In the Shadow of the Sun

by EM Castellan

  Candlelight greeted me in the salon, along with the king. Louis stood alone before the empty fireplace, a candlestick in hand and an embroidered morning robe over his white nightshirt.

  “You summoned me?” he said. His tone was low and his eyebrow raised in a challenging stance.

  The door shut behind me with a soft click, and I pushed away from my face the strands of hair that had escaped my plait. My pulse still rushed in my ears, but I kept my composure.

  “I did. Thank you for coming.”

  The faintest hint of an amused smile pulled at his lips. “How could I resist? Your note had me very intrigued. I can never say no to a beautiful woman’s request to practice magic in her apartments at two in the morning.” He made “practice magic” sound like inappropriate behavior.

  I ignored both the flattery and the suggestive tone, and pointed at a leather-bound book I’d left open on my sofa. “We can’t perform this spell at any other time, I’m afraid.”

  Louis put down his candlestick and picked up the heavy volume. While he perused the worn pages, I retrieved his candle to light the sconces around the room. Then I cracked a window open to let in some fresh air. The night sky was clear, with stars blinking around the near-full moon, whose light bathed the park in silver tones.

  “A dream-walker spell?” Louis’s incredulous tone brought my attention back to the room.

  “Yes.” I joined his side to make my case. It was a complicated spell, but one I felt we ought to try if we wanted to get to the bottom of Fouquet’s real intentions. “With the party at Vaux tomorrow, I feel it would be a mistake to walk into the Crown Magicien’s territory without having full knowledge of his powers and plans. I’ve been trying to find a way to answer our questions, and I believe this is it.”

  To my relief, Louis’s gaze shone with interest. “You want us to walk into his dreams, when his guard is down, so we’ll know what he wants from Sources and how his magic works.” He dropped the book on the sofa and gripped my hands. “Henriette, this is genius.”

  I pulled away to hide the heat creeping up my cheeks. “Not really. It’s a complex spell. But after the mirror I’d like to think we could manage it. And we do desperately need information.”

  He nodded at my words, excitement lighting up his face. “I think you’re right. Both spells have some common threads, actually. Why don’t we—”

  My bedroom door sprang open and I jumped. Philippe leaned against the jamb with an arm stretched above his head. He was entirely naked.

  “Why do I feel left out?” he asked.

  I froze, too surprised by his apparition and his state of undress to react. If Louis was shocked, however, he hid it well.

  “You can’t help it, can you?” he snapped. “You have to make an entrance.”

  Philippe crossed his arms. “And you can’t help it, can you? You have to show off. You simply can’t resist proving you can do what you want, when you want, where you want. You have to rub it in my face.”

  Taking the open door and the discussion as an invitation to get about, Mimi entered the salon. Her tail wagging, she padded toward me. Her arrival shook me out of my trance. Regaining control of my senses, I held up my hands between the two brothers.

  “Please don’t argue—”

  Philippe interrupted me. “If you think for a second that I’m going to let you endanger yourself for him, you’re sorely mistaken.”

  “As if you care,” Louis replied before I could. “Now can you set aside your petty jealousy for an hour, put on some bloody clothes, and leave us to do something actually useful?”

  Scorn dripped from his tone, and Philippe’s face darkened.

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? For me to just disappear and leave you to do whatever the hell you want?”

  His own temper rising, Louis turned to me with a finger pointed at his brother. “What is he doing here? I thought we’d be alone.”

  I opened my mouth to explain, fully aware now that failing to warn my husband about my plan had been a mistake. But Philippe spoke again before I could, taunting and brash.

  “What do you think I’m doing here? In my own wife’s bedchamber? Of all people, you shouldn’t need me to spell it out. Or is your reputation as the best lover in the kingdom also unwarranted?”

  He’d closed the distance between him and his brother, and they now stood almost nose to nose. Louis turned pale with anger.

  “From what I understand, you don’t even know where to start in a lady’s bedchamber—”

  “For heaven’s sake!” I hissed, exasperation taking over my embarrassment at the unseemly conversation. “Will you both stop it? There’s a dark magicien with limitless powers out there who wants us all dead. The party he’s throwing to trap us is tomorrow! So if you two are going to fight like cockerels instead of helping me find out how to defeat him, I’m going back to bed!”

  My breath wheezing in my chest, I grabbed my dog, marched back to my bedroom, and slammed the door behind me. Flustered and astonished by my own behavior—had I really just walked out on the King of France and locked my husband out of my bedchamber?—I waited as a stunned silence hung on the other side of the door. My heartbeat thumping in my temples, I deposited Mimi on the parquet floor and allowed for my breath to settle. Soon, angry whispers rose behind the closed wooden panel. The argument went on in low tones for half a minute, before soft knocking disrupted the quiet.

  “Henriette, please come back out.” Philippe’s voice, wary and gentle. I crossed my arms and let a few seconds tick by. At my feet, Mimi swished her tail in support. “Henriette, please,” Philippe went on. “I— We apologize.” Another beat. “Let me grab my nightshirt, at least?”

  My anger melted and my breathing calmed, I retrieved his white garment on the bed and opened the door. Both brothers stood on the other side, their silhouettes strikingly similar in the candlelight, Louis’s expression severe and Philippe’s uncertain. I shoved the nightshirt into his hands.

  “Are we doing the spell or not?”

  Philippe shrugged into the piece of clothing. “Is it dangerous?” Anger had seeped out of his tone, replaced by concern.

  “It’s a complicated spell,” I said, as honest as I could be with him. “We’re going to enter Fouquet’s mind. It’s not dangerous because we can’t physically get hurt, but—”

  “But there’s always a risk when using magic,” Philippe finished.

  I gave him a remorseful smile. “Quite.”

  Any spell brought on its own hazards—the more complex the enchantment, the greater the danger. Louis and I could lose ourselves in the magic, or allow it to change us, if we weren’t careful. But I trusted the king, and it must have shown on my face, for Philippe nodded, the defeatism in his eyes nearly breaking my heart.

  “Right. Do what you must, then.”

  I wanted to apologize for not sharing my plan with him—foolish as I was, I had thought of keeping him in the dark until it was over. But my desire to protect him had only hurt his feelings, and now his brother moved around the room in preparation for the spell, leaving me neither time nor space to speak.

  “Am I allowed to stay?” Philippe asked, louder than his previous words.

  Louis moved a chair away from the thick carpet and placed the spell book on the floor. “If you can shut up and let us work, yes.”

  I cringed inwardly at the unnecessary spite in his tone, and squeezed Philippe’s forearm. For a heartbeat our eyes met, and I strived to convey with one look what I didn’t want to say aloud in front of his brother.

  You’re welcome to stay if you want. But don’t let any of this upset you.

  Some of my silent message must have registered with him, for he gave another nod and dropped down onto an armchair, his face once again a mask of crafted indifference.

  With the self-assurance of one who never doubts he’ll get his way, Louis extended his hand to me. A glance toward the clock reminded me time was of the essence, and I slipped my fingers into his
. His skin was warm against my cold damp hand, but I pushed all thoughts of awkwardness aside. The spell was what mattered.

  We sat facing each other on the floral-patterned carpet, our hands linked above a lace handkerchief. To enter someone’s dream, we needed one of his personal effects, and I had asked Louis to provide us with one earlier that day. A piece of jewelry would have been preferable, as it was more often worn than a cloth, but Fouquet would likely have noticed one of his rings missing.

  I closed my eyes, forced a breath down my constricted lungs, and settled my heartbeat.

  “Ready?” Louis asked.

  I tightened my hold on him, and spoke the word of the spell.

  “Rêve.”

  As Louis had pointed out, a dream-walker spell was in many ways similar to a mirror spell. When the king drew on my magic, we followed its golden specks into a dark empty space before the bright dots merged into shapes and colors before us. My body as ghostly as in the looking glass, I gripped Louis’s hand like a lifeline as my magic coalesced into the shimmering walls of what resembled a huge ballroom.

  But instead of dissolving into more muted colors, the glittering dots remained and painted the whole room in vivid tones. Everything in the enormous space seemed made out of gold, from the gleaming floor to the gilded high ceiling. The light of massive chandeliers overhead blinded me to the point that I had to squint and look at everything sideways, as if the glare of the hanging candles was the sun’s itself. At first glance the vast room stood empty, until Louis’s ethereal form pulled me forward and the shape of giant gilded birdcages detached themselves from the gold background. My heart jolted in my chest.

  The cages held human-shaped figures, slumped against the gold-plated bars with a thin layer of gold powder covering their skin. Some lay unmoving, their gazes empty, but others moaned and shivered inside their prison. The first captives I didn’t recognize, but as Louis led me onward, my eyes fell on the stiff corpse of Le Nôtre’s former Source. In the next cage, Prince Aniaba writhed in a cloud of gold dust. And in the following one, Moreau hung like a wounded animal, his arms chained up above his blood-soaked head.

  A dismayed whimper escaped my lips. What sort of nightmare had we stepped into? Louis’s firm hold on me the only thing keeping me from toppling over, I glided after him along the row of cages, barely glancing inside each one while fear at what new horror awaited me strangled my breath.

  Marie-Thérèse, collapsed into a shapeless heap, blank eyes wide open.

  The Queen Mother, her nightdress covered in gore, her body broken like a doll’s.

  Louise, blood matting her blond hair and silk dress, weeping like a helpless child.

  And in the next cage, Philippe, glassy-eyed and panting, with a bloody gash across his abdomen.

  My heart jumped in my throat. “Philippe!” I threw myself toward his prison, but Louis’s grip on me turned ironlike and he didn’t let go.

  “Henriette, it’s a dream! It’s not real; it’s not true!”

  But a sob built up in my chest and I struggled to tear away from his grasp. Philippe was hurt. I couldn’t stand thinking it, let alone seeing it without trying to do something.

  “Henriette!” Louis’s tone cracked like a whip. He took hold of my jaw with his free hand and forced my gaze back to him. “Remember where you are. This isn’t real.”

  I blinked in the chandeliers’ glaring light, my jumbled thoughts struggling to slow down. The king’s gaze was as gold as the rest of the room, shimmering with the same magic. He was right. This wasn’t real. We were in a spell, one I had helped cast. My nerves settled.

  “Let’s carry on,” Louis said.

  I obeyed as he guided me forward once more. The ballroom seemed endless, with the row of cages stretching into infinity. I kept my attention ahead to avoid looking at any more captives. If this spell had confirmed one thing, it was that the Crown Magicien did dream of killing us all. After what seemed like eons of weightless running, a new shape emerged from the sea of bright gold before us.

  A throne, tall as a tree and made of carved silver, with Fouquet sat on it like a child in a giant’s armchair. Just like in the chapel, his body seemed to be built out of shadows. His head bowed, he tapped the tip of his silver-plated cane onto the gilded floor, the noise haunting in the empty space. At his feet, a figure in ragged clothes cowered away from him, his attempt at staying out of reach hindered by a chain linking his neck to the foot of the throne. I focused on Fouquet, clamping on the nagging feeling that the blond-haired trembling form was the king.

  At my side, the real Louis kept a firm grip on my fingers and faced his Crown Magicien with a straight back. My magic flowed from my core to his, strengthening us both. Fouquet lifted his gaze, and his irises flashed gold in the dark shadows pulsing around his body. A bored sigh escaped him.

  “How many times will I have to put you down?” His voice, hoarse and tired, resonated in the huge room.

  Impassive, Louis gestured at the man on the ground, who recoiled at the attention. “You already have, it seems. I must be what’s left of the king’s spirit.”

  One thing the dream-walker spell required was to keep the dreamer unaware of the magicien’s trespassing into his mind. Whatever happened in the dream, Louis had to act as if he was part of it, while I remained invisible, a shapeless source of magic that had neither identity nor body.

  Anger flashed across the moving features of the Crown Magicien, who hit the chained man on the ground with a vicious blow of his cane. The poor creature yelped and I flinched, but Louis didn’t lose his composure. When neither he nor his double on the floor reacted, Fouquet brought his gaze back to the Louis at my side.

  “Have you come here to taunt me?”

  “No.”

  “What do you want, then?”

  “I want to know.”

  “What?”

  A mirthless smile stretched Louis’s mouth. “Everything.”

  Fouquet chuckled, a hollow sound. He kicked the king at his feet again, and I threw out a protective hand out of reflex. The real Louis pulled me back, but not before his minister’s gaze flicked toward me.

  He can’t see me, I reminded myself. Yet the Crown Magicien’s stare lingered where I stood, a question in his golden eyes.

  “Why do you need Sources?” Louis asked to distract him.

  It worked. Fouquet’s attention returned to him. “For their magic, of course.”

  “But how do you keep the power you’ve stolen from them?”

  Fouquet planted his cane between his shadowy legs and rested both hands on its carved silver handle. “With a spell, little king.” Malice glinted in his eyes. “Who said being a bookworm couldn’t have its rewards? I spent my entire youth studying magic, you see. Poring over ancient texts everyone had forgotten. Haunting magical libraries and talking to old magiciens until I was blue in the face. And one day, when I was seventeen, I found it. The spell that allows a magicien to steal a Source’s power—and use it while remaining alive and whole.”

  Louis tilted his head to the side and surveyed Fouquet’s dark form. “I wouldn’t say ‘whole’…”

  His minister banged his cane onto the floor, and the king at his feet whimpered. He sounded so much like Louis that bile rose in my throat.

  “I am still whole,” Fouquet snapped.

  “Why do you need more Sources’ powers, then?” Louis asked, his face still a mask of self-control.

  The Crown Magicien took a moment to reply, as if pondering his choice of words. “The magic … burns out. Without its host, it vanishes as I use it. It turns out a magicien can’t store power for long, even with this spell. So while I work on correcting this … flaw, I have to ensure I have access to more magic.” A hint of amusement twinkled in his eyes. “Thankfully, you were kind enough to fill your court with Sources for me.”

  So if he didn’t kill more Sources, his power would run out. This was what he’d meant when he’d spoken to Olympe about his weakening state. And with his
failed attack on Prince Aniaba, he was now weaker than ever. Unless he managed to kill a Source between now and the party tomorrow night, we might have a chance to stop him. Hope soared in my chest, until his gaze landed on me once more.

  “Who’s your Source?” he asked, his tone thoughtful.

  To my horror, he rose from his throne and extended a hand—more tendrils of smoke than flesh and bone—toward me. Louis held on to me tighter, as Fouquet’s searching stare roamed all over where I stood.

  “So much light,” he said dreamily. “So much power. I’ve never seen such a thing. It’s not that silly little Louise, I know. And it’s not the African prince. I’ve tasted him, and his power is potent but not as much as this one—”

  He was so close he would have touched me if we had not both been immaterial. Then his eyes widened.

  “Révèle!”

  Could magiciens cast spells in their dreams? I had never thought it was possible. But then, I had never thought a magicien could survive more than two days after going dark either. I recoiled at the shouted spell, my instinct useless. A flash of light, bright as lightning, slashed through the air, and I met Fouquet’s astonished gaze.

  “You!”

  He made to grab me but Louis let out the foulest curse I had ever heard and yanked me backward.

  “Run!”

  My feet moved and we tumbled headfirst into the dark void of the tail end of the spell. Golden specks flew past us like shooting stars, my magic dissolving into the emptiness. Dizziness struck me and I closed my eyes.

  When the world settled around me, I became aware of my panting breaths, of Louis’s viselike hold on my fingers, and of another pair of hands gripping my shoulders. I opened my eyes, sweat beading all over my cold skin. Philippe’s face was pale and pinched with worry.

  “What happened?”

  Louis released me, and curled his white-knuckled hands into fists, as he let out a foul curse.