The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi

exhibition?”
    “Of course not—”
    “Thank God.”
    “—Zofia is going with you.”
    “ What? ” said Zofia and Enrique at the same time.
    “I workalone,” said Zofia.
    Enrique rolled his eyes. “Most women kill to be alone with me.”
    “I have learned that something does not have to be animate in order to use the word ‘kill,’” said Zofia. “Like how some people say ‘kill time.’ Perhaps these women you are referencing are killing their expectations?”
    Tristan snorted half his cocoa, then looked at the clock and blanched.
    “I have to go,” he said.“I’ve got a commission due.”
    Enrique sighed. “I need to do more research on the artifact. Zofia, you might as well come with me. You’ll need to know this too.”
    Zofia scowled and slid off her chair, leaving S é verin and Laila in the kitchen. S é verin reached for his tea. He was glad the kitchen was bright and that they sat on opposite sides of a wide table. It wasn’t as though the circumstancesof that one night had ever repeated themselves, but every time he was alone with her, it was as if his thoughts slipped over a cliff … where images best left forgotten reared up like ghostly waves.
    “Laila.”
    “ Majnun ,” she said mildly.
    Only Laila called him Majnun , or madman. Usually, it was said with something like affection, but her tone was cold.
    S é verin looked around the kitchen. Laila preferredwarm, bubbling chaos in her workspace. Stained recipes papering the walls. Chipped mixing bowls that she insisted had soaked in happiness and were therefore superior to something new. Wooden spoons engraved with the names of the people she cared about, swinging and clanging from the ceiling. But today, everything looked pristine. Nothing on the surface. Everything tucked away. It was theopposite of happy.
    “You never learn,” she said, sipping her tea. “Perhaps this could have been avoided had you just let me read your correspondence.”
    “The letter was Forged, there’s no way—”
    “The seal was Forged. The paper itself was ordinary. I could have told you where it had been, how many homes it had traveled to before finding you. I could have told you it was a trap.”
    She was right,and he knew it. But sharing it with everyone would have only proven that he’d placed them in danger.
    “What would you have me do?”
    “I would have you trust me,” she said. “As I have trusted you.”
    That trust was the reason why there was no contract or oath tattoo between them. Two years ago, Laila had saved his life by reading the pocket watch of a hotelier who wished him dead just so he couldtake over the property. She’d proved her abilities to him by reading an old ouroboros pendant passed down from his father … and once she’d drawn out the depths of him, she’d offered her own secrets in return. She could have lorded her findings over him, but instead, she gave him a knife of his own, and that was how it was. The two of them smiling, the damning unknown things held like knives at eachother’s throats.
    Barring Tristan, it was the most secure friendship he’d ever known.
    “You’re making this a far greater deal than it is,” said S é verin.
    One look at Laila, and he knew he’d said exactly the wrong thing.
    “It’s my life, S é verin,” she said stonily. “And it means a great deal to me.”
    He flushed. “I didn’t mean it like that—”
    “I don’t care what you meant. I care about somethinggetting in the way of my search,” said Laila fiercely. “Your ego included.”
    Always, Laila returned to her search for the Forged book with the answers to her existence, though not even Laila knew its contents. Just as she was unstoppable and relentless for the ones she loved, she embodied that with her search too. Nothing could hold herback. Not the family she’d left behind in India and, someday soon, not the family she’d made here.
    “All I’m asking is that you trust us the way we trust you,” she