“I knew it!” she whispered, pulling them in. “The Beazleys are known for two things: their sudden wealth and the secrecy it demands. I believe I just found our way toward an explanation for both.”

Kane again felt that bristling dread, that subtle shift among the threads of the reverie. They had been led here for a reason. This reason. But were they abiding by the plot, or defying it? Was this part of Ursula’s book, or an embellishment born of Helena’s mind? As they entered a passage of velvet blackness he found the whistle in his pocket. He should have blown it when he had the chance, but now their sneaking demanded utter silence.

They crept down a spiraling staircase lined in spitting gaslights. When Kane stumbled, Dean caught his wrist. They held hands the rest of the way, until they entered a room that must have been deep beneath the estate.

It was a laboratory of umber wood and frosted glass. A wide desk stood in the corner, covered in brass contraptions and beakers of smoky liquid. It sat beneath an even bigger mirror. In all the cases, glittering like trapped starlight, were eggs. Hundreds of bejeweled eggs.

It was, and was not, a version of the living room Kane had seen in the videos of Maxine Osman. Kane doubted that steampunk technology or precious eggs were written into The Devil in the Lily. Whatever world they explored, it was not the predictable book Ursula believed she was acting out. She couldn’t know all its secrets.

Sophia’s eyes glistened as she surveyed the collection. “I knew it. I knew it. The Beazleys make their money in the trade of precious stones and metals, but no one can figure out their source. Mines, my father says. Or pirates. But this proves my theory! The Beazleys don’t mine their precious stones. They breed them. You saw those splendid creatures in the garden, didn’t you? The fish and the peacocks and that gargantuan turtle crusted in jade? Like everyone, I figured they’d simply been ornamented for the wedding, but no. Those creatures were hatched that way.”

Kane remembered the delicate, enamel birds he’d seen upstairs. He remembered Helena, as an old woman, telling the interviewer about the ornamental egg collection that she and Maxine shared. We talk about what would hatch from them. This, then, was their game made real. A vein of fantasy stitched through the Victorian elegance of Helena’s reverie.

Kane needed to get back to Ursula. He hovered by Sophia, unsure of how to dislodge her from her snooping. She was peering into an open case at an egg of exquisite rose gold. Ribbons of green enamel folded over the curved bottom, like new leaves, each dotted with pearls and diamonds so that the egg seemed to shiver with fresh dew.

When Sophia reached in to touch it, Dean grabbed her hand away. His eyes were distant.