“Yes, Madame, I’d like that very much!”

Her chuckle told me I had answered too eagerly. “Just don’t tire thyself out too much to work.”

“I—” I caught myself on the verge of promising too much. “I’ll try my best, Madame.”

“Do.” With a face as much smirking as critical, she handed me my bowl, loaded with lopsided petits fours and mangled omelet, twice my usual portion.

“Thank you, Madame.”

“Not at all, Mycroft. Rather I should thank thee and thy stray.” She leaned low as she unlocked the cage to let me in, whispering so only Saladin and I could hear. “Mycroft knows this already, but Apollo Mojave was my only rival for the complete affections of the Seven.” She winked at wide-eyed Saladin. “Thanks to you two, I won.”

I felt a sense of safety as the bars locked fast behind me, Fate’s promise that Saladin and I would not be ripped apart again until that lock clicked open once more. For thirteen years we had enjoyed only those rare hours when I could slip my tracker, or stolen seconds between its bleeping my excitement and Papadelias’s cavalry charging in. Now a whole night stretched before us, infinite as the sea. It was an undeserved mercy, snowfall to cool my burning patch of Hell.

«Mycroft,» Saladin whispered as we wrapped ourselves around each other. «Where are we?» His Greek felt hollow, like a child’s song lost in a cavern.

«The secret capital of the world,» I answered.

«Who was that woman?»

«The secret Empress. I’m sorry, Saladin. I wanted to die for you, but after what happened to me here I was too weak, and now they’re going to do it to you, too.»

His eyes seemed old, too old, life without medical treatments letting the years show in his face as in portraits of ancients. «Who is Jehovah? You mentioned the name Jehovah.»

I stroked his hairless cheek. «Tomorrow. The world can end tomorrow. For tonight, let’s let the world cease to exist.»

He tasted my ear. «Why are you crying? I’m all right. These wounds are nothing.»

«We killed Apollo.» My voice cracked as I said it. «Apollo’s dead and we killed them, I killed them, and the reasons were all lies…» I drew Apollo’s coat tighter around us, as if we could hide in its reality. «What kind of God would plan this?»

His eyes grew wide. «Mycroft, since when have you believed—»

«Even if Apollo had to die, They could have used disease, or an accident, or lightning. Why us? Why murder, and why make us, both of us, live to see that we were wrong?» I pulled him around me like a shell. «We killed Apollo, and tomorrow, and the next day, forever, we’ll still have killed Apollo. Tell me it’s a nightmare, Saladin. Just for tonight, tell me it isn’t true.»

He held me as I wished, but his breath against my cheek was slow with thought. «Mycroft, where did Bridger come from? Apollo didn’t have a child. Seine wasn’t pregnant, we know that, but the resemblance is too strong, so where—»