He waited for her every night, and though sometimes he felt her … he never saw her. In those moments when he missed her most, he would think on her promise. I will always be with you. In the wake of not knowing whether this was true, he had no choice but to believe.

“Well. I should go,” said Enrique. “I have to prepare for tomorrow’s lectures, and I’d like to do that before they get here.”

“I’ll let you know when they arrive,” said Séverin. “Please make sure that Zofia has put away anything too flammable—”

“Already done,” said Enrique. He frowned. “She was not enthused.”

“And tell Hypnos not to drink in front of them.”

“I’ve bought him a teacup in which he can put his wine. He was, also, not enthused.”

“And try not to lecture them the moment they ask a question about anything on the premises,” said Séverin.

Enrique looked highly affronted. “Would it really be a lecture?” He raised his hands and wiggled his fingers. “Or would it be an unhinging of their known world?”

Séverin stared at him. “Perhaps there is enough that is unhinged in this household.”

“Hmpf,” said Enrique. As he turned to the door, he cast a scathing glance at Argos, who was napping beside the fireplace. “You are an overpriced and overpainted chicken, and you are lucky you are not even remotely edible. I hope you know that.”

Argos slept on.

Séverin laughed. When Enrique left, he stroked Argos’s feathers and then returned to his desk. On the wooden surface lay a tarnished ouroboros that had once been pinned to his father’s lapel. Séverin traced the shape slowly, remembering the sneer in Lucien Montagnet-Alarie’s voice as he imparted what he considered the most precious piece of advice to his son:

We can never escape ourselves, my boy … we are our own end and beginning, at the mercy of a past which cannot help but repeat itself.

“You’re wrong,” said Séverin under his breath.

But even as he said it, he didn’t truly know whether he had spoken the truth. There was much he could not claim to know. He did not know what it meant when Laila had said they would always be connected so long as she lived. He did not know whether she would keep her promise and return to him. He didn’t know whether his efforts would make a difference, or whether the world would turn on indifferently and leave his legacy in the dust.

Outside the window came the crunch of hoofbeats over gravel. Séverin’s heartbeat sped up as he looked through the glass and saw them for the first time in months: Luca and Filippo, the orphan brothers from Venice. It had taken ages to locate them, and a mere month for the adoption papers to be drawn. Séverin had been preparing for this moment for the better part of a year, but right then, the sheer weight of what he was undertaking knocked the wind out of his lungs.