Séverin studied the framing, stepping back. “I don’t think so.”

Laila imagined the room growing a touch colder.

“Excuse me?” asked Enrique.

“I doubt House Janus would want their entrance to treasure to be based on something that isn’t an original. It would feel … insulting. As for the dragon link, I imagine it would not be so tenuous.”

“So you think we need to look for an actual dragon?” asked Enrique.

“Maybe not quite so literal, but something more rooted to the word perhaps.”

There was a certain logic to it. Again, the past intruded. Laila remembered how joyously Séverin used to read rooms of treasure, as if he understood, on some fundamental level, how precious things liked to hide. Once, it had made her feel special … how he, alone, had found her all those years ago, unearthed her skills, kept her safe. Treasured her. Laila pushed it from her mind.

“Fine,” said Enrique tightly. “We can try it.”

For the next ten minutes, the group split up to comb through the halls’ maps and statues once more.

“I imagined this would be far more exciting,” said Hypnos, bored. “Considering the dragons.”

“What about this?” called Zofia.

The four of them turned to face her. She stood near the end of the corridor before a small map that was hardly fifteen centimeters long. Zofia had snapped off one of the pendants from her strange necklace, holding it up like a light and pointing at something written off to the side.

When they reached her, Laila didn’t see anything at first except yellowing paper, sepia ink outlining and shading stretches of mountains, rolling waves and hillsides, flat plains. Long ago, the map had been Forged, and though time had weakened the Forging bond, a wisp of will gusted across the page. An invisible wind ruffled stalks of wheat. The depiction of waves rolled gently and disappeared into the frame. Enrique leaned forward, following Zofia’s finger to an expanse of blank page broken only by the appearance of a dorsal fin knifing in and out of the water. And beside it, in slanting font so small that Laila would’ve missed it completely, a phrase in Latin:

HIC SUNT DRACONES

Dracones.

Dragons.

Laila stared at the word, hope needling painfully in her chest.

“It’s a reference that means territory unknown,” said Enrique excitedly. “Ancient cartographers believed that the land they could not see must necessarily be populated by ancient beasts, monsters, etcetera, although the most common Latin phrase mapmakers used was ‘terra ignota’ first seen in Ptolemy’s Geographia in the year 150. This particular phrase hasn’t been seen except on the sixteenth-century Hunt-Lenox globe.”

Territory unknown. Laila smiled. She liked that idea. That in the vast places where the world became unfamiliar, there might be something as beautiful and remarkable as dragons lying in wait.

Out the corner of her eye, Laila saw Séverin smiling at Enrique. Enrique didn’t look at him, but his jaw clenched as he said: “Zofia, I believe you know what to—”