Nine days.

Even so, she would put her trust in those who deserved it. Laila reached out, grabbing Enrique’s hand and looking Zofia and Hypnos in the eye.

“Shall we?”

LAILA’S FIRST SIGHT of Venice stole her breath away, and though she had so little of it left, she could not bring herself to mind. Venice seemed like a place half-sculpted from a child’s daydream. It was a floating city knitted all over with marble bridges, full of sunken doors wearing the faces of grinning gods. Everywhere she looked, the city appeared enchanted with liveliness. On the merchant tables set up along the banks of the lagoon, Forged lace folded itself into the likeness of a crescent moon and played peekaboo with a grinning child. A string of stained-glass beads floated up from a velvet settee to clasp playfully around the neck of a laughing noblewoman. Elaborate masks covered in gold leaf and decorated in swirling pearls floated regally past them, buoyed into the air by the craftsmen mascheraris who worked near the water.

“To get to Isola di San Michele, we’re going to need a boat,” Enrique said.

Hypnos had turned out his pockets mournfully. “How will we pay?”

“Leave it to me,” said Laila.

She walked quickly along the docks. First, she swiped a black shawl left unattended on a stool—a memory of warm, brown hands knitting the shawl pushed through her mind. Sorry, she thought. She swept it over her stained and ripped gown. At her throat, her L’Enigme mask lay folded away in a tiny pendant dangling from a green silk ribbon. She tapped it once, and the elaborate peacock mask unraveled and settled around her face. If the other mascherari hawkers wearing their products noticed something amiss, they said nothing as she passed.

Laila kept an eye on the waters. They had emerged through a passageway of pale, Istrian stone that opened up right beside Ponte di Rialto, the huge bridge that looked like a crescent moon had abandoned the sky simply to adorn the city. In the late afternoon, gondolas swiftly cut through the jade water.

The gondoliers paid her no mind as they smoked and played chess by the stone steps. Laila touched the prows of their boats one by one, skimming through their memories—

The first: A girl with a flower in her hair, her eyes fluttering closed as she leaned in for a kiss …

The second: A man’s frustrated voice: “Mi dispiace…”

The third: A child holding his grandfather’s hand, the smell of cigar smoke surrounding them.

On and on and on until—

Laila’s hands stilled as a static sound filled her thoughts. It was the kind of static that only belonged to a Forged object.

She smiled.

AN HOUR LATER, Laila sat on the prow of the gondola, watching as a frost-colored moon rose over an island in the distance. The cold wind on her face was bracing, and even though she was never rid of the weight of her death on her hand, at least she could have this too.