The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves, #1)(78)

Laila sucked in her breath.

The wall changed. At first, it showed nothing but cloth, but then the surface of it rippled, turning liquid and silver. A Tezcat door, exposed. In its reflection, Zofia caught Laila’s eye.

“They’re coming through here.”





22





ENRIQUE


Enrique was hanging upside down from his armchair.

He groaned aloud. “It makes no sense.”

Hypnos, seated on the black-cherry chair beneath him, raised his nearly emptied wineglass. His third such glass, if memory served Enrique.

“Try wine.”

“I doubt that will help.”

“True, but at least you won’t remember.” Hypnos drained his glass, then set it aside. “How come you have an armchair? I want one.”

“Because I live here.”

“Hmpf.”

Sometimes Enrique found his thoughts worked better when he was dangling upside down. It helped that he could see the floor beneath him, all the documents they’d found on the Fallen House fanned out across the carpet. And in the middle of it all, encased in a thin quartz terrarium: the bone clock.

It was a feast for both a symbolist and a historian. It was not an ordinary clock, though it had a face and numerals and hands that pointed to various hours of the day. Twisting symbols stretched around the clockwork. Carved maidens who drew veils over their faces. Grinning beasts that disappeared beneath silver foil foliage. Sepulchers that opened and closed in the space of a blink, forcing one to wonder whether there was something that had crept out of their hollow spaces. At first, Enrique had thought the Forged symbols were intentional. But after hours of observation, he had become disillusioned. Symbols meant something, but they could also exist to confuse the eye. Something that he was not willing to share just yet with Hypnos.

All his life, symbols had been a source of comfort. They felt like stories that reached out beyond the confines of time. And yet, everything about this clock felt like a taunt. To make it worse, every time he looked at it, he was forced to reckon with the hours sliding past. Every hour that went by with Tristan’s life hanging in the balance.

A loud huffing sigh broke through his thoughts.

“How am I supposed to think under these conditions?” demanded Hypnos. “What happened to the wine?”

“You could always try water for a change,” said Séverin from the doorway.

“Water is boring.”

To an outsider, Séverin looked no different than he normally did. Dressed in an elegant suit. Irritable, but restrained. As if this minor glitch were nothing to worry about. But the closer he got, the more little details popped out. The slope of his shoulders. The creases under his eyes. Ink stains on his fingers. The threads on the cuffs of his sleeves unraveling.

Séverin was coming undone.

Séverin took two steps inside the stargazing room before stopping.

“Can’t find a seat?” asked Hypnos.

Enrique righted himself. Of course, Hypnos had spoken in jest. There were a number of empty seats, but to Enrique they felt like unsteady ghosts. There was the black cushion on the ground where Tristan should be sitting, hiding Goliath in his pocket. The green, velvet chaise lounge from where Laila would be brandishing her teacup like a queen’s scepter. The high stool with its ragged pillow where Zofia would be leaning forward, a matchbox twirling in her hand. And then Séverin’s seat, the black-cherry armchair where Hypnos currently sat.

In the end, Séverin chose to stand.

Enrique looked behind him to the door. “Where are the girls?”

Séverin fished around in his pocket and held up a note. “Laila and Zofia went to investigate something at the Forging exhibition.”

That made Enrique sit up straight. “What? That place is crawling with security guards. And if there’s someone from the Fallen House there, then—”

Hypnos started laughing. “Oh, mon cher. Did you want them to ask for permission?”

“Of course not.” Enrique blushed.

“Ah,” said Hypnos, his gaze narrowing. “Then perhaps you’re nursing a bit of a wound for not being invited along with them. Which girl, I wonder, has laid claim to some corner of your imagination…”

“Can we just get back to work?”

“Laila, I wonder? The living temple goddess?”

Enrique rolled his eyes. Séverin, on the other hand, went entirely still.

“Or is it the little ice queen?”

“Neither,” he said sharply.

But even as he said the words, he couldn’t help remembering that one of the last times he’d been in this room was with Zofia. Together, they had cracked the code on the Sator Square. Together, they had found something. He’d just thought they made a good team. Yet even as he remembered it, he saw Zofia in the train compartment. The light catching on her candle-bright hair. Her pale fingers tracing the neckline of her velvet dress as she practiced, of all things, flirting.

Enrique shook himself. His head was a snarl of too many impressions. Tristan’s closed eyes, the dead stare of the figures on the bone clock, the peppery scent of Hypnos’s skin, and light catching on Zofia’s hair.

“When will they be back?”

“In an hour,” said Séverin. “Where are we on the clock?”