The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves, #1)(105)

Séverin held the fur stole at arm’s length.

“Thank you.”

Séverin picked up the protocol of the Winter Conclave. They would be staying at a palace, it seemed, with separate suites allowed for—Séverin squinted as he made out the world—mistresses. He rolled his eyes. Many of the Order factions of the Western world would be in attendance, particularly those factions which guarded a continent’s Babel Fragment. If the Fallen House sought to join all the Babel Fragments of the world, then it was no longer just the problem of France.

“What about Laila?” asked Hypnos.

The paper slipped from his hands.

“What about Laila?” he asked, not looking up from his desk.

He hadn’t seen her since that night in his study. He pushed away the memory.

If everything went to plan, they would find her precious book. She would leave Paris, and he would be free of his guilt.

“Are you no longer working together?”

“We are.”

Enrique had become, albeit grudgingly and with much attitude, a conduit between the two of them. Laila might not speak to Séverin anymore, but he still had what she wanted: access to artifacts and the intelligence collected by the Order. And she still had what he wanted: insight into the objects that held precious secrets. Séverin would pack a box full of this or that collector’s or curator’s personal effects and have it sent to her, and a progress report on finding the Fallen House. Laila would return the box with notes about the person attached, along with anything she’d picked up from the Palais. It was a method that suited both of them.

“Have you asked her to join us at the Winter Conclave?”

Séverin nodded.

“And has she responded?”

He sighed. “No.”

That was another problem. He couldn’t figure out what she wanted, what would make her join.

“Ah, lover spats,” sighed Hypnos.

“Laila is not my lover.”

“Your loss, mon cher.” Hypnos shrugged and looked up at the clock above the office doorway. “Your birthday party is in full swing downstairs. You do know that, don’t you?”

“Mm.”

“Are you going to make an appearance?”

“This late in the evening, I doubt it will be remembered,” he said.

Hypnos rolled his eyes, bowed, and swept out of the office. Séverin forced down a yawn. He wanted to stay in his study, but there was nothing left to do. Happy birthday, indeed. Last year, Tristan had the bright idea of baking a living entremet pie and filling it with four and twenty blackbirds as an homage to the nursery rhyme that Séverin had found funny when he was eight. Zofia built the cage-pie with a Forging mechanism to open when Séverin blew out the candles. Enrique found a first edition nursery rhyme book containing “Sing a Song of Sixpence.” Laila had made the jam. But once the candles had been blown and the cage sprang open, none of the birds wanted to leave as they vastly preferred Laila’s pie. And then Tristan had wanted to keep them. And Enrique was furious because there were bird droppings all over the library books. The pie was inedible after that, but Laila baked him a cupcake and left it on his desk the next day with a small candle.

Séverin almost laughed, but it died halfway past his lips.

There would never be another birthday like that.

Right before Séverin left his office, he grabbed an ouroboros mask from his desk. The brass snake mask formed an intricate figure-eight pattern that hid his eyes, so he could watch the revelries from the top of the bannister. L’Eden was in the grips of a masquerade ball. Acrobats spun down from the rafters, grinning masks plastered eerily onto their faces. Everyone had come out for the event. Zofia wore a mask with a pointed beak, her cloudlike hair fluffed around her like ruffled feathers. Enrique stood beside her, a grinning monkey mask on his face, complete with a tail. Hypnos had eschewed a mask in favor of a sweeping, phoenix train Forged into the semblance of twisting flames.

At the doors, a line of twelve women wearing peacock feathers poured into the lobby. They were utterly dazzling.

But they were not her.

Behind him, he heard his factotum call out: “Please welcome the stars of the Palais des Rêves, who are performing a very special dance in honor of Monsieur Montagnet-Alarie’s birthday!”

The crowd cheered. Séverin turned on his heel. His suite was just off to the western alcove, disguised behind a Tezcat door of a long, oval mirror encircled by an ouroboros. The snake was Forged so that it continually slithered, continually chasing after its own tail. It was only by catching it by the throat as if one were to throttle it that the snake would still. It was also how one could access his suites.

Séverin’s room was rather spartan, which he preferred. There was a large bed with an ebony headboard. A sheer, golden canopy Forged so that anyone who touched it between the hours of two in the morning and four in the morning—prime murder hours, he was told—would be snarled in the threads.

Séverin rubbed the back of his neck, dropped the snake mask on the floor, kicked off his shoes, and yanked his shirt out of his pants. When he breathed deep, he wondered whether he was beginning to lose his mind. Impossibly, he thought he could smell Laila. Sugar in the air. A faint aroma of rosewater. She was haunting him. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. What was wrong with him? He trudged forward a couple steps, ready to collapse into his bed when he stopped short.