“Thank you for informing me,” he said.

“Such things are best discovered on one’s own,” said Hypnos. “Though I am curious … what made you realize such a thing?”

Enrique found himself thinking of the dream conversation he’d had with Laila. He thought of her catlike smile and the horizon of some other world illuminating her.

“I suppose you could say it’s because the idea filled me with light,” said Enrique.

41

SÉVERIN

Six months later

Séverin Montagnet-Alarie was no god. As such, he could not change the past, but that didn’t mean he could not break free of it.

Séverin stared out the window of his office, nervously turning a tin of cloves in his hands as he watched the winding, gravel path that led to the entrance of L’Eden. They would be here soon, and he wasn’t sure what they would make of the place …

It was the beginning of winter, and the city seemed more fragile in the brittle sunshine. On the far side of the lawns, workers dug holes and erected trellises, while others lay down tarp to protect the flowers. Next year, the trellises would boast roses of every hue and fragrance. But amidst all that riot of beauty, there was only one star in the garden.

It had taken Séverin and a team of gardeners the better part of a month to find a single surviving rose cane from the variety Tristan had once planted, and which Séverin had later ripped out of the ground and burned. Tristan had never named his roses, and so the duty fell to Séverin. Henceforth, that variety would forever be known as L’Enigme.

While some things had been rebuilt, others had been destroyed.

Gone was the Seven Sins Garden, and although some hotel guests might have mourned the loss of being able to say they had walked through hell and back in time for dinner, Séverin had found that he had enough of hell.

In its place, Séverin had constructed a rehabilitation menagerie for birds who, for a number of reasons, could no longer survive in the wild. There were songbirds who had fallen out of their nests too young, doves who had been mistreated by peddling magicians, sparrows who had once found themselves in the jaws of pouncing cats. There were other birds too, ones who had been kidnapped from their native homes and brought to Paris as objects of curiosity. Birds with plumage that rivaled sunsets, parrots with multihued beaks, golden-eyed falcons, and creatures sporting a crest of rainbows on their brows. All of them found a home in L’Eden and were now cared for by a resident veterinarian and zoologist and, surprisingly, Eva, who had retired her art and moved into L’Eden with her ailing father. To Séverin, each bird carried a piece of Tristan. When they healed, it was almost as if, bit by bit, his brother was healing too.

In the evenings, Séverin would walk through the aviary. Most of the time, he wasn’t looking up at the birds, but staring down at the ground where his shadow sprawled unrecognizably beside him. In those moments, he could pretend that it wasn’t his shadow at all, but Tristan’s. He could pretend his brother walked beside him, Goliath balancing on his shoulder. In those moments, the chaotic murmur of Paris faded, replaced with the secret poetry of birdsong and the flutter of mending wings, and sometimes—sometimes—Séverin could almost hear Tristan sighing. The sound was like peace unclasping from pain and taking wing into the sky.