Page 53

The smell of rotting vegetables from the abandoned market stalls filled the air in Les Halles, mixing with the bitter tang of torch smoke as more men and women joined their ranks.

They marched until they came upon Rue Saint-Honoré.

The street unfurled before them, lined with Paris’ oldest homes, standing like fortresses of wealth.

It stretched before them, its cobblestones gleaming in the dying light.

Grand facades adorned with wrought iron balconies and gilded shutters stood like silent witnesses to the mob’s fury.

The Tuileries Palace loomed in the distance, its shadow stretching long and dark over the scene, a stark reminder of the power they sought to tear down.

Gabin passed élise to a pair of men. “Hold her,” he ordered, and their grips intensified on her neck and arms as Gabin took his place at the head of the mob. His gaze swept the crowd until it landed on a young man near the edge with torchlight dancing in his nervous eyes.

“What’s your name, boy?” Gabin called.

The man stammered, “Jean.”

Gabin pointed at him with pride in his eyes. “Tonight, you fight for justice. For bread! For France!”

The crowd roared, and the young man’s hesitation melted into a raised fist.

élise’s stomach twisted as Gabin’s words whipped the crowd into a frenzy. She’d marched before, shouted slogans, even dreamed of change—but this was different. This wasn’t about justice. It was about destruction.

The houses loomed ahead, their golden windows catching the last rays of sunlight, and for the first time, she wondered how many innocent people were trapped inside.

“Let’s show these pathetic scum they have dared step on the wrong estate!” Gabin yelled. The crowd’s shout shook the perfectly maintained cobblestone street.

“Tear them from their silken beds!” Gabin roared. “Let them feel what it’s like to bleed on the streets they’ve ignored! And if the cowards aren’t hiding inside—burn it to the ground!” Gabin’s voice rose above the clamor, a sharp command that sent the mob scattering like wolves scenting prey.

Screams of families littered the night, and élise shut her eyes tight, wishing to forget the curdling sounds.

Gabin slowly walked the street with the two men holding élise behind him, admiring all he had accomplished. She tried to squirm free, but the two men’s grips only tightened.

There was a shout. “Gabin! We found someone you would want to see!”

Gabin bounded to the edge of the road, where they dragged a man beneath the street lamp and forced him to his knees. One pulled his hair back.

“Rollant?” élise whispered.

Gabin grunted before he laughed. “Ah, Monsieur Rollant Montvieux. Do you live here?”

Rollant sighed and laughed with Gabin. “No, Monsieur Roux, I do not.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I had a job to do to pay for bread,” he said.

Gabin walked up to him and punched him hard in the face. élise flinched.

Rollant spat blood before looking up at Gabin.

A woman’s scream took their attention. “I saw him riding at the palace! He is a King’s Bodyguard!” She yelled and pointed with a knotty finger. “And she was with him!” Her finger swept to élise.

Her heart sank. The two men holding her threw her to the street and kicked her.

Gabin turned to the crowd, his voice rising above their murmurs.

“Do you hear that? Traitors, both of them! One a spy for the king, the other a traitor who dared to lie to us, to all of you. Will you let them escape justice?” The roar of the mob shook the street, and élise felt the ground shift beneath her feet.

“Tie her up too,” Gabin barked. The two men grabbed her hands and started to drag her on the street as she screamed, reconstituting the crowd.

But Rollant bellowed, “She’s innocent. I lied to her.”

The men paused, and Rollant directed his next comments to Gabin.

“And how ironic the command to kill her comes from the man who made her wear bruises and bloody marks of his dominance. She left you, Gabin, and now you want revenge on her. They should tie you up as well. We all saw her bruises and marks. None of us is blind.”

Gabin sneered, grabbed élise, and pulled her to stand.

A murmur rippled through the crowd at Rollant’s words. A few faces turned to Gabin, their expressions wary.

“Lies,” Gabin snarled, raising his arms to reclaim the crowd’s fury. “Lies from a royalist dog! Will we believe him, or will we take back our justice?”

The hesitant murmurs dissolved into roaring chants.

Gabin wrapped his arms around élise and brandished his baker’s knife.

“If I recall, élise, when we first met Rollant, I suspected him as a spy, and your words were that if he were a spy, you’d draw first blood and kill him,” he said loud enough for the crowd to hear.

“Now kill him.” Gabin shoved the dagger into her hand and pushed her into the space before Rollant. “Show us where your loyalty lies.”

élise glanced back at Rollant before turning to Gabin, frozen in fear. She scanned the angry mob; their shouts dimmed in her ears and gave way to her pounding heart and shaky breath.

“He said he is a navy man, but is now a king’s guard as well? He lied to all of us. He doesn’t want our freedom.” Gabin spoke to the crowd. “He wants the king to oppress us! Death to him!” Gabin yelled. “Death to Rollant Montvieux!”

The cheer erupted into the night.

élise glanced at the dagger in her hand. “I can’t do it, Gabin,” she whispered.

Gabin sneered at her and answered her publicly. “Your words were ‘Take. It. Back!’” He pumped the air for each word. “Take. It. Back.”

The crowd chanted in unison while Gabin closed in on her.

“You said, if you remember, little dove, that if he were an informant, you’d be the one to take his life.

Did you not say that élise, that night he first came to my bakery?

Well, it turns out, he was an informant,” Gabin gritted.

“He betrayed you. I have never betrayed you. He lied to you, but I have never lied to you, though we’ve had hard times.

Be good to your word, élise, and kill him like you said, or I may be unable to save you from this crowd. ”

Gabin forced his hand around hers so much that she felt she would have a permanent indentation of its hilt in her palm.

“You can feel it, can’t you?” Gabin whispered, his breath hot against her ear as he tightened her grip around the hilt. “The weight of justice. Go on, élise—be the hand of the people. Take back what he stole from you.”

He shoved her into Rollant’s chest. “Gut him—make it slow. Let him bleed. We’ll string him up too as a warning for any royalist scum,” Gabin ordered.

Her heartbeat thundered in her chest, each pulse a countdown to the unthinkable as her gaze locked with Rollant’s.

The bruises on his face, the quiet resolve in his eyes—it was too much.

The crowd’s chants of vengeance swirled around her, muffled and distant, as if the world held its breath.

Could she do it? Could she destroy the one thing that had felt like kindness, even if it was a lie?

Her hand trembled, but Rollant’s eyes were steady as he gave her a slight nod.

“Everyone dies, élise,” he whispered, his voice deep in a calm command. “Put the blade through my belly. Leave it in.”

The men, holding his arms, wrenched them back so his head dropped.

She grabbed his shoulder and leaned her mouth to his ear. “I am afraid. I can’t do it.”

“They will kill you if you don’t,” Rollant said, his lips brushing against her cheek. “No sense in having us both die. Do it quickly. Don’t give them reason to doubt.”

She pulled back, letting his lush brown curls give them some privacy. He stared at her like he had when he first saw her—with all the love in the world. It was the look she had always wanted. The look that confirmed it was not all a ruse, confirmed his kiss, his care, his love for her.

“I can’t take your life,” she whimpered.

Rollant’s lips curved into the faintest of smiles, his voice low and steady as it had always been. “You’ve already saved me—let me save you too.” His shoulders straightened, and he met her gaze with quiet determination. “You can do this. For both of us.”

Her breath hitched, and her head shook.

“I cannot save you if you don’t,” he whispered.

The crowd chanted, “Kill him!”

The air reeked of sweat, smoke, and fear—the heat from the torches pressed against élise’s cheeks, making her shiver. The mob’s chants pounded like war drums, shaking the air and drowning out her frantic thoughts.

“Do it, élise,” he coaxed her. “Quickly.”

“I’ll die with you,” she whispered.

“No,” he shook his head. “No,” he repeated through clenched teeth.

But Gabin’s hand wrenched hers. “It will be easy, élise. A quick push”—Gabin yelled and thrust the blade into Rollant’s belly for her—“and we rid France of one more royalist dog!” The crowd erupted in joyous cacophony.

Gabin whispered, “There you go, little dove. Hold steady. Let him feel the length of the blade.”

The knife hilt was slick in her grip, damp with sweat and blood. Rollant’s breath hitched—a sound so brief, so quiet, yet it shattered her more than any scream could. Pain etched into Rollant’s brave face.

Gabin spun around with arms in the air to show victory.

Rollant’s blood oozed on her fingers as they still clutched the blade. Her jaw fell agape, and she forgot to breathe. Her fingers popped off the handle. The words spilled from her mouth: “Forgive me.”

His groan sounded in her ears as the hollers of the crowd doubled.

“Best not let the men see your tears,” he whispered in a stammer, echoing her words from their first meeting.

“Rollant,” she whispered. She had just stabbed him and sentenced him to death. Her hands slid to his chest, his neck, his cheeks, leaving a bloody trail of guilt.

“What have I done?” Her breathy words were lost in the cheers, and before she could say more, Rollant was yanked back and a rope thrown around his neck.

Gabin shoved her aside, barking orders to hoist him on the streetlamp.

“Easy does it,” he said. “Leave him on his toes, let him really suffer and feel our plight!”

Rollant’s gasps came out in spurts as Gabin walked up to him. “I told you she was my woman,” he murmured and spat in Rollant’s face. Gabin twisted the blade élise left in his belly with a hard wrench of the handle.

élise’s vision blurred with tears. Her fists clenched at her sides, nails digging into her palms. She wanted to scream, to rip the knife from Gabin’s hands and stop this madness—but her legs refused to move, frozen by fear and the weight of her betraying hand.

She should have thrown the knife down and been killed alongside him.

She had allowed Gabin to force her hand.

Rollant’s face contorted as Gabin twisted. The rope tightened around his neck as they tied his arms with the same rope that hung him. He stood on his toes to keep breathing. His arms were strung up behind him at an awkward angle. To lower them meant to lift his toes off the ground and die.

“Let’s see how strong this royalist is, shall we?” Gabin said as he spun to the crowd. “Let’s see how long the king’s dog can last. Who’s betting he’ll still be breathing by sunrise? Or if he took the weak man’s way out and fell to his heels during the night?”

élise’s breaths grew heavy as she watched Rollant.

Their eyes met. What had she done? Rollant was dying before her eyes because she had caused a scene at Versailles.

He was the man who had taken every chance to protect her and care for her, even until the end.

He told her it was all a lie, but deep down, she knew at least his feelings for her were not false, though maybe everything else was.

And she’d thrown it away. The urge to vomit overcame her, but her belly was empty.

Gabin grabbed élise under the top of her arm and dragged her behind him, back into a life of torment.

élise peered over her shoulder at Rollant, who was hanging onto life and perched on his toes beneath the lamplight.

There was a glint in his eye, a shimmer of hope in his coming end.

His coat blew in the winter breeze past his calves.

She blinked back the tears from her eyes. This time, he wouldn’t be coming back.

“You see, little dove,” Gabin murmured as he dragged her away, her focus still on Rollant. His grip bruised her arm, and she winced. “There’s no one left—not your lover, not your friends, not even God himself. You’re mine to do with as I please, just as you always were.”