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“My King,” Brienne began again. “Since His Majesty refuses to raise what taxes we do have, and the parlements refuse tax reform, we will no longer be able to borrow if we cannot pay our debts. France will collapse without drastic reform. This is a fact.”

“And what of the parlements?” Louis glanced up with timid eyes. “The parlements, filled with nobles, guard their privileges under the guise of law. They will reject your reforms again, as they did Calonne’s.”

“If we do nothing, we risk rebellion. Call the Estates-General. Let the Third Estate vote on the reforms,” Brienne said.

Chairs scraped as the other four ministers gasped and bristled.

“The reforms will pass with the Third Estate voting,” Brienne finished with unwavering confidence in the working class voting to tax the nobility, the Second Estate, and the clergy, the First Estate.

The Minister of Justice and Keeper of the Seals, Chrétien Francois de Lamoignon, interjected in the succeeding silence.

“At this moment and onward, the King’s authority is vulnerable.

Calling the Estates-General will undermine the crown for all time.

It hasn’t been called since 1614, and nothing came of it but a decade of interference and revolt.

Give the Third Estate a voice, and they’ll demand more.

Equality. Then power. You’ll lose your throne. ”

Louis glanced toward Rollant. Their eyes met. Mortal burdens, but Minister Lamoignon was right.

“Don’t mind him, Sire.” Montmorin waved Rollant off. “He knows nothing of this.”

Rollant stared at the intricate scrolling on the wall opposite him.

The sad fact was that, at an immortal twenty-six years old, he knew more than humanly possible.

He was both the youngest and the oldest man in the room.

With an ageless face, he glanced at the portraits on the wall, masking the centuries he had witnessed.

Amelot leaned toward the king. “Calling the Estates-General will alienate the nobility.”

“Minister Brienne,” King Louis dipped his head, giving Brienne permission to speak freely against the violent opposition in the room. Amelot, Montmorin, La Luzerne, and Lamoignon leaned back and lifted their chins.

“I am grateful for the opportunity, Sire,” Brienne said. “The people are restless. Restless people breed rebellion, and rebellion breeds revolution—just as it did in the colonies. The Estates-General will buy the crown time. Give them a voice; perhaps they will not yet demand blood.”

Montmorin shook his head and interrupted. “What of the crown’s reputation amongst the great powers we have fought to earn back?”

Lamoignon silenced him with a raised hand and rose, his face taut. “Once you give the Third Estate a taste of power, they will demand more. They will not stop at taxes. You will give up your power and your lineage of great kings. The Just, The Sun King, The Beloved; they shake their heads.”

Louis leaned back, his face ashen beneath the chandelier’s light. His hands, empty of his locks, clenched into fists and bounced on his thigh until, finally, he rose to his feet slowly with distant eyes. He folded his hands behind his back. “I will . . . consider the matter further.”

Rollant followed Louis out of the Cabinet and down the hall filled with opulent mirrors. Louis let out a long, despair-filled breath. The quiet corridor was empty save for the two royal guards at the entrance to the King’s Cabinet at the other end.

“Chevalier Rollant de Montvieux, you have been with the royal family for centuries,” he said in hushed tones. “What path would you take?”

Rollant hated when the kings would ask him for advice. It was a sheer reminder of his eternal punishment of life.

“And be plain, Rollant,” Louis said, his head drooping. They slowed their pace. “What should I do?”

Rollant suppressed a sigh. He had already told him what to do several times in the last few years, but the king never listened, or if he did, never acted. Rollant was tired of talking. “I am in no position to advise the king in this manner.”

“For the sake of Heaven, out with it.” His harsh whisper passed through clenched teeth.

Rollant sighed. “If I wore the crown, I would bypass the parlements and institute tax reform without calling an Estates-General, with military power if needed, forcing the nobility and the clergy to pay taxes and, even more, their fair share of taxes to alleviate the burden on the people and ensure their bellies are full without dividing your authority in the process. I would not delay as each passing day your power slips away.”

Louis stopped with jaw agape. “And kill my people by using military force?”

“No.” Rollant regained his patience. “You must wield power,” he said, whispered, peering down at the king. “Absolute power as king while you still have it.”

Louis shook his head and looked at the masterfully painted ceilings. “Lord God Almighty, my soul is yours. What do I do?”

Rollant nestled into his former sense of nonchalance. He hadn’t uttered a prayer in a long time, yet his childhood in the age where God was everything hadn’t left him either. He didn’t dare say there was no God, though he had spat in the divine’s face when he’d accepted the immortal deal.

The eerie echo from the Hall of Mirrors muted in his ears. He gave the King the correct answer again, but he doubted Louis XVI would do it, not with four of five ministers not worth the silk they wore. Lamoignon was the only one who spoke any sense.

“Rollant,” the king interrupted his thoughts. Frustration stained his pale cheeks. “You side with Lamoignon then?”

“I side with what my eyes have seen come to pass. I side with history, your history, the lineage of your ancestors. Do as I told you in haste before matters decline further, and you’ll keep your family crown.” Rollant shut his mouth, having already said too much and not in the proper tone.

Louis motioned for him to enter his empty bedchamber, a room adjoined to the ostentatious king’s room where the Sun King had expired. Nether Louis nor his predecessor liked the big, open, cold room. They much preferred the smaller, warmer, adjacent room.

Rollant closed the doors behind them, and Louis sat on the bed’s edge. Louis’ trembling fingers pulled the wig from his head, revealing a matted mess of short brown hair.

“I cannot override the parlements,” he muttered, sinking his face in his hands. “I want to be a king of the people. I want them to love me, unlike my grandfather, who abused the crown,” he said.

His hands fisted, and he banged his forehead in gentle beats. “I cannot override the parlements I reinstated at my grandfather’s passing to appease the nobles who are of the few who still support the monarchy.”

Rollant stood at attention like a coat of armor lining the halls.

He had seen kings rise and fall, domestic and abroad, King Louis XVI was no different.

This king would doom himself and perhaps the crown with inaction or the wrong action.

But Rollant didn’t fear it. Someone somewhere would rise again, and he would still be stuck in this immortal condemnation of false living.

At least, they could all enjoy the rest death had to offer, and if they trusted in the Lord, eternal rest in paradise.

For Rollant, though, it didn’t matter; it was all meaningless.

He longed for something he could never have, so after centuries, he finally did not see the point in longing for it.

Lucifer had won his soul. The deal had been made in a moment of rage and weakness, and he was forever enslaved to it.

Louis had fallen backward, sprawled out on his bed, mumbling incoherently, like he had done when he was a child. The poor man was overwhelmed, worried, and at a complete loss though the answer was right in front of him.

Rollant shifted his weight at the awkwardness but finally decided to comfort the man he had known for thirty-three years. Rollant sat beside the king.

Tears formed in Louis’ eyes. “I . . . I never asked for this. To be king. I was never made for war, hunger . . . the burdens. The people are angry, but how do I make them understand that I am not their enemy? The nobility refuses to be taxed.”

Rollant nodded. The nobles, if not suppressed, would end all things known.

They had come close to abolishing the crown under Louis The Just nearly two hundred years prior.

“The unfortunate matter is that your grandfather did not listen to me either and ran up the debt and spent more time with various women than he did attending to the state. They see you as king and, therefore, their enemy.”

“Yet I am not him.”

Rollant hoped he did not have to be evident to the point of condescension. It seemed the king was going to force him to be.

“How is that my responsibility to correct his errors?” Louis rasped.

“Because you wear the same crown.” Rollant shot him a glare a father would a son.

Louis wiped his eyes and sat up, spine curved with his head between his knees. “I don’t want this.”

“And yet you have it.” Rollant’s voice held no warmth or reassurance.

Louis was like his ancestors, and Rollant grew weary of watching weak men cling to crowns they did not deserve.

The weight of centuries of service burdened his broad shoulders, built and defined through fifteen years of swinging a heavy steel sword.

He stood up and rested his palm on the pommel of his rapier as a gesture of control.

Louis lifted his head and stood up hastily. He paced back and forth before his grand bed. Indecision snaked through his shoulder blades and held them tight enough to see through his coat. He stopped in front of Rollant and placed both hands on each of Rollant’s shoulders.

“I trust you more than anyone for your sheer amount of experience.” Louis’ eyes flickered with a rare moment of resolve, though Rollant knew the king would not follow his advice.

“Go, Rollant. Go into the streets of Paris. See what is happening there beyond Versailles.” He pressed his lips thin.

“I cannot trust the whispers of nobles or the demands of ministers. Take a month if you must or more, but return with the truth of how the people feel and with answers.” He patted Rollant’s shoulder.

“Do you need anything from me to do as I have requested of you?”

Rollant shook his head.

Louis’ brow furrowed. “Not even a place to stay or commoner’s garments?”

Rollant shook his head. “A king once gave me land outside of the city walls in Charonne. I have a house there. It has not been touched in a decade or more, I’m afraid, but I can make do.”

Everything he had acquired over the centuries had been sold for gold and stored in the floorboards.

It was more than he could ever need in several lifetimes.

Squatters had probably broken in, given the tumultuous times.

He figured it didn’t matter because he had all eternity to buy and sell and kick people out of his home.

Louis withdrew his hands and placed them behind his back. “Go, then, Chevalier Rollant de Montvieux.”

“As you command, Your Majesty,” Rollant said with a bow. He left and made sure the two guards from the King’s Cabinet had moved to the guard room of the bedchamber before following the King’s command.

As Rollant moved between scurrying servants and courtiers, he knew only one of two outcomes would come to pass: the crown would be saved, or he would witness its end. Either way, France would change.

Soon after, he stepped from the gate at the Palace of Versailles dressed as a commoner with a bag of his clothes, coin, Amée’s rose encased in glass, and his dagger.

He mounted his horse, which a servant had brought to him.

The soft gallop of hooves against the road stirred a memory of his days as a knight but without the heavy burden of his armor.

He had forgotten how freeing it was to let God’s breath rush past his face.

A small flame warmed his heart in the peace it brought for the moment, giving him the falsest of hopes that perhaps the divine still loved him and wanted him in his Heavenly glory.

The sounds and luxury of Versailles faded to silence along the road until the clamor of unrest and tension in Paris spilled into the air like a tide that even an immortal man could not stop, nor did he care to.

His heart turned still and cold once again as he neared his forgotten nobleman’s estate on the very eastern outskirts of the city, in the quiet, calming village of Charonne.

It was a modest stone home amongst the mostly empty apartments he had built long ago.

He hadn’t collected rent in a long time and let the few residents live there for free.

It looked like they returned his neglectful kindness by tending to his home, little garden, and double-stall stable.

The old street was empty as he trotted to the stable behind the house.

He put away his horse, giving her a carrot and patting her mane in appreciation for her journey to Paris before walking to the home’s entrance on the street.

“Restless, rebellion, revolution,” he muttered as the door to the home creaked open. The wintry winds blew the dust from the furniture. He would have to remember that saying for when the next king asked for his advice, that is, if there was a next king.