A Drop of Night(68)

I slam my doors, kick in the floor peg. Something massive crashes against them, rattling the hinges. I run blindly into the next room, the next, not even trying to lock anything after me. This was your idea, Anouk. This whole thing, it was your stupid plan, and now we’re separated, waiting to be picked off like ducks on a carnival conveyor belt.

The doors to the gallery crash open. They’re catching up. I dive behind a sofa, coughing, gasping.

Four trackers burst in. I empty my clip into them. When I stand, there are four bodies on the floor. My hands are shaking

“Lilly?” I whisper to the empty room. But Lilly’s gone. I’m on my own.








Palais du Papillon—112 feet below, 1790


A serving woman, huge as an ogress, leads me back to my chambers. Her face is a weary mask, her apron filthy. She smells of onions and dirt and sour milk. I feel a strange sort of companionship with her as we trudge up staircases, through chamber after opulent chamber, these treasure rooms of ruby, jet, and emerald. She held a blindfold when she came for me, and perhaps she meant to use it, but she took one look at my reddened eyes and twisted it into her fist. I suppose I should be grateful for this kindness. Or perhaps she should be grateful, for had she tried to bind my eyes, I might have scratched out hers.

A cold, iron numbness has taken hold of me and settled into my bones. Somewhere deep inside I feel rage, hot enough to melt glass, but I cannot reach it. I stare straight ahead of me, and I try to keep my feet moving, try to forget the cracking in my heart, Mama’s face when she cried out to me.

We arrive at my chambers. The serving woman unlocks the door and stands aside. She is so still, a great brooding mountain, delicate and hulking both at once. I turn to face her, my eyes pleading.

“Madam,” I say quickly. “Madam, I beg of you, let me—”

But she will not look at me. She lowers her head and pushes me hurriedly through the doors. I hear them slam shut, the wrench of the lock sliding home.

I slide to the floor and lie in a heap. Still I do not cry. I feel as though I could, feel a strained cord of muscle in my chest, fit to snap, but no tears will fall. All I can think is: We must get away from here. Delphine, Bernadette, Charlotte, Jacques, me. We must escape.

Jacques finds me this way and pulls me upright, crushing me to him. “They are mad here,” I whisper, and bury my face in his collar. Only now do the tears come, hot and endless, wetting the linen of his shirt.

“I know,” he says, but he doesn’t. He cannot know the depths of their madness. I try to explain to him what I saw, what has become of Mama.

He holds me more tightly with every word, and when I am finished there is no shock or outrage from him. Only grim, weary determination. “It is not just la Marchioness Célestine,” he says, and I stiffen. “We found Marie-Clair in a chamber near the edge of the palace. She was barely sixteen, one of the youngest. They had emptied her of blood, taken parts of her, and that pale thing in the room . . . Monsieur Vallé saw it walking today in the western wing, free as you like. He said it turned to look at him, and its face opened like a wound. They are keeping it— ”

I push away from him, straightening. “You are here,” I say, steadying my voice and steadying my chin. “That is what matters. I trust your arrival in my chambers means you know the way out?”

Jacques almost smiles at that. Through the grime and the tiredness, his eyes become merry and warm. “Always straight to business goes Aurélie du Bessancourt. You should be a shopkeeper.” His gaze darkens again. “I have found your sisters, yes. They are safe and as well as can be hoped. And I have found a way out. We will go today. Now, if you will allow it.”

“If I allow it?” I am laughing now, though my tears have not yet dried. “You tell me this now, when you might have told me the moment you stepped inside? Of course I will allow it, you great oaf! Havriel and Father will be distracted. They will not expect an escape. We must hurry!”

Jacques nods, but he remains where he is. He disentangles himself from me and says: “I have something for you,” and ducks his head. “Before we go.”

I pause, peering at him. I see us both in the mirrored window, a tall boy and a tall girl, and I see him open his hand. In it is a flower, dried and pressed. A daisy. He lays it gently in my palm. “It was left behind by another servant—” Jacques twists his hands together, stumbling over his words. “I know it is not the time, but I wanted you to have it. There is a good woman, a tavern keeper on the outskirts of Péronne, a friend of my mother’s. I thought you might hide there until transportation can be arranged. Her inn stands in a field, off the Rue de Maismont. By the millpond, do you know the place? There are many more daisies there. Well . . . I thought—Let this one be a promise.”

The flower rests in my palm, dry and delicate. I can smell the warm tinge of straw from it. A memory blooms in my mind of Mama and my sisters and me, lying in a meadow, sunlight falling through the apple trees and dappling our faces. I do know the millpond. We went there once, in better days, with a picnic and silver forks and a painter with a great easel and a hundred daubs of vivid color.

I tuck the flower into my sash. I clasp Jacques’s hands, and I smile at him, and he does not smile back, but grins, his face folding like an accordion. And though we both know the worst is still ahead—there is running to do now, and fighting—a flame kindles under my tired heart, and in the light of it all the ills of the world seem suddenly small and faraway.