Page 44 of Chateau Reverie

‘I was reading from an English book,’ she whispers. ‘And she was laughing. She was laughing, because I could not pronounce through correctly.’

Leander tightens his grip on her hand.

‘But it was not raining that night,’ she continues. ‘Or—perhaps it was. I am not certain anymore. When I think of it, all I can see is her face.’

A flash of lightning onstage. All is bright, white, and colourless, and a cymbal strikes. Then darkness, pure darkness.

A woman screams. Genevieve does not know whether it is one of the dancers or herself.

There is the sound of shattering glass. She wants to close her eyes, but she cannot. She is blind in the black, awaiting sight once more, and the only thing that feels real is Leander’s hand in hers.

The chandeliers blaze back to light, illuminating the theatre once more with their warm glow. The stage is now free of scenery and sky. There is merely wooden flooring and a plain dark backdrop. One dancer lies dead on the bare boards, staring sightlessly at the ceiling above them. Her leg is twisted at an unnatural angle beneath her. The other looms above her, standing still and silent, staring directly at Genevieve in her seat.

Beneath the mask of thorns, scarlet rivulets of blood well and drip down its wearer’s chin.

The cymbal strikes again. The curtain falls.

‘My God,’ Missah murmurs.

Genevieve pulls her hand out of Leander’s. ‘Wait,’ he says, but she ignores him. Instead, she stands, leans over, and vomits a stomach of half-digested cherries onto the floor of the theatre. It leaves a pool of bile dark as wine, staining the parquet red.

Sixteen

‘You must calm yourself,’ Orestes says.

Leander snarls, rakes his nails across the wall of the hallway. The Château trembles faintly beneath his abuse, as if this house is frightened of him, the puppet forced to dance within its walls. Good, Leander thinks savagely. You obey her, don’t you? Always. You obey our mother, because you were the first of her creations, the most beloved, the grandest. You are complicit in all of this, and I will never forgive you for that.

‘Don’t you disgust yourself?’ Leander shouts. ‘This cruelty, all for the sake of the Lady’s pageant, her ballet, her make-believe. If she wanted something more from it, if it had meaning, then perhaps it would be less reprehensible. But this is bloodsport, Orestes. That is all it is, and all it ever has been.’

Orestes glances meaningfully to the door at their left—the door to Genevieve’s chambers, behind which she is sleeping with tear tracks down her face. She had been insensate when Leander had carried her to bed. When he’d put her down, she’d seized his wrist, and whispered, ‘Forgive me. Forgive me.’ He tried to speak more to her, but she would say nothing else.

‘Immortality breeds boredom,’ Orestes says to him, ‘and boredom breeds madness—true madness. For as long as I remember, Lady Reverie has been running these auctions and delighting in the dissolution of the guests. We are powerless to stop it. We ought to be thankful that we are no longer victims.’

‘I refuse to be thankful for any of it.’

‘Be angry instead, then, Leander,’ Orestes replies. His voice is tired. ‘As you always have been. Battle against the current until your strength fails. That is your destiny, as much as surrender is mine.’

‘I can’t believe you’d—’

‘Believe it!’ Orestes cries in frustration, and Leander almost gasps in shock, so rare is it that his brother shows any emotion but amusement or mild disapproval. It makes him look human, almost, the way his cheeks have flushed with annoyance, and the way he rips his straw hat off his head as if it has offended him. ‘Believe I am the same as our mother and the Château both. Believe I have been sent to destroy you and your dearest Genevieve, to ensure you never escape. Believe whatever you must, Leander, to keep that fury in your heart. Because once that fury is gone, you will be like me, and you will lose whatever small pieces of yourself you have managed to retain.’

‘Orestes,’ Leander says in shock, in confusion. But his brother doesn’t allow him to finish. He spins on his heel and collapses into a cloud of shimmering beetles, their wings an iridescent green. The swarm undulates, buzzes round the ceiling, and then flies in unison down the hall.

Leander watches him leave. There is nothing he can say, he knows, to stop him, to apologise. Perhaps once there was—but no longer. Not ever again.

It’s not yet time for the final banquet, so Leander leaves Genevieve to rest in her room.

He goes to the clock in the foyer and stares at Señor Ortiz in the gears. He wonders how much of the Château is made of bones; how many hands and eyes and beating hearts are still embedded in the walls, the floors, the soaring columns, and the gargoyles on the roof. He says, ‘What was your secret?’ and leans in to listen, but if Ortiz is speaking, Leander cannot understand. There’s only the ticking, the heartbeat ticking. He has that victory, at least, this poor clockwork man: his secrets will remain his own. The Company can take almost everything, but not that. Not anymore.

He wanders the Château, as he always does. In a marble room Leander doesn’t recognise, but which he knows he’s visited before, he finds Madame Kramarov sitting in front of a portrait. The man in the portrait is faceless, a smudge of skin-tone paint and yellow blue. If Leander were human the way the guests are, he might recognise a person there—but instead, he sees the truth beneath. He sees the hook his mother has laid in the canvas, the lure without its bait.

‘Young man,’ Kramarov says cordially, glancing at him.

‘Madame.’

‘Is Mademoiselle de Vienne at all improved?’

‘I don’t know,’ he says honestly. ‘She is sleeping.’