The Gilded Wolves

by Roshani Chokshi

  “It’s like this,” said Hypnos, walking up to him. “May I, beautiful?”

  Enrique managed a nod. Hypnos turned over his hand, sliding his brown thumb down his palm before stopping above his racing pulse.

  “In each Babel Ring, there’s a core of the matriarch or patriarch’s blood. The blood fuels the Ring’s ability to House-mark, among other things. When the matriarch or patriarch dies, or if they wish to retire their seat early, a head of House is summoned to administer the inheritance test. First, the Ring that will be passed on is cut into the heir’s hand.” Hypnos dragged one edge of the crescent moon across Enrique’s hand. Through his skin, he felt a hum of power, like lightning traveling through his veins. “Then, the Ring of the witness is held over the bloodied Ring. If the heir is of the same blood as the matriarch or patriarch, both Rings turn blue. If the heir is not…”

  “You are left with a handsome scar,” finished Séverin coldly.

  Hypnos dropped Enrique’s hand.

  “The Order is not above falsifying the inheritance test,” he said, facing Séverin. “It’s been performed in the past by families wishing to pass over one heir for a different family member.”

  “On what grounds would they deny an heir his inheritance?” asked Enrique.

  Hypnos ticked off the reasons on his fingers. “They might not like how the child’s mind works, or who they love, or—”

  “Or the Order might like their bloodlines nice and neat,” cut in Séverin, his voice distant. “Two heirs of mixed blood would not do. An easy solution is to choose one over the other.”

  Hypnos’s jaw tightened. Gone was his lax demeanor. Regret twisted his handsome features. “If memory serves, you tried to tell me that years ago,” he said quietly.

  “And if memory serves, you didn’t listen.”

  Spots of color appeared on Hypnos’s cheeks. “As you so aptly pointed out, my very breath has been monitored by the Order since the day my father died and passed the Ring to me. But if you acquire this artifact for me, I will administer the inheritance test myself. No falsifications like last time. I can return your Ring to you … I know where it’s kept.”

  Enrique felt as though all the air had been drained from the room. Séverin refused to look at Hypnos as he spoke. “What do you want?”

  “A Horus Eye.”

  Enrique sucked in his breath.

  “Where is it?”

  Hypnos hesitated for a moment, then said, “The vaults of House Kore.”

  “No,” said Séverin immediately. “I am not stepping into that woman’s house.”

  And no wonder, thought Enrique. The matriarch of House Kore must have helped falsify the results of the inheritance test that stole Séverin’s title.

  “Just before the auction, she was viciously attacked,” said Hypnos. “Her Ring was stolen.”

  “Probably an inside job,” said Séverin. “We don’t get involved with those.”

  We. Enrique felt a thrill of pride. That’s right! he wanted to say. But he didn’t.

  “I’m not asking you to find her Ring,” said Hypnos. “There are people already dedicated to that search. What I’d like your help for goes beyond that. As I’m sure you haven’t forgotten, the Rings of our Houses guard the location of the West’s Babel Fragment.”

  Séverin laughed. “And do you think this mastermind thief knows the Fragment’s location and wishes to perform some nefarious activity there with the stolen Ring? Because as I recall, revealing the Fragment’s location requires two Rings, not one. Your precious knowledge should stay safe.”

  Enrique knew little about the inner workings of the Order, but Séverin had once told him that knowledge about the location of the West’s Fragment circulated among the Houses of different empires every century. France was the most recent possessor of the location’s knowledge. If the Ring of House Kore had truly been stolen, that knowledge would be in grave danger. And if Séverin was right and the theft was an inside job, then that made all the more sense why Hypnos would want to steal rather than inquire after the Horus Eye.

  If House Kore had been compromised from the inside, then no one in the House was trustworthy. And if, by some chance, the thief had taken the Ring to the Fragment’s location, then looking through the Horus Eye would immediately reveal its whereabouts.

  “With a single Ring, the Fallen House nearly threw the world off balance,” said Hypnos. “They paid the price, to be certain, but history always repeats itself.”

  Enrique remembered the Forged threshold of the Palais Garnier as he was leaving the auction. An image stood out in his mind: a peeling hexagram on a gilt mirror. The symbol of the disgraced Fallen House. Something about that hexagram sat heavily in his thoughts.

  “And, if I may be so bold, which I am, so I will … you have no choice but to help me, Séverin.”

  “You can threaten me with imprisonment, but I’ll get out. You could set your guards on us, but I’ve already planted an incendiary sphere, and I could have this place up in flames before you take a single step,” said Séverin.

  Enrique bit back a grin. Séverin’s lie at the entrance. The small knife he’d surrendered without complaint. He’d distracted the guard with a false weapon while hiding the real one.

  “When did you—”

  Séverin smiled. “I had to do something to pass the time while you were making eyes at my historian.”

  “Wait. I was bait?” demanded Enrique.

  “You’re flattered.”

  Maybe a little.

  When Hypnos looked around the room, Séverin waved his hand. “Don’t bother. You won’t find it in time. And I won’t go anywhere near that House,” said Séverin, turning on his heel. “Perhaps we can work out a different agreement. In the meantime, Enrique and I must be going.”

  Hypnos loosed a breath. “I hate when I have to do this! Flaring tempers, veiled threats, ugh. It ages me, mon cher, and I detest that.”

  Hypnos stomped his foot. An image rippled across the surface of the scarlet rug. Nausea twisted through Enrique. Before him wavered an image of three kneeling bodies in the distance … their heads bent forward, hands bound … but the shapes were unmistakable.

  Laila.

  Zofia.

  Tristan.

  Séverin immediately paled.

  “You see? You can walk out and survive. But I can’t say the same for the rest. I want an oath that you’ll return the compass, go to House Kore, and get me that Horus Eye,” said Hypnos, holding out the Forged quill that tattooed oaths. “Do this, Séverin, and I can give you back your House.”

  Séverin was rooted to the spot. “Are they alive?”

  “Do we have a deal or no?” asked Hypnos in a singsong voice.

  “Are they alive?”

  “They won’t be if you don’t swear the oath. We’ll be equally bound, Séverin. I assure you, it’s for the best. You’ll like working with me, I promise! I’m fabulous at parties, have excellent taste in menswear, et cetera, et cetera,” said Hypnos, waving his hand. “And if you don’t agree to this, then I will break every bone in their bodies, and etch your name onto the splinters. That way, your name will be all over their deaths.”

  Hypnos’s smile was sharp as broken glass. “Still unwilling?”

  7

  SÉVERIN

  Wrath was the second of Séverin’s seven fathers.

  Some of his fathers lasted for months. Others for years. Some had wives who did not let him call them mother. Some fathers died before he could learn to hate them. Others died because he hated them.

  * * *

  THE LAST TIME Séverin saw his father’s Ring, he was seven years old. The Ring was a pinched oval of tarnished brass depicting a snake biting its tail. The underside of the tail was a blade. After the fire killed his parents, the matriarch of House Kore dragged his father’s Ring across his palm, and the snake tail cut through his skin like a hot knife to a slab of butter. For a moment, he saw the flash of promised blue … the very glow his fat
her had often talked of that proved he was the true heir of House Vanth … but then it disappeared, obscured by the sweeping cloak of the patriarch of House Nyx. Séverin remembered how they talked in hushed whispers, these people who he had once called “Tante” and “Oncle.” When they turned to face him, it was as if they had never bounced him on their knee or snuck him an extra plate of dessert. The mere span of a minute had rendered them strangers.

  “We cannot let you be one of us,” said the matriarch.

  He would never forget how she had looked at him … how she had dared to show him pity.

  “Tante—” he managed, but she cut him off with a sharp brush of her gloved hand.

  “You may not call me that anymore.”

  “A pity,” Séverin heard his former oncle say. “But we simply cannot have more than one.”

  A group of lawyers later informed Séverin that he would be taken care of until he came of age to inherit the trust funds of House Vanth, for though he was not the blood heir, his name appeared on every deed and contract, thus entitling him to the assets.

  Séverin did not mourn the death of his father as much as he mourned the death of Kahina. His father had not allowed him to call her “Mother,” and in public she referred to him as “Monsieur Séverin.” But at night … when she snuck into his room to sing his lullabies, she always whispered one thing before she left: “I am your Ummi. And I love you.”

  His first day in Wrath’s home, Séverin wept and said, “I miss Kahina.” Wrath ignored him. By the second day, Séverin had not stopped weeping and once more said, “I miss my Kahina.”

  Wrath had stopped on his way to the commode. He turned around. His eyes were so light that sometimes his pupils looked colorless.

  “Say her name again,” said the old man.

  Séverin hesitated. But he loved her name. Her name sounded like how she smelled … like fruits from a fairy-tale garden. He loved how when he said her name, he remembered that she used to hunch over him, all that black hair curtaining over his small head, so he could pretend it was nighttime and therefore story time.

  The moment he spoke her name, Wrath backhanded him. He did it over and over, demanding that he say “Kahina” until blood replaced the fairy-tale taste of his mother’s name.

  “She’s dead, boy,” Wrath had said when he was finished. “Died in the fire along with your father. I don’t want to hear her name again.”

  * * *

  WRATH’S BASTARD BOY also lived in the house, though he hardly treated him like his own child. The boy was younger than Séverin and had wide, gray eyes. When Wrath was mad, he did not care which boy he took so long as one was taken.

  In his study, Wrath kept a Phobus Helmet, a Forged object of mind affinity that coaxed out the wearer’s nightmares and played them on a loop …

  Wrath only watched when the boys started screaming after the Phobus Helmet was secured to their heads. He never touched them except his occasional blows.

  “Your imagination hurts you far worse than anything I could ever do,” he once said.

  One day, Wrath called for the other boy. By then, Séverin had learned his name was Tristan. That day, he saw Tristan crouched in the shadows. Neither boy moved.

  “Have you seen him?” demanded Wrath.

  Séverin had a choice. He made it.

  “No.”

  Wrath took him instead.

  The next day, Wrath called for both of them. Séverin was outside, wandering the grounds. Wrath’s footsteps echoed loudly. Séverin might have been caught if he hadn’t felt a small tug on his sleeve. The silent boy was hiding in the rosebushes. His lap was full of flowers. He scooted to the side to make room for Séverin.

  “I protect you,” Séverin whispered.

  * * *

  I PROTECT YOU.

  One promise.

  One promise, and he couldn’t even keep it.

  Every time he blinked, he saw their bodies. Zofia’s bright hair mussed by dirt. Tristan crouching, swaying … and Laila. Laila, who should have sugar in her hair, not shards of glass. Laila, who he …

  He dug his nails into his palm, screaming at the driver to go faster. Beside him, Enrique was a ghost of himself, whispering and turning over rosary beads in his hand. The second they got to L’Eden, Enrique leapt out of the carriage. “I’ll check for them inside.”

  Séverin nodded, then broke into a run across the Seven Sins Garden.

  He didn’t stop running until he arrived at Tristan’s workshop in Envy. Tristan’s back was to him. Hunched over. His neck bent. His worktable strewn with small fronds and snippets of petals … all the makings of the miniature worlds he obsessively cobbled together.

  Séverin couldn’t find his next breath. Had they strangled him? Propped him upright like a cruel joke? If so, then what about Laila and Zofia? Were they dead in the kitchens and the laboratory? Or—

  Tristan turned.

  “Séverin?”

  Séverin stood there, swaying.

  “Why do you look nauseous? Is it that sleepwalking guest in Room 7? I caught him sleepwalking naked in the servants’ quarters last night, and if that’s what happened, I honestly don’t blame you—”

  “The others,” rasped Séverin. “Are they … are they…”

  Tristan frowned. “I just saw Laila and Zofia in the kitchens. Why? What’s wrong?”

  Séverin grabbed him abruptly in a hug.

  “I feel like I’m missing something important,” wheezed Tristan.

  “I thought you were dead.”

  Tristan laughed. “Why would you think that?” But when he caught the flat look in Séverin’s eyes, he paused. “What happened?”

  Séverin told him everything from Hypnos’s proposition … to the reward waiting at the end.

  “House Kore?” Tristan practically spat. “After what she—”

  “I know.”

  “Are you going to take the offer?”

  Séverin held up his hand, showing the harsh slash of the oath tattoo. “I have no choice.”

  In that moment, Tristan’s face was inscrutable.

  After what felt like forever, Tristan turned over his own hand. The silvery scar down his palm matched Séverin’s. Neither of them knew where Tristan had gotten his scar. But it didn’t matter.

  Finally, Tristan placed his hand over Séverin’s, stacking their scars before saying:

  “I protect you.”

  * * *

  ONE OF THE greatest secrets of the Fallen House was where they had held their meetings.

  It was said the key both to their secret meeting locations and to their lost treasure lay in the bone clocks once given to each member of their House. In the fifty years since they had been exiled and executed by the Order, no one had cracked the clocks’ code. These days, it was considered nothing more than a rumor that time had smoothed down to the shape of a myth. But that didn’t stop interest in acquiring the bone clocks. Of late, the clocks had become something of a collector’s item.

  One of the few remaining ones sat on Séverin’s bookshelf.

  In all the time that Séverin had kept the bone clock, it hadn’t revealed any of its secrets. Although sometimes the clock stopped at six minutes past two o’clock, which he considered rather strange considering that there was only one word found on the clock: nocte.

  Midnight.

  Séverin often looked at it when he was thinking.

  Fifty years ago, it had seemed impossible for anything to ruin the Fallen House. And now … to Séverin, the clock was a reminder. Anything could fall. Towers that scraped the heavens, Houses with pockets deeper than empires’, shining seraphs who had once been in the confidence of God. Even families who were supposed to love you. Nothing was invincible but change.

  Séverin was still staring at the clock face when the letter from Hypnos arrived. He ripped open the envelope, scanned the first line, and scowled.

  To be fair, you would have done the same.

  Séverin’s knuckled grip paled.


  Before you throw this in the fire, I do hope you listen to that seed of rationale deep within your fury. We are to work together, and though I might not extract my promises the best way, I always keep them. As I know you do.

  Tell me what you need from me.

  Séverin hated that word. Need. He hated how Hypnos’s promise of a new inheritance test had itched that very word to life.

  Sometimes he wished he didn’t remember life before the Order. He wished someone with a mind affinity could root through his memories and shred those years. He was haunted. Not even by people, but the phantoms of sensations—firelight limning the outlines of his fingers, a cat with a fluffy tail who napped at the foot of his bed, orange blossom water on Kahina’s skin, a spoon dipped in honey and smuggled into his waiting hand, wind on his face as he was tossed into the air and caught in warm arms, words that sank into his soul like growing roots steeped in sunshine: “I am your Ummi. And I love you.” Séverin squeezed his eyes shut. He wished he didn’t know what he had lost. Maybe then every day wouldn’t feel like this. As if he had once known how to fly, but the skies had shaken him loose and left him with nothing but the memory of wings.

  Séverin rolled his shoulders. His fingers left damp impressions on Hypnos’s letter. He crumpled it in his fist. He knew what he was going to do. What he needed to do. As he walked out the door of his study, a phantom ache curled between his shoulder blades.

  As if they craved the weight of wings.

  * * *

  THROUGH THE FROSTED glass door of the kitchen, he saw their shapes crowded around the high-top counters. He heard the chime of bone china, silver spoons hitting tea saucers. The crisp snap of cookies. He could picture them with perfect clarity. Zofia carefully cutting her cookie in half, then dipping each half into the tea. Enrique demanding to know why she was torturing the cookies. Tristan scoffing that tea was hot, watered-down leaves and “Laila, is there any hot chocolate?” Laila. Laila, who moved like a sylph among them, watching them with those eyes that said she knew their worst secrets and still forgave them. Laila, who always had sugar in her hair.