“Nothing is new, child,” said Lucien. “Everything repeats. The sooner you know that, the happier you’ll be.”

Séverin had disliked his father’s summary. It felt weak and powerless. Surely, those were words of defeat. Surely, if he made a mistake he regretted and learned from … then history would not repeat itself.

And yet it had.

The moment the explosion ripped through Ruslan’s gondola … the moment a chunk of wood splintered the boat where he and Laila crouched and waited … it was like muscle memory. To go to her. To shield her body with his.

To protect her above all else.

In those seconds before he lost consciousness, Séverin felt a line drawn between this moment and the one in the Palais des Rêves, the moment where he’d flung himself over Laila and left Tristan’s throat at the mercy of a blade-brimmed hat.

That moment had been the floor on which his life pivoted sharply from what he had imagined. That moment had neatly sheared away all the things he thought he’d wanted, scraped clean the dreams he’d once held, and left room for something beyond imagination.

Perhaps his father was right in one way.

History had repeated itself, but it was a matter of perspective. The ouroboros was merely a serpent biting its own tail. Held far enough away, it became a lens through which to focus the world beyond it.

And that was how the world felt as Séverin regained consciousness—newly refocused.

Dimly, he felt a hard, satin couch beneath him, a pillow propped under his head. As his eyes adjusted to the light he saw that someone had left him a glass of water. There was a musky odor here, a closeness to the Grand Canal that seeped through the floorboards of wherever he was. A dull ache hit his ribs. He drew back his jacket and then stopped, the cold weight of panic slamming through his body.

The divine lyre.

It was gone.

He patted his chest again, then jerked to a stand, frantically feeling around the surfaces of the settee—

“It’s in another room,” said a familiar voice. “Guarded by Hypnos and Zofia. They have the Poveglia map with them too. We were just waiting on you to wake up.”

He heard the flare of a match, and then the room slowly brightened as dozens of interlocked Forged lanterns blazed to life. Séverin held his breath as Laila came into view. If this were a fantasy, he wanted to remain utterly still, to keep this phantasm of her in place.

“You were bleeding earlier,” said Laila haltingly.

Séverin looked down at his torso, only now realizing that he wasn’t wearing anything besides his formal coat and trousers, and that he was swaddled in linen from his bare chest to his navel. Laila averted her eyes.

“Given what happened last time your blood hit the instrument, we thought it was best to keep it away from you,” she said.

The rational corner of his mind agreed with that, but the other half—the animal half that recognized only danger in the dark—froze over. Anything could have happened to him after Ruslan’s gondola attack. But he was safe. They were furious with him, but they had taken him back to their hideout, cleaned his wounds, bandaged him up, left him in the dark to rest, and guarded over him as he slept.