It had been two days since they had found the address and key to the matriarch’s safe house.

“This house better be beautiful because I am not leaving it under any circumstances,” Hypnos had declared.

When they had pushed open the peeling, wooden door marked 77 on Calle Tron Strada, they found a small, but richly appointed house. Hypnos had explored first, leaving them on the threshold. When he found neither hidden trap nor adversaries lying in wait, he smiled widely, his eyes appearing bright and glossy.

“It’s exactly as the matriarch promised,” he said.

Inside were several bedchambers, a drawing room with an elegant piano which Hypnos immediately played, a kitchen that Laila instantly perused for ingredients, a vast library littered with strange contraptions along the walls which Enrique had disappeared inside—and, right across from the library, a small room where Zofia might Forge.

It was the smallest suite, with whitewashed walls, a small skylight, and a long, steel workbench. The tools that covered one of the walls were out of date, but serviceable nonetheless. Zofia had immediately run her hands over the glass lathe, the wire cutters, the dusty jars of saltpeter and nitrate, vials of potassium chloride and ammonia, stacks of matchboxes, and the scraps of metal lining the walls. The moment she touched the sheets of iron and aluminum, she could feel the metal within reaching out to read her will … Did she want it to bend? To sharpen? To hold fire in its structure?

The touch of the metal eased a tight, coiling sensation that had been building inside her ever since they had left Lake Baikal. All this time, she felt as if she had been walking through the dark, aware that her eyes were wide open, and aware that it made no difference at all. Every step brought her deeper into unknowable territory, so she could not begin to guess or trust what lay ahead.

That was the problem with the dark.

Once, Zofia had accidentally locked herself in her family’s cellar. Hela and her parents had gone to the market, and Zofia, frightened, had clutched the first thing she felt: a length of silken fur. It wasn’t until Hela had found her and the lantern light spilled over the wooden walls that Zofia saw what she had held so close: a skinless pelt, the creature’s head and paws still dangling from what remained of it.

Zofia had thrown it from her immediately, but she would never forget how the dark had tricked her. She hated how it made even the strange turn familiar and the familiar turn strange. As a child, her fear sometimes grew so great that she would crawl into bed beside Hela.

“You are frightened of nothing, Zosia,” her sister would mumble sleepily. “It cannot hurt you.”

Scientifically, Zofia understood this. The dark was nothing more than the absence of light. But these past few weeks, it had also taken on a different absence. The absence of knowing.