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“There’s so—” I’m about to tell him about Hazel’s escape when he interrupts.

“I wish to show you something. And we don’t have much time. This way.”

He glides down the hall and turns left, stopping at a large, gilt-framed mirror to pull on its right-hand side. It opens with a click, revealing a small landing with a stone staircase branching off it in both directions. We climb through the hole and walk up until we reach another hallway. Left, right, up a set of stairs, left, more stairs . . . I quickly lose track of where we are except that we are climbing high up within the palace. The halls are bustling with servants, and everyone bobs a curtsy or nods to Lucien as he passes.

We reach a simple wooden door—it’s locked, but Lucien takes out his key ring. A spiral staircase curls up, and when we come to its end, there is only another wooden door. This one has no lock.

Lucien opens it and I find myself staring at a bedroom. It’s plain, almost austere, and reminds me of my room at Southgate. A neatly made bed, a dresser, a small armchair by the window. There is a watercolor painting hanging on the wall, a meadow of blue flowers. A closet door is slightly ajar.

“Is this . . .”

“My room,” Lucien says, and he doesn’t look at me. I feel embarrassed. This is so personal. Why did Lucien take me here?

Then he crosses the room to the closet, pulls aside the row of hanging lady-in-waiting dresses, and reveals a hidden door.

It is made of metal and has no discernible handle. Lucien takes his arcana off his key ring and inserts it into a depression in the center of the door. The tuning fork begins to buzz, then the door clicks open. Lucien holds out his hand and the arcana drops into his palm. Once it is secured safely back on its ring, he pushes the door wide.

“Yours will open it as well,” he says. “As will Garnet’s and Sil’s.”

I leave the bedroom behind and walk into the secret room. The door swings shut, plunging us into darkness for a moment before lights begin to switch on one by one.

“What is this place?” I ask.

“My workshop,” Lucien says.

Bookshelves line the wall behind me and the one opposite, books crammed in wherever there is space. Where there isn’t, stacks of books pile up on tables or under chairs. The wall to my left is plastered with maps and illustrations and scraps of paper with hastily scribbled notes. There is a large drawing table with three glowglobes hovering over it like miniature suns. An easel is set up in a corner, a collection of paint tubes on a nearby table, their guts spilling out in shades of magenta and lavender and lemon yellow. A large screen, like the one Dr. Blythe used when giving me Augury tests but larger, is mounted on the wall among the papers, glowing faintly.

The center of the room is dominated by a long wooden table, covered in strange equipment. There are glass beakers in every shape and size, some filled with bubbling liquids, others smoking in hues of gray and gold, some with flames burning underneath, some that emit faint humming sounds, like a faraway arcana. There is a mortar and pestle filled with crushed leaves that give off a minty scent and another one with black things inside that look like peppercorns. Thin copper coils twist out of several beakers and into others.

The wall to my right is entirely filled with clocks. Large and small, some fancy, some plain, some made of intricately wrought metals, others just simple white faces with wooden frames.

I see a familiar-looking object, lying half-buried under a sheaf of papers on the drawing desk. I pick the slate up in trembling hands.

“Yes,” Lucien says softly, and I jump. “I made Annabelle’s slate. That was a prototype.”

My fingers tighten around it briefly before I set it back down on the table.

“Why are you showing me this?” I ask.

“I felt it was time. The Auction draws closer every day. No one has ever seen this place. Besides, you are so opportunely available now.” Lucien moves a pile of books off of an armchair and indicates that I should sit. He pulls up a stool from in front of the easel. I notice that there are the beginnings of a drawing on it—the rough outline of a girl’s face with long hair. I would be willing to bet it’s Azalea.

“It’s incredible,” I say.

Two pink spots appear on Lucien’s cheeks. “Thank you.”

“I doubt I could ever understand what you’re doing here.” I glance at a beaker filled with bright emerald liquid.

“I’m sure you could work a few things out,” he says, eyes twinkling. He glances around the room. “This place has been precious to me for so long.”

“The Electress doesn’t know about it?”

He chuckles. “Oh no. Neither the Electress nor the Exetor know about this room. There are many secrets in this palace that they are unaware of. That is what happens when you do not look below the surface of things, when you only focus on what is right in front of you.”

He picks a copper spring up off the floor and twists it around in his hands.

“Why so many clocks?” I ask.

“I told you a bit about my childhood,” he says. I cringe inwardly, remembering the horrific tale of how Lucien was castrated against his will by his own father as his mother and sister watched. “I loved taking the one clock in our house apart and putting it back together. I suppose old habits die hard, as they say.” He glances at the wall of timepieces behind him. “Some of them feel like very old friends.”