Enchantée(124)

“Where is my sister?”

“At my house in Paris.” He coughed. His throat was filling with blood. “Chandon knows where.”

She sat back on her heels, studying him. “Why did you do this? To me? To Chandon?”

With a grim smile, Séguin said, “For the old ways, so they would not be brushed aside by revolution. For things to be as they were. For the queen.”

Marie Antoinette had refused to help Camille, and yet, had warned her that Séguin was a cheat. Had she meant this, that he had used magic for her sake? “Tell me.”

“I helped her. Who else do you think tucked up that sagging chin? Who was it that polished her skin from crepe to satin? When she discovered what I could do, there was no end to her requests. ‘Monsieur le Vicomte, give me parties like those in fairy tales. Give me clothes no seamstress could make. Give me a face and body more beautiful than any woman’s. Versailles’ magic is fading—renew it! The people of France hate me, they talk of rebellion. Make them love me. Bring back my son.’”

Resurrection? “But that’s not possible—”

“No. Not even for me.” Séguin thumbed away a bubble of blood at the corner of his mouth. “The more threatened she felt, the more she feared the people would tear her from the throne, the more desperate she became. She called it cheating, when I spilled my blood to work her glamoire. She felt none of the cost. Her insatiable hunger for la magie would have killed me. What was I to do?”

“Not enslave another person—not force me to marry you—”

“Caught like I was, what would you have done, magician? How irreproachable would your decisions have been?”

The sun had risen above the trees. Its light filtered through their uppermost leaves, tracing them in gold. Camille didn’t know what she would have done, had it been she and the queen. But she knew what she’d done when her sister’s life—her life—had been at stake. She’d given herself over to the aching sorrow of turning coins, then to the black singing rush of the glamoire, and finally, when all paths in the labyrinth came to dead ends and there were no cards left to play, she’d given herself up. Séguin had never intended to give up anything.

“I would have done what I had to,” she said, bowing her head.

“Madame,” the surgeon called. “I must see my patient.”

Séguin’s eyes had left her face and were pitched to the sky. In their yawning pupils, Camille saw clouds race overhead. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be what you wanted,” she said, quietly.

“You were, in my dreams, if nowhere else.” He coughed again. “Do something for me, will you?”

Camille took in his ravaged face, his broken shell of a body. He had been just as trapped as she. But she’d had something he didn’t: someone to love and care for, and that had saved her. She would grant him this last wish.

“Don’t let them bind me, stuff me with poultices.” His voice was barely audible. “I have lost my magic and what is a magician without that? I wish to die, Camille. To be free of this.” He gestured vaguely at something she could not see. “This world.”

Standing at the window of an abandoned apartment at Versailles, poison spooling in her blood, her empty hands on the windowsill: hadn’t she also wanted to be free of the world she’d found herself in? Hadn’t she also wanted liberty, a choice?

Camille nodded.

“Then go tell the surgeon,” he said, his once-beautiful voice a harsh croak. “Be gone.”

Camille stood. She was dizzy. Her clothes, her skin, everything reeked of blood and burned magic. The surgeon tried to shoulder past her but she put her hand out. “Leave him, monsieur,” she said. “He does not wish to stay.”

She waited, hands knotted in her skirt. The boy who lay crumpled in the grass had only brought her suffering. She had wished him dead and herself free of him, and now it had come to pass. And yet, tears burned in her eyes. For a reason she could not understand—for had it not nearly destroyed everything she loved?—she grieved the unraveling of magic.

Would the winds of change sweep all magic away? And if they did, who would she then be?

Séguin’s breathing grew more labored, strident. Then his face, which had already fallen into ruin, grew still. The surgeon held a mirror to his mouth. “He is dead.”

“I cannot recognize him,” Foudriard said as the surgeon’s men came with a litter to carry Séguin’s body away.

“I would always know him by his rings,” Chandon replied, slowly. “I saw that sapphire cabochon every time he hurt me. I hope I live long enough to forget it completely.”

Where Camille stood, the leaves of grass were crushed and smeared with blood, even the tiny white heads of clover. Over the lake, the mist had vanished. Instead the sun glittered on the water, turning it to diamonds.

Lazare still held his sword. When he reached Camille, he wrapped his left arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. She pressed her cheek against his chest. Under his coat, she heard the regular beat of his heart. She wanted to climb inside, to take refuge there.

His lips brushed her forehead. “Camille Durbonne,” he whispered, “we have been released.”





67


In Lazare’s carriage, Camille dropped her head against his shoulder, her eyelids flickering with fatigue. The glamoire she’d worked in the abandoned room was leaving the dress, and now her body shook with fatigue.