Even gods had a secret, soft throat. To wound them, you must not want them. You must turn your face and laugh at their riches. Rejection was a mortal blade that would always find purchase.

From his vantage point on the gondola, the stark face of the nearby clock tower announcing that it was half past midnight confirmed what he already knew: They weren’t coming.

At first, he told himself that something had gone wrong. But that was impossible—he had left the Mnemo bug beside Laila. There was no way it could have been misplaced. Then he wondered if some ill had befallen them, if the Order had somehow found them … but surely Ruslan would have crowed about such a finding. For nearly twenty minutes, Séverin had stood in the gondola and stared up at the Bridge of Sighs. He kept imagining them in every stray laugh or distant sound of feet. When he had first neared the meeting point, he even convinced himself that he’d seen a slender figure stealing into the shadows.

They did not want him.

They had chosen not to come.

Dimly, he knew he had to go back.

If he stayed away any longer, Ruslan would punish him for it.

Séverin felt as though he couldn’t breathe. He sank into the gondola cushioning, an unfamiliar tightness constricting his chest as Eva’s words floated back to him.

How do you know they will come for you, Monsieur? You may not have killed them, but even I could see that how you treated them was a death of its own.

Séverin felt ill. He gripped the edge of the gondola, nausea roiling through him. He had done this to himself. He leaned over the boat, on the verge of vomiting, and it was then that he saw the white petals float past him.

For the first time in years, he heard his mother’s voice. He had blocked out the smokey sound for so long, but now it had found him. He remembered one of the last times he saw her: He had cried out for her after a nightmare, and his father had allowed Kahina to sleep beside him, though he grumbled that Séverin would become soft from such coddling.

“Listen, habibi, and I will tell you the tale of the rich king and the most beautiful flower in the world,” Kahina had said, smoothing his hair away from his forehead.

“How beautiful was the flower?” asked Séverin, for it had seemed very important, if the bloom was worthy of a king.

Kahina smiled. “The flower’s petals were white as milk, and its fragrance like something stolen out of paradise. The king asked the flower if he might take it to his kingdom, and the bloom agreed, but only if the king promised to care for it.”

Séverin had frowned at this. None of the flowers on his father’s estate had ever spoken to him. Perhaps they did not imagine him a king. He would have to wear his best clothes tomorrow and inform them otherwise.