The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves #1)(79)

“Nowhere,” grumbled Hypnos.

“Have you tried taking off the glass covering?”

“What would that do?” demanded Enrique. “It’s far too delicate as it is. Maybe that’s why it’s called a bone clock in the first place. Fragile bones and all that. I lifted the covering once and examined it with kidskin gloves, and the silver immediately started flaking.”

“Fine, fine,” said Séverin, although he didn’t sound very convinced. He turned to Hypnos. “What about any headway on the Fallen House?”

“There’s nothing here that we haven’t already discussed. The Fallen House believed it was their sacred duty to rebuild the Tower of Babel. They sought to do that by”—Hypnos paused, squinting as he held a piece of parchment to his face—“‘harnessing the power of the dead.’ I have no idea what that means. It sounds both sinister and terribly unfashionable.”

“Well, they were always cryptic,” said Enrique, gesturing at the famed bone clock.

At the height of their power, the Fallen House had never once revealed where they held their meetings. Only their infamous bone clocks, their Forged objects of communication, could reveal the meetings’ location. Supposedly, the clock also contained a failsafe method allowing a non-House member to locate them in case of emergency, but Enrique was starting to think that was nothing more than rumor.

“How do we know Roux-Joubert is even at the Fallen House’s original meeting place?” asked Enrique.

Séverin turned over the honeybee chain in his hand. “He’d consider it a point of pride. As if he were intentionally continuing a legacy.”

Hypnos snorted. “Him and who else? You told me that man kept saying ‘we,’ but the Order has tightly controlled anything even resembling recruitment to the Fallen House. They had the leader executed, and the rest of them were given the choice of death or a strong mind affinity alteration that would wipe out any recollection of the Fallen House.”

“But so many of those members must have been with the Fallen House for most of their adult lives, wouldn’t mind affinity make them—”

“—a shell of their former selves?” finished Hypnos. “Yes. Which is why a shocking number of them chose death. Fanatics.”

“Some must have escaped both death and punishment, though,” mused Séverin. “Perhaps they were driven deep underground.”

“My guess is that it’s a clever, deranged man and his hench person with that blade hat you mentioned. The Fallen House loved to travel in packs, like they were wolves or some such. Trust me, if he had more than one person on his side, he would’ve brought them all for that little showdown in the greenhouse,” said Hypnos. At this, even Séverin nodded in agreement. “Also: Who wears a blade hat? What if it slips and then you end up slashing your face? Detestable.”

Enrique shuddered, crossing himself. “At this rate, we’re not going to find Roux-Joubert or his henchman. Nothing on this clock is helpful. Not even the notation.”

He pointed at the one word scrawled just beneath the sixth hour marking: nocte.

Midnight.

“It’s just the name of the clockmaker,” said Séverin.

“I wouldn’t be too sure … It might be a directive, a rule of some kind meant to inform us how to look at the clock.”

“Can I just see the clock without the protective covering?” asked Séverin.

“Only if you promise you won’t smash it.”

“I promise I won’t smash it.”

Enrique narrowed his gaze and then nodded in the direction of the bone clock. Gingerly, Séverin lifted the glass covering. He considered the bone clock beneath, the silver foil clinging to the exquisite statues.

And then he shoved it over, where it toppled to one side.

Hypnos squealed. Enrique leapt out of his chair.

“What did you do?” he demanded.

“I did what I wanted. It’s my clock.”

“But you promised!” wailed Enrique.

“True, but my fingers were crossed.”

Hypnos faked a gasp. “Oh no! His fingers were crossed!”

Enrique shot Hypnos a scathing glare. “Séverin, you could have damaged a symbol, some critical piece of information, and now we’ll never find Tristan—”

“I gave you nearly four hours,” said Séverin. “You’re brilliant. If there was anything to find, you would have sniffed it out by now. That you didn’t is proof enough to me that, in the clock’s current state, there is nothing worth finding.”

“I…” Enrique hesitated.

Truthfully, he was both flattered and insulted. But looking at the place where the bone clock had toppled over, mounting horror replaced all that. Silver dust now spangled the air, a consequence of the delicate foil that had covered the symbols on the clock. Evening light glanced off it, creating sharp and slender shadows on the face of the machinery.

“Now you’ve done it,” said Hypnos. “He’s lost the ability to speak!”

“Oh, shut up, Hypnos—” started Séverin.

Enrique tuned out both of them. He crept forward slowly, his heart hammering. There was a new pattern on the body of the bone clock, like ink sluicing between grooved wood. Words hewn out of light and silver and shadow. Where the silver had peeled away, a flat paleness revealed itself. Off-white. Like … like …