The salon was always changing, but Céleste had managed to find a pattern to the place. Artists were creatures of habit and comfort. They liked to take their aperitifs in the front room and nibble on crystallized flowers while they reintroduced themselves—their memories as hazy as the surrounding smoke. Céleste had met Jean Cocteau nearly twenty times, and he’d herded her to the designers’ tent after half of those, recalling only during her fitting that he’d dressed her before. Never mind! What shall we wear this evening? A cape made of storm clouds? A scarf knitted with auroras? Trousers hemmed in honeysuckle?
At least he remembered now that she preferred pants. And pockets.
These outfits became her touchstones, a way to tell this endless stream of evenings apart. Nights of fire, moonbeams, and furs. But every single one of these costumes paled in comparison to putting on Rafe’s shadow. There was nothing quite like the feel of its darkness against her skin—sleek, but also crackling. Wearing his silhouette was like listening to a gramophone right after the needle dropped, waiting, waiting for the song to finally play. It reminded Céleste too of how winter air sometimes pulled itself tight around her fingers, turning her touches to sparks.
It felt like this all over.
Every night.
They met before the enchanted hour, sometimes at a café in the Latin Quarter, sometimes at a bench by the river—always approaching the Fontaine Saint-Michel together. Céleste still didn’t trust the dragon to let her in alone, and Rafe didn’t seem to mind being used as an imaginary shield. He played the part of romantic dreamer well. Almost too well. Whenever they stepped into the Quartier Secret, whenever he handed her an aperitif that somehow tasted exactly like dawn swallows swirling around a château’s slanted roof, whenever his color-splashed fingertips tightened around his own flute, whenever he tipped its orange contents down his throat, Céleste could see an altogether different life.
She saw it in the painters’ wing too.
Rafe liked to stop here, often after their costume change, when they were wearing moss or spiders’ silk or a cape woven out of fables. Céleste looked down at these words, hemming her ankles, wishing she’d thought to ask for an invisibility cloak instead. The problem with relying on Rafe García’s shadow was that it put her at his mercy. She could not go down into the Vault of Dreams until he finished painting.
Oh, how he painted.
Rafe’s talent was raw. Her old art teacher would have been aghast at the way he held a brush, but the former gangster didn’t seem to give a damn about form. He rolled up his shirtsleeves. He slashed. He slapped. He moved as if he were in the middle of a street fight instead of an all-encompassing canvas. It was a sort of battle—against the room’s blankness. Rafe kept filling the white with frenzied strokes, summoning scenes that made Céleste forget his combative movements completely.
There were staircases that climbed into themselves, until you reached a ceiling of stars that could be picked and eaten like fruit. Balconies would become cliffside cities. Stained glass floors rose into rainbow-hued mountains, which rose into skies filled with colorful clouds, clouds that had castles tucked in their towering shapes, so that you had to paint wings on your own back to reach them. It was possible here. Artists often opened their exhibits toward the end of the evening, so that salon-goers could wander through one of André Derain’s famed forests or get lost in a maze created by Pablo Picasso.
Rafe’s landscapes felt like the beginning of something bigger though. You’d need more than one night to explore them properly… such as this ice palace. It sat on top of a slow-moving glacier, its walls threaded through with auroras. Green light grew like vines. Blue spilled through too. Bits of gold dashed up Rafe’s forearms as he mixed a new borealis with his brush. It looked as if he’d plunged his hands into a vat of sunlight.
“Are you almost done?” Céleste called out.
“Never.” He straightened, pushing some of the hair from his face to meet her gaze. The motion left trails of gold over his cheeks. “Why? Would you like to try?”
A satin sky yawned above them, crying out for more stars. Something yawned inside Céleste too, when Rafe walked over with the flaring brush in his fist. His shadow did not so much as touch her, and for a moment, she let herself imagine a life where she didn’t need it. A night spent adding turrets to his castles and constellations to his skies and then drawing new horizons of her own. Nothing like those poorly painted backdrops at The Rite of Spring—who the hell believed that looked like Russia?
Céleste hadn’t thought twice about this at the ballet, but she knew better now, thanks to her weekly visits to the Mad Monk. It wasn’t quite like confession—there was no screen between her and the Sanct who posed as a priest. His head would bow, and his eyes would light, and a numbing blue would freeze her lungs, and it was all too easy to imagine snow blanketing the garden on the other side of the window.
She was due for another glimpse today, but only if she had dreams to burn first.
If they returned to XXXXXXX without any imaginings, he would be… displeased.
Céleste reached out and seized the brush. “We should go before we give ourselves frostbite.”
Her voice felt ice thin.
Her fingers dripped with light. His too. Rafe was still holding the brush.
“I’d rather just paint you a coat,” he said. “Fuchsia fox or silver sable? Which one do you want?”
Céleste did not want a coat. She didn’t care what Rafe wanted either, or so she told herself. She tried to ignore the way their hands overlapped—tried not to think of more gold tracing their skin, of gilding each other’s bodies like illustrations from a fairy tale. She didn’t look at the divot on his chin. Nor did she let her gaze drop to the muscular ridges of his chest, even though his shirt made of sea fog did little to hide them.
“We already spent a tragic amount of time getting decorated by Jean this evening,” she told him. “We can’t waste any more painting snowflakes—”
“A waste?” Rafe’s laugh wasn’t funny at all. It shook them both, rattling the chains of his watch too. “Is that what you think this is? A waste? I spent my entire youth stuck in a moldy room, drawing whatever my boss wanted. Signatures, deeds, banknotes—nothing that was really worth a damn. I hated scribbling that uninspired shit, but I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. I drew the best I could in that dark closet. There wasn’t even a window to look out of—so I found myself some posters to stick to the wall. The travel ones had the best landscapes. Athenian ruins. The golden spires of Constantinople. When I stared at them, I had something to look forward to.” His gaze swept over the wintry chamber. “What’s the point, otherwise?”
Céleste watched her cloudy breath rise. Fade. The palace he’d painted on the glacier looked a lot like the estate she’d spent her childhood in—ogival arches, matching turrets, a weather vane with a vain A. She wondered if Rafe had picked up those details from her own dark memory, when XXXXXXX had plucked it from her head. Did he think this was a place she wanted to escape to?
“When I was young, I lived in a château with lots of windows,” she said. “My father was a rich man, but that didn’t stop him from chasing fantasies. He lost our fortune to a swindler when I was seventeen, but he never told my mother and me. Instead, he found the highest window he could.” Her eyes flicked to the tallest tower. Its walls were starting to sweat, and a puddle was forming on the snow below, where the Artoises’ groundskeeper had found the body. “The house was shut up after that. My mother couldn’t cope. She was sent to Charenton.” Chunks of ice were falling now. “I lost everything.”
“Careful,” Rafe said sharply.
The whole castle was melting, sinking into its own glowing lake like some eerie Camelot. It swept Céleste’s cape of fables around her ankles. It rose up to her knees, cold as grief. She couldn’t stop it even if she tried, and God, how she’d tried. She took the train to Paris and didn’t look back. She kept on taking. She’d swindled men as stupid as her father and buried their gold. Now she had to spend her nights trying to dig her way out of her own grave. Céleste Estelle Artois has enough dirt on her hands as it is. The Seer’s words rushed back with the water. She became what ruined her, but she stands to become so much more. She’s exactly where she needs to be.
Well, she would be. If she could just get Rafe to let go of the brush and hand her his damned shadow…
“I can’t always be stardust,” Céleste said. “I have to survive.”
She’d spent five years turning this pain into profit, but she’d never spilled the truth of it like this. Not even Honoré knew the whole story.
Rafe’s expression softened.
“I know,” he whispered. “Believe me, I know, but dreaming is surviving.” He let go of the brush then, to run a hand through his dark hair. This didn’t just leave trails of gold but silver too—his ideas shimmered like tinsel. “If you go too long in the salon without creating something original, La Fée Verte will notice. She may not invite you back.”
Shit. She hadn’t considered this. Even though Céleste held the brush with perfect technique, it felt strange in her hand. Her calluses could no longer be called that, after three weeks without painting. The canvases in the Enchantresses’ tomb were blank, and her mind felt much the same. The last time she’d sketched something that was truly hers, she’d been sitting in that melting turret.
As for shining hairs? Well, the green birds did not flock to her the way they bothered the other imaginers… Could they sense Céleste was sourcing her sense of wonder from Sylvie’s storybooks? Forgeries seemed to be about the only thing she could conjure, apart from that first night following the dragon, when Rafe had stolen her hairpin. When everything turned glittering…
The thief was even closer now than he’d been then.
The gold on his face shimmered. So did the paint on his fingers, as he reached out to touch a strand of hair by Céleste’s cheek. “After being locked away in that dark room for so many years, the light of this salon was almost too much. It took me weeks to finally paint something that was worth a damn.” Rafe glanced back at the brush in her hand. “You do want to try, don’t you?”
“Am I so transparent?” She certainly felt that way, as one of the castle’s outer ramparts collapsed. As Rafe’s fingers grazed her cheek. As her own hand tightened around the brush.
Want—yes, that was a word that spelled out Céleste’s life. Only, she’d never felt it quite so keenly before. Instead of a hole in her belly, there was a fire.
“Go on,” Rafe murmured. “The night’s young. We have plenty of time to explore your landscape.”
He was right.
Well, she wanted him to be right, and that was all that mattered as Céleste tilted her head closer to his. Rafe’s hand traced down her jaw, tipping her chin just so, leaning in, in—
“OH!”
Both artists pulled apart at the sound. It had come from the outer edges of the landscape room, where the phosphorescent ice castle’s water was sweeping past an elephant—of all things. The blue creature was balancing a tray of drinks on its trunk.
And on the animal’s back…
“Were you about to kiss?” Sylvie called gaily. She was wearing a cape that unfolded into a large pair of orange butterfly wings, which she then used to balance along the beast’s spine. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. But I’m glad I did! We’ve been looking everywhere for you, Céleste! And I do mean everywhere! Isn’t this place amazing? I can’t believe you never told us about it before.”
“Sylvie?” Céleste faltered in the frigid water, at a loss. “Your hair is…”
The girl finished triumphantly. “Pink!”
“Violently.” Rafe looked as shocked as Céleste was, seeing her young ward with fuchsia curls, on top of an elephant. “It seems I should have nicknamed you ‘Weasel’ instead of ‘Magpie.’ How on earth did you manage to sneak in here?”
“I didn’t sneak! La Fée Verte invited us inside because she wants Honoré to become a knight, just like Joan of Arc! Did you know her dragon ring is magical, Céleste? You should see her fight with it. She’s supposed to learn how to battle shadows…”
“Shadows?” Céleste was thankful then that Rafe’s silhouette was submerged.
The man himself appeared to be holding his breath.
“I think so,” Sylvie went on. “La Fée Verte wouldn’t say any more about it in front of me. They stepped into this castle and froze up the drawbridge a while ago and— Oh! Hello again!”
The last of the walls had washed away to reveal Honoré. Her friend looked changed. There was a nasty new cut on her face, but that was the least of it. Something about the way she stood did bring Joan of Arc to mind. Someone had conjured her a suit of armor… and there was a halo of light surrounding the other Enchantress, making her sharp features even sharper. Holier-than-thou. A war-banner image.
“Mon amie!” When Honoré started splashing toward her, Céleste saw the glow had come from La Fée Verte. She saw the armor was not a couturier’s idea but her friend’s dragon ring. Its band had rippled out from Honoré’s fist, sheathing her skin in metal. “Can you believe it?”
No. Céleste couldn’t.
She’d walked away from Honoré, dusk after dusk, because she thought she’d had no choice but to leave the other Enchantresses in the dark. Now—here under the light of La Fée Verte’s stare—she saw what a mistake that had been.
“Honoré.” It had never been so hard to say her friend’s name before. “What—How did you find this place?”
“No thanks to you two.” The other Enchantress’s eyes cut to where Rafe was standing. “Why the hell did you keep this salon a secret?”
“It is a secret,” Rafe explained. “No one who attends this place remembers it after sunrise.”
“Everyone forgets all this?” Sylvie’s pink brows knit together. “Every morning?”
La Fée Verte was moving toward them, but her steps didn’t seem to ripple the water. “There are exceptions,” she said. “I’ve invited Honoré to stay for the foreseeable future, so she can help me with some… security.” Rafe’s smile wavered at this. Céleste doubled down on hers. “Nothing for you to worry about, mes rêveurs.”
Au contraire.
Her stomach twisted as she watched Honoré’s ring crawl up her arm, until the dragon grew to the size of a hawk and perched on her shoulder. It reminded Céleste of the fountain statue—right down to the glint of its teeth.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Sylvie leapt off the elephant, her butterfly wings a frantic burst of orange. They were fresh and clumsy. She landed in a somersault, water splashing, her pink hair splayed across her face. “We can create anything we want! Did you paint this castle, Céleste?”
“Rafe did.”
Rafe, who was eyeing the ring as if he expected it to bite him. Honoré seemed to notice his wariness, but she also seemed to understand. “It’s all right,” she told him. “I’m controlling it.”
La Fée Verte raised her gilded eyebrows. “You know this piece?”
“I knew its former owner,” he said tightly.
“I went back to the bar this evening, looking for you,” Honoré said. “And then I found myself here.” She looked back at the palace’s dripping foundations. “You really are an honest artist now, huh?”
“I try my best,” replied Rafe.
“His landscapes do liven up the place.” La Fée Verte looked out over the glowing waters. “Rafe is one of my regulars. And you…” She glanced at Céleste, at the brush that hung from her hand. “I’m glad you’ve finally found your way to the painters’ wing. Perhaps you could draw me another skirtless dress? The idea is probably well before its time, but I’d love to try planting it with one of the designers. Maybe Coco?”
“That’s a fun name!” Sylvie took a sip from her steaming mug. “Speaking of names, did you know Honoré is the saint of cakes? Maybe you could draw her a coat of arms with éclairs and macarons.” She laughed.
The other Enchantress rolled her eyes, and Céleste clenched her jaw so hard, her teeth started to ache. Her stomach kept turning, just as it had with that final bite of Sylvie’s birthday tart. She wished she could go back to that moment—to the three of them sitting in their tomb—and make Honoré believe she was mad. That would be so much better than the alternative…
La Fée Verte smiled. “It’s probably best to leave baked goods to the Sanct behind Stohrer.”
Sylvie perked up at the mention of her favorite pâtisserie. Its windows displayed cakes with as much care as jewelry and had been smudged by her nose many, many times. “Stohrer is enchanted?”
“All bakeries have a sprinkle of magic, but if you go to Stohrer after hours, you’ll find some extra-special treats,” La Fée Verte told her. “The sweets I serve here pale in comparison.”
“I’m quite fond of the baba au rhum,” Rafe said. “Its syrup tastes like candlelight.”
All at once, Sylvie started fluttering.
Up, up, and aw—
Honoré caught the youngest Enchantress by the ankle, before she could fly too far. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Where do you think?” Her wings kept flapping, layering Honoré’s hair with orange butterfly dust. “To the enchanted pastry shop!”
“You can’t just take off all on your own like that! It’s dangerous!”
“So you keep saying. But I saved you from that gangster this evening—”
“There are worse things than gangsters out there, ma rêveuse.”
Céleste didn’t miss the glance between Honoré and La Fée Verte. She saw the way the Sanct’s hand tightened over… an imagining? For a heart-stuttering second, Céleste feared it was one of her pieces, but no—it was nothing more than a shard of glass.
“Much worse,” Honoré added.
“There are wonderful things as well,” La Fée Verte said. “The bakery is quite safe—in fact it’s one of the safest places in the city. You and your friends should go visit. Perhaps you’ll find out that dragon of yours has a sweet tooth after all.”
To Céleste’s surprise, Honoré almost smiled.
“Great!” Sylvie called from above. “Let’s go!”