Séverin had known there was no need to subject Laila to the same fate. There was nothing he could do to her that time wasn’t already planning. Laila blinked and saw Séverin’s cold, violet eyes staring down at her as he wiped his knife against the front of his jacket and said: “She’ll die soon anyway.”

Light caught on her garnet ring, the number displayed within the jewel impossible to miss: Ten. That was all she had left. Ten days before the Forging mechanisms that held her body together fell apart, and her soul came loose.

Maybe she deserved this.

She’d been too weak, too forgiving. Even after everything, she had let him—no, wanted him—to draw her down to him and intersperse their heartbeats with kisses. Maybe it was a blessing that he had not played the divine lyre, for how could she live with herself knowing she had encouraged a monster?

Monster, not Majnun, she told herself.

Yet some selfish part of her broke from knowing how close she had been to life. She’d touched the very strings that could have saved her, but they would not move for her.

Séverin had been cruel enough to want to show her. Why else would he have left the Mnemo bug beside her, and the diamond pendant he had once used to summon her? Laila smashed the Mnemo bug’s wings once more, watching whatever memories it held expire with a sigh. Again and again, she knocked it against the ice, gripped by a fierce desire to destroy any sign of Séverin. An odd, choked laugh ripped out of her throat as plumes of colored smoke rose in a thick fog, distorting the grotto around her.

As she stared through the veil of fog … a shape on the ice stirred.

Laila reared back, horror filling her. She had to be seeing things. She had to.

Séverin must have driven her mad.

Because right before her eyes, Enrique and Zofia stirred to life.

3

ZOFIA

Zofia woke to a shrill ringing in her head. Her mouth felt dry. Her eyes kept watering. Add to that the sticky raspberry-cherry jam on her shirt—and she did not like raspberry-cherry jam. Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the sights around her. She was still in the ice grotto. Several smashed icicles lay around her. The oval-shaped pool where the leviathan named David had once rested was now empty of the mechanical creature, and the water was very still. A colorful fog rose up in the place where Laila had once stood …

Laila.

Panic grabbed hold of Zofia.

What had happened to Laila?

The past hour flew back to her. Ruslan—who had lied to them, pretending to be their friend—shaking Laila, demanding she play the divine lyre, only to find out that Séverin was the one who could. And then Séverin walking toward her holding the knife imbued with Goliath’s paralyzing venom. He had grabbed her, whispering:

Trust me, Phoenix. I will fix this.

She barely had time to nod before the world had gone black.