Slowly, Zofia forced herself to listen to the others’ conversation. There was talk of secret Tezcat routes that would lead them to Venice, and how the members of the Order of Babel were still paralyzed from Eva’s blood Forging, which left them only a handful of hours to leave or risk getting caught. Zofia could hardly bring herself to listen.

Instead, she stared at the ring on Laila’s hand: ten days.

She had ten days to protect Laila. If Zofia could do that for her friend, then maybe she could make herself open the letter and learn Hela’s fate for certain. Until then, she would keep the letter covered. If she did not look, then she did not have to know, and if she did not know then perhaps there was a chance … a statistical impossibility, but a weighted number nonetheless, that Hela was not dead. Zofia reached for the safety of those numbers: ten days to find a solution for Laila, ten days in which she might hope Hela was still alive.

Hope, Zofia realized, was the only protection she had left.

4

LAILA

Laila picked her way through the shadows of a narrow brick alley, pulling tight the cloth that covered her face and hair. Around her, stray cats mewled and hissed, tumbling in the piles of trash. Wherever they were—she had lost track of the Tezcat route after the seventh switch—it was early afternoon, and a wind off the sea carried the stench of dead fish. In front of her, Hypnos laid his hand against a dirtied brick. Zofia stood beside him, holding up a Tezcat pendant she had torn off from her necklace. It was the only tool they had with them. Enrique’s research, Zofia’s laboratory, Laila’s costumes … all of it had been left behind in the Sleeping Palace.

The pendant glowed brightly, indicating a hidden entrance.

“This should be the last Tezcat route,” said Hypnos, forcing a smile to his face. “The matriarch said from here, the passage would open up right beside the Rialto Bridge. Is that not wonderful?”

“That is not how I would define ‘wonderful,’” said Zofia.

Her blond hair had come undone and haloed her whole head, while her blue gown looked scorched. Next to her, Enrique gingerly touched the bloodstained bandage around his ear, and just then, a fat cockroach scuttled across Laila’s mud-crusted slippers. Laila recoiled.

“Wonderful is a hot bath and a foolproof plan waiting for us on the other side,” said Enrique. “We don’t even know where we’re going to find this safehouse.”

“We have a hint…” said Hypnos before reciting the matriarch’s instructions: “On the island of the dead, lies the god with not one head. Show the sum of what you see, and this will lead you straight to me.”

“Which means what, exactly?” said Enrique.

Hypnos’s mouth pressed to a thin line. “That’s all I was given, mon cher. So we must make do. I’m going to check that this is the correct route. Zofia, will you come with me? I might need that fancy necklace of yours.”