The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves, #1)(23)

“I protect you,” Séverin whispered.



* * *



I PROTECT YOU.

One promise.

One promise, and he couldn’t even keep it.

Every time he blinked, he saw their bodies. Zofia’s bright hair mussed by dirt. Tristan crouching, swaying … and Laila. Laila, who should have sugar in her hair, not shards of glass. Laila, who he …

He dug his nails into his palm, screaming at the driver to go faster. Beside him, Enrique was a ghost of himself, whispering and turning over rosary beads in his hand. The second they got to L’Eden, Enrique leapt out of the carriage. “I’ll check for them inside.”

Séverin nodded, then broke into a run across the Seven Sins Garden.

He didn’t stop running until he arrived at Tristan’s workshop in Envy. Tristan’s back was to him. Hunched over. His neck bent. His worktable strewn with small fronds and snippets of petals … all the makings of the miniature worlds he obsessively cobbled together.

Séverin couldn’t find his next breath. Had they strangled him? Propped him upright like a cruel joke? If so, then what about Laila and Zofia? Were they dead in the kitchens and the laboratory? Or—

Tristan turned.

“Séverin?”

Séverin stood there, swaying.

“Why do you look nauseous? Is it that sleepwalking guest in Room 7? I caught him sleepwalking naked in the servants’ quarters last night, and if that’s what happened, I honestly don’t blame you—”

“The others,” rasped Séverin. “Are they … are they…”

Tristan frowned. “I just saw Laila and Zofia in the kitchens. Why? What’s wrong?”

Séverin grabbed him abruptly in a hug.

“I feel like I’m missing something important,” wheezed Tristan.

“I thought you were dead.”

Tristan laughed. “Why would you think that?” But when he caught the flat look in Séverin’s eyes, he paused. “What happened?”

Séverin told him everything from Hypnos’s proposition … to the reward waiting at the end.

“House Kore?” Tristan practically spat. “After what she—”

“I know.”

“Are you going to take the offer?”

Séverin held up his hand, showing the harsh slash of the oath tattoo. “I have no choice.”

In that moment, Tristan’s face was inscrutable.

After what felt like forever, Tristan turned over his own hand. The silvery scar down his palm matched Séverin’s. Neither of them knew where Tristan had gotten his scar. But it didn’t matter.

Finally, Tristan placed his hand over Séverin’s, stacking their scars before saying:

“I protect you.”



* * *



ONE OF THE greatest secrets of the Fallen House was where they had held their meetings.

It was said the key both to their secret meeting locations and to their lost treasure lay in the bone clocks once given to each member of their House. In the fifty years since they had been exiled and executed by the Order, no one had cracked the clocks’ code. These days, it was considered nothing more than a rumor that time had smoothed down to the shape of a myth. But that didn’t stop interest in acquiring the bone clocks. Of late, the clocks had become something of a collector’s item.

One of the few remaining ones sat on Séverin’s bookshelf.

In all the time that Séverin had kept the bone clock, it hadn’t revealed any of its secrets. Although sometimes the clock stopped at six minutes past two o’clock, which he considered rather strange considering that there was only one word found on the clock: nocte.

Midnight.

Séverin often looked at it when he was thinking.

Fifty years ago, it had seemed impossible for anything to ruin the Fallen House. And now … to Séverin, the clock was a reminder. Anything could fall. Towers that scraped the heavens, Houses with pockets deeper than empires’, shining seraphs who had once been in the confidence of God. Even families who were supposed to love you. Nothing was invincible but change.

Séverin was still staring at the clock face when the letter from Hypnos arrived. He ripped open the envelope, scanned the first line, and scowled.

To be fair, you would have done the same.

Séverin’s knuckled grip paled.

Before you throw this in the fire, I do hope you listen to that seed of rationale deep within your fury. We are to work together, and though I might not extract my promises the best way, I always keep them. As I know you do.

Tell me what you need from me.

Séverin hated that word. Need. He hated how Hypnos’s promise of a new inheritance test had itched that very word to life.

Sometimes he wished he didn’t remember life before the Order. He wished someone with a mind affinity could root through his memories and shred those years. He was haunted. Not even by people, but the phantoms of sensations—firelight limning the outlines of his fingers, a cat with a fluffy tail who napped at the foot of his bed, orange blossom water on Kahina’s skin, a spoon dipped in honey and smuggled into his waiting hand, wind on his face as he was tossed into the air and caught in warm arms, words that sank into his soul like growing roots steeped in sunshine: “I am your Ummi. And I love you.” Séverin squeezed his eyes shut. He wished he didn’t know what he had lost. Maybe then every day wouldn’t feel like this. As if he had once known how to fly, but the skies had shaken him loose and left him with nothing but the memory of wings.