture of it like roughened silk. She shoved aside the memory. She knew all the carefully cobbled pieces of him. He was deception steeped in elegance, from his sharp smile to his unsettling eyes. Séverin’s eyes were the precise color of sleep—sable velvet with a violet sheen, promising either nightmare or dream.

Séverin held open the door, and Laila brushed past him. The basement holding space was narrow and lined with bookshelves and rusting cutlery. Tristan was in the middle of peeling off his S?reté uniform in exchange for a swallowtail coat and top hat. He waved a shy hello at her.

Laila blew him a kiss. “So? Did you get the catalogue coin?”

Séverin grinned. “Yes.”

“Where’s the courier?”

“With a stiff drink, I imagine.”

“Did you keep the coin or—”

“Returned it,” said Séverin. “No point holding on to it once we had the coordinates.”

“Good,” she said. She’d begun to feel rather guilty for the courier and the thought of landing him into even more trouble with his employers didn’t sit well with her. “What happened back there with the Sphinx schedules?”

Séverin rubbed his hand through his hair. “I couldn’t tell you. Zofia Forged the schedule perfectly. Tristan delivered it on time. A clerical error, perhaps. But you saved us. Feigning a lovers’ spat with Hypnos?” He shuddered.

“On the contrary, it was quite fun,” said Laila. Séverin seemed to go rigid, and Laila felt the slightest thrill. “He was the one who came to warn me, anyway.”