Page 40 of Chateau Reverie

‘Your master,’ she echoes.

‘Yes.’

‘Your master, who was the real Mattias Kurki? You are his servant?’

‘Yes. I accompanied him on the journey here.’

‘And then you took his place.’

He gives her a pleading look. ‘You must not tell anyone, mademoiselle. I needed it more than he did.’

‘What did you do to him?’ she asks.

His eyes flit guiltily away.

‘What did you do?’ Genevieve repeats in horror.

‘I needed it more,’ he insists. ‘I am in love. The one I love is beyond me, but. . . she will return my affections. The Company will make it so. My heart’s desire—they’ll give it to me if I win, surely, even though I couldn’t write it down?’

Genevieve replies, ‘You would force a woman to love you?’

His lips twist into a grimace. ‘I will make her happy,’ he says. ‘Happier than anyone else could.’

‘That invitation was not for you. You lied to the Company.’

‘I know. That is why you cannot tell them.’

‘I. . .’ Trembling, Genevieve presses her hands into the cold stone of the fountain behind her. There is nowhere for her to go. ‘If I swear I will keep your secret, will you permit me my freedom?’

He scrutinises her face. Genevieve keeps her expression as open, as compelling as she can—even as she thinks of Saliha Sultan in her apron and wonders what the price of her deceit will be. Wonders if the Company—who value honesty above anything—will tolerate his lies, her lies, once they are discovered. Wonders whether they will both find themselves polishing silverware and tightening corsets at Château Reverie for whichever group of fools comes next.

Something of her doubts must show in her face. ‘Forgive me,’ Not Kurki says, shoulders slumping. ‘I do not believe you. And I cannot risk this. I cannot lose my only chance.’

He comes nearer still. One of his hands is fisted at his side. At best, he means to apprehend her, to tie her up and obscure her somewhere until the auction is over—at best. At worst? She cannot bear to think of it. She feels a deep and familiar terror inside of her, acrid and aching, turning in her stomach and burning her throat. If she had a pistol or a sword, she would be capable of saving herself. But Genevieve has neither of those things. She has only her pretty gowns and her insipid smiles and her pearl earrings. She has her cowardice and her guilt and her desperation. It is not enough. It never has been.

‘Please,’ Genevieve says. ‘I beg you.’

‘I am sorry,’ he replies.

There is movement to the side of them, something shifting, something stretching. There is a rumbling like rocks rolling down a mountainside. Not Kurki looks to Genevieve’s left, his face a mask of horror; Genevieve follows his gaze. The marble lion is rolling its neck as if awakening from a long sleep. With a gravelly purr, it leaps off its plinth, as living as any animal—and, without pause, it pounces upon Not Kurki.

There is a gruesome sound, the crunch of bone meeting stone. The lion closes its jaws around him, head and torso, and tips him upwards so that his scuffed leather boots are pointing towards the blue sky. Then it eats him.

It is not clean. As Not Kurki slips downwards into the creature’s gullet, there is a snapping noise, and his body hinges awfully, like a wishbone pulled apart; blood drenches the lion’s lower jaws and the grass beneath them. Whatever injury has been done, it is enough to prevent Not Kurki from screaming, and so he dies without a word, without a scream—there is only the splintering, wet noise of bone and flesh scraping against rock, and Genevieve’s own panicked breathing, fluttering in her chest in time with her heart. The lion’s throat bobs, it shakes its head back, and then Not Kurki is gone.

The creature’s eyes, two chiselled dimples in orbs of marble, turn towards Genevieve consideringly. Blood streams out of its mouth in a distorted mimicry of the fountain behind them.

Genevieve could never outrun a lion, not even if she had enough control of her limbs at that moment to move them. Shaking, she collapses against the side of the fountain. The creature sits down on the gravel in much the same pose as a housecat, tail swishing, regarding her warily.

A light, honeysuckle-scented breeze blows through the gardens of Château Reverie. A cloud passes briefly over the sun, momentarily cloaking Genevieve in shadow; in the distance, a songbird trills a tune.

Genevieve closes her eyes. She falls forward and presses her forehead against the earth, breathing in the soil, breathing in the grass, breathing in the Château itself, until she is no longer herself but merely another plant with its roots in the dirt. She listens to the movements of the wind and the water falling in the fountain. She pretends that the lion is not there, that she knows nothing but nature and the daylight. When a hand suddenly presses against her back, she is so subsumed by these things that she does not notice it is there. It takes hearing her name, said over and over, pleading and concerned, before she can lift her head and recall that she is even human.

It is Leander. It is always him, and it feels in that moment as if it always will be. He cups her face in one palm and says, ‘Oh, sweetheart, what happened?’ with such anguish, such surrender—his wide eyes so blue, Genevieve wishes to drink from them, wishes to plunge into them and never resurface.

‘Kurki,’ she says, stumbling over the name as if she has only just learnt it. ‘He is dead. He nearly took me, and then the lion took him.’

Leander glances at the lion, its stone maw stained scarlet, watching them from the grass. He walks over to it and crouches, so that his face is level with the beast’s.