For one single moment in time, that song moved through Hypnos, so that he was like a secret pane of glass through which the sunlight shone and the moonlight moved, and he was not illuminated so much as he was enlightened. He saw all the people he had been. The boy who loved to sing, forced to keep his mouth shut. The boy who yearned for song and was surrounded by a thousand different kinds of silence—the silence of his mother’s race, the silence of his own desires, the silence of the luxuriously appointed rooms he haunted like a ghost. All his life, Hypnos had felt like a wandering set of notes, desperate to be set into music, and he had found it in the friends who had become family. Even with them, he felt nervous, as if they might throw him out of their music at any moment … but this grand song assured him otherwise. The song told him he was enough as he was, that his soul held a symphony of its own, for that was how he had been made.

But then the song released him.

And he was left with the memory of vastness … and the barest hint of warmth.

PART VI

39

ZOFIA

Three days after they had escaped the crumbling ziggurat and left Poveglia behind, Zofia sat in a private train compartment en route to Paris. Already, the world had changed. According to every newspaper, ancient Forged objects all around the world had ceased to function.

No one knew why.

There were reports of protests outside churches as religious leaders shouted that this was a sign that God was displeased with them. Industrialists spoke of how modern invention erased the need for Forging altogether. For those with an affinity for mind or matter, their art remained intact, but Zofia suspected that one day … even that would change.

Amidst all the uncertainty, there was one thing Zofia knew without a doubt: She did not know what would happen next.

In the past, this would have discomfited her. She would have spent the entire train ride counting the tassels on the rug, the hanging crystal pendants on the light fixtures. Now, she found herself far less bothered by the unknown. Even if the world were dark, Zofia knew she could be a light.

Alone in the compartment, Zofia stared at her hand, where Laila’s large, garnet ring now shone on her finger. Inside the jewel, the number read zero.

The thought of seeing that number had once paralyzed Zofia. But that moment had come and gone, and though it had not ended at all how she imagined, it had not devastated her.

Zofia flexed her fingers beneath the weight of the garnet ring. She had found it near the clay-lined shores of the lake in the cavern, toppled beside a broken lantern. It must have slipped off Laila’s hand right before they entered the sanctum.

When Laila had asked Zofia to make the ring for her months ago, Zofia had not liked the idea of the red stone. It was the color of blood and reminded Zofia of the warning signs she had once seen placed around the university laboratories.