Page 68 of Chateau Reverie

‘You remember, do you not?’ Genevieve murmurs, leaning even closer. She ought to smell like the pond, but instead she is honey sweet, like the oils Claire once rubbed into her skin. ‘How wanted I made you feel? When I begged you to touch me, when I kneeled for you—I could make you feel like that again. Lay me down, Claire, at the roots of the elm, and let me show you how much I have longed for you. . .’

Her breath flutters over Claire’s cheeks, her golden hair hanging limp at her shoulders. Claire wants to believe—she wants to. But she told herself she wouldn’t forget, not this time. A memory comes to her, someone whispering to her in the darkness. It wasn’t your fault, Claire. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t.

‘I have longed for Genevieve, also,’ Claire says, dropping a hand to her pouch. ‘But you are not Genevieve.’

The creature blinks. ‘No?’

‘Genevieve would never have forgiven me,’ Claire says. ‘She would have told me there was nothing to forgive.’

Claire pulls Saliha’s dagger hairpin from her pouch and plunges it into the illusion’s heart. This interloper, this memory corrupted, gasps in response, as if she can feel fear—then a great gout of filthy pondwater bursts out of her chest, brown and stinking of sewage and blood. It arcs into the sky like the jets of a fountain, and Claire tries to throw herself back to avoid it. But Genevieve’s hand darts out, supernaturally strong, and she takes hold of Claire’s wrists. Then she is pulling them both backwards, into the depths of the tarn.

The water is warm and viscous as blood. Claire is momentarily blinded by the green of the algae, the murkiness of the stones beneath her. But then her vision clears, and she can see around her, even though she remains submerged. Genevieve is still there before her, screaming soundlessly in the water, brown torrents of liquid bursting from her chest and spiralling around them, polluting the lake. Her hands are locked around Claire’s waist, keeping her there, and Claire is choking on the filth of the tarn, choking on her own horror. She tries to claw her way up to the surface; Genevieve keeps her down in the deep.

Let me go, Claire tries to say. Please, let me go. But all that emerges is a torrent of bubbles. Her chest is tight, lungs burning. Genevieve is still screaming even as she holds Claire down. And although Claire does not want to die here, she also does not want to see Genevieve suffer—even if this is not truly Genevieve, even if this is only some vision brought forth to destroy her. So she stops struggling. She moves closer to this creature, this mud-slippery amalgam of fury and regret, and she takes it in her arms. The hilt of the hairpin embedded in its chest pokes uncomfortably at her ribs. Claire runs her fingers through the golden hair that floats around them in some small attempt at comfort.

I understand, she thinks. Scream if you must. Scream for all the times I could not. I will be here once it is over.

She waits. Slowly, uncertainly, the false Genevieve stops screaming, stops writhing in the water. Claire pulls her head back to look her in the eye. They stare at each other.

Slowly, Genevieve releases Claire’s waist.

Part of her wishes to stay down there, with her dead lover and the silent stones. To drift forever in the waters of this tarn in the shade of the willow trees and know nothing but peace.

But someone is waiting for her.

So Claire pushes herself up, up from the base of the lake. Her head breaches the surface, and then she is gasping clean mountain air, sodden and wild and alive. She is no swimmer, of course, and so it is with an awkward lunge that she reaches the bank, pulling herself onto the grass with all the grace of a slug upon a leaf. Her white gown is white no longer. The algae in the tarn has stained it an extraordinary emerald green—the same shade as the Company livery.

Claire stands, legs trembling. She looks to the horizon, where the sun sits waiting upon a mountaintop. She checks the watch: half an hour remains.

Leander. She must find him.

She thinks of Orestes, when last they spoke. At the heart of it all, you may find the answer.

Skirts in her hands, she runs back towards the gardens.

Twenty-Six

Leander is in the hedge maze.

He has no way of knowing where he is inside it: the lion has tugged him up here, has taken a seat at a dead end of greenery to stare expectantly at him, but apart from this it can provide no other service. Leander must find his way out alone, dig his way through the honeysuckle and topiaries to find his escape.

It is nearly dawn. Claire must have already bid, or she at least is in the process of doing so. Still, something compels him to stumble forward down the path. To look for her, even though he knows it’s useless. He wants to watch her leave. To see her escape Reverie for good, and know that she is safe.

Around a sharp turn, he almost stumbles into something: a topiary of a man inspecting the opposite hedge, leaning forward with his fingers stroking his chin, two white puffs of allium fashioning his eyes. Leander stops, swears softly to himself. He reaches out hesitantly, then retracts his hand.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he says to Missah. ‘I should have known you’d end up here.’

The hedge Missah makes no reply. Perhaps one day he might; some of those transformed eventually learn to navigate their new bodies, just as the lion has. Or perhaps he will remain here forever, pondering the maze’s secrets. Either way, Leander cannot help him. Not now.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says once more, stumbling forward. Nothing to be done, he tells himself. There’s nothing to be done. But that doesn’t stop him from retching once he turns the second corner, falling to his knees on the porcelain gravel.

At the start of this auction, Leander had felt numb to all the cruelty and the sacrifice his mother demanded. But now the human parts of him have reawakened, Claire has reawakened them, and he is terrified, furious. He must escape this place. If not the Château, then this maze, at least, with its twittering birds and mocking loveliness. Morning is coming and he refuses to be lost here for the rest of his pitiful existence. He will watch Claire—Genevieve now—leave Reverie, even if it kills him. He must prove to himself that this time, this one time, he has done something right.

‘Onward,’ Leander says. He squares his shoulders and begins to walk, ignoring the way the corridor before him seems to stretch forever without a turn, the way the dawn seems mere moments from breaking. On the hedge to his left, a robin made of polished jasper lands to consider him, its sparkling eyes watching with a sort of spiteful delight.

Claire arrives at the maze.

As before, the labyrinth has neither entrance nor exit, the hedges closed and impenetrable. She peers at it through the hole Orestes made in her fan; she sees nothing. She attempts to climb, but the hedges are too dense to find hold. Claire will run out of time before she can find a way over the top.