Page 64 of Chateau Reverie

‘You are my Hero,’ she says. ‘Once, a young Leander came to my auction, and he won it. He wished for love: now I have given it to him.’

Claire covers her mouth with her hand, holding her breath, fearing that if she releases it she will cry out with her horror. She sees it now, with sudden, awful clarity: the Lady’s vision. Her grand tragedy told in three days, three acts. Like the ballet on the stage, but played out across the entirety of the Château; how cleverly she has engineered it.

‘You will keep him,’ Claire says hollowly, ‘when I leave.’

‘Naturally. His original wish has been granted. He asked for true love, not that he might have it always. And you, Claire Marchand, will attain your heart’s desire. You will be the first to win the auction and then leave it. A carriage awaits you before the gates, with your servants and your horses. Once you are no longer on Company ground, you shall be Genevieve de Vienne entirely. Her memories will be yours; Claire Marchand will be gone.’

Claire replies, ‘And the tragedy will occur once more. Hero and Leander, torn apart.’

The Lady smiles indulgently. ‘Is it not enchanting, mademoiselle? I am a great storyteller; I have always considered myself as such. I choose my cast so intentionally—ensure the characters are unique and fascinating—and the entertainment that results is so utterly delightful. This auction has been my favourite to date. I think I shall never forget it.’

The cruelty of it all, the satisfaction in her voice, makes Claire feel sick to her stomach. Was this how the people felt as they suffered famine and war, staring up at the gleaming walls of Versailles? She understands it now. She finally understands.

She takes a deep breath. She wants to leap at Lady Reverie and push her off her pedestal. She wants to fall to her knees and scream and laugh and snarl like a rabid dog. But she is accustomed to wearing Genevieve’s face, accustomed to play-acting at admiration and coyness. And so, carefully ensuring her words are free of deceit, she replies, ‘My heart’s desire is an extraordinary reward, my lady, one I am in awe of receiving. And yet. . .’

The Lady raises her brows; the new furrows in her golden forehead scatter a beam of sunlight over the grass. ‘And yet?’

She is treading dangerous ground. ‘It is impertinent in the extreme,’ Claire says. ‘I know this—but I wish to change my heart’s desire and receive a different reward.’

Lady Reverie throws her head back and laughs. The laughter is somehow not laughter, but instead a shower of pearls that burst from her lips and fall to the ground, rolling and scattering. A few bounce against Claire’s skin and shoes before settling, and they are painful upon impact, causing her to flinch.

‘You wrote your desire upon your invitation,’ the Lady says. ‘An invitation that you burnt. The request is binding, unless you can raise that paper from its ashes.’

‘That invitation was addressed to Genevieve de Vienne.’

‘Yes.’

‘And I am not Genevieve de Vienne,’ Claire says. ‘Not yet. At this moment, my lady—the moment you declared me winner of the auction—I remain Claire Marchand.’

For the first time, the Lady does not reply immediately. Her silence is heavy, and Claire wonders if this is the moment she seals her own execution. She escaped the guillotine, but the blades of the Company, she suspects, are far more insidious. The Lady resembles a woman, in a superficial sense, but her inhumanity is evident not only in the shine of her skin and the crystalline cry of her voice. It is in the blankness of her eyes and the detached disappointment with which she regards Claire, as if she is a figurine she has moulded, and now she is deciding whether to throw the clay to the ground and try again.

‘Speak, then, Claire Marchand,’ Lady Reverie finally says. ‘What is your new wish?’

‘Leander,’ Claire replies. ‘I wish to leave this place as Claire Marchand, without forgetting who I was—in so doing, not attaining the wish I made previously. Instead, I wish for Leander to come with me. I wish for his heart’s desire. I wish him to be free of the Company.’

She expects, perhaps, that the Lady shall be furious at this request, or at least shocked—but she simply purses her lips, as if she has bitten into something sour. ‘You are so willing to sacrifice what you came here for?’ she asks. ‘To always recall your past and feel the weight of your guilt? For the sake of love alone?’

‘For my own sake,’ Claire says. ‘If I am ever to forgive myself, I must remember what there is to forgive. I realise that now.’

‘And Leander shall be your salvation? Your penance?’

‘He is dear to me, and I wish to save him.’

‘That is all?’

‘Perhaps not. But that alone is enough.’

Lady Reverie sniffs in disdain. Taking the lotus in one hand, she reaches with the other for the sunflower that has grown beside her—then, with a savage tug, she pulls the flower’s head from its stem. She crushes the flower’s crystal centre within her fist. Her own blood, dripping through her fingers, is the mirror-molten colour of liquid mercury. She says, ‘Choice is not a kindness, girl. The aeons have shown me that. The chaos and fickleness of your world disgusts me. Your people were given fire; you set your cities alight. You found iron and made it into swords. You learnt to farm, then hoarded grain until others starved. My auctions create new stories for you: ones that punish your follies as you deserve and provide reward when it is due. I offered you salvation, and in return you ask for more.’

The Lady pauses here—looming over Claire, an aureate colossus—and then, delicately, cruelly, she makes to step from her pedestal. Claire cries out, tripping backwards: it seems that the Lady will crush her beneath one golden limb. But she does not. She pauses, smiling coldly at Claire, then returns to her previous stance.

‘You fear me,’ Lady Reverie says. ‘That is not surprising. You are no braver than any other woman who has stood before me and asked me for something I will not give. I have ruled this place since men have had secrets to keep and lies to speak. I have had a thousand guests standing before me and promising my destruction. None of them mattered. Not in the end.’

‘I know I do not matter,’ Claire replies. ‘And I do not promise your end, Lady Reverie. I cannot stop you, just as I cannot stop the fall of the guillotine blade, the start of a war, the end of a century. I do not think that saving Leander will stop the auctions, or undo what has already been done in this place. If there have already been a thousand Leanders, and a thousand Claires, and all of them have ended in tragedy—then I accept that we may be the next. But we may not be. And that chance, no matter how small, is worth any risk I could ever take.’

Lady Reverie’s lips smile, a smile constructed piece by piece, as though gears turning in a watch: first one side lifting, then the other, then her cheeks raising, and her mouth opening to speak.

‘You are exquisite, Claire Marchand,’ she says, ‘standing before me now, with a soul full of scars and a heart full of love. Perhaps it is time I finally took a daughter.’