“Why aren’t you scared of the dark?” Zofia had once asked her sister.

Hela turned toward her in the night. Even though she could not see Hela’s gray eyes, Zofia knew they were open.

“Because I know I just have to wait a little while, and then the light will come back,” said Hela, reaching out to stroke her hair. “It always comes back.”

“What if you get lost in the dark?” Zofia had asked, curling closer to her.

She did not like to be touched, but Hela was soft and warm and knew not to hold her too closely.

“I would do the same thing, sister … I would wait for the light to show me the paths before me. And then I would not be so lost.”

Alone, Zofia pressed her hands to her heart, thinking of Hela and Laila. Whatever lay inside the envelope held a variable that could not be changed. But Laila’s fate was dependent upon elements Zofia could still control. It was not unlike being lost in the dark. All she had to do was work and wait, and eventually, when the light came … she would be able to see the path before her.

“PHOENIX.”

Bleary-eyed, Zofia looked up from her workbench to see Enrique standing in the archway. A low thrum of heat coursed through her belly at the sight of him. He had lost an ear, but his effect on her when she was unguarded remained the same. Zofia studied him, annoyed. Was it the curious sheen of iridescence to his black hair? The inky depth of his eyes or the prominence of his cheekbones?

For the past two days, she had caught glimpses of Enrique working in the library. Enrique was never still. He hummed. He tapped his foot. He thrummed his fingers along the spines of books.

All of this should have annoyed her, but instead, it made her feel less lonely.

“Phoenix … did I disturb you?” asked Enrique, stepping inside. He surveyed her workbench, his eyes widening. “You have enough for a small army.”

Zofia regarded her inventions. “I have enough for, perhaps, fifteen people.”

“You do realize we are a company of five individuals.”

Zofia frowned. “We do not know what waits for us in Poveglia.”

Enrique smiled. “Precisely what I wished to talk to you about. Would you mind waiting in the library? I’ll fetch Laila and join you in a moment.”

Zofia nodded, pushing her chair. Her back ached, and her eyes burned as she stepped from the dimly lit laboratory and walked across the hall to the library. Hypnos met her by promptly bursting into song.

“Ah, my fair and feral muse!” he sang, before speaking: “How goes your cultivation of destruction?”

Zofia remembered Enrique’s wide eyes.

“Productive,” she said. “Potentially excessive.”

She found herself smiling as she took a seat on a high stool beside him. Hypnos always seemed able to make people smile. Although, lately, Enrique did not seem to smile at him. It was different from how they had been at the Sleeping Palace, which only added to the confusing darkness of her thoughts. She remembered watching them kiss, and the way they had melted against each other. There were moments when she imagined herself in Hypnos’s place. But simply because they were no longer attached did not mean that Enrique would ever want to do that with her. Ideas had no physical mass, but Zofia felt the thought like a stone thudding in her stomach.