Page 15

I am accosted by the Dauphin the moment I step back in the Chateau.

“Marie!” His voice echoes through the high-ceilinged hall.

I stare at him, part of me forgetting I am back in Marie’s body after my brief time without the owl-face pendant.

I realize I’m still holding the enchanted button from Regnault—I’ve elected to call the weapon Buttons—and quickly slip it into the pocket of my skirts.

Thankfully, the Dauphin doesn’t seem to notice.

He sprints up to me and snatches my hands, pulling me to a stop in front of one of the windows.

He’s wearing a damask jacket in mourning black, and it does no favors to his complexion.

His breaths come short and urgent, and the beam of wan light cast by the window highlights the bags under his eyes.

“Where have you been?” he gasps. “I have been looking for you everywhere.”

“I was in the gardens,” I say, feigning confusion.

He frowns. “I looked in the gardens, but you weren’t there.”

My heart gives a twitchy little thud. It seems I need to be more careful about any future detours. “You must have missed me,” I say. “It isn’t hard, you know, in that maze.”

“You must bring guards with you next time,” the Dauphin says, looking harrowed. I open my mouth to protest, but his clammy grip on me tightens. “You cannot be alone out there, not after everything. It’s too dangerous.”

I blink innocently. “But why? They caught the killer, did they not?”

The Dauphin releases my hands to rub his arms, as though to dispel a chill. “Y-yes,” he says, and the lie is so painfully obvious, I nearly laugh.

“You don’t sound very convinced, monseigneur.”

“Aimé,” he says, staring at his feet. “Please, call me Aimé.”

“Aimé,” I prompt. “Was he caught?”

“That’s what everyone seems to think,” the Dauphin admits unsteadily, running his hands through his hair.

“But I’m not sure. The man they arrested…

he’s my personal guard. The one you met yesterday.

I don’t think he would… but what does it matter?

No one will tell me anything. No one will even listen to me. ”

He takes a shuddering breath. Runs his hands through his hair again, and I can see him draw on a mask with the movement, collecting every distraught, misplaced piece of himself and slitting it back into place. When he meets my eyes again, he smiles crookedly.

“We ought to have been celebrating,” he says, and then extends an arm. “Walk with me, my darling intended?”

I smile genially and oblige, placing my hand with a flourish on his arm. The marble floor is polished to mirror-smoothness, and our reflections accompany us as we stroll—wavering, distorted silhouettes. Against the Chateau’s seemingly unconquerable shadows, we both look like phantoms.

“Are you doing all right?” the Dauphin asks suddenly. “After last night. I dragged you into a horror. If I had known how bad it would be… and for my father to… And now he’s dead.”

His voice shakes. I glance sideways at him and realize I can make out the red mark of a handprint on his cheek, buried under the fine layer of powder coating his face. I don’t understand it. How can he grieve a monster?

“I don’t regret our engagement, if that’s what you’re asking,” I say.

“I’m exactly where I need to be.” I know I should follow up with something along the lines of, And how are you doing a day after your father’s murder, because that is the exact sort of ridiculously sentimental thing Marie would know to say.

But before I can muster up a convincing amount of concern, we are interrupted by the appearance of a maid at the end of the hallway.

At the sight of her, the Dauphin’s face brightens.

He pats my hand. “Do excuse me,” he says, and walks briskly up to meet her.

At his approach, the maid drops into a startled curtsy, talking with rapid excitement.

She must be past my father’s age, her black hair streaked with gray; what little I can see of her face is etched with lines of exhaustion.

I frown as she grips the Prince’s hands tenderly, gazing at him with shining eyes.

She seems far too old to be a lover, but truly I wouldn’t put any level of poor taste past the Dauphin of Auréal.

Finally prince and maid finish their hushed exchange, and the maid hurries off.

I give the Dauphin a questioning look as he returns to my side. He shakes his head, his lips pressed together. “Never mind that,” he says, strangely sheepish.

I don’t comment—I have bigger fish to fry than the prince’s torrid affairs. I’m growing weary of trying to be delicate, tiptoeing around the subjects I truly want to discuss.

“Aimé, I’ve had a thought,” I say.

He glances at me, his blue eyes nearly colorless in the rheumy light.

I lower my voice further, carefully keeping it out of earshot of nearby guards. “Has D—the man they arrested for murder been questioned yet?”

The Dauphin looks away, swallows tightly. “He— Yes. I tried to stop them, but my uncle said it was… necessary. No one would tell me how the… interrogation went. So I’m in the dark. Unsurprisingly.”

Oh, Mothers. “Have you tried to speak to him yourself?”

He shakes his head. “My uncle has forbidden it.”

“Are you not the King? Why would that stop you?”

His hands turn red where he is wringing them. “I disobeyed my father, and now he’s dead. I’m afraid to… to do something like that again. It’s probably better to let my uncle make the decisions.”

I feel the same frustration I did last night, when he’d let himself be dismissed from the entrance hall.

How can he let his power be stripped from him so easily?

“The King was murdered, Aimé,” I say firmly.

“We hardly know how. Or why. Do you really think it’s wise to let yourself be kept in the dark? ”

“What else am I supposed to do?”

“Start by speaking to the prisoner,” I say. “I imagine he is more likely to talk to you than to anyone else. And think about who might stand to gain from King Honoré’s death. And why.”

He gives me a strange look. “You really have changed,” he says, and I suppress a wince.

“Is that… a good thing?”

He laughs. “It’s neither good nor bad. I simply miss when we were children, playing by the lake. Everything was so simple back then.” He taps his chin, then exhales heavily. “I do not like this, Marie. I fear he will not want to speak to me.”

“I will go with you, if it helps.”

To my relief, he nods. “With you… perhaps I can try. But I don’t think it will go well. I don’t think it will go well at all.”

Damien, the Dauphin tells me, is being kept in a holding cell beneath the guard’s garrison for the time of his interrogation.

As we walk, thunder snarls in the distance, the sound muffled by a wadding of ragged clouds.

Behind us trail two guardsmen in musketeer blue, silent and stoic, their sharp gazes sending discomfort crawling up and down my spine.

I try to ignore them, focusing on the mission at hand—a task made difficult by the Dauphin’s nervous silence.

The cells are located beneath the building, in an unforgiving pit not unlike a cellar. The space is vengefully cold, the sharpness of it crawling into the roots of my teeth and making them chatter. It reminds me, horribly, of the weeks Damien and I spent in the Verroux slums.

There are only two cells, both hollow, echoing things strewn with filthy straw and caged by crooked bars. One of the guards lights a torch and holds it out, the flame highlighting old streaks of filth along the floor. There are splatters on the wall that look dreadfully like blood.

The Dauphin flinches when he sees them.

“I shouldn’t have brought you here,” he whispers.

“Nonsense,” I say. “I want to be involved.”

He opens his mouth to respond, but in the same moment, the torchlight falls on a figure curled up on the floor of one of the cells. Despite everything, my heart seizes. I know that mess of hair, that broad back.

“Damien?” the Dauphin calls gently.

My brother is on his feet in an instant, his eyes searching and wild, straw flying off the tattered remnants of his clothes.

Bruises mottle his cheekbones, and dried blood cakes the lobe of one ear—no doubt the result of the guard’s interrogations.

When his attention lands on the Dauphin, his shoulders slump.

“You should not be here.” His eyes dart from the Dauphin, to me, to the guards behind us. The Dauphin seems to understand his meaning, because he turns.

“Could—could you leave us?” the Dauphin asks them.

They both hesitate. “Monseigneur,” says the one on the right, a man with a curling black moustache.

“I do not think it’s wise to leave you with this…

this…” He seems to struggle for words, pointedly avoiding Damien’s eyes.

I can guess why: One day ago, they had still been comrades, brothers-in-arms. Now one of them has been accused of the worst sort of treason.

“You don’t truly believe that, do you?” the Dauphin says softly. “Please, just for a few minutes. He will not hurt me.”

The men do not move.

“Your future king has given you an order ,” I say sharply, losing my patience. “Why are you ignoring it?”

The men flinch. The one with the moustache gives us all a pained look before turning and heading back up to the entrance, his companion at his heels.

They leave the torch in a sconce by the stairwell, too far to provide any true illumination, but close enough to make everything look sharp-edged and unsettling.

“Good men, those two,” Damien says as soon as the guards are gone, looking to Aimé with flinty eyes. “Loyal. Keep them close. Do not trust any of the others. Especially not the ones from noble families.”

The Dauphin frowns. “What do you mean?”