The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves, #1)(30)
The jaadugar her parents visited was skilled in crafting a new body from broken ones. He could even tease out the consciousness and transfer it to a new vessel. Which was exactly what her parents had asked for when they had brought her—stillborn at birth—to the jaadugar’s hut outside the town.
Years later, Laila was told that if she had been brought to the jaadugar even an hour later, her soul would have unraveled for good. This was a fact her mother loved to remember and her father longed to forget.
They had asked for the beautiful girl they dreamed their daughter would become, and ended up with her. Red and screaming as any newborn. She became stunning, true, but she always bore that seam along her spine. As if she had been sewn together.
When her mother died, her father changed. He turned direction when he saw her, took his meals in his room, barely spoke to her except when she stood in front of him. Laila watched her father grow scared of her and took to wrapping her hands, so that she would not frighten him with her abilities. Her mother called her ability a gift. Her father called it a consequence of her making, for they’d never heard of someone with her gifts. It wasn’t until she was sixteen and all her friends were preparing for weddings or agreeing to betrothals that she confronted her father.
One evening, she showed him the bangles her mother had left behind. “Father, may I wear these after you arrange my wedding?”
Her father sat in the dark, his eyes distant. When he looked at her, he laughed.
“Wedding?” he asked. He pointed at the length of her body. “The jaadugar who made you said his work won’t hold past your nineteenth birthday, child. What’s the point of arranging a marriage? Besides, you’re a made girl, not even real. Who would have you?”
Those words chased Laila to the ashram of the jaadugars, but the man who had crafted her body was long dead, and the book of secrets they had guarded had been stolen … taken to a place called Paris by an organization known as the Order of Babel.
She combed for clues to the book’s whereabouts in every object she read, but so far her search had proven fruitless. If she could only have direct access to the Order’s knowledge, she was certain she’d find it immediately. She couldn’t do that, however, unless she had a patriarch at her side. Acquiring the Horus Eye meant she finally would. It was the twisted humor of fate that the patriarch should be the only one who’d ever made her forget she was a crafted thing with an expiration date hanging over her head. Which was all the more reason to pretend that night had never happened.
No distraction was worth death.
Laila watched her scar shift in the mirror’s reflection. Delicately, she pressed her fingers along the puckered edges. Part of her wondered if the day she turned nineteen, she would split down the middle, unraveling into a pile of shining pelts and worn bones, the barest glimmer of an almost-girl vanishing into the air like smoke.
If they acquired the Horus Eye, she’d never have to find out.
Laila zipped up her dress, hiding the seam down her back. She left the store wearing the brilliant ironwork gown, the straps of her Night and Stars costume glimmering just beneath the satin.
* * *
ON THE BOULEVARD de clichy, the Palais des Rêves embodied its name. The Palace of Dreams. It was designed like a jewel box. On the roof, beams of lights pirouetted into the sky. The Palais’s stone fa?ade was Forged with an illusion of dusk-touched clouds, purple-bellied and dream-swollen as they skimmed across balconies. No matter how many times Laila saw the Palais, she always felt transformed. As if right then her lungs drew in not air, but the very night sky. Stars fizzed through her veins. The alchemy of the Palais’s music and illusions reshaping her from dancer to dream.
Laila stepped through the Palais’s secret stairway entrance. Inside, a guard holding a silver lightstick greeted her.
“L’énigme,” he said respectfully.
Laila held still as the lightstick flashed over her pupils. It was routine protocol for any who entered the Palais. The lightstick revealed whether or not someone was under the influence of a Forging affinity of the mind. Mind affinity was a dangerous talent, and the favorite method of assassins who could pass off the blame on an innocent.
Once cleared, Laila entered the Palais. A sense of calm washed over her. The familiar perfume of the stage filled her. Waxed wood, oranges studded with cloves dangling from the ceiling, talc powder, and rubber. Inside, cleverly designed skylights filtered in the starlight. The ceiling arched like a vault over the stage. Champagne chandeliers ghosted over the crowd, glittering like constellations crushed underfoot by feverish dancers.
On the wide, scalloped stage, the singer, La Fée Verte, sang a glorious song of revolution. Her gossamer green gown floated out behind her, wings of thinly cut mother-of-pearl slowly opened and closed from her back. The sharp scent of absinthe lingered in the air, and her most fervent admirers raised smoking goblets of the liquor high in their hands. Behind her, she’d chosen a strange backdrop … not of the Bastille, the fortress that was stormed by a crowd of revolutionaries … but the catacombs of Paris. The ossuaries which held the bones of millions, the remains of voices both terrible and grand from the Revolution. It was a chilling image on the stage: rows upon rows of grinning skulls, femurs bent into hallways and crosses. But it was a reminder too. That every victory had its costs.
The second terrace was reserved for dressing rooms. Each star of the Palais had their own, customized to their specifications. Laila cast a glance over the terrace, quickly scanning the crowd, spotting the mark. The House Kore courier. He looked unsure of himself, sitting in a velvet upholstered chair. On the table before him was a bowl of chocolate-covered strawberries. Laila grinned. You took my advice.