Chapter 13

Fable and Lore

Céleste had plenty of chances to come clean about her new grift. She could have confessed with a mouthful of macaron—which somehow tasted exactly like stargazing on a Brun De Vian-Tiran blanket with a flask of hot cider. She could have said something at the café they passed, where tea was served to customers in cups with changing china patterns. Languages changed too, depending on the flavor of the leaves they sipped. English, Russian, Japanese…

Céleste didn’t use any of these to tell Honoré and Sylvie the truth.

Nor did she slip in a word as the Enchantresses followed Rafe into a bookshop in the ninth arrondissement, where shelves wandered with as much purpose as an American tourist. Books were stacked on the floor as well, providing perfect perches for the shop’s cats. Céleste spotted at least two—a tom with a bottlebrush tail and a beautiful cream-colored cat with cocoa markings—napping on leatherbound volumes. They seemed to know Rafe. The shopkeeper did too, uttering an exclamation when he saw who’d set the bells by his door chiming.

“I have just the thing for you, Monsieur García! A book from the ashes of Alexandria arrived only a week ago, and I thought immediately of your fondness for Egyptian myths—”

Why was it all booksellers wore spectacles? Surely the Sanct didn’t need them to see. A silver masque scrolled his temples, flickering with whatever magic the bookseller used to summon the manuscript. The parchment was old and charred in several places. It would be hard enough to read even if it weren’t written in a long-dead language, but this didn’t stop Rafe from scanning the text, pausing every few lines to smile at some mysterious words.

It seemed he didn’t need any special tea to translate them.

Honoré noticed this too. “I’m sorry, but where the hell did you learn to read hieroglyphics?”

“Cairo,” he replied, his gaze still buried in the manuscript. “Where else?”

“You traveled all the way to Egypt?” Honoré frowned. “I didn’t think the Orient Express went that far.”

“It doesn’t.” Rafe unrolled the scroll a bit farther. “Thank you for this, Libris.”

“The real thanks should go to Lore,” the bookseller said. “He was the one who remembered your interest in embalming techniques. I hope this manuscript holds whatever it is you’re hunting for.”

Rafe looked up from the papyrus. His expression was still, so still, and his shadow was too, but Céleste could feel something shifting. It coiled almost as tightly as the scroll he tucked into the lining pocket of his jacket. This was exactly where he would’ve put the dreams they weren’t forging. The perfect place for secrets.

“Your assistant is quite attentive,” he said, with a smile that showed no teeth.

The bookseller smiled back. “I wouldn’t call Lore my assistant. In fact, he’d probably consider the opposite arrangement to define our relationship. Is there anything else I can help you find before dawn, Monsieur García?”

“Do you have any fairy books?” Sylvie’s butterfly wings kept brushing the bells by the door—she was unable to contain her excitement. “My rainbow is missing some colors.”

“Which ones?” the Sanct asked.

“Lilac, I think.”

“They’re by Andrew Lang,” Céleste explained. “The covers are very shiny.”

Libris the Bookseller pushed his spectacles back up his nose. “Ah, let me have a look around. Feel free to do the same!”

But Céleste did not feel free at all as she explored the stacks. It should’ve been an exciting experience: so many stories waiting to be discovered while Sylvie flew from shelf to shelf and Honoré shouted at the girl to “watch your wingspan!” But the deeper Céleste went into the shelves, the more she felt the weight of so many unspoken words bowing in on her. It was hard to breathe, and it wasn’t even morning yet. What would happen when the sun rose? When this cape of fables unraveled and no dreams spilled out?

Céleste would have nothing to show for her evening—and yet, she’d be exposed. Caught, not in a lie, but in her own terrible truth. Coughing blood.

She took a sharp breath.

Her hands wandered to her hair as she went deeper into the bookstore, inhaling the quintessential smell of stories—leather and ink aged with dust. It would be an interesting macaron flavor. Interesting enough for XXXXXXX to burn, at least. But try as she might, Céleste couldn’t get the idea of this pastry out of her head. Nor could she stand the thought of going back to rue des Ombres empty-handed, so she kept twisting her hair into knots.

“What’s wrong, mon amie?”

Honoré stood on the other side of the shelf, peering through a gap in the books. The titles framed her face in a way that called attention to the cut—short, but deep. She must have gotten the wound hours ago, but it hadn’t stopped bleeding completely.

Céleste bit her own tongue. She’d taste red again, if she wasn’t careful. “I—I was just trying to imagine something.”

“I’m not sure that works without La Fée Verte,” Honoré said.

Silence passed through their shelf, a stretch too long.

“I know why you keep going back to her salon, every night,” her friend went on.

Another pause.

Somewhere, in another aisle, Sylvie squealed with delight.

“All this time we’ve been calling ourselves the Enchantresses when there was real magic out there, just waiting. If I could paint like you or Rafael, I’d absolutely choose castles over confidence schemes. You deserve this, mon amie.” Honoré glanced toward the front of the shop, where Rafe was browsing. Then she looked back at her ring, which had spent most of the evening perched on her shoulder. “So do I.”

“Sylvie says you’re going to be La Fée Verte’s knight,” Céleste said.

“You know how she likes to romanticize things—” Patches of pink appeared on Honoré’s cheeks. “But I figure, if you’re going to spend your evenings at the salon, then I should too.”

She tried not to tug on her hair, tried not to shrink at the thought of doing this every night. “What about when I forget in the mornings?” she asked with a dry mouth.

“You spend most of that time with Rafael anyway, no?” Honoré looked down at Céleste’s gold-streaked fingers, her own flaxen eyebrows rising. “Our days don’t have to be any different than they have been, lately. I suppose I could convince La Fée Verte to let you keep your memories too. She did make a concession for Sylvie—”

There was another squeal. A scuffle.

“And just what do you think you’re doing, mademoiselle?” Céleste recognized the bookseller’s voice then. “Can’t you read?”

“Why else would I be browsing a bookshop?” came Sylvie’s reply.

“The sign says to ASK FOR ASSISTANCE!”

Honoré and Céleste exchanged glances and then hurried around the shelves. They found their pink-haired ward standing by a locked case—though locks had never been terribly effective where the youngest Enchantress was concerned. The glass door was hanging open, and the book that should have been behind it was now in Sylvie’s hands. It looked rather plain compared to the other volumes on the shelves. Bare brown. There didn’t even seem to be a title. Yet… as the girl clutched the book to her chest, Céleste saw gilding grow across its cover. Gold letters began to unfurl one by one:

The Enchantresses of Paris

“I think it’s a story about us! See?” Sylvie flipped to the first page and tapped at the opening sentences. “‘Père Lachaise was home to some very unusual ghosts.’ It talks about you too, Céleste! You never told me you used to be Catholic. And is your tongue really made of silver?”

Céleste was biting it harder than ever, hoping there were no lines about how she’d lied, how she was still lying, how she was going to die if she didn’t.

Libris the Bookseller also seemed distraught, fumbling for a pair of gloves draped by the case. Rafe grabbed the book instead. As soon as he touched the cover, its shining letters shifted into darker words: The Unbreakable—

But the title was interrupted, when Libris swooped in, placing the volume back behind the glass.

Sylvie made a face. “I was just getting to the good part—”

“Not much good comes out of reading your own story,” the bookseller said shakily. “Hence the sign. I can skim some passages for you if you’re willing to pay—”

“No,” Rafe said quickly. “That won’t be necessary.”

Sylvie’s brown eyes were glimmering. “Would it tell me who my parents were?” she asked.

“There’s no telling what it might tell you,” the bookseller informed her. “Everyone thinks they want to know how their lives will unfold, but I find that’s rarely the case, even when it’s a happy ending awaiting them.”

“But, if you didn’t like your ending, couldn’t you just change it?” Sylvie wondered.

According to the Seer of the Seine, you could. But Libris did not say anything about dusty stars as he closed the case. He glanced back at the smallest Enchantress and—with a silver wink from his masque—added a second lock to the latch. “I’m afraid I must ask you to pay for the pages you’ve read.”

Sylvie dug into her pockets.

She produced a ball of lint and a mashed macaron.

The bookseller sniffed the crumbling pastry. “I am fond of the First Spring Leaf flavor, but I’ll need more.” He nodded at Honoré. “That ring might do.” The ring in question bared its silver fangs. “Or your watch, Monsieur García? I’ve admired that piece for years.”

Sylvie dug into her pockets again. “What about these?”

The dreams she pulled out shimmered pink—no surprise there. What struck Céleste was the fact there were so many of them and so much hair still left on the girl’s head. The bookseller seemed fascinated as well. His spectacles glistened as he leaned down to inspect her offerings: A pod of white dolphins playing around a ship with seafoam for sails. Carousel horses galloping through a field of strawberries that were actually rubies. A princess and a pauper playing a game of chess.

“You’re quite the daydreamer, aren’t you?”

“I’ll say.” Honoré snorted. “She’s convinced cats can talk.”

“But of course they can.” The bookseller glanced up at the gray tom, who was now perched on top of the display case. “Lore here has all sorts of fascinating tales to tell. I’ve tried my hand at translating over the years, and I’ve managed to record quite an extensive list of vocabulary. I can share it with you, if you’re interested.” He nodded back at the ideas in Sylvie’s hand. “Hand over half, and we’ll call ourselves even.”

“Half?” Rafe raised his eyebrow. “Don’t be such a shark, Libris! That’s far too—”

“Deal!”

The tom watched closely as Sylvie handed over her imaginings. The bookseller didn’t knot them into bracelets, nor did he toss them into a fire. Instead, he grabbed a nearby book and slipped the dreams between the pages, the way one might press a flower. Then he hurried down one of the aisles. Lore hopped off the shelf and trotted after him.

“Your dreams are worth more,” Rafe told Sylvie. “Much more, if you save them. You should’ve haggled.”

The youngest Enchantress shrugged. “I can just imagine other things. And it would be nice to understand what Marmalade is saying.”

“Marmalade?” Céleste asked.

“The orange cat who has a taste for human flesh,” Honoré clarified. “She named him after jam.”

“He does have a sweet side,” Sylvie said. “You’ve just never given him a chance to show it. Whatever happened to that kitten you had when you were a child isn’t his fault, you know.”

The other Enchantress’s face didn’t flinch, but her ring did. The dragon coiled around her neck, then spilled down her chest, covering most of her torso in silver. Her legs had to shift to hold the weight—moving into what Céleste recognized as a fighting stance. The first position of défense dans la rue.

Rafe mirrored this.

Céleste did not miss the way the thief placed himself in front of her and Sylvie.

“It wasn’t Honoré’s fault either,” he said, eyeing his own reflection in the armor.

Both shimmered.

Then shrank.

Beads of sweat sprouted on Honoré’s forehead. They rolled down to her nose as the dragon pulled back, retreating to its original perch on her middle finger.

“Here you are.” The bookseller had returned, holding a volume almost as heavy as Sylvie herself. She nearly toppled over when he handed it to her. “The Known Words of Fable and Lore.” The other cat’s cream-colored ears perked up at the sound of its name. It yowled plaintively at Céleste. “Fable says to tell you that she likes your cape very much, mademoiselle.” He glanced back at Sylvie. “If you’re interested in other languages, I have plenty of guides. Flowers, clouds, bees, rivers, trees… Everything speaks if you know how to listen. Even houseflies hum in the key of F major.”

“Sure,” Sylvie said, as if this were common knowledge. “But I should probably just stick to cats, for now. They don’t like sharing attention.”

“You are wise, daydreamer.” Libris smiled. “I expect you’ll become fluent in cat-speak quite soon. I’ll keep an eye out for that lilac fairy book in the meantime, and if you return The Known Words of Fable and Lore when you’re finished, I’ll buy it back by completing your rainbow.”

Rafe did not seem worried at all when they exited the bookshop. He didn’t bat an eye at the stars—which seemed to be growing waterier by the minute—nor did he try to turn toward the Quartier Secret. Even if they did wander back that way, there wouldn’t be time to forge anything, Céleste realized. They’d wasted too many hours painting the ice palace and eating cake, and was she just imagining it, or could she already taste some iron on her tongue?

“What’s next?” Sylvie sounded breathless, but that could have been because the book about cat-speak was so large. Large enough that she’d resorted to balancing the tome on her head instead of carrying it. “A mysterious meeting of owls? A secret garden party?”

“There is one of those at Temple de l’Amitié,” Rafe told her, “but that’s all the way over on rue Jacob. There are closer festivities. This way!” He waved them north, where the night wheeled over a distant hill and the almost-finished alabaster domes of Sacré-Cœur shone like the bite of an orchard apple.

“Isn’t Sylvie a little young for Montmartre?” Céleste asked in a rusty voice.

“No!” the girl protested.

“I promise we won’t get into too much trouble.” Rafe looked back over his shoulder and winked. “We’ll just go for a stroll up rue Lepic! Ten-year-olds can stroll, no?”

“I’m eleven!”

“Even better! Honoré and I snuck out here when we were that age!” Rafe whirled back on his heels with a laugh. Céleste was getting dizzy watching him, the gold paint on his face streaking like tiger stripes. Surely he wasn’t planning on returning to rue des Ombres empty-handed. Was he?

It all turned to shit.

I was wrong to trust him.

Céleste glanced over at Honoré, remembering her friend’s grave warning, but she seemed to be swimming in other memories. The dragon ring had swirled back up the Enchantress’s shoulder, perching there like a hunter’s falcon. Its gaze found Céleste first. Silver and separate.

Honoré’s brown eyes looked cheery by comparison. “A short walk shouldn’t hurt,” she said. “Shall we?”

It was difficult to tell what was magical in Montmartre. The neighborhood already had a glittering otherworldly quality. Cabarets spilled up its liveliest street—rue Lepic—like a purse of loose jewels. There was a stucco elephant in Moulin Rouge’s garden that was nearly a match for Sylvie’s cocoa-dispensing dream—and as Céleste walked through the crimson puddles of light the club’s sign splashed on the sidewalk, she couldn’t help but think of Henri. Was the poor little rich boy inside the statue’s belly, crying to dancers about con artists? Or was he still going on about vampires?

Again, such creatures didn’t sound so far-fetched here. Up the lane sat a restaurant that used coffins as tables, and next to that was a place guarded by pearly gates. Cabaret du Ciel, it was called. The wings worn there were made of wires and harnesses, but a few doors down, you could find the real deal: feathers sprouting from bare shoulder blades.

Sylvie stopped in her tracks when more songbirds burst through the door of this establishment. Not green, but red as holly berries. There were yellow ones too—daffodil bright. “What’s this?”

CABARET D’AILES, so said the sign. Céleste recognized the name from the moving posters. She recognized the birds as well. They swirled the same way they did on paper; red and yellow sparks curled into calligraphy. An elegant invitation over the street.

“A place where want can be turned into wings,” Rafe explained. “Désirée and Plume will let you fly for an evening, if you offer them your burning desires.”

This appeared to be true enough—a masque-less woman exited the cabaret with swan feathers swooping down her back. She smiled as she took off toward the steeple of Sacré-Cœur. Those weren’t gargoyles perched on the church, cutting out jagged pieces of the moonlight with their wings…

Sylvie didn’t seem to notice. She was too busy trying to get a glimpse through Cabaret d’Ailes’s door. “I want to go inside!”

“That’s the point,” Rafe told her. “Want can be terribly powerful, if you know what to do with it.”

This was true. It was the reason their fiddle games paid off so well and filled their graves with gold… but Céleste understood the other side of that coin. She knew want could be dangerous too. You might go blind following such a feeling, seeing only its shine, wandering further and further from everything you’ve ever known, until you’ve fallen off the map entirely.

It was too late for her, perhaps.

A glance at Rafe. The other thief was leaning against a lamppost, the gas flame inside leaping eagerly. His shadow seemed to do the same as he reached for his pocket watch. Céleste felt her chest squeeze tight, tight with the certainty that he was going to slip away and ditch her again. Somehow.

“No cabarets,” she told Sylvie, firmly. “Besides, you already have a pair of perfectly good wings!”

“So? You have more than one dress, don’t you?”

“Dresses are different,” Honoré said. “They’re clothes.”

“Well, what about moustaches?” Sylvie argued. “You have at least thirty of those!”

Céleste edged closer to Rafe. He’d untangled the watch and was winding it, just like he had their first night together. And, same as it had outside the Vault of Dreams, the timepiece’s gears began to grind. No! Her thoughts felt fanged as she reached for his shirtsleeve. She’d be damned if she let him vanish again—

Sea-fog fabric swirled under Céleste’s fingers.

There was a hot hint of skin.

And then Rafe turned to run up the lane.

It was the songbirds Céleste noticed first. Both flocks were frozen in the sky, suspended midswirl. The revelers around the dome of Sacré-Cœur had gone still too. The air felt like the velvet lining of a jeweler’s case, cushioning every motion as Céleste turned to see the other Enchantresses: Sylvie was statuesque; Honoré’s eyes were stuck mid-roll. More guests were exiting the cabaret, caught with their bat wings snapping like umbrellas on a rainy day.

Céleste spun in a full circle, putting the paralyzed pieces together. She could see Rafe making his way up the street, his pocket watch swinging with every step. The thief hadn’t used it to check his fateful hour…

Tonight Rafe García had stopped time entirely.

He didn’t seem to realize Céleste had stolen this moment with him. He did not pause and look back before slipping through a small iron gate. The entrance was rusted over and almost unnoticeable, tucked between one celebration and the next. A snarled garden sat past it, so snarled that Céleste almost expected the branches to grow over the old stone staircase before she could climb it.

The windmill at the top of the hill looked just as forgotten: bleached boards, four skeletal arms.

A door, orbital and open. No bran was being sifted into flour inside. No spices were being crushed to make perfume. There wasn’t even a millstone. When Céleste peered over the threshold, she saw a floor covered with plush carpets. Curio cabinets ringed the space, their shelves filled with oddities: dried flowers, bracelets carved out of jade, scarab beetles with their wings pinned open, a massive magnifying glass. At the center of the room sat a desk covered in scrolls, much like the one Rafe had borrowed from the bookshop, covered in centuries of dirt and lost languages. There were codices too, books that looked as if they belonged on chains in a monastery library, although Céleste wasn’t sure the church would’ve wanted to keep a manuscript like the one at the top of the stack. A human heart had been painstakingly illustrated on the open page. Dissected. There was something sinister about the paper… That dark splatter on its edge might not be ink.

It made her bite back Rafe’s name.

She hadn’t seen the other thief enter the windmill, and there was no sign of him on the ground level. There were no stairs either, only rafters crisscrossing all the way up to the windmill’s ceiling. Lanterns designed for desert nights hung from these beams—latticework and candy-colored glass. Blue, green, crimson… they lit a path to the desk.

The diagram of the heart didn’t look any nicer up close. It made Céleste’s own heart squeeze harder. Her throat turned into a straw, trying to drink the syrupy air. She stopped breathing entirely when she spied Rafe’s sketchbook sitting at the corner of the desk. What had he been scribbling on the bridge? What had he been so eager to hide from her?

There were no cryptic notes on the pages.

No whimsical landscapes either.

Instead, Céleste found herself flipping through crude maps of Paris—made even cruder by the Xs Rafe had slashed through certain spots. They appeared in almost every neighborhood, including the eighth arrondissement. She paused on this page, staring at the mark over the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. What did it mean? What did any of this mean? Why was Rafe bringing scrolls to this windmill? Why was he researching human hearts and embalming techniques? The hair on the back of Céleste’s neck began to bristle. An all-too-familiar feeling now…

His shadow was near.

“You shouldn’t be here.” The voice came from the rafters, from the darkness tucked between those hanging jeweled lanterns. This blackness grew into wings, and Rafe dropped in front of the door.

It was the only way out, Céleste realized as soon as the other thief loomed there. She spun around to face him, her back to the desk, her eyes searching the curio cabinets for anything that might resemble a knife. No luck. There were jars though, their glass tinted almost the same brown as Rafe’s eyes. It was easy not to peer through it too closely, to tell herself that the shapes floating inside had nothing to do with her own heart. Beating faster and faster.

“What are you doing in this windmill?” Rafe asked, his voice a borderline growl.

“I should ask the same of you.” The sketchbook was still in her hands, still open to the place they’d first met.

A change fell over the other thief’s face, when he saw what Céleste was holding. It was much like the shift in the bookshop, only this time, his shadow started coiling as well. When Rafe took a step forward, she could see a beast crouched at his heels, far too large to be a fox. It didn’t move.

Even when the sketchbook was snatched from Céleste’s hands.

She didn’t try to hold on—not the way she had with his watch. After seeing the X-slashed maps, it didn’t seem wise to test how far Rafe García was willing to go. He stood close to her now, and through the thinning fog of his shirt, she could see even more scars, written across his chest in the language of knives.

“How did you manage to find this place?”

“I followed you.”

“How?” One more step, and Rafe would have her against the desk. “How did you break into this moment?”

The spine of a book pressed into the small of Céleste’s back; her silver tongue started to water. It was probably best to tell the truth at this point. “I saw you winding your watch, and I thought you were going to disappear on me again, so I reached out.”

Dare she repeat the motion?

It would serve her better than a cheese knife, certainly.

“As soon as I touched you, the sky stopped.” And now? Céleste’s fingers landed on the other thief’s bare arm. The windmill stayed still. Dust prickled the air. Iridescent insect shells watched from the shelves, and the candied lanterns did not wink.

Rafe’s eyes flickered though.

“That’s it?” He let out a breath. “A touch?”

Céleste nodded. It was hard to tell which pulse she was feeling in her fingertips—hers or his. Both were wild.

“I guess it makes sense the watch’s magic could be shared that way,” Rafe said after several beats. “I’ve never let anyone close enough to try before.”

His shadow stirred back into the shape of a fox, though it still kept its distance.

He’d been afraid of her. But why?

“What about our fateful hour? Was that bullshit after all?”

“No,” Rafe told her. “It’s just the beginning.” He pulled the watch from his shirt—which swirled so she could no longer see his scars. “The fateful hour is the watch’s primary function, but it turns out it has another trick. If you wind the gears just right, you can stop time. I don’t think the Sanct who sold me this relic knew about that fancy feature.” He tapped the filigreed pattern on its face—now moving. The hourglass’s wings were fluttering. Its sand was trickling too. Halfway gone. “When I discovered I could freeze a moment, I only managed to get away with a few seconds at first. Now, on good evenings, I can steal an extra hour.”

And quite a few other things, by the looks of it.

“Is that what you’re doing with your time? Stealing?”

“Depends on who you ask.”

“I’m asking you,” Céleste said.

Rafe’s fox peered around his boots, its ears folded back on its head. “I hunt down secrets.”

“What kind of secrets?”

“The key to immortality.”

“You want to live forever?”

“Our employer does,” Rafe said delicately. “But our employer is… not easy to please. He can’t know about this place.” The shadow fox shuddered a little and hopped onto the thief’s muscular shoulders. It reached up to the nearest lantern and opened the orange glass. There was no fire inside.

No, Céleste realized. The lights above them were shining with dreams.

Rafe’s dreams.

She recognized the sweep of his landscapes when the thief handed some to her. “This isn’t the first time I’ve had to entertain a daytime acquaintance,” he explained, grabbing several more dreams to slip into his own pockets. “It’s easy enough to grab what I need from this stash while they start sprouting feathers at Désirée and Plume’s establishment. Far easier than what would happen if I failed to return to rue des Ombres.”

It made sense then, why Rafe had acted so laissez-faire all evening. Why he was currently so on edge. The windmill was his safety net. His contingency. Theirs now. She wouldn’t have to go back to XXXXXXX without an offering.

“Always have a backup plan,” Céleste murmured.

“What?”

“Oh, it’s just something the other Enchantresses and I say.”

“Enchantresses?”

“That’s what we call ourselves—Sylvie and Honoré and I.” Céleste felt a needle of pain, straight at the center of her damned heart. “They’re more than just acquaintances.”

“Clearly.” Rafe shut the lantern and looked back at her. “Will that pose a problem?”

Céleste glanced back at the dreams she was holding.

You shouldn’t let Sylvie think we can just make believe our way out of mistakes, she remembered Honoré saying. We lie, yes, but not to each other. Not to ourselves.

So much had changed since that night.

“It will get tricky, if Honoré stays Enlightened.” She would need a good reason to disappear with Rafe. “But she already knows I’ve been spending my evenings with you. She believes we’re involved…”

“Aren’t we?”

“I meant romantically.”

“Ah.” A hint of a smile edged his lips. “Would that be such a difficult performance, mon amour? We’ve already set the scene, after all. Sylvie was convinced we were about to kiss in the landscape room.”

She wasn’t the only one.

Céleste had never stopped noting how close Rafe had her to the desk, though now it felt less like a threat and more like a promise. His fox shadow wove through the rafters above them. The thief himself was still, watching her with those burnt-sugar eyes.

“It’s just… I’ve never had to lie to them before,” she said quickly. “I’m not sure I can pull it off.”

“Well, then, perhaps we should practice.” Rafe took a step forward. He lifted his hand to her cheek, just as he had in the landscape room. The gold paint was still glimmering on his fingertips, and when he touched Céleste, it felt as if her skin had become one with the sun. “Kiss me, Céleste Artois. Kiss me like your life depends on it.”

That wasn’t too far from the truth. Neither was the way Céleste leaned in. She’d kissed plenty of men before—viscounts and nouveau riche businessmen who’d needed more than a sliver of ankle to distract them. She considered herself quite good at it. Better, when there was champagne involved.

But this… this was different.

This was Rafe.

She knew the curvature of his lips, knew how to tilt her own just so, knew how to melt into him the way his shadow sometimes did. He tasted like a murmur at midnight. Like spiced smoke and sea fog and, somehow, the tail end of a sunset. Céleste let herself linger for several seconds before pulling back.

“Good,” Rafe whispered. “That was good, but we can do better, I believe.”

He leaned in, one hand sliding up the nape of her neck, the other curving around her waist. There was more heat to this kiss. It flushed through Céleste’s cheeks. It curled down her spine, lighting up each heave of her caged lungs. It slid between her thighs and trembled there.

And, Dieu, oh Dieu, she liked it.

Rafe broke away, his scarred eyebrow raised with a wordless question: Shall I go on?

Céleste reached up and pressed her thumb into that perfect chin divot. She drew his lips back down to hers, only vaguely aware that the desk was still there. No, most of her was focused on the feel of Rafe. All over. The graze of his tongue inside her mouth—just a taste. The thief’s hands slipping down, leaving gold paint spatters across her collarbone. Skimming the crescent moon of skin where her corset became breast. Céleste was starting to feel stars too. She wanted them to shine brighter, wanted to be blinded by the light of it all, wanted Rafe’s hands to wander even farther, wanted him to hoist her onto that desk covered with secrets, dark secrets she could keep behind her for a while longer—

But then Rafe pulled back.

His hair was wild, and his watch swung, keeping time with his heavy breath. “That was… convincing. Though I think it might be too much of a show for young Sylvie.”

“Probably,” Céleste said, swallowing her disappointment.

“We need to be getting back to Cabaret d’Ailes so your Enchantresses don’t think we’ve vanished.” Rafe nodded at the lanterns, which had oh-so-slowly started to flicker. The moment they’d stolen together was nearly gone, confirmed by the tiny hourglass engraving on his watch. It was down to only a few grains of sand. “We’ll tell them we’re going home together before sunrise, and then we’ll take these dreams to rue des Ombres. No one will be the wiser. Though you may want to wipe off that paint for the sake of congruity.”

Céleste looked down at the edge of her corset. Yes, the other Enchantresses would notice if it was suddenly sparkling gold, but the paint proved hard to rub away, even with the handkerchief Rafe handed her.

“What about tomorrow evening?” she asked. “Sylvie’s going to want to keep exploring.”

“We’ll just kiss our way into a corner, until we find the right dream.” Rafe eyed the fading shine of her décolletage and bit back a smile. “That should be easy enough.”

Céleste wasn’t so sure. The paint was coming off in flakes, glittering on the ground between them. It was messier than she’d expected. And now, standing across from the thief whose touch still glowed under her skin, whose secrets still lurked at her back, she had a feeling things might get even messier.