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Authors: Roshani Chokshi

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BOOK: The Gilded Wolves
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He stalked toward her. The dark shape of him choked off the light. Zofia staggered, crawling backward as she reached for the Forged tape concealed on the underside of her collar. She peeled it off, throwing it between her and the man. As she threw it, she
willed it:
Ignite
.

Flames spurted up from the ground and heat shimmered in the air. Just through the flames, she saw the man’s face. Livid and red in the glow.

Enrique helped her stand, his voice sounding faraway as he rallied her: “Move, move!” The exit was within reach. One step, then
another, then running. The glass doors flung back. Footsteps slapped the pavement. The scent of fire stung
her nose. Her mouth tasted like iron and salt from accidentally biting her tongue, and her ears rang out with the man’s last word: “Revolution.”

 

10
LAIL
A

Laila couldn’t find enough breath to pull into her lungs.

Hypnos had sent her head spinning.

Tristan and S
é
verin will be dead within the hour.

“What do you want me to do?”

Hypnos clapped his hands. “I
adore
when people ask me that.”

Laila narrowed her eyes. “Why don’t you—” she started.

But Hypnos ignored her, crossing the room to Laila’s large, gilt mirror propped up on
her vanity.

“Allow me to show you the scene I just left behind on the floor of the Palais.”

Hypnos pressed his hand to the mirror, and the image rippled. The reflection changed from Laila’s dressing room to an eye-level perspective of the audience facing the stage. In the mirror’s reflection, men lit up their cigars. Waitresses weaved through the audience wearing wings made of newsleaf, each
sheet covered in the words of the French constitution:
Libert
é
, Equalit
é
, Fraternit
é
. Laila
eyed Hypnos suspiciously. Only the courtesans and dancers of the Palais knew the mirror’s abilities.

He met her gaze and shrugged.

“Please,
ma ch
è
re
, this room is not the first dancer’s room I’ve been invited to.”

A flicker of movement in the mirror stole Laila’s response. A Sphinx.

“We anticipated
one Sphinx in the crowd,” said Laila uneasily. “That’s nothing new—”

Hypnos pointed at the mirror. From the eastern hall, a second Sphinx. It paced back and forth. At the table nearest it sat the House Kore courier. At first, Laila’s heart lightened. Maybe S
é
verin and Tristan had gotten there earlier than she expected. Maybe Tristan had just put the decoy on the House Kore courier.

“That must
be S
é
verin—” she started.

Just then, right on schedule, a third Sphinx stepped through the doors of the western hall. Beside it walked a S
û
ret
é
officer in plain uniform.
S
é
verin and Tristan
.

Tristan spotted the House Kore courier on the other side of the room.

“Don’t!” Laila yelled.

She knew even as she yelled that it was useless. The mirror relayed only images. Not sound. No one could hear
her.

If he walked forward, she wouldn’t be able to see him anymore. The mirror only allowed a look at a strict width of the audience. Tristan looked as if he was about to take a step forward when something yanked him backward. Abruptly, a group of men stood from their table, cutting Tristan and S
é
verin from view. When the men cleared, Laila caught a glimpse of Tristan and S
é
verin hiding behind
a wide, marble column. Any moment now,
the two genuine Sphinxes would recognize the imposter. A violent image flashed before her eyes. S
é
verin and Tristan facedown in a pool of blood.

Laila whirled to face Hypnos. “Get a message to them! Besides, you’re a patriarch of the Order. Can’t you call off the Sphinx?”

“The moment I step outside my home, my every action is recorded and submitted to the
Order at the end of every month,” said Hypnos, tapping his lapel where a mnemo bug in the shape of a moth was pinned. No wonder he’d come here. All dressing rooms were Forged to nullify any recording devices.

Outside her door, someone began to beat drums, her cue to enter the stage. Laila eyed Hypnos’s fancy clothes, from the watch and the mnemo bug to the crescent-moon cuff links of his sleeves.

“Are all your accessories House-marked?”

Hypnos’s gaze turned haughty. He stroked his matching crescent-moon brooch. “Of course. Far too pretty to be on commoners.”

Laila had an idea. She unclasped her dress, candlelight catching on her Night and Stars costume.

Hypnos’s eyebrows skated up his forehead. “Oh, heavens,” he said. “I don’t blame you in the least. But I can’t have the death of my
hired associates on the conscience of my irresistibility.”

“Your virtue is safe with me.” Laila winked. “How would you like to cause some drama?” she asked, shrugging off the rest of her gown. Her Forged peacock headdress tickled her skin.

Hypnos’s teeth flashed in the candlelight. “I live for it, lovely.”

L’ÉNIGME DID NOT
take the stage as planned.

She did not take the stage at all.

Laila
descended the main staircase instead of the stairwell that led directly to the stage. She told no one—not the stage manager,
musicians, or even her fellow dancers. Which was just as well. When the grand courtesan had trained her, she had told her the only rules to follow were instincts and color palettes. Tonight, Laila followed both.

At the top of the staircase, she waited. In one hand, she
carried a half-empty bottle of champagne. Her other hand brimmed with strings of pearls, a set of emerald earrings, and two crescent-moon cuff links. The two Sphinxes had not moved from their posts. Tristan and S
é
verin were nowhere to be seen.

“Hypnos!” she hollered.

The crowd turned. The French horn and piano music cut off sharply. Hypnos sat at a table, his arm around a beautiful man. When
he looked up at her, he flashed a wicked smile.

Laila walked down a few steps, swaying her hips generously so the light caught on her spangled corset. She hadn’t faked a lover’s spat in six months. She owed it to the crowd.

Gingerly, Hypnos slid his arm off the other man.

“You lied to me,” she said loudly.

Hypnos stood, putting up his hands. “My darling, I can explain—”

Laila threw the champagne
bottle in a wide arc. Some people dove out of the way. Others raced to catch it before it fell, but they were too late. The champagne bottle smashed to the floor, glittering shards spinning out across the dance floor. The Sphinx nearest the stage lifted its head. Its nostrils flared.

“She meant nothing to me!” cried Hypnos, dropping to his knees.


She?
” repeated Laila. “I was talking about a
he
.”

“Oh.” Hypnos winced. “Him too?”

“I am through with this!” announced Laila. “
All
of this!”

From her vantage point on the stairway, Laila broke the streams of pearls. They rained down on the audience. As the crowd dove for the pearls, the second Sphinx lifted its head.

“L’
É
nigme is not performing today!” yelled Laila, and then she turned on her heel, disappearing up the stairs.

The stage
manager huffed, but she didn’t care. Her contract allowed—and, frankly, encouraged—one outburst and cancelled performance a year.

She was just doing her job.

The moment Laila was in her room, she touched the mirror and watched the scene unfurling on the Palais floor. S
é
verin and Tristan weren’t there. But neither was the House Kore courier. On the floor, the two real Sphinxes crouched on their
knees, pawing through the stray pearls and jewels, their hands wet with champagne. Tossed in with all that rubbish had been Hypnos’s House-marked cuff links and the crescent-moon brooch. Laila was fairly certain one of the cuff links had fallen between the floor panels, which meant they’d be searching for ages.

Laila changed out of her costume, and then selected a violet
cr
ê
pe de Chine
dress
from her wardrobe. Polished amethyst pendants Forged to drink in the moonlight adorned the sharp V of the waistline and the tips of her billowing sleeves. Laila paused to swipe more rouge on her lips before taking a specially commissioned staircase behind her wardrobe that led to the servants’ exit and the cellar that served as a holding cell. At the cellar, she pressed her ear to the door.

Behind the wood, the voices were indistinct. After a moment, she heard a chair scrape back. Then, a door slamming shut.

If all had gone to plan, Tristan had finished interrogating the House Kore courier while S
é
verin discovered the Horus Eye location. Laila was still straining to hear more sounds when the door swung open. She lost her footing, and her head thudded against someone’s hard chest.
She looked up, a scream caught in her throat.
Sphinx
. Its jaws were cracked wide. Reptilian eyes like a gold coin slit down
the middle. It caught her with one hand, and then with its other, pulled back the mask to reveal a disheveled S
é
verin. He grinned.

“Had you there for a moment, didn’t I?”


God
,” said Laila, clutching her heart.

“A mere mortal, at your service,” he said, bowing.

The Sphinx
mask had mussed his hair, and Laila’s hands twitched with the memory of her fingers combing through it, the surprising texture of it like roughened silk. She shoved aside the memory. She knew all the carefully cobbled pieces of him. He was deception steeped in elegance, from his sharp smile to his unsettling eyes. S
é
verin’s eyes were the precise color of sleep—sable velvet with a violet sheen,
promising either nightmare or dream.

S
é
verin held open the door, and Laila brushed past him. The basement holding space was narrow and lined with bookshelves and rusting cutlery. Tristan was in the middle of peeling off his S
û
ret
é
uniform in exchange for a swallowtail coat and top hat. He waved a shy hello at her.

Laila blew him a kiss. “So? Did you get the catalogue coin?”

S
é
verin grinned.
“Yes.”

“Where’s the courier?”

“With a stiff drink, I imagine.”

“Did you keep the coin or—”

“Returned it,” said S
é
verin. “No point holding on to it once we had the coordinates.”

“Good,” she said. She’d begun to feel rather guilty for the courier and the thought of landing him into even more trouble with his employers didn’t sit well with her. “What happened back there with the Sphinx schedules?”

S
é
verin rubbed his hand through his hair. “I couldn’t tell you. Zofia Forged the schedule perfectly. Tristan delivered it on time. A clerical
error, perhaps. But you saved us. Feigning a lovers’ spat with Hypnos?” He shuddered.

“On the contrary, it was quite fun,” said Laila. S
é
verin seemed to go rigid, and Laila felt the slightest thrill. “He was the one who came to warn me, anyway.”

“He did?”
asked Tristan and S
é
verin at the same time.

“I did.”

The three turned to the doorway. Hypnos leaned against the entrance. He held up his mangled mnemo bug, a sign that for the time being, at least, he was not recording anything.

Hypnos grinned at Tristan. “Ah! I used you as bait!” He walked forward, with his hand outstretched. “How do you do?”

Tristan crossed his arms. “I should set one of
my spiders on you. They’re very venomous, you know.”

Hypnos looked around the room. “Are they present?”

Tristan faltered. “Well, no, not exactly, this is when Goliath eats, you see, and—”

S
é
verin cut him off. “Why are you here?”

“We’re in business together, are we not?” asked Hypnos. His gaze swept over the room as he tilted his head to one side. “Where’s that handsome historian?”

“On business,”
said S
é
verin tersely. “Which is the only topic I am willing to discuss with you.”

“Ah, yes.
Business
. So. Were you successful in finding the catalogue coin?”

S
é
verin eyed him for a moment. Then, he nodded.

“We have the exact coordinates for the Horus Eye in House Kore’s collection. Now, we just need the invitation.”

“My domain, naturally.”

“And I’ll need a guest list and the name of the private
security organization the matriarch of House Kore hires for her event.”

“Done!” said Hypnos, clapping his hands. “Is this what teamwork is like? How … hierarchical.” Hypnos winked at Laila. “Hello, lover.”

“Ex-lover,” she said, a touch fondly.

Hypnos reminded her of Enrique. If Enrique’s wits had been fed on champagne and bitter smoke for the better part of a decade. S
é
verin’s face darkened.
A small muscle in his jaw twitched, as if he were chewing down an imaginary clove to calm his temper. He stalked forward, placing himself between Laila and Hypnos.

“You and I should talk privately,” he said to Hypnos.

“I’ll come for tea tomorrow.”

“There’s no need for you to come to the hotel.”

Hypnos’s shoulders dropped, his voice pitched like a child’s. “But I want to!” He grinned and spoke
normally again. “And I
always
do what I want. I shall see you tomorrow.”

Hypnos blew Tristan two kisses, which Tristan pretended to squash under his heel. Then, Hypnos pushed past S
é
verin and bent over Laila’s hand.

“I shall keep your identity secret, L’
É
nigme
.
And before I forget, I must tell you I adored your costume. So shiny. I’m rather tempted to see if it will fit me.”

Hypnos glided out
the door. Once he was gone, Tristan’s shoulders dropped, and he released his breath.

“I really don’t want him at the hotel.”

For a moment, a cold, hollow look flickered on his face. Laila knew how protective Tristan was of S
é
verin, but she’d never seen him look like that. A moment later, his expression melted into a warm smile.

He beamed. “Oh, I liked your costume too, Laila. You looked beautiful.”

Laila bowed, then glanced at S
é
verin. He’d taken unusual care
with how he dressed. The color of his silk pocket square matched the silvery shade of his scar. On the second button of his shirt, he’d pinned an elaborate ouroboros brooch, one that she knew dug painfully into his skin because he’d told her. His shoes were scuffed hand-me-downs from his father, the long-dead patriarch of House Vanth.
Laila’s chest tightened. Today, S
é
verin had dressed in subtle pain. Laila recognized it because she did the same thing to herself every night when she took off her clothes, splaying her fingers against the long scar down her back as she tried to read her own body. Sometimes the pain was a reminder of where she was … who she was … and what she wanted to be.

BOOK: The Gilded Wolves
12.76Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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