In the Shadow of the Sun

by EM Castellan

  A blush crept up my neck. “What is it?”

  Shiny butterflies replaced the fantastical birds, turning our skin into a kaleidoscope of colors, and a smile stretched his lips.

  “Nothing. It’s just … sort of perfect, you know?”

  Emotion tightened my throat without warning, because he was right. For a fleeting moment, we were alone, with a display of stunning magic above us that sought nothing more than to entertain us. There was no threat, and no duty, or family, or past deeds and future responsibilities to trap us.

  Philippe was there in the water with me, without any lavish clothes or carefully crafted mask to hide behind. I leaned in to kiss him again, and as our lips collided gently, I committed this instant to memory.

  Whatever came next, we’d had this one, perfect moment together. I never wanted to forget it.

  * * *

  The next day I woke up with my lungs on fire, Philippe’s arm wrapped around my stomach, and an idea poking around my head. Unable to suppress neither a coughing fit nor my excitement, I disentangled my body from my husband’s grasp and slipped out of bed.

  “You all right?”

  His voice muffled by his pillow, he squinted at me in the faint light filtering through the shutters, half his naked body displayed amid the rumpled sheets. A flush crept up my cheeks. We’d lain together again after the previous night’s fireworks, and I doubted I would ever get used to his attention, or the sight of his large frame carelessly sprawled in my bed.

  “Yes,” I said between two wheezing breaths, “I just need water.”

  I scurried away before he could convince me to go back to his side, and went to find a maid.

  By midmorning my fit had passed and my predawn epiphany bore its fruit: I was led into the king’s antechamber, where I found Louis bent over a gilded mirror in the warm sunshine. I clapped once in delight.

  “You have it!”

  Louis raised an eyebrow at me. He’d sent out the guards and servants for privacy, and he had his fists on his hips as the golden light played in his blond hair.

  “Yes, Henriette. Your wish is my command. You requested one of Fouquet’s mirrors. Here it is. Now, will you please tell me what this is all about?”

  I clasped my hands together to lean over the mirror, eager to inspect it.

  “I’ve been thinking about your desire to find irrefutable proof of our enemy’s identity,” I said. “Rather than focusing on our two suspects at once, it has occurred to me we could try and eliminate one, as it were.”

  Louis’s expression was unconvinced. “With a mirror, which, until an hour ago, hung in my Crown Magicien’s study?”

  Another privilege due to his station, Fouquet didn’t stay at the château with the rest of the court: Instead, he lived a few miles away, in his private hôtel particulier in the park of Fontainebleau. Last night at the canal, I had overheard the Crown Magicien tell a courtier he had to retire early, because he would be spending today at Vaux-le-Vicomte. It had occurred to me we could use his absence to further our investigation. So upon waking this morning, I had sent a message to the king, asking him to dispatch his musketeers to Fouquet’s mansion and retrieve an item for us. Once our spell was finished, the mirror would be returned to its original place, with hopefully none the wiser.

  I nodded. “Fouquet left the party by the canal early last night. He claimed a headache and a slight fever, as he often does. By all accounts he returned to his mansion. I thought we might try to see what he did before going to bed.”

  Understanding dawned on the king’s features, along with a satisfying look of approval in my direction. “You want to summon the past in the mirror.”

  “Yes. So we’ll know for certain whether Fouquet is playing you or not.”

  I didn’t know enough about Moreau—where he lived, who he trusted, what his habits were—to prove his guilt or innocence. Fouquet, however, was easier to gain access to. As a prominent member of the court, his life was more of an open book than Moreau’s.

  The spell I offered to attempt was a complex one, which I had only ever read about without seeing it performed. It allowed a magicien to awaken the memories held in a looking glass: What the mirror had “seen” at a certain time, the magicien would be able to witness. I couldn’t be certain Louis and I could manage it: Our water spell had lasted a mere few seconds before failing, while our enchantment with the roses at the ballet had required two weeks of intensive practice before we could master it. Doing this mirror spell without any prior training or much time to achieve it was like placing a bet on a horse you’ve never seen race, but with the growing threat around us, we didn’t have much choice. And between Louis’s burgeoning skill and my own power, I thought it worth a try.

  The king rubbed his hands together, excitement shining in his golden eyes. My own heartbeat quickened. He reached out to me.

  “Shall we, then?”

  I slid my fingers into his, my skin more damp than I wished. I hadn’t touched anyone since Philippe, and somehow the sudden intimacy with his brother felt like a small betrayal. I chased the thought away. Protecting us against a dark magicien and an uncertain future was what mattered. Spending time with Louis and performing a spell to achieve this goal was a small sacrifice my husband and I would have to bear.

  “Ready?” the king asked.

  Our hands firmly entwined, we faced the mirror and I gave a brief nod.

  “Révèle.”

  Louis took hold of my magic, which erupted in golden flecks and reached out into the mirror. I grasped a bright particle with my mind and plunged after it inside the looking glass. All of a sudden I stood in a wood-paneled study, my body as ethereal as a ghost’s, Louis’s grip on my hand the only tangible thing I could feel. The smells of leather and firewood and dust mixed in the air as the specks of my magic settled along a bookcase filled with thick volumes and on a desk piled high with papers.

  But instead of witnessing a singular event—the moment Fouquet had visited this place last night—a stream of memories flashed and overlaid before my eyes. The Crown Magicien writing at his desk, spectacles sliding off his nose. Pacing along the thick Persian carpet, muttering a spell under his breath. Throwing papers in the roaring fire in a fit of rage. Drinking a glass of wine by the window, his gaze lost on a snow-covered park outside. Replacing a book on a shelf. Shouting at a clerk in brown clothes. Giving orders to a servant. Kissing a woman in a silk dress. Extinguishing a candle.

  The sequence of actions witnessed by the mirror rushed before me, more jumbled and fast each time I blinked. My head started spinning as a chilly sensation traveled up my legs. Louis’s grip on me turned viselike, his skin cold as ice and his fingers stiff as a corpse’s. The golden specks of the spell formed shapes and vanished too quickly to follow now, and took on a worrisome silver color. Panic spread through my chest, squeezing the air out.

  The spell isn’t working.

  I closed my eyes and forced my mind to recall what Sister Marie-Pierre had taught me.

  You’re the one in control of the magic. The magicien only has power over the spell.

  I opened my eyes, and gave the dancing speckles a mental tug.

  “Révèle,” I repeated.

  I had no clue if I had spoken aloud within the spell or in the reality of the king’s antechamber, but the images before me slowed their infernal dance, and settled on a scene with two familiar figures. Like actors on a brightly lit stage, Fouquet and Olympe faced each other in the study, fireworks shooting off in the distance behind the trees outside.

  “It has to happen this week,” the Crown Magicien said, his voice distorted as if he spoke underwater. “I’m weakening.”

  “But who?” Olympe shook her head. “They’re already suspicious, it can’t happen here again. You’ll have to go to Paris.”

  Fouquet rubbed his face with a jeweled hand, age and exhaustion carving deep lines into his skin in the candlelight. “I can’t go to Paris again. I have too many things to do here, and at
Vaux. I simply can’t spare the time. It’ll have to be someone here.”

  “But you’re running out of candidates!” Olympe threw her hands in the air. “There are only a few Sources left now, and they’re watched around the clock.”

  “I don’t care who!” Fouquet lost his temper. “Just make the arrangements, and let me know when it’s done.”

  “It’s getting too dangerous!” Olympe snapped back. “Your spies tell us the king suspects Moreau for now, but it won’t last if you’re not careful.”

  Fouquet pointed a threatening finger at her. “Just. Find. Someone.”

  Olympe opened her mouth to reply, but no sound reached me. Instead, the whole scene dissolved before my eyes, like the ink of a letter splashed with water. Then the study itself disappeared, replaced by the golden dots of the spell in a black vacuum. Fear gripped me for a second, until a familiar voice snapped near my ear.

  “Henriette, open your eyes.”

  I obeyed. Louis frowned down at me, the gilded plaster ceiling of his antechamber in the background.

  I coughed. “Why am I lying on the floor?”

  “You collapsed.” He straightened, his tone and manners all businesslike. “Are you all right?”

  “I think I am.”

  I sat up but coughed again, my breath grating against my lungs. When my cough subsided, I accepted Louis’s help to stand back up. The dizziness and heaviness in my limbs that had struck me during the spell had vanished.

  “So,” he said. “Did you see what I saw?”

  “If you mean Fouquet and the Comtesse de Soissons plotting to murder another Source, then yes.” I brushed my dress back into place; the relief in knowing Moreau wasn’t to blame for any murder loosening all the tension in my limbs. “How many Sources still live at court?”

  Louis stared at the innocent-looking mirror, his jaw tightened in a stern expression. “Eight.” He gave a brief nod in my direction. “Nine with you.” He grabbed a quill on the desk and dipped it into a marble inkstand, before scribbling down a few words on a thick piece of paper. “I’m giving orders so they’ll be guarded at all times, from now on.”

  “Aren’t they already?”

  “Yes. But we can’t afford another death.”

  He finished his note and marched to the door, his heels clacking on the parquet floor. When he had handed his message to a guard outside, he let the door click shut behind him and moved back to the desk to trail the gilded frame of the mirror with a light finger. Silence stretched between us, and in the end I asked the question that burned my lips.

  “What about Moreau?”

  Now that we knew Fouquet was the real threat, it seemed only fair to give him his position back. But Louis shook his head.

  “I’ll let him know he has my trust again, but I won’t reinstate him. It would make me look fickle and I won’t appear any weaker than I already am.”

  I opened my mouth to plead the cause of the former chief of security, but Louis stopped me with a raised hand.

  “My decision is final.”

  I suppressed a sigh, knowing better than to argue with a king. Louis’s attention remained on the mirror, his thoughts already on another matter.

  “I’m grateful for your help today,” he said, his tone thoughtful.

  I waved his thanks away, despite the pride swelling my heart. Apart from a few hiccups at the beginning and at the end, we had managed to perform the spell and to gain the insight we needed. I called that success.

  “I’m pleased it worked. It’s not an easy spell, is it?”

  “It’s not. But it’s incredibly useful. And I’m certain we can master it with a little practice.” He turned to meet my gaze. “I shall like to have mirrors in every room at Versailles.”

  I bit my lip to prevent an incredulous smile. “You want to spy on everyone?”

  Ignoring my tone, he remained straight-faced. “Why not? Know thy enemy, they say. I shall like to be able to spy on my courtiers if I wish to. I’m not saying I will. I would just like to be prepared.”

  I shook my head, still skeptical. “If you say so, Sire.” I let a grin stretch my lips to tease him nonetheless. “If I were you, I wouldn’t stop at a mirror in each room. I’d build a whole gallery filled with looking glasses and encourage my courtiers to spend as much time as they want there.”

  I had meant it as a joke, but the look Louis shot me was so sharp I stopped talking.

  “You’re right,” he said. “A whole gallery of mirrors. No one has ever thought of that.”

  Before I could protest, he walked out of the room, repeating under his breath:

  “A whole gallery of mirrors. A hall … of mirrors.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  That evening, a storm rolled in and forced everyone inside. Rain lashed against the windows, and the brightness of the salons deepened the darkness outside. Courtiers who hadn’t retreated to their apartments mingled on the ground floor to play cards, gamble their fortunes, and drink wine. String music rose from a quartet by the double doors, and the heat in the rooms became stifling as voices grew louder.

  Sat on a sofa with an ivory fan in my hand, I threw a distracted glance at the magical clock on the mantelpiece when it chimed eleven o’clock in a burst of colorful sparks that made a couple of ladies gasp.

  Next to me, Athénaïs sat in Prince Aniaba’s lap, and they fed each other candied fruit off a silver platter. Athénaïs giggled like a besotted girl, which I suppose she was. A small part of me melted at the sight of their happiness, yet a much larger part was increasingly concerned by their relationship, and guilt at my prolonged silence weighed heavy on my conscience. Athénaïs’s parents were both members of two of the oldest noble families in France. They had sent her to court to find a husband, and as fond of Prince Aniaba as I was, I couldn’t imagine he was the suitable bachelor they had envisaged for their precious daughter: He had no money save the annuity granted by the king, no situation aside his position as a Source, and no title recognized in this country. And even if his prospects were good for now, he might not want to stay in France forever. It was Athénaïs’s duty to serve me, but it was mine to ensure she stayed out of trouble while at court and found a husband who matched her own rank.

  As my friend, I wanted nothing but her happiness. Yet as my lady, I had to protect her from scandal. Flirting with a foreign prince on a hot summer evening was one thing. Dreaming of a future with him was quite another. I had no wish to see her heartbroken, but I refused to see her reputation ruined all the same.

  Loud laughter from the other side of the room distracted me. Philippe held court by an empty fireplace, a flock of young men around him. The jewels of his colorful outfit catching the candlelight, he told a story that had his audience hooting and clapping. Even if we were now on the same side, it was disconcerting to see how easily he put on his carefree mask and managed to ignore me. However better it was to keep our partnership hidden, my heart still ached a little at this joyful display from which I was utterly excluded.

  And I couldn’t help but wonder how hard it was for him to pretend he didn’t care about me. All for the benefit of a brother who wasn’t even here. The king had vanished earlier along with Marie-Thérèse and the Queen Mother. To no one’s surprise, Louise had followed a few minutes later, pretexting a headache.

  “Listen! Listen everyone!”

  The Comte de Saint-Aignan’s voice cut through the noise and his head appeared above the crowd like a red balloon as he clambered upon a chair. A grin splitting his face, he wiped the sweat off his brow with a large handkerchief and waved a hand to quiet people down. More or less reluctantly, silence settled over the courtiers, who shushed each other and turned to the count with eager expressions.

  “I have a treat for you,” he said. “I thought a game would distract us on this dreary night.” An appreciative murmur rippled along the crowd, and my own interest was piqued despite the late hour and my growing tiredness. “It’s simple, really. In a minute Prince Aniaba and
I are going to extinguish all the candles in the château, save for one in each room. Then we’ll play a game of hide-and-seek.”

  Delighted gasps echoed around the room, but my own heart sank. Plunging the whole place into darkness and letting people run amok when there was a killer at large? This sounded like a terrible idea.

  “So,” the count resumed, oblivious to the fact he was giving the Crown Magicien the perfect opportunity to kill a Source. “Gentlemen will hide. Ladies will seek. Who knows what might happen? But there’s one more thing! Doors might not lead you where you expect…”

  Applause and excited giggles greeted his announcement, which he welcomed with a broad smile. He signaled for the prince to join him, and I cast a sweeping look around. Fouquet had supposedly gone home after dinner, but I double-checked he was indeed nowhere to be seen.

  “Isn’t it awfully exciting?” Athénaïs clasped her hands together, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

  The courtiers around us had all abandoned their conversations, card games, and seats to crowd by the magicien and his Source. The two of them held hands with focused expressions, and I glanced up to where Philippe had been sitting moments before. He and his entourage had disappeared, swallowed by the crowd. Anxiety sent a shiver down my spine, and all the lights went out.

  Joyful shrieks and stampeding feet resonated around the room as everyone took off in a rustling of expensive fabric to play the game. Disorientated in the sudden darkness, I grabbed Athénaïs’s arm before she could get away.

  “I’m not sure it’s safe—”

  “Oh, come on!” She hopped up and down with impatience. “I want to find Jean!”

  My eyes adjusting to the dark at last, I could make out her eager features in the light of the single candle now burning by the magical clock. Most people had already left the room and I held on to her, determined to do so until the lights came back on. Her expression turned pleading.

  “Please, Your Highness? There are guards everywhere.”

  I didn’t have the heart to stamp down on her excitement with my misgivings about the game and her beau.