Lazare howled her name.
The dress steeled itself against what was coming.
Séguin slowed, his golden eyes wide with surprise, and tried to stop. But the grass was slick.
She stabbed at him with her glass knife, felt the blow of his body against hers wrench it from her hand.
His dagger struck her under the ribs. The dress screamed as the blade sliced through its silk and into the quilting of Camille’s stays.
She slipped and lost her balance, fell to the ground.
Séguin loomed over her. “Stay back,” he warned the others, “or I will kill her!”
Desperate, she felt in the grass for her knife, but she could not find it anywhere. It had vanished. She pressed her hand to her dress—pleading, hoping—but it was silent as death.
She had one more card to play. “You will not kill me, Vicomte,” she said. “I am too dear a thing to you.” As she lay there, she had the strangest feeling of wanting to laugh. “Everyone here knows you for a magician. Kill me and you have no standing at court. No sorrow-well. Nothing.”
Séguin started to speak but instead grunted, as if in pain. Wonderingly, he touched his throat. He stared at his fingers when they came away red. Above his cravat, under his jaw, she saw it: a violent, crimson line. The glass knife.
He looked at her with disbelief. “You have a magic weapon?”
And then Lazare was there, grabbing the back of Séguin’s coat, hauling him away. When Lazare released him, he sank to his knees. Blood poured from his wound as Lazare shouted for the surgeon.
While Foudriard kept his sword pointed at Séguin, Lazare knelt by Camille and pulled her into his arms. Camille let go. All the effort, all the pain, she let it fall away as she sank her head against his shoulder, tucking her face into the warm hollow of his throat. His pulse beat against her mouth as she inhaled: sweat, the iron bite of his blood, the sweet scents of crushed grass, horses, and skin. There was absolutely nothing about him that smelled of ash or cinder or magic.
“I thought I’d lost you … a second time,” Lazare choked. Even with dirt and grime glazing his skin and blood caked along his jaw, he was heart-stopping. “Will you forgive me?”
“For what?”
“For walking away from you, that night in the gardens. I was lost. I could see how proud and stubborn I was being, but I couldn’t escape myself.”
“Our shadows are tied to us, like it or not.” Camille brushed back a strand of hair from his face. “All we can do is run faster.”
He kissed her gently above her eyebrow. “Whatever shadow I might have, you have utterly vanquished it.”
“Vicomtess!”
She and Lazare stumbled to their feet. Across the grass, Chandon was making his way toward them. On his tired face was a wicked grin. In his hand he swung his cane—not like a crutch, but a weapon.
“See there?” he said, stabbing his stick at Séguin. “Is that a poisoned blade you just happened to have with you?” He snatched the dagger from Séguin’s hand. “You were always terrible at duels.”
On the ground, Séguin contracted in pain. The blood running from his throat had darkened to a deep, reddish black. In his face, furrows grew like cracks in ice, racing along the sides of his mouth, stretching across his forehead. He no longer looked nineteen or twenty. Magic had made him an old man. His hair grayed, age spots speckled his cheeks. Shadows swam under his eyes.
All the while, Séguin chanted to himself.
“What strange magic is this?” Chandon scoffed. “Something you read about in one of those grimoires?” As Séguin’s glamoire had fallen away, Chandon had stood up straighter, as if a great weight had been lifted from him. His face had gained back some of its high color, its gaunt hollows smoothed. Scornfully, he said, “Why don’t you use your own sorrow, Séguin? Or are you too dead inside to feel anything?”
Séguin stopped muttering his spell. It was clear that he expected something to have changed.
But it had not.
He stared at Camille. “You cheated.”
“You’ve never had to make the best of the cards you were dealt, have you? You’ve always gotten exactly what you wanted.” Determined tears stood in Camille’s eyes. “You assumed you had the winning card, but you hedged your bet. I did not cheat. I played my ace, and won.”
66
“Lie still, Séguin,” Foudriard said. “The surgeon’s coming.”
White wig askew, the surgeon shouted as he hobbled toward them. “All this noble blood spilled!” He sank to his knees next to the vicomte’s still form. “Are you still with us, monsieur?”
“After everything he has done to all of us,” Chandon said, pain crackling in his voice, “he deserves to die.”
Séguin’s lips moved. The surgeon bent close, listening. “Monsieur wishes to speak with his wife. Where is she?”
Camille stepped backward and bumped into Foudriard. He steadied her, his arm around her shoulders. “He will die, there is no doubt,” he said kindly. “You’re under no obligation to speak with him. It’s your choice.”
Her skin crawled when she thought of everything he’d done to those she loved. What he’d planned to do to her and Sophie. He would have made their lives a living hell such that they would beg for death to release them. What should she do? She listened for the dress to advise her.
But it was silent, more silent than it had been even in the burned box.
Clouds drifted across the pale blue sky; a scatter of swallows flew over the long grass. In the wind that hushed across the field, she heard Maman’s voice.
There are others more unfortunate than you, mon trésor.
She had hazarded it all, and she had won. There was only one more thing she needed.
“Shall I go with you?” Lazare asked.
Camille shook her head. “I’ll speak to him alone. I need to know for certain where Sophie is.”
“Hurry, madame,” urged the surgeon. “He fails fast.”
In the trampled, rust-red grass, Camille knelt by Séguin’s shoulder. Wrinkles and age spots continued to bloom across his face. Too much magic. The back of his hand, his enormous blue ring, the lace of his sleeve—all were gaudy with blood.
“I want your help, but I won’t apologize,” he said. A bright rivulet trickled from the corner of his mouth as acrid fumes of magic leaked from him. “You are stronger than I thought, Camille.”
“Where is my sister?”
“At my house in Paris.” He coughed. His throat was filling with blood. “Chandon knows where.”
She sat back on her heels, studying him. “Why did you do this? To me? To Chandon?”
With a grim smile, Séguin said, “For the old ways, so they would not be brushed aside by revolution. For things to be as they were. For the queen.”
Marie Antoinette had refused to help Camille, and yet, had warned her that Séguin was a cheat. Had she meant this, that he had used magic for her sake? “Tell me.”
“I helped her. Who else do you think tucked up that sagging chin? Who was it that polished her skin from crepe to satin? When she discovered what I could do, there was no end to her requests. ‘Monsieur le Vicomte, give me parties like those in fairy tales. Give me clothes no seamstress could make. Give me a face and body more beautiful than any woman’s. Versailles’ magic is fading—renew it! The people of France hate me, they talk of rebellion. Make them love me. Bring back my son.’”
Resurrection? “But that’s not possible—”
“No. Not even for me.” Séguin thumbed away a bubble of blood at the corner of his mouth. “The more threatened she felt, the more she feared the people would tear her from the throne, the more desperate she became. She called it cheating, when I spilled my blood to work her glamoire. She felt none of the cost. Her insatiable hunger for la magie would have killed me. What was I to do?”
“Not enslave another person—not force me to marry you—”
“Caught like I was, what would you have done, magician? H
ow irreproachable would your decisions have been?”
The sun had risen above the trees. Its light filtered through their uppermost leaves, tracing them in gold. Camille didn’t know what she would have done, had it been she and the queen. But she knew what she’d done when her sister’s life—her life—had been at stake. She’d given herself over to the aching sorrow of turning coins, then to the black singing rush of the glamoire, and finally, when all paths in the labyrinth came to dead ends and there were no cards left to play, she’d given herself up. Séguin had never intended to give up anything.
“I would have done what I had to,” she said, bowing her head.
“Madame,” the surgeon called. “I must see my patient.”
Séguin’s eyes had left her face and were pitched to the sky. In their yawning pupils, Camille saw clouds race overhead. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be what you wanted,” she said, quietly.
“You were, in my dreams, if nowhere else.” He coughed again. “Do something for me, will you?”
Camille took in his ravaged face, his broken shell of a body. He had been just as trapped as she. But she’d had something he didn’t: someone to love and care for, and that had saved her. She would grant him this last wish.
“Don’t let them bind me, stuff me with poultices.” His voice was barely audible. “I have lost my magic and what is a magician without that? I wish to die, Camille. To be free of this.” He gestured vaguely at something she could not see. “This world.”
Standing at the window of an abandoned apartment at Versailles, poison spooling in her blood, her empty hands on the windowsill: hadn’t she also wanted to be free of the world she’d found herself in? Hadn’t she also wanted liberty, a choice?
Camille nodded.
“Then go tell the surgeon,” he said, his once-beautiful voice a harsh croak. “Be gone.”
Camille stood. She was dizzy. Her clothes, her skin, everything reeked of blood and burned magic. The surgeon tried to shoulder past her but she put her hand out. “Leave him, monsieur,” she said. “He does not wish to stay.”
She waited, hands knotted in her skirt. The boy who lay crumpled in the grass had only brought her suffering. She had wished him dead and herself free of him, and now it had come to pass. And yet, tears burned in her eyes. For a reason she could not understand—for had it not nearly destroyed everything she loved?—she grieved the unraveling of magic.
Would the winds of change sweep all magic away? And if they did, who would she then be?
Séguin’s breathing grew more labored, strident. Then his face, which had already fallen into ruin, grew still. The surgeon held a mirror to his mouth. “He is dead.”
“I cannot recognize him,” Foudriard said as the surgeon’s men came with a litter to carry Séguin’s body away.
“I would always know him by his rings,” Chandon replied, slowly. “I saw that sapphire cabochon every time he hurt me. I hope I live long enough to forget it completely.”
Where Camille stood, the leaves of grass were crushed and smeared with blood, even the tiny white heads of clover. Over the lake, the mist had vanished. Instead the sun glittered on the water, turning it to diamonds.
Lazare still held his sword. When he reached Camille, he wrapped his left arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. She pressed her cheek against his chest. Under his coat, she heard the regular beat of his heart. She wanted to climb inside, to take refuge there.
His lips brushed her forehead. “Camille Durbonne,” he whispered, “we have been released.”
67
In Lazare’s carriage, Camille dropped her head against his shoulder, her eyelids flickering with fatigue. The glamoire she’d worked in the abandoned room was leaving the dress, and now her body shook with fatigue.
“I can’t remember when last I slept,” Camille mumbled. “Days ago? Weeks?”
“Nearly there,” Lazare said. The wound across his collarbone had stopped bleeding.
Trembling, she took his bloodied hand in hers. It steadied her.
As the carriage raced from the Bois de Boulogne to the city center, the open spaces gave way to farms and vineyards, then buildings and cobbled streets. To the east, she knew, lay the ruined fortress of the Bastille. It would never again be a prison.
It was hard to comprehend what had happened in the last few days. Everything was changing. The constitution Papa had wished for would soon come to pass. No longer would the French people be shackled by the greed of the nobles or the church; they would rise up and take what had been stolen from them.
A new France.
The carriage came to a halt in the courtyard of Séguin’s mansion. Walls of warm limestone rose up on three sides; somewhere a hidden fountain burbled. Camille had hoped she might see Sophie’s face in one of the many windows, but all were blank.
What if Séguin had lied? What if she wasn’t here? Or if she was in some danger?
Her fatigue forgotten, Camille flung herself out of the carriage and raced up the low stairs to a set of glass doors. “Open the door!” She banged so hard the glass shivered in its frame.
No one came.
Camille rattled the door handle but the door remained stubbornly closed. What if Sophie were tied up, locked in? “What if she can’t come because she’s hurt?”
Lazare unwrapped her hands from the door handle. “Wait, Camille. We’ve had enough injuries.” He took the pommel of his sword and smashed one of the glass panes, then reached in to unlock the door.
They burst into a large entry hall tiled in marble and hung with tapestries. Lilies like stays in a silver vase. Ahead of them lay the house’s receiving rooms; to the right, the broad steps of a marble staircase curved up and out of sight. It smelled of magic and ash.
A maid emerged from one of the rooms. When she saw them, she blanched. “Monsieur Durbonne, come quickly!”
Dazed, Camille could not think who the maid meant. Papa? Then a boy stepped into the hall.
Alain.
It was the first time Camille had seen him since he’d threatened her in front of their old apartment on the rue Charlot. He didn’t seem to be drunk. He was no longer wearing his filthy uniform. Instead he was dressed in an expensive chestnut-brown suit, his cravat white, his face clean-shaven.
“Bring Sophie here, Alain,” she said through clenched teeth. “Now.”
“You cannot order me.” Splotches of angry color rose in his face. “Neither of you have any business here. Get out.”
Lazare loosened his sword in its sheath. “We know she’s here, monsieur.”
“What will you do, slay me?”
Camille had no time for this. She grabbed her skirts and ran. She dodged Alain and raced toward the stairs. Behind her, she felt his hand catch at her dress—but then Lazare’s sword sang out and Alain fell back.
In the hall, she stopped. A door swung open and Sophie’s slender figure emerged. For a moment she stood there, silhouetted, hesitating.
“I’m sorry, Sophie,” Camille said into the silence. “I made so many mistakes.”
At the sound of Camille’s voice, Sophie ran toward her. “Camille!” she cried, as she embraced her.
Camille held Sophie tight. “I was so worried about you,” she whispered, the words rushing out. “I thought I would lose you—I was wrong not to tell you about him. I knew what he was, but I hid it from you. I thought I was protecting you! I’m so sorry, mon ange. I will never forgive myself. But Séguin’s dead now,” she said into Sophie’s ear. “His magic is gone.”
“I thought I was saving us!” Sophie said, with something like a sob—or laughter. “I thought I would marry him, we would be rich, and you could stop working your magic. We would finally be free. We’d have a new life.” She caught her breath. “But I was wrong, too. He was so kind, before I agreed to come here. I had no idea how terrible he truly was. The things he promised he would do to me—to you. They were awful.”
“He trapped us both.”
Sophie touched Cam
ille’s cheek, wiping at the blood. Softly, she asked, “Did you marry him?”
Camille nodded. “I didn’t know what else to do. I thought to use my magic—and I did—but I had to marry him first.”
“But you did it for me,” Sophie said in a small voice.
Camille held her close as Sophie’s ribs heaved under her stays. Finally. Finally.
Wiping away her tears, Sophie pointed to Alain where he stood by the door. “Our dear brother was the one who convinced me to write the letter to you and to come here.” Her voice shook with fury. “He was the one who furthered my connection with the vicomte; did you know that? He brought the vicomte to Madame Bénard’s so he might flirt with me and take me for walks. Alain convinced me that Séguin would marry me, and I was fool enough to believe him. Séguin kept me here as bait in the trap for you. I was nothing—nothing to him! He said the cruelest things to torture me! As if he knew what I feared the most. And Alain was just as bad—worse,” she spat. “You were absolutely right about him.”
“You’ll sing a different tune when the vicomte returns,” Alain said. “All of you. I did what was best for me, and for Sophie. Did you even consider us,” he said to Camille, “while you were gallivanting about Versailles and sailing around in balloons and doing God-knows-what with him—”
“Tais-toi, Alain,” she warned. “I may have done wrong, but I tried to do right. You forgot that distinction long ago. You forgot what right was when you stole from us, when you cut me and hit me.”
“You deserved it all.”
Lazare brought the point of his sword to a spot above Alain’s cravat. “Careful, monsieur.”
“I took care of you both.” Camille ached with regret. All those nights of playing cards until she could barely stand, working the glamoire over and over until the inside of her arm was a constellation of crimson wounds and her soul felt hollowed out. She had grown thin and so sick, while Sophie grew sleek on good food and rest. And then when they had money, and Alain had asked for it, hadn’t she given it to him?
“I never wanted your help.” His face flushed. “When I asked you for money outside the courtyard door, in the letter—that was because Séguin forced me to. He wanted to weaken you. I only played my part.”
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