The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves, #1)(80)

Hypnos scuttled backward on his hands. “Dear God, is that clock actually made of bone?”

At the same time, Séverin squinted. “There’s writing on that clock.”

It hadn’t been clear until now. The hand that had cleverly disguised the words on the clock was cramped and narrow, the words barely legible Latin that Enrique quickly translated:

I have been with you all your life

Though I appear only in strife

My quantity will let you see

All this world was meant to be



Enrique moved closer to the clock, his fingers hovering over the words that now appeared.

When Enrique looked up at him, there was a renewed light in Séverin’s eyes. Something that hadn’t been there until now. The three of them sat once more on the ground. Hypnos with his knees pulled to his chest. Séverin, legs crossed, arms crossed. And then Enrique, who was now happily sprawled out, a pen and notebook beside either hand as he began to transcribe the riddle’s words. This was the first breakthrough they’d had in hours, and he could feel the strength of it like an unaccounted for burst of sunshine in the veins.

“My quantity,” mused Séverin aloud. “That suggests the answer is twofold. Both the answer to the riddle and how it relates to the clock. Perhaps the quantity has something to do with the numbers on the clock face?”

“Yes, but the clock only goes to twelve,” said Hypnos. “What’s in your body that there’s only twelve of that shows up in times of strife?”

And thus began the most excruciating hour of Enrique’s life. At first, there was talk of teeth which Séverin instantly dismissed. “Who only has twelve teeth?”

Together, they combed through different riddled answers but nothing fit. The minutes stretched by. Not one of them had disturbed the bone clock where it lay. Hypnos had gotten up and started to wander in circles, moaning for wine. While Séverin had turned inward once more, his fingers worrying the tassels on Tristan’s cushion.

“Stupid clock that may or not be made of bone.”

Séverin lifted his head. “What did you say?”

“I said the clock may or may not be made of bone.”

“Bone.”

Hypnos muttered, “I could use a quick one.”

Enrique ignored him. “Could that fit? As an answer?”

“‘I have been with you all your life,’” read Hypnos aloud. “True. Or that’d be deadly terrifying. Though some people, I honestly believe, are born without spines. And next we have, ‘though I appear only in strife.’ What? I don’t think that fits.”

Enrique fell quiet. The strife bit had thrown him off too, at first. Bones didn’t appear in strife, floating before someone like ghosts. But they certainly showed. He had seen it in the Philippines, when he accompanied his father on rides through the provinces of Capiz and Cavite to check on the rice production of the paddies they owned. On the road, leaned up against whitewashed churches and houses that looked like a strong breeze might make them fold over in defeat, crouched the beggars. Young and old, it didn’t matter. Their eyes were all the same: flat and vacant. The faces of those whose hope had hardened and shrunk from too much of life. There, he saw the children with their too-sharp ribs ridging their shirts. Knobbed elbows stained with dirt. Eyes unsettlingly wide in faces sculpted by starvation.

“I think ‘bone’ fits,” he said quietly.

Hypnos cast him a strange look. Enrique had no desire to be the focus of that attention, so he said, “The last two lines fit as well. We know that the Fallen House had some macabre interests. It’s possible that meant using bone. In which case, that line, ‘all this world was meant to be,’ might fit with their own interests and not all humans’ everywhere. Which leaves the second-to-last line—‘my quantity will let you see’—as the final hint. Maybe it means the number of bones found in a human body. How many are there, anyway?”

“Two hundred and six,” said Séverin instantly.

Enrique frowned. “Do I want to know why you had that answer immediately?”

Séverin’s smile gleamed wolflike. “I doubt it.”

“But how do we get 206 to show up on a clock?”

Séverin let out a soft laugh. As if he were remembering something. “Six minutes past two. Two-oh-six. Two hundred and six.”

The three of them stared at the clock. Some crackling energy that had not been there before now wafted out of it. Enrique had the bizarre notion the clock could now sense that they knew how to drag out its secrets.

Slowly, Enrique pushed the hour and minute hand. Hypnos and Séverin had moved closer without him noticing. He saw the scene, suddenly, in his mind’s eye, as if from afar: three boys kneeling around a clock made of bone, the light behind them rendering them sharp shadows brought to life, and he felt that thread of hunger sewing them all together in the moment, so that when it came right down to it, perhaps their souls would have been indistinguishable.

Enrique waited.

He waited for the Forging power to unravel into the air, to push back. But he felt nothing.

“It’s not working,” said Hypnos. “Did we get it wrong?”

Enrique’s heart seized. He hoped not, but then—

“We didn’t follow directions,” said Séverin, pointing to the little script on the clock’s crescent: nocte. Midnight.