The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves, #1)(57)

Sometimes people hid a plaster mold of their hands—Séverin hid one behind his bookcase—or there might be a piece of wax with a thumbprint concealed by a window. Chances were, the matriarch had something like that too. All she had to do was find it.

Hauling out the leather armchair, Laila balanced on the seat, letting her fingers trail down the wall of the bookcase. Energy flowed out of her veins. A headache crimped the edges of her vision.

As Laila searched the bookcase, her mind picked up images of contracts, receipts, love letters, and then she caught it: a thumbprint encased in amber. It was hidden in the pages of a book of love poems. She searched for the spine on the shelves, opened the book, and found it. A large amber coin. Laila muttered a quick prayer, then tossed it onto the desk. The red glow faded.

Grinning, Laila jumped down from the armchair. The noises outside the office grew louder. More urgent. There was no use trailing her fingers down the desk, trying to figure out where it kept the key. Forged things never answered to her readings. Laila reached for drawers and cabinets, rifling through papers as fast as she could.

Hundreds of keys filled the drawer inside the left cabinet. Laila plunged her hand through the metals, casting out her senses. The keys weren’t Forged, so the images flowed through her. Empty bed rooms. Halls of senate. Order of Babel auctions. And then … a dark vault, a ceiling full of painted stars, statue busts, and hundreds upon hundreds of rows filled with strange objects. Her eyes flew open.

The key to the subterranean library beneath the greenhouse.

Laila pulled the key and ran to the chaise lounge near the door. She lifted the cushion and found the nautch costume beneath wrapped in cloth. Quickly, Laila undid the wrappings, but she hadn’t anticipated what she would feel the moment she saw the outfits of her youth. The way her soul staggered, folding in on itself at the memories. The raw silk blouse the color of parrot plumage and edged in red. The heavy gunghroo bells and jimmikki earrings that looked so like her mother’s. Laila raised the costume to her nose, inhaling deeply. It even smelled of India. That mix of camphor, dye, and sandalwood incense. Looking at the outfit, a cold fury spread through her. She heard her mother’s voice curling through her thoughts: You want to feel real, my daughter? Then dance. Dance and you will know your truth. Laila had thrown her soul into dance, giving her body to the rhythmic invocations, the sharp movements that stamped out whole stories with nothing but her limbs. It could be sensuous. But it was always sacred. It was, her mother used to say, proof that she had a soul. That she was real.

But to people in the audience … it was entertainment designed to be something else.

What had Hypnos called it?

Titillating.

Laila changed her outfit, undoing her braided crown of hair so that it fell thickly down her back. She shoved her House Nyx maid costume into the cushions, hid the amber thumbprint coin back in the book of love poems, and secured the key in her blouse.

The third bell struck.

At the far end of the room, no light appeared at the crack of the door. If Séverin had been waiting for her, he wasn’t anymore. The nautch dancers had probably lined up at the stage. She would only draw attention to herself if she ran out now. Laila pulled the silk scarf over her head and slipped outside into the empty hall. By now, the rest of the guests were already seated inside the vast amphitheater. All she had to do was get to the theater.

The guard yawned when he saw her.

“You’re late,” he said, bored. “The rest of your party is already assembling.”

“I was asked to perform a solo piece,” she said, crossing her arms.

The man groaned, flipping through the pages of the schedule. “If you can go on now, then—”

“Lead the way.”

She scanned the crowd … somewhere, Séverin was there.

The guard directed her to the musicians to choose a song. Laila recognized their instruments, and an ache dug into her ribs. The double-sided drum, the flute and veena and bright cymbals.

“Which piece shall we play?” asked the veena musician.

She peered through the curtain at the crowd. Men in suits. Women in dresses. Glasses in their hand. No sense of the story she would have tried to tell with her body. No language with which to decipher the devotion of her dance.

She would not perform her faith to them.

“Jatiswaram,” she said. “But increase the tempo.”

One of the musicians raised an eyebrow. “It’s already fast.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You think I don’t know that?”

Jatiswaram was the most technical piece, the distillation of music and movement. A piece where she could still perform and set her heart aside.

A few minutes later, an announcer cleared his throat. The stage fell dark. “Presenting a nautch dancer—”

Laila tuned out the presenter. She was not a nautch dancer. She was a bharatnatyam performer.

As she walked, two parts of herself merged together. She had done this walk, worn these clothes. The man who had brought her to France as a performer had thrown away the original costume sewn by her mother. Laila was supposed to wear a customized salwar kameez, not this ridiculous thing that left her midriff and chest on display. Her hair was supposed to be strung with flowers, with a preserved jasmine from her mother’s first performance. Not unbound, and brushing her waist. She looked at her hands, her chest pinching. Her hands felt naked without henna.