“I believe the inlay stonework is in a style called cosmatesque,” said Ruslan, gesturing at the threshold. “It’s beautiful, is it not?”

Séverin couldn’t stop staring at the body sprawled out on the dock, the blood steaming in the cold air. His palms turned damp, remembering the hot slip of Tristan’s blood on his skin when he’d held his brother’s body to his chest. The matriarch’s voice echoed in his head: He will test you before he trusts you.

Séverin swallowed hard, forcing his thoughts to Hypnos and Laila, Enrique and Zofia. They were counting on him to find the map to the temple beneath Poveglia. His instructions on the Mnemo bug he had left by an unconscious Laila had been clear: in three days’ time, they would meet at the appointed location in Venice. By then, they should have cracked the matriarch’s riddles and discovered where the map lay. If not, then it was up to him to find the answer. Once he had the answer, then he needed to figure out a way to be rid of Ruslan.

“It’s beautiful, yes,” said Séverin, arching an eyebrow. He wrinkled his nose. “But the reek of blood hardly agrees with this stinking Venetian air. Come, let us go, before it puts us off our appetite. One day soon, we shall demand more elegant offerings than blood.”

Ruslan smiled, gesturing him inside.

Séverin’s hand twitched. He pressed his thumb against the hard, crystalline strings of the divine lyre. He still remembered what it felt like to touch those strings with a bloodied hand … as if the pulse of the universe had run through him. In his hand alone lay the gates of godhood.

And in a matter of days, Séverin Montagnet-Alarie would be a god.

2

LAILA

Laila had never felt more alone.

Around her, the grotto burned with cold. Icicles lay shattered on the floor, and in the eerie blue light of the snow-packed walls, the smashed wings of the Mnemo bug bled watery rainbows. A knot rose in her throat, and she squeezed the diamond pendant in her hand, wincing at the sharp pain of its angles.

In the hour since Séverin had left with Ruslan, she hadn’t moved. Not once.

She kept staring instead at the bodies of Enrique and Zofia sprawled out on the ice, not three meters from her. She didn’t want to leave them, and she didn’t want to get closer either. If she touched them … if she closed their eyes to make their death appear like sleep … it would be like breaking the fragile skin of a dream. One touch, and she would have made this horror real. And she couldn’t allow that.

She couldn’t allow herself to hold the truth wholly in her heart: Séverin had killed them all.

He’d plunged a knife into Enrique and Zofia. Maybe he’d done so to Hypnos too. Poor Hypnos, thought Laila. She hoped he’d at least been stabbed in the back so he’d died without knowing that the person whose love he wanted most had betrayed him.