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TO THE KING’S HEAD!

T he bright light in Souveraine’s eyes faded just as quickly as it had sparked on sight of Léon.

She was around the bar and taking his hands, just as he took hers, feverish and shaking.

“I’m in trouble. I’m in so much trouble, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Come.” She pulled him into a quiet alcove, careless of the eyes and snickers of the publicans.

But Léon wasn’t. He dropped her hands, his face falling with them.

The act set her on her guard for bad news, which only compelled her to move even closer.

“Is it émile?”

“No.” He clutched her hands again, thoughtlessly, trying to soothe that worry away.

“He’s okay. He’s… I think he’s safe. For now. But I have something I need to do, and if I can’t do it… Oh, Souveraine…” His head fell against the stone wall, hard, the pain of it comforting in a way that would have made him do it again, had Souveraine’s hand not reached up to prevent it.

He leaned into her cool skin, calm against the mess of his mind.

“I don’t know what to do. I have to kill someone tomorrow. A young woman. And I don’t want to do it.”

Her hand pulled back, a wrinkle of astonishment crowding her face.

“Is she someone you know?”

“No, not at all. I only saw her for the first time today.”

The offhand phrase provoked Souveraine’s ever-present jealousy.

“Is she pretty?”

A flash of Henry’s hazel eyes, those gold-green sparks, a perfect correspondence with Catherine’s, rose up before Léon, and he admitted, “Very. Very pretty.”

“Well, if she needs her head cut off, then so be it,” Souveraine snapped.

The harsh edge to her voice and the rod-straight line of her spine brought Léon back into the room, and sharply.

“No. It’s— The man who has émile, I found him. It’s just one man, but he’s very dangerous. He wants that girl, the prisoner, in exchange for émile, and if I can’t break her out, if I must kill her tomorrow, he will do the same to émile, I don’t doubt it. He’s a madman. He almost shot me today.” Souveraine let out a gasp, and he hurried on in a frantic whisper, “I can’t get those keys, and even if I could, I can’t get past the guards. I’m to kill her first thing in the morning. Souveraine, what am I to do?”

The little bell sang again, and Souveraine’s big blue eyes scanned the crowd of four men making straight for the bar.

“Don’t move.” She walked quickly to her position of trade, but first poured a triple brandy, which she pushed across to Léon.

It probably wasn’t wise, but Léon was about as far from wise as he’d ever been.

He dropped onto his stool and took a sip, the brandy burning twice as hard down his parched throat as usual, assaulting his cavernously empty stomach.

That man .

Léon saw the memory of him now, walking through the doorway.

He remembered too well the desire he’d felt for him, only now it made Léon sick.

The way he’d sidled right up to him, stood by him, said good evening to him…

And that must have been right before he went for émile…

The idea provoked a fresh and searing hatred, hotter than the alcohol churning in Léon’s gut.

That he’d come to the bar specifically to check Léon was there, that Léon had stared at him.

The way he’d let him see he wanted him.

The way Henry drank by his side so brazenly.

As Léon’s fingers scrunched into fists, his attention was drawn by the second gasp he’d heard break from Souveraine that evening.

He knew it as her scandalised gasp, for Souveraine, the best barkeep he’d ever met, loved gossip in proportion to the success of her business, which was very successful.

Léon listened in.

“They’re talking about trying him. For treason,” one of the men said.

“Just like that,” added another, taking a sip of his ale.

“And high time too,” Souveraine replied.

“King or not, I’d spit on him if he crossed my path just the once.”

“And his whore too,” a third put in.

Souveraine kept her professional face on, but Léon saw the slight falter of her eyelashes.

To hide it, she poured out another drink, topped up what the men already had, then raised her glass.

“Well, then. To the King’s head!”

“To the King’s head!” they repeated, clinked glasses, and drank deep.

“I’m thinking about going to Paris to see it,” said one of the party.

Léon swivelled around, interested now.

“You’d go all that way just to see one man lose his head?”

“If it was the King, I would,” the man replied.

“Just imagine the look on his face.”

“You should put in a special request to do it,” another said to Léon.

Clearly, they knew who he was, even if he had no clue about them.

“It would be an honour to take that bastard’s head. One for the people.”

“One for the people,” Souveraine proposed, raising her glass again, to more clinks and cheers.

“It’s that slut I want to see die,” said the fourth man, the same one who’d mentioned Marie Antoinette so delicately a few moments earlier.

“Her and her brats. Imagine all of them growing fat on our money while we’re starving.”

“Maybe if you spent a little less on beer…” one of his friends joked.

The man only stared off into the distance, his own dear fantasy playing out behind his dull eyes.

“Just imagine her up there in all her finery, hair piled high on top of her empty head, jewels all over her. Then imagine her head cut off, crimson running deep in the fabric of her silk dress, and all the blood-soaked diamonds of her necklace spilling into the crowd with her treasonous blood. Then a man could get back some of what he’s owed.”

Léon and Souveraine both quietly wondered how long it would be until that man was up on Léon’s scaffold, and Léon had a feeling he might not bother to sharpen his axe especially well that day.

But the man then dropped the fateful words: “I’d pay good money to see that.”

And it was like Léon had been hit in the face with a brick.

“Exactly how much money?” he asked before the idea had even fully formed.

“The Queen? Her head? I’d give you everything I’ve got to see a show like that.”

‘A show like that…’

Every single thing Léon had seen and heard that day suddenly seemed to fall straight in his lap, and there arranged itself into something tangible, audacious, ridiculous, and wonderful.

His own head snapped across to Souveraine, and he said, “I have an enormous favour to ask you.”