“Where’s Laila?” she asked.

“Here.”

Laila stepped inside, wearing a white dress. The color, he thought, looked funereal on her. Though she was no less kind, a distance had crept into her gaze since last night. Oftentimes, her fingers went to her wrist, as if she were checking her pulse.

“We’re supposed to meet Séverin at midnight,” she said.

Enrique’s jaw clenched. “How will he find us?”

Laila looked as if she was about to say something else and then thought better of it. “I’m sure it won’t pose a problem to him.”

“But where do we go when we get there?” asked Hypnos. “I imagine if one is throwing a party, the setting will be magnificent, possibly labyrinthine—”

“Leave that to me,” said Laila, wiggling her fingers. “Servants always see something. It’s easy to brush against their sleeves or touch what they’re holding and look into the rest of the room. Zofia, what have you brought us?”

Zofia touched the robes on the table. “Six explosives, a silencing board, one spherical detection device, five filtration devices for smoke, and smoking light deflection.”

Hypnos blinked. “That’s … that’s rather thorough.”

“Not to mention what’s sewn into this,” said Laila, patting the corsetry of her dress.

“Three daggers, four meters of steel rope, and phosphorous lenses in case our light source fails,” rattled off Zofia.

Now Hypnos looked a little nervous. “This seems like an awful lot of dangerous objects required just to find a map…”

Zofia shrugged, chewing on a match. Hypnos looked to Laila, but she had gone distant once more. She twisted her ring, and Enrique’s heart broke a little. The number of days left was weighing on her. And why shouldn’t they? How could anyone breathe around that terror? But they were so close to finding an answer. So close to something that could change their lives.

Enrique reached out, holding her hand. He smiled. “We’ve got hope, a flimsy plan, and a great deal of explosives. We’ve gotten by on less. Let’s go.”

THE MIND FORGED masks told them where to go for the Carnevale, but not how to enter.

Half an hour before midnight, Enrique, Hypnos, Zofia, and Laila stood before a black-and-white wall of mosaic tiles at the entrance of a concealed alley that was empty and lined with refuse. Before them, the mosaics stretched about seven meters high, and three meters wide. Despite the arrangement of the tiles, it didn’t resemble anything. On the bare wall beside it was a small square full of colored Forged lights—red, blue, yellow, and orange—each no larger than a coin. At its center was a blank, circular depression. The colorful lights would easily fit within it like a key, but why was such a thing necessary?

Enrique pushed back his mask. The cold, February air kissed his face. A passing breeze stung at his bandage, and he bit back a wince.

“Why does this feel like it’s going to be another riddle?” asked Hypnos. “I already hate it.”