Page 35 of Chateau Reverie

‘This way,’ Leander says. He spins away from her and strolls down the hallway. For a moment, it seems as if Genevieve won’t follow. Then he hears her footsteps, hurrying to keep up. He isn’t certain if he’s relieved or disappointed.

Thirteen

He brings her back to the foyer with its tree-shaped clock, standing stoic on its golden roots. Its face reflects the glittering light of the midmorning sun. Its branches seem to have stretched somehow higher, knocking the unlit chandelier askew. Genevieve gives Leander a questioning look, but he only leans against a wall, his face impassive, the little packet of food still dangling from one hand.

‘He’s here, most likely,’ Leander says.

Genevieve circles the tree, but she sees no sign of Ortiz—and then, a glint between a pair of roots. She crouches to see a brass pocket watch, its face cracked into a spider’s web of shards. Through the distorted glass she sees the moment it fell, the broken mechanism forever frozen: four. It must have been early in the morning, then.

Above the roots, the hinged door leading to the clock’s innards is partially open. The lock is scuffed, as if someone has bashed it.

Standing once more, Genevieve opens the door.

Within, unsurprisingly, she is confronted by clockwork: a tangled mass of gears and chains. A pendulum swings with the curious stutter of a heartbeat, side to side. As she observes it, the pendulum begins to speed. The gears are all gold, some inlaid prettily with nacre or enamel, or engraved in an alphabet she does not recognise. And these mechanical pieces are not laid flat, either; they are stacked upon each other or turned at an angle, so as to form shapes within the casing.

Something glitters deep within the clockwork—something moving. Genevieve leans forward. There, between the gears, there is a pair of dark, human eyes blinking back at her.

And that is when she realises: each gear, each cog, has been placed at these convoluted angles and joints for a cause. They resemble a face.

It is the face of Monsieur Ortiz.

Genevieve stumbles backwards, soundless with horror. Tripping over one of the roots of the clock, she falls heavily onto the marble, pain crawling up her spine and into her jaw. She gasps, once, twice, scrabbling at the floor around her. The gears are still ticking, ticking, the pendulum before the human figure swinging faster and faster in an awkward rhythm. One-two-pause. One-two-pause.

A heartbeat. His heartbeat, reacting to her presence.

‘Genevieve,’ Leander says with alarm from across the foyer. He moves towards her, but she is already standing shakily and approaching the clockwork once more.

‘I am sorry,’ she says. ‘My God. I am so sorry.’

If she were to remove a gear now, would it kill him or free him? Surely either fate would be preferable to this, to the perpetual agony of the pendulum. Genevieve thinks of Ortiz the previous day, smiling at her as she admired his work. She cannot permit this to continue. She reaches forward with a trembling hand towards the clock.

‘Don’t,’ comes a harsh voice.

Leander is standing beside her. He loops two fingers around her wrist and pulls her arm down to her side. ‘Don’t,’ he repeats, more softly this time. He keeps his hand on her as if he fears she will shake him away. ‘It’s too late, Genevieve. He’s gone.’

‘He is inside—he is blinking—’

‘And you will join him if you do anything to damage the clock,’ he tells her. ‘This is his punishment for interfering. Ores—the Auctioneer warned us, remember? Warned him, the first morning.’

‘That does not mean he deserves this!’ Genevieve cries, and she tugs her wrist out of his hand. ‘It does not mean we should not save him!’

Leander’s lips press into a grim line. ‘It doesn’t matter what he deserves. What’s happened has happened, and there’s nothing to do but ensure we don’t meet the same fate.’

‘How can you be so cold in the face of this?’ she demands, half tempted to seize him by the collar, to slap him, if only to see something in his expression other than this abhorrent indifference.

‘My grief won’t undo his fate. Neither will yours.’

‘You claimed to admire my compassion, and yet you refuse to feel compassion yourself.’

‘That’s because compassion is for people like you, Genevieve,’ Leander snaps back. ‘People who have others who care for them, rely on them, who will benefit from their kindness. But no one benefits from me, no one ever has. Whether I am kind or cruel or callous—it does not matter. What I do makes no difference at all.’

‘It makes a difference to me,’ Genevieve says without hesitation. ‘Is that not worth something, at least?’

Leander’s expression softens. He glances to the clockwork, rubbing the back of his neck fretfully with his palm; it is such a casual gesture, so mundane, that it throws into relief how curiously still he often holds himself, with that rigid spine and his knees locked.

‘Only one of us can win the auction,’ he says. ‘You understand that, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’