Page 19 of Chateau Reverie

But locating her is proving more difficult than he’d like. The Château maintains an illusion of sense for the other guests, but it doesn’t bother for Leander. Why would it? They are siblings, in a way: children of the same tyrant. Each door leads somewhere new and strange, unless Leander makes a concerted effort to reach somewhere particular. Even then, the Château sometimes refuses.

Eventually, as often happens, he finds himself caught in a loop. It is the Château’s way of telling Leander he has done something wrong. The three rooms in the loop are sequenced in colour, light to dark: navy to cerulean to palest blue, like rising from the bottom of the ocean to the clearest waters of the shore.

Upon his third visit to the lightest room, there is suddenly a guillotine between two columns—an absurdly beautiful guillotine, carved of mahogany, with a brass blade embossed with flowers and a velvet rope dangling to make it fall. The hole for the victim’s head is large enough that Leander could place his own neck there with ease.

‘Very funny,’ he says, and there is a faint rumbling beneath his feet.

He turns around. The door he entered by is gone. Ah, he thinks. Lady Reverie so adores her punishments.

‘I am trying to find her,’ he says to the room. ‘That is what you want, isn’t it? For me to spend time with Genevieve de Vienne. Do you hope she’ll distract me, and therefore prevent me from winning? Do you want me to use her secret for my own? Is she your idea of a gift, Mother?’

No response comes. The door doesn’t reappear. He looks over his shoulder at the guillotine; a flash of light crosses its blade.

‘I shan’t cut my head off,’ Leander says. ‘My thanks for the suggestion, though.’

When he turns back to the door, there is a mirror in its place. He sees his own reflection for a fleeting moment—pale skin, silver hair—and then the view changes. It is the ship gallery of the Château, seen as if he is looking through one of the windows.

The ship gallery is one of the better rooms in the building. It usually faces the gardens and therefore has an abundance of sunlight. The darker corners of this place are where the Lady hides the less desirable of her creations: old servants who have warped into stone, for example, or gemstone monsters who moan and shuffle blindly in search of their mother. But the gallery is safe from such monstrosities. Its eastward wall is covered in dozens upon dozens of paintings of ships, each frame flush with the other, so that the paintings are like puzzle pieces fitting together. They are all the same ship, in a multitude of different waters, from different angles. In some, the ship is wrecked against rocks; in some, it gleams proudly as its hull spears through a storm. Leander doesn’t know where his mother acquired the ship, nor is he tempted to ask.

Through the mirror, Leander can see Genevieve and Missah observing the paintings. Their backs are to Leander, but they are still recognisable by the dark curls of their hair. Their words are muffled through the glass of the mirror but audible.

‘. . . third floor I have searched,’ Genevieve is saying. ‘And still nothing.’

‘I have yet to find mine, also,’ Missah replies. ‘I began my search in the library, and I found a book with my name upon the cover, as if someone knew exactly where I would look.’

‘What did the book say?’

‘It taunted me.’ Missah’s tone is both frustrated and amused. ‘Foolish seeker, you know nothing.’

‘“Foolish seeker”?’

‘I imagine it was referring not only to the treasure hunt, but to my wish: the lot I am bidding for. On my invitation, I asked to know the truth.’

‘What truth?’

‘The truth,’ Missah says. ‘I was once a follower of Christ, before I chose to worship at the altar of reason. Even now, years later, something in me wonders if I am wrong to have made that decision. I do not know what to believe. I must have answers. That is why I came here.’

She turns sideways to regard him more directly, showing Leander her profile. ‘You wished to know if God exists?’

‘I wished to know what will happen when I die,’ Missah says. ‘Heaven, hell, or nothing at all? The great unanswerable question. In retrospect, it was a ridiculous request—but then, I never expected to arrive here. And besides, now I have arrived, what answer could they possibly give me that I would ever believe with certainty?’

Genevieve hums in thought, chewing at her lower lip. Leander finds his eyes drawn to it, the petal of flesh caught between her teeth, and he knows he should look away—he must—but he does not. ‘Perhaps there is no such thing as certainty,’ Genevieve says slowly. ‘At Court, we considered the divine right of kings as certain as gravity. Everyone said that God had chosen the king, that he was destined to rule. But. . .’

She trails off. Missah, seemingly as fascinated by her as Leander is—although perhaps for different reasons—leans forward in curiosity. ‘But?’ he prompts.

‘But we were wrong,’ Genevieve says. ‘Divine heads roll the same as any other. I reached England three years before the king was executed, but I shall always remember the day I learnt that he had died.’

‘Did you weep for him?’ Missah asks. ‘Mourn?’

‘I mourned, but I did not weep. After I read the paper, I went outside to look up at the heavens, and I wondered if they were empty. Not because his death was wrong—I don’t know if it was wrong. But because the world I’d known was dead then, too.’

‘I am sorry,’ Missah says.

Genevieve shakes her head. She turns away from the painting and strides towards the windows to look outside: towards Leander, standing in his execution room, watching her through the mirror. Her grey eyes sweep across the glass. She can’t see him but he can see her, and Leander is entranced. Genevieve de Vienne, he realises, is the sort to wear her life on her face—to observe her is to understand her, intimately, and that intimacy leaves Leander breathless. Emotion has marked her so evidently, in the faint impression of nascent smile lines, in the sleepless darkness beneath her eyes, in the nervous flutter of white teeth at her lip. She is a woman of earnest feeling—intense, demanding. For all her attempts at composure, there is simply too much there for her to hide.

She is so human, so mortal. And Leander does not know her, not really. But he wants to. He is afraid of how much he wants to.

His mother chose her for him; Leander is now sure of it. She knows his heart. She knows how to make this auction as painful as possible. And so here is her gift, her punishment: a woman whose secrets Leander can use. A woman so beautiful he will hate himself for doing so. A dagger so lovely that Leander wants to plunge it into his own chest.