Page 20 of Chateau Reverie

He closes his eyes.

‘What must I do?’ he asks. ‘To appease you? Should I admit that I want her? Reach out to her through the glass?’

The Château is silent.

‘There must be another way,’ Leander says. ‘Another way to demonstrate my devotion, my thankfulness. You’re angry that I have been avoiding her, angry that I am not making enough effort to steal her secret. Are you keeping me here until I apologise? Believe me, then: I am sorry. I’ll make penance. Please, I beg of you, let me leave this place. Let me not be haunted by her, if only for a moment.’

When Leander opens his eyes once more, there is still no door—but Genevieve is gone. Instead, the mirror is a mirror, and his own face stares back at him. He is less human than he’s ever seen himself before: his eyes are faceted sapphires, sparkling in their sockets, and his skin is smooth and hard and pale as marble, veined with flecks of silver. He hopes his face returns to some semblance of normality soon. It usually does so quickly. Usually, but not always.

He turns away from his reflection. He knows what his mother wants now.

Before him, the guillotine gleams.

After speaking with Missah, Genevieve ascends six flights of steps before she cannot continue upwards. There she finds a great number of corridors and doors entirely unattended by servants. Although many doors are locked, just as many are open. Most of the rooms here appear to be for storage, full of boxes and chests and easels covered in white cloth; some are empty entirely. One has a forest of busts on plinths, carved in different sizes and from different stones, but all depicting the same severe, elderly man with one ear missing. Another—a long, thin sort of room without any windows, only barely lit from the ambient light of the corridor—has no walkable floor, only a recessed pool of water over black tiling, upon which a vast collection of dying leaves floats and occasionally sinks. Genevieve crouches to regard her reflection in the water. It is indistinct, a hazy shadow whose lines become more and more ill-defined as she watches it. The darkness spills through the liquid like diluted ink as a brown-grey oak leaf slices through the shadow’s wavering neck.

The third room is recognisable from the miniature in the rose garden: it is full of birdcages, and each cage holds a songbird of exotic origin that Genevieve has never seen before. There are dozens and dozens of such creatures, in every tone of red and orange and blue and green, like a collection of jewels. Upon their arrival at Versailles, a cousin had once gifted Genevieve a parrot that could sing songs, bright green with a hooked beak and beady amber eyes. It only ever sang the same tune, over and over, so mournfully that eventually Claire had brought the cage over to the window and released it. Genevieve had been relieved, even proud. She had kissed Claire breathless, golden hair tangling in her fingers, and outside the parrot had flown by in a flutter of scarlet and emerald.

The birds at the Château seem far less melancholy than the parrot had been. If anything, they are angry. Their song is so cacophonous, so discordant, that Genevieve can bear to be there only for a moment before she claps her hands over her ears and turns to leave. But then a glint—something in one of the cages, catching the light. She inches towards it, even as the bird within, a great macaw with hyacinth wings, raises its feathers and calls out in warning.

‘Forgive me,’ she murmurs, poking her fingers through the lower bars. The macaw flashes a talon; it leaves a scratch upon the back of her hand, tearing through her gloves, leaving the silk ragged and stained with a small line of blood. Genevieve gasps in pain, but she remains resolute. She manages to snatch up the figure at the bottom of the cage and inch it out of the gap.

It is a little figure of a man with platinum hair, a silver coat, and a dark hat. Monsieur Sterne, Genevieve realises, and she tucks the miniature into her pouch. Now he must collaborate with her, she thinks with satisfaction. He has no other option, if he does not wish to lose.

Humming, she exits the room. Behind her, she hears the macaw screeching, wings beating fruitlessly within its cage. Poor thing, she thinks. If only I could release you, I would.

Eight

In the darkness, Leander remembers.

He will not remember when he awakens, he knows that he will not, and so he grasps these moments of memory and holds them close, weeping for their dearness. The shouting of children. Siblings—two? Older, he thinks, laughing by a riverbank. A woman’s hand closed around his. Don’t wander too far, darling. That is wild country. Men are fighting there. A school of some sort; a town with wooden houses and a quill in his hand. Winters, bitterly cold. The salt of the sea on his tongue. A tombstone, two. Three, perhaps. The world moves forward; he ought to take a wife. He ought to, he ought to. The grim smile of a pastor. You have lost your family, young Master Sterne. It is understandable that you are lonely—

He awakens trembling.

There is sharp pain in his throat—as if he has swallowed a knife—and above him, a figure looming with a needle in their hand. The figure moves. It is Orestes.

He is on the floor of the foyer; Leander recognises the mural on the ceiling, nymphs and satyrs copulating with expressions of mutual regret. He sits up, ignoring his dizziness, and watches as Orestes replaces the needle in his breast pocket.

‘You falter, Leander,’ Orestes says in gentle admonishment. ‘Not a day of the auction has yet passed, and already you have lost your head.’

‘Yes, very amusing.’ Leander touches his neck: he senses a faint impression of stitches beneath his fingers, and then the stitches disappear, as quickly as he felt them.

‘It has scarred,’ Orestes tells him.

‘Scars fade.’

‘Only some.’ He stands up, offers Leander a hand.

Leander stands without his help. The Château sways in front of him, then stabilises. His neck stings, and each swallow makes him wince with pain. ‘Mother left me a guillotine.’

‘Oh? Whatever for?’

‘Why do you think? She made me. . .’

‘Did she make you?’ Orestes asks with uncharacteristic sharpness. ‘Or did you engineer the punishment yourself, through spite and foolishness? You have been offered a great boon, brother mine. An opportunity you do not seem to grasp.’

‘So you admit it, then.’

‘Admit what?’