Page 50

The Hour of Reckoning

Two days after Rollant’s report, King Louis reinstated Necker and promised to live in Paris to live closer to the people as the National Assembly requested, but the damage was done.

Paris had become a furnace of rage, its streets choked with barricades and smoke from burning homes.

Officials swung from ropes in the public squares, landlords were dragged into the streets and beaten, and the nobility fled like rats from a sinking ship, leaving the king to fend for himself.

Rollant had seen it with his own eyes, and yet, there at Versailles, the palace clung to its gilded serenity as though the revolution could not breach its walls.

But the cries for bread had turned into cries for the Queen’s head. In the eyes of the people, no one was more indulgent than Marie Antoinette, and their hunger for reckoning burned hotter than their need for food.

Pale light preceded the sun and crawled across the early October morning sky. Not hearing the growing rumble in the distance, Rollant sat on his bed in his attic room, with Amée’s rose and élise’s scarf in each hand.

How cruel a punishment the sorceress had given him. It struck not at his vices, but at his very nature—to love, to protect, to hold—turning his greatest virtue into a death sentence.

The last memory of Ninette clawed at his mind, her small hands clutching his clothes, her gasping cries fading to silence.

Ninette could have lived—if only he had let go as he had done with élise.

If only he’d known that love, when held too long in his arms, meant death.

Every heartbeat spent in his arms was a breath stolen by the curse.

The truth had come too late—three centuries too late—and now Ninette’s death hung over him like a freshly woven noose.

His stomach churned. Bile rose in his throat as he clutched the rose and scarf tighter.

He was a monster, unworthy of anyone’s memory or love.

With a heavy sigh, he returned the rose and scarf to the drawer. Their weight was heavier than any weapon he’d wielded. Beneath them lay his knight’s surcoat, a relic of another life, yet the duty remained.

Death would never claim him, no matter how much he invited it.

His dagger, his instrument of futility, was now élise’s.

He hadn’t bothered to replace it. He slammed the drawer shut, turned to the mirror, and stared at the unchanging face bound by a curse—immortal, untouched by time, and yet burdened by centuries of failure.

He forced composure as he adjusted his uniform before descending the stairs.

Faint drumbeats echoed through the halls, joined by angry shouts. He stopped to listen. “Paris has come for their king,” he muttered with a scoff, wondering how they would dispose of Louis.

He hurried to the King’s Chambers to relieve his post for the day, though he doubted the poor guard would get much sleep or even live to see the day.

“Captain,” the guard addressed him before Rollant dismissed him, took his place, and knocked at the king’s door. Louis opened it and rushed Rollant inside, taking him to the balcony. Rollant’s chin dropped at the sight.

“They’ve walked all the way to my gates?” Louis muttered, his pacing quickening. “This is unthinkable. Unheard of!”

“Yes, and with the newly formed National Guard as well,” Rollant muttered, lofting an eyebrow, remembering when he told the king and his cabinet about the possibility of mobs attacking the palace with rebellious soldiers. “At least, Commander Lafayette is sympathetic to the crown.”

“If they stay behind the gates, they shall tire and leave,” Louis muttered, pacing the room as his fists clenched and unclenched. “I will reconsider the decrees vetoed only yesterday. Yes, and I will move the Assembly to Tours tomorrow, so we won’t have to worry about the Parisians.”

Rollant stared at the king, unmoving. He had heard such hopeful delusions before—kings clutching at the last threads of power, blind to the tide rising around them. He strained to hear the mob’s shouts beyond the gate. “It sounds like they’re here for the Queen’s head, Sire.”

Louis stopped, his face pale. “No . . . No! They wouldn’t dare.”

But at Rollant’s expressionless gaze telling him otherwise, Louis sank onto his bed.

“Father in Heaven,” Louis whispered, his voice trembling. “What have I done to deserve this? Help me in my time of trouble.” He clutched his temples, rocking slightly as the shouts of the guards grew louder, more desperate.

Rollant had seen palaces breached before and their kings slaughtered, but his heart raced every time, knowing he could not save the king from a mob even in his immortality.

He’d always been killed, and by the time his body revived, the king was dead, and then he’d be killed again, thought to be a demon, enduring relentless death until he found himself reborn at the feet of the new king to explain himself.

He rubbed his neck, remembering the few times he’d been beheaded; at least the later beheadings had been easier to bear.

“Sire, I hate to interrupt your prayer, but the crowds have found an entrance point through the Chapel,” Rollant said as he observed the crowd kill two bodyguards in their haste to the palace doors in the Royal Courtyard.

He walked to the door and ordered the bodyguard to block the entry to the King’s Guardroom and ensure the Queen and the children were in the antechamber immediately.

The first crack of splintering wood echoed like a gunshot through the halls. Frantic shouts rose over the clash of steel. The mob’s rage crawled closer every second. Rollant’s pulse quickened. He’d trained the bodyguards for this moment, but their number was too small.

The mob poured into the palace like a flood—men and women wearing the red-white-and-blue tricolor cockades, their pikes glinting in the morning light.

“They are spilling into the Great Hall,” Rollant advised the king.

The clamor of weapons mingled with the angry shouts and sharp cracks of doors splintering.

“Curse my grandfather for tearing the iron gate down to build an opera. Yes, Grandfather, a wooden gate will keep the masses away,” Louis mumbled with clenched fists. His fingers popped and dug into his forehead before he stood up with purpose. “If they want my wife’s head, they shall not have it.”

At that moment, they heard frantic knocking.

Soon, the Queen burst into the room, her petticoat barely clinging to her frame, a single cloak thrown over her shoulders in haste.

Her face, pale as porcelain, shone with sweat and tears.

Her chest heaved as she clutched the Dauphin in one arm and held Madame Royale’s hand with the other.

Behind her, the muffled thud of pikes striking wood and the rising shouts of the mob filled the halls.

Each sound was a countdown to catastrophe.

Rollant stepped aside as she rushed to Louis.

“Save me!” she cried, her voice cracking.

“Mama, I’m hungry,” the Dauphin whimpered, tugging at her sleeve, oblivious to the threats at the door. Queen Marie Antoinette knelt, smoothing his hair with trembling hands. “Be patient, my love,” she whispered, though her voice wavered with fear. “Be patient.”

Rollant’s heart tightened—a sensation he came to despise over the years—watching history devour the innocent time and time again.

Louis tended to his children and ran a hand down the Queen’s arm. To calm her, he said, “They will not harm you, not while I’m alive. “

Rollant walked past their family, suppressing his desire for a wife and children as he had always done.

Commander Lafayette awaited Rollant in the antechamber.

He approached the commander, noting his stiff posture and carefully measured expression.

Rollant asked, “Is this how you run your guard, Commander? Through chaos and mobs?”

Lafayette smirked and cast his eyes down. “There wasn’t much of a choice,” he admitted, running a hand over his tricolor cockade. “Surely, Captain, you understand it is better to concede a little than to lose everything.”

His eyes met Rollant’s, steady, though his hands held an almost imperceptible tremor. “I serve the people as much as the crown,” Lafayette said, his voice tight. “Do you think I like this, Captain? The monarchy won’t survive the day if we don’t meet their demands.”

Rollant narrowed his eyes but said nothing, his jaw tightening at Lafayette’s pragmatic stance. The commander continued, his voice softer but more urgent, “They want to see the Queen. Her presence may calm them enough to save her life.”

“And what happens if it doesn’t?” Rollant shot back, stepping closer, listening to the shouts clearly state they wanted her head. “You cannot guarantee her safety, can you?”

“No,” Lafayette admitted, the word heavy with resignation. “But I have men among the crowd who will try to prevent further violence. That is all I can offer.” He gestured toward the shouts beyond the door. “If she doesn’t go out there, they’ll tear this palace apart. We have no time.”

Rollant’s gaze flickered to the door and back to Lafayette. “The people may call for her, but you’ll be the one sending her to her death.”

Lafayette’s face hardened, but his next words carried an edge of desperation.

“And if she doesn’t go, they’ll take her anyway—along with the king, the children, and anyone else they find.

Would you have them butchered like animals instead of standing as symbols of dignity for what little time remains?

” He paused, his voice dropping to a near whisper.

“I’ve seen what they do to those who resist.”

The commander’s words hung in the air, and Rollant let out a slow breath, his gaze locked on the man before him. Whatever sympathy Lafayette held for the crown, it was clear the commander’s loyalty had become a balancing act on a crumbling bridge.

“Very well,” Rollant muttered at last. “I will take you to her.”