Page 52 of Chateau Reverie

Another firework. It is peach and white, bright as sunlight, and in the aftermath of its glow, Claire says, ‘Take my secret, then. Now that you see I am not worthy of your sacrifice.’

‘Not worthy,’ he snarls, and he takes her hand in his, presses his nails into the meat of her palm in his desperation. ‘Claire, of course I want you to remain who you are. But I will never—never—allow you to become a servant of the Company. To be trapped here for eternity. I love you too much. I love you—I don’t know how it’s possible—but I do. And if you don’t leave this place, you will be doing to me what Genevieve did to you. You will make me live the rest of my life in regret.’

Claire’s blood is roaring in her ears. She wants to say, Don’t. She wants to say, I am sorry.

But she says nothing. The silence is sudden and fraught: they are both speechless, awaiting another firework. It does not come. Perhaps the display is over.

Leander stands and offers her his hand. Claire takes it, and he draws her up to him. ‘I can’t allow it,’ he says, and he sounds exhausted, his voice almost hoarse. ‘The truth is, Claire, I have deceived you as much as you’ve deceived me. You will realise that soon enough, and then my loss will hurt less. I’m certain it will.’

Tears well once more. ‘I do not want to lose you, Leander.’

‘You will hardly remember it,’ he says. He brushes a tear from her cheek. ‘The Château will be like a nightmare, sweetheart. Painful, but soon forgotten.’

She shakes her head. ‘I cannot forget. I will not.’

He takes a step away from her and curls his arms around himself, tipping his head to the sky. ‘When you leave this place,’ he says, ‘and, God, I hope you leave this place—I will only be a dream to you. But I hope you’ll still know that you were my lantern, Claire Marchand. I almost drowned for you.’

Nothing Claire can say will change his fate, or hers. Not now. Leander turns on his heel, and she watches him leave without so much as a farewell, without so much as a backward glance. As she does so, she tries to grasp at the wisps of Genevieve de Vienne still hanging about her shoulders, wondering if she can pull another woman’s face back on. But it does not work. The last of Genevieve is finally gone somehow. Claire stands there alone, shivering in the dark, living a life that should belong to someone else.

Twenty

Leander takes the path away from the Château, towards the bridge and the river. At the stream he turns left rather than right; he is looking for his brother and he knows where he might be found.

The night is bright in this place; it always is. The moon is so large and full—every night it is full—and the stars around it so numerous that there is as much light in the sky as there is dark. Leander follows the path with his arms still wrapped around himself, gulping down the chill, wet midnight air. He isn’t frightened, nor is he cold. He just wants to keep himself together, wants to hold all the human pieces of himself that Claire Marchand has given him close to his chest. She has made him a little more mortal, he thinks, and he wishes to stay that way—at least until the Château takes his memories of her once more.

And here is the tarn. A small lake pressed into the mountainside as if a giant made it with his thumbprint. It sits in the shadow of a great elm, and the water appears to be welling from some underground spring; it bubbles at its centre, and it is so clear, even at night, that Leander can see the pearlescent stones at the tarn’s base, shuddering with the water’s movement as if alive. Blue gentians and pale edelweiss crowd the tarn’s banks, bowing their heads curiously towards the water. It is beautiful, of course, because everything here is. Leander would like it better ugly. He would like there to be mud and scum and the stink of dead fish. It’d be easier. Kinder.

‘Leander,’ comes a voice, and he looks up to see a figure sitting in the branches of the elm. Orestes, staring up at the sky. ‘Do you require something of me?’

‘I. . . I don’t know,’ Leander says. ‘I wanted to speak with you.’

Orestes smiles at him. His teeth glitter like fireflies in the dark. ‘Have you made your choice?’

‘Yes.’

‘You will stay? Permit Genevieve de Vienne to bid and to win?’

‘Yes.’

‘My congratulations to her, then,’ Orestes says pleasantly. ‘A rare achievement, to win an auction.’

Leander leans against the trunk of the tree. ‘You said to me, yesterday, that only one person has ever done so before.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Who was it?’

Orestes sighs. ‘Who do you think? It was you, Leander. Of course it was.’

Leander feels the truth of that—he had guessed it—but it hurts him all the same. He had always suspected that he had once been a guest, but if he’d broken a rule, taken a penalty, he would be here trapped the same as all the others in his mother’s collection: soulless, emotionless, a doll for her to manipulate and decorate in her quest to create her perfect Château. Instead, he is a cruel contradiction. He is without memories and yet aware of his own forgetting.

Orestes shuffles on his branch, dangles a hand down over Leander’s head. A moth flutters towards his open palm and lands upon his outstretched fingers. He closes his fist, crushing it.

He says, ‘Mother made me, but you, she stole. And you have changed during your time here, to my surprise. When you arrived, you felt. . . younger. More earnest. You had been lonely in your previous life, so lonely—that was evident enough. Whatever family you had once possessed had been lost to you. You were desperate to find someone who could share your solitude. You called me “brother” gladly, and you came to me when you were frightened, when you did not understand the workings of the Château. Ah, but those days are long gone now, are they not? Swept away with the wind.’

‘How long have I been here?’ Leander asks him.

‘I could not say with certainty. A century, perhaps? When you came for your auction, you referred to your land as a colony. You were born there, but your parents were not. I know little more than that.’