The Gilded Wolves

by Roshani Chokshi

  Laila didn’t greet anyone, but walked straight for him. She braced her hands on either side of his chair and leaned close. “Laugh,” she whispered, her breath hot against his skin. “Now.”

  “Why?” he murmured.

  “Because the proprietor of L’Eden has never stepped foot inside the Palais, and now you’ve caused quite a stir. More than one of the dancers wants to know whether you’re spoken for, and while I love them, I don’t want them running around the hotel trying to get your attention.”

  Heat zipped up his spine. She wanted it to seem like he was hers.

  “Jealousy looks good on you, Laila,” he said, smiling.

  Laila scoffed, but her grip on his chair tightened a fraction. “I’ve got a reputation to protect. So do you. It’ll draw too much attention. So laugh.”

  “Make it worth my while.”

  Maybe it was the smoke in the air, or the dimming lights and eyeless wolves, but the words—meant only to tease—slipped out wrong. Laila drew back an inch, her eyes dropping to his lips. Everyone else in this room could have vanished on the spot, and he wouldn’t have noticed. In her eyes, he saw an answering … something. A flash of radiance. And for the first time, he wondered whether she thought about that stolen night the way he did. If it haunted her too.

  But then the performance cymbal was struck, and she pulled back from him. He let out a delayed laugh, hoping it would be enough.

  “Presenting L’Énigme!” exclaimed the announcer.

  The ceiling spotlights spun toward her, and Laila turned without answering. Séverin cursed under his breath. What the hell was wrong with him? He hunched his shoulders and felt the sharp corner of the envelope in his jacket.

  “What was that about?” asked Enrique.

  “Nothing,” said Séverin brusquely.

  He didn’t have to see Hypnos’s or Tristan’s eyes to know what kind of looks they were exchanging. His face burned as he pulled out the envelope and ripped open the letter. Better to look harried than humiliated, he thought.

  L’Énigme took the stage and the entire theatre burst into applause, rising to their feet and stamping the ground. In the din, he almost couldn’t process the letter, but then the words hit him:

  ROUX-JOUBERT ESCAPED.

  DO NOT LEAVE L’EDEN.

  The letter dropped from his hands. Séverin felt like he was moving through water. He couldn’t stand up fast enough. Around him, the howls of the audience turned to shouts.

  “Fire!” shouted someone beside him.

  The curtains had caught in an instant. A wildfire clawed up toward the balconies, moving with unnatural speed.

  Tristan clutched his arm. “Dear God—”

  Séverin followed his gaze to the hall where Roux-Joubert stormed through the entrance. With every step, he threw sparks of fire onto the ground. More velvet curtains caught fire and smoke thickened the air. Overhead, the chandelier swung dangerously as the crowd stampeded. From the podium, the announcer yelled for the guards, for order—

  But all Séverin heard was Roux-Joubert.

  “It doesn’t work that way, dear boy,” said Roux-Joubert, smiling. “You cannot go without leaving something behind.”

  Roux-Joubert’s gaze went to Laila. She had managed to clamber down from the stage, and now ran toward the table. She reached out, and Hypnos grabbed her hand. The blade-brimmed hat sailed toward them. Séverin launched out of his chair, throwing his body across hers until they both crashed to the ground—

  Her heart beat furiously against his, and he wanted to bask in that cadence forever. All around him, footsteps pounded into the ground, shouts stamping the air. His eyes seamed shut, his whole body tensed for a blow that never came.

  “Oh no, oh no—” cried Enrique.

  Séverin opened his eyes, pushing himself off Laila and the ground. But she must have seen something before him because she let out a strangled cry. Séverin turned, and he thought the world had split.

  He was wrong. Laila had never been the intended hit of the blade-brim hat. A metallic smell stamped into the air. Tristan swayed. He opened his mouth, as if he were going to speak. On the ground, the hat had fallen onto its top, the blade gleaming. A thin line of red stained the collar of Tristan’s shirt. The line widened. Blood spilled down the front of his jacket. Tristan crumpled to the floor. His head fell back, knocking against the stone.

  Séverin didn’t remember rushing to him. He didn’t remember gathering Tristan’s body and holding it close. Around him, the others had crowded close. He knew they were shouting, running for help, moving so fast as if reality wouldn’t be able to catch up to them. But he knew the truth. He knew the moment he touched Tristan’s chin, turning it toward him. His gray eyes were still wide, but death had stolen their luster forever.

  PART VII

  From the archival records of the Order of Babel The Origins of Empire

  Mistress Hedvig Petrovna, House Dažbog of the Order’s Russian faction 1771, reign of Empress Yekaterine Alekseyevna

  It is said that when one among us dies, the memory of their blood lies in the Ring.

  The Ring always knows who its true master or mistress is.

  36

  SÉVERIN

  Three weeks later …

  Séverin sat in his office, waiting for his guests. On his desk, afternoon light spilled across the wood, thick and golden as yolk. It startled him sometimes. The audacity of the sun to rise after what had happened.

  The door opened, and in stepped the matriarch of House Kore and Hypnos. Hypnos was dressed in black, his pale eyes rimmed red.

  “You missed the funeral,” he said.

  Séverin said nothing. He didn’t want to mourn. He wanted to avenge. He wanted to find the Fallen House and open their throats.

  The matriarch startled when she looked at him, recognition flitting across her face. He hoped her hand still hurt.

  “You…” she started, raising her hand. But then she caught sight of her Ring and folded her hands across her lap.

  “The French government and the Order of Babel is indebted to you and your friends for your service in restoring my Ring and preventing what might well have been the end of civilization,” said the matriarch stiffly.

  Hypnos clasped his hands in front of him. “There is no reason to delay this any longer. House Vanth will be restored. You’ll be a patriarch.”

  He pulled his Ring from his finger and set it on the desk. Then he glared at the matriarch until she did the same. From the inside of his breast pocket, Hypnos withdrew a small blade.

  “It will only hurt for a moment,” said Hypnos gently. “But then you can reclaim what is yours. You can be a patriarch in time for the Winter Conclave in Russia. The whole Order will recognize you then.”

  The matriarch did not look at Séverin; her lips were clamped in a tight line. Séverin stared at his desk. Here it was, the moment that he had worked for … a repeat of the two Rings test. He had imagined this moment a thousand times. His blood—the same blood denied and deemed false—smeared on their Rings, the blue light that would spiral up his arms, sink through his skin. He imagined it would feel like deliverance. Like wings shaking loose from his skin. The impossible made possible—the world turned edible, the sky a cloth he could drag down and wrap around his fists. He had not imagined it would feel like this. Hollow.

  “What’s a little more bloodshed,” he said, pushing the Rings across his desk.

  Hypnos stared at him oddly. “I thought you wanted this.”

  Séverin watched the Rings roll across the wood. He blinked, and no blue light swam behind his eyes. He saw fair hair, nails with crescents of dirt. Downcast gray eyes.

  Why can’t this be enough? Sometimes I wished you didn’t even want to be a patriarch.

  A memory came to him, unbidden, of the day Hypnos had tricked him into an oath. Séverin remembered looking at Zofia, Tristan, Enrique, and Laila through the glass door. They had been drinking tea and cocoa and eating cookies. He remembered
wishing to grab that moment and press it beneath glass. And look at where it had gotten him. He had sworn to protect Tristan, and now Tristan was dead. He had promised to look out for the others … and now the Fallen House, who had seen each of their faces, was still out there. Waiting. Without them by his side, they’d never find the Fallen House. And with them at his side, they walked with death ever at their shadow. He couldn’t let them get hurt. But he couldn’t let them get too close either. When he blinked, he remembered Laila’s body beneath his, the cadence of her heart. A siren song. Guilt snapped his thoughts. For the song of her heartbeats, he’d never wash Tristan’s blood from his hands.

  The matriarch’s eyes widened.

  “Do you?” she asked. “Do you want this?”

  “No.” He stood abruptly and walked to the door, ushering them out. “Not anymore.”

  37

  LAILA

  Three months later …

  Laila stood in the hallway outside Séverin’s office. In her hands, she carried the latest stack of reports. He’d told her there was no need to send them by personally, but she couldn’t keep herself away any longer.

  Sometimes she wondered if grief could break someone, for all of them bore fractures, new hollows. Enrique hardly left his research library. Zofia lived in the laboratory. Hypnos’s charm seemed knife-honed, desperate.

  Grief snuck up on her sometimes, and she was not sure how to defend herself from the force of its surprise. Just last month, she had started crying because the cocoa in the kitchens had gone stale. No one ever drank it but Tristan. And then there was the stray Night Bite she had found, gathering dust beneath her bed. She had stopped wearing black crepe two months ago, but that did not stop her from wandering the gardens of L’Eden, as if she might still catch a glimpse of a fair head and the edge of a laugh.

  But lately, Laila wasn’t sure what to do. Séverin sent her objects to read, but she was beginning to think grief had sapped her abilities.

  It all started after the funeral.

  Laila had gone to Tristan’s workshop. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for. Some token, perhaps. Something happy that might keep at bay the last image of his death, blood caking his hair, gray eyes dimming, Séverin’s face a mask of broken dreams.

  But what she found was not happiness.

  It was a secret drawer, one that not even Séverin had known about. Within it lay the pinned bodies of wingless birds. Laila had shuddered at the sight. Here lay the mystery of the birdless grounds of L’Eden. Slowly, she had touched one of the iron stakes pinning them in that rictus of death and an image rose to her mind. Tristan laying traps. Tristan catching them, cooing to them, weeping when he tore out their feathers, cushioning the small worlds that he crafted with such love in the dark of his workshop. She heard how he whispered to the struggling creatures: “See? It’s not so bad … you don’t have to fly.”

  Against her will, she remembered Roux-Joubert’s words in the greenhouse …

  “His love and his fear and his own cracked mind made it easy to convince him that betraying you was saving you…”

  She’d burned it. All evidence of it. And now she couldn’t even tell if what she had seen was true. When she reached for the memory of it, it was like kneading a fresh bruise. She never told Séverin. She could not bear to let him see this. Already, he walked through the halls of L’Eden as if he had seen enough ghosts for a lifetime. Why give him demons to see too?

  Laila faltered at the door, about to turn when it suddenly opened.

  Séverin stood wild-eyed before her, shocked at her presence. Her face burned. That moment where she’d leaned over him, that evening where he’d hungrily whispered “make it worth my while,” now felt like antiques of a different era.

  “Laila,” he said, exhaling it like a curse he wished to be rid of. “What are you doing here?”

  Laila had been waiting for this. She’d gathered every scrap of courage to speak these words. For the past two years, she thought that having a deadline on her life should make her pull back … but Tristan’s death changed that. She didn’t want to glide through life, unfeeling. She wanted to know everything while she could. She didn’t want the ghosts of thresholds not crossed hanging over her. She didn’t want one night. She wanted a chance. It was that conviction, more than anything, which made her drop the reports to the floor, step toward Séverin, and kiss him.

  38

  SÉVERIN

  Séverin’s seventh father was Lust.

  Lust taught him that a broken heart made a fine weapon, for its pieces were exceptionally sharp.

  One day, Lust became obsessed with a young man in the village. The young man shared his affection, and both Séverin and Tristan spent many a night laughing at all the strange sounds that echoed through the halls. But then one day, the young man came to the villa and said he had fallen in love with a woman of his family’s choice, and he was to marry her within the fortnight.

  Lust was furious. Lust did not like to be jilted, and so he found the young woman. He made her laugh, made her love him. And when she told him she carried his child, he forsook her. The girl took her own life, and the young man she would have married went mad.

  So, Séverin suspected, did Lust. He spent days sitting on the stone balcony, his feet dangling out, his whole body tipped forward as if he were daring the world to give him wings at the last second.

  The day before Séverin and Tristan left for Paris, Lust whispered to him:

  “Lust is safer than love, but both can ruin you.”

  * * *

  SÉVERIN BROKE OFF the kiss, startling backward.

  “What the hell was that?” he spat.

  Confusion flickered on Laila’s face, but she masked it quickly.

  “A reminder,” she said uncertainly, her eyes on the floor before she lifted them to him. “To live again…”

  Live?

  “Turning into ghosts is not what the dead deserve.”

  She came closer. There was so much hope in her face that he felt the ache of it in his bones. Memory bit into Séverin. He remembered how he reached for her instead of Tristan, how he shielded her against one he’d sworn to protect. How could she dare to speak of what the dead deserved?

  Ice crept into his heart. A sneer twisted his mouth, and he laughed, walking back to his desk and leaning against it.

  “Laila,” he said. “What do you want me to say? Would you like me to quote poetry? Tell you there’s witchcraft in your lips that resurrected me?”

  Laila flinched. “I thought in the catacombs that—”

  “Did you really think that kiss meant something?” he asked, smirking. “Did you think one night meant something? I can barely remember it. No offense, of course.”

  “Stop this, Séverin. We both know it meant something.”

  “You’re delusional,” he said coldly.

  “Prove it,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

  Séverin’s eyes flew open. She was standing right in front of him, her footsteps silenced by the plush rug beneath them. He steadied himself as he reached out to touch her cheek. The slightest tremble ran through her body.

  “You’re blushing, and I’ve hardly touched you,” he said. He forced another sneer onto his lips even as his foolish heart leapt. “Do you really want me to go through with this proof? It will only humiliate—”

  Laila wrapped her arms around his neck, drawing him against her. Séverin’s hands gripped her waist, as if she were an anchor. As if he were drowning. And maybe he was. A sigh, once trapped in her throat, turned into a moan when his tongue slipped into her mouth.

  “Laila,” he murmured. He said her name again, whispering it like a prayer.

  He lifted her off the ground, turning sharply and settling her on the desk. Her legs fell to either side of his hips. They were pressed so closely together that the light from his nephrite desk could not squeeze between them. He filled his hands with the black silk of her hair. This was what a kiss that meant no
thing supposedly felt like. As if he could not touch her enough, taste her enough, as if this movement alone would leave his body riddled as an addict’s. Her neck was hot silk against his lips. He felt drunk. And then, he felt her hand skimming to the space where his shirt joined his pants, and he stopped short.

  He stepped back. Her legs, once wrapped around his waist, fell, and her heels hit the front of the desk.

  “See?” he said hoarsely. “I told you. Nothing.”

  Fury flashed across her face. “You know it wasn’t. And if you really think that, you’re a fool, Majnun.”

  He winced at the last word. When he finally looked at her, her sable eyes appeared raw. He didn’t even remember reaching for the words that flew out of his mouth, but their venom chilled his teeth. “Go ahead,” he said. “Call me whatever you wish. It’s impossible to be hurt by someone who’s not even real.”

  He couldn’t doubt what he felt afterward. The lightning crack in the air as something in Laila unmistakably broke.

  39

  SÉVERIN

  Two months later … November 1889

  Séverin held up a gigantic fur stole that, until very recently, might have been a silver fox. Or may have been a shiny weasel. He could never tell with these things. Glossy chips of garnet shone in the fur so that it looked blood-flecked.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “It’s your birthday present, cher!” said Hypnos, clapping his hands together. “Don’t you love it? Perfect for our upcoming trip too. Russia is frigid, and the last thing you’re going to want at the Order’s Winter Conclave is to sound snobby through chattering lips. It just won’t suit.”

  Séverin held the fur stole at arm’s length.

  “Thank you.”

  Séverin picked up the protocol of the Winter Conclave. They would be staying at a palace, it seemed, with separate suites allowed for—Séverin squinted as he made out the world—mistresses. He rolled his eyes. Many of the Order factions of the Western world would be in attendance, particularly those factions which guarded a continent’s Babel Fragment. If the Fallen House sought to join all the Babel Fragments of the world, then it was no longer just the problem of France.