Chapter 20

In Somnis Veritas

Living at La Ruche was a bit like staring into one of those enchanted mirrors—Céleste could see herself in another life here. A life with open windows, where she woke up to the chatter of other artists in the courtyard, composing poems or sharing bowls of the vegetable stew constantly simmering in the nearby soup kitchen. Free to anyone who was hungry. Céleste often was, by the time she awoke in the late afternoons, awash in buttery sunlight. But she usually chose to stay in the sheets, where she could trace the lines of Rafe’s face on the pillow beside her. A warm-up. It was getting harder and harder to get out of bed these days. The air grew ever colder. They’d slipped into autumn, somehow. Three and a half months had passed since their first fateful meeting, and it was hard not to wonder if she’d be alive otherwise. If she’d gone straight back to the cemetery after The Rite of Spring, would Céleste be there? Still? Six feet under?

But that was a darker diversion.

The life that Céleste entertained at La Ruche had more colors to it. Cadmium, sure, but also yellows and pinks and greens—hues that most of the old Romantics wouldn’t be caught dead mixing. This was partly because of Rafe’s palette. But also because she’d run out of charcoal, and the other artist had pushed his collection of paints on her. Please, use whatever you need! What’s mine is yours!

Her rendition of the shadow fox still hung above the bed.

There was a painting of the geranium too, her first stab at proving she deserved to stay here. Rafe was right—one didn’t have to pay money to have a studio at the “beehive,” but like La Fée Verte’s salon, it was understood that you would fill the space. Art was their honey; thus, flowers seemed like a fitting inspiration. Céleste drew the blooming iron lamps of the Métropolitain entrance next, sketching the alleyway of the Quartier Secret just past that. Her third painting went further, capturing the fuchsia blossoms that grew around the salon’s green door. In somnis veritas.

Rafe was particularly entranced by this piece. He stood in front of the canvas, watching its paint dry. “You must be stealing my dreams,” he murmured.

Céleste eyed him carefully. He was a different person these days, back to his normal rhythm of forgetting midnight’s magic at dawn. Sunlight made Rafe more artist than thief—and he believed that was all they were. This was partly why she’d begun to paint so much. It was easier to stand easel to easel than try to talk around the truth of their relationship.

Not that she was entirely sure what that was anymore.

They still kissed in the salon, and she still enjoyed it. She more than enjoyed it. But they were both careful to stay inside the boundaries of their performance. No matter how much Céleste wanted to push Rafe down into a bed of beaming sunflowers after the Enchantresses left them for the evening, she pushed away instead.

They had to stay focused.

(Ha! As if she could focus with the taste of him lingering on her lips.)

They had to steal that goddamn dream.

(Again, ha! There were still thousands of imaginings to sort through.)

The man Céleste shared an art studio with had no memory of how far they’d gone together, but there were moments like this, when she could sense glimmers of his true self fighting to break through. “Stealing your dreams? What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know.” Rafe’s fingers traced the Latin letters, too reverent to actually touch. This was also them before dusk. After dawn. Céleste had certainly entertained thoughts about pushing him onto this mattress—and she’d had ample opportunities to flirt—but when it came down to it, the idea of being with Rafe when he wasn’t Rafe felt wrong.

So she always woke up before him, in their shared bed. She always studied his sleeping face long enough to remind herself that this would not last forever. She rose and put on her robe and turned her want into colors on a canvas.

She’d become quite prolific over the past month and a half.

“I don’t know,” Rafe murmured again. “I just… It seems as if I’ve seen this door before.” He glanced back at the drawing of his sigil. “Your work always sparks something in me.”

“Déjà vu?” she suggested, as she set about cleaning her brushes. The memories of magic were still there, somewhere in his head. They had to be, if they kept reappearing. All the salon’s imaginers eventually remembered their previous evenings there… though sometimes it took several hours after midnight.

“It feels like more than déjà vu,” Rafe declared. “It feels like… a candle being dropped into a giant cavern.”

A strange image, Céleste thought. But perhaps it was more déjà vu coming through. They’d spent so many hours in La Fée Verte’s Vault of Dreams, going deeper and deeper every evening. It was easier for them to lose each other there, now that Rafe could no longer cloak them both with his shadow. For some reason he’d lost that ability after the windmill had burned. He couldn’t shape his silhouette into wings either. The fox had been scarce too. Once, when they’d stopped in the landscape room to paint an upside-down garden for Sylvie, Céleste had thought she spied the creature hiding in a tangle of honeysuckle.

But that could have been her own imagination.

She still hadn’t managed to pull any of her own dreams from her head. They must be growing though. Twice Céleste had felt the green songbirds pluck something and fly off to the Vault. Wouldn’t it be ironic if she ended up stealing her own idea? Possible, but not probable. She and Rafe went well past the established path of the birds now, far enough from the stairs that there likely wasn’t much need for the invisibility cloaks they wore. Sometimes Céleste could go most of the evening without seeing him.

She missed that closeness.

She missed a lot of things: Fighting lessons with Honoré. Bedtime stories with Sylvie. Waking up each day without wondering if it might be her last.

Rafe too battled a lingering dread, despite his amnesia. “I dreamed I went back to Belleville, last night,” he’d told Céleste, their second evening at La Ruche. “No one knew me though—no one but you. And I tried to run, but my feet wouldn’t move. I was trapped in my own shadow, and I couldn’t get out.”

It’s all right, she couldn’t say. You’re awake now.

At least he had a few hours where Terreur was a nightmare. Céleste wished she could say the same. She wished she could be as charmed as the rest of La Ruche’s artists, who found themselves gazing out to the ivy-throttled gates most midnights. Oh, look at that bird! I’ve never seen such emerald feathers! A magical migration usually followed—from Montparnasse to the Quartier Secret.

Rafe’s Enlightenment often found him earlier, during the blue hour. Céleste had mistaken the magic for a bat at first, because it was so dark and frantic through the studio window. But as soon as it flew into the back of the other artist’s head, it vanished. His eyes widened, then flashed as he checked his pocket watch’s fateful hour. This was always the first thing Rafe did, once he became her Rafe.

There were still several hours before that would happen on this autumn afternoon. Céleste lay next to Rafe on the mattress, watching the September sun highlight his sleeping face. Wanting to capture it. To bottle not just the light itself but the warmth of his body beside hers and the scent of woodsmoke whispering through their window and the stir of an even closer fire beneath her belly—

Tap-tap.

A soft knock on the studio door jarred Céleste out of bed, though Rafe did not so much as stir. It was probably Guillaume Apollinaire. Or one of the commune’s many other artists who loved to pop in to see the painting she was working on. Flame-striped tigers. Dresses made of leaves and mist. Dancing on a floor filled with stars… This last piece was only half-done, constellations still unstrung as Céleste pulled on her robe and opened the door.

It was Honoré standing in the hall.

Céleste hated how her heart caught when she saw her friend. “Mon amie?”

“I found myself in Montparnasse, and I thought I’d drop by.” Honoré’s eyes flicked over to the mattress, where Rafe was lightly snoring. “How are you taking to the penniless life?”

Céleste wasn’t quite sure what to say. She’d memorized her lines at night well enough, when it was understood that they all understood magic. But now she was supposed to be blind, her sight wiped clean. She wasn’t even sure how much of her friend she was supposed to see. Surely not the shining dreams stuffed like knives into her belt. The rest of her clothes looked plain enough. Trousers. Half-rolled tunic sleeves. Her arms were crossed. Why were her arms crossed? Why was her brow furrowed? Shit. Céleste had been quiet too long…

“It’s richer than I’d anticipated,” she answered. “I’ve never met so many people eager to give so much away.”

“Are you painting?” Honoré didn’t push, but there was something forceful in the way the other Enchantress stepped past. There was something aggressive too in her examination of the studio’s canvases.

“I’ve been trying to establish my own style,” Céleste said quickly. “Delacroix was getting too depressing, and Sylvie’s been spinning such fantastic stories lately—I figured I’d try my hand at illustrating them.”

What other reason could she give for the scenes Honoré was now scouring? Bears that breathed fire. A painting of Duchess d’Uzès painting her own hair purple. Gardens made almost entirely of green birds. Surely the other Enchantress recognized these moments, but the painting that finally gave her pause was one of Rafe’s, where the windmill peeked over Montmartre’s rooftops. Honoré stared at its blades, her eyes going smoky. The sleeve over her right arm stirred, and Céleste tried her best not to notice.

“And what about the rest of your work, mon amie?”

Céleste knew then. She knew the other Enchantress knew.

“I really did believe you were becoming an honest artist. I bought all your bullshit. La Fée Verte even turned it into a sword for me… and that shattered when I most needed it.” Honoré pulled a dream from her belt and threw it on the floor. It smashed to pieces near the potted geranium.

Rafe groaned.

Honoré pulled out another forgery.

“I can explain,” Céleste said, before her friend could break it.

“Explain what? Why you’ve been stealing La Fée Verte’s power for a vampiric megalomaniac? Why you’ve been lying through your teeth for three and a half months? Why Eleanor said she saw you at Caveau des Terreurs? Why I walked into an ambush there this afternoon? Fuck, Céleste! This isn’t some fun little fiddle game. I almost died today!”

Over on the mattress, Rafe kept stirring. He wouldn’t understand what they were saying if he woke, but he might, if he remembered their words after sunset. Céleste reached out to grab Honoré’s hand so she could draw her friend away from the studio. But the other Enchantress was hot to the touch—silver and red rage.

Céleste gasped as the dragon’s fang sank through her palm. It hurt, but it was so much more than metal piercing skin. It was Honoré—her friend, her sister—stabbing her. It was the understanding that Céleste hadn’t escaped the blood on her hands. Not at all. She’d simply made things that much worse. She’d betrayed Honoré.

She deserved this.

But the other Enchantress gasped as well, pulling her arm to her chest as if she were the one who’d been wounded. “Shit! Are you all right, mon amie?”

“No.” The word unraveled from her.

Then she kept unraveling.

She felt like a piece of tatting that had snagged on a gate. One catch—one truth—was all it took for her lacework lies to disintegrate. I’m not all right. Céleste knew she should have admitted this back in the hay fever days. At least then she would have had a shoulder to cry on, instead of a bite wound. Honoré had pulled herself back, was staring at Céleste as if she were a stranger. There was truth in this too, and that was what hurt so badly.

“I’m dying, Honoré.”

This confession was one of Céleste’s longest, lasting the entire walk from La Ruche to the river. She did not relish it. She didn’t smile the way she had while burying some rich fool’s gold. She couldn’t brush the dirt from her hands and walk away. But there was something freeing about telling Honoré everything. The disease’s hay fever stage, last spring. The crimson gloves, at the ballet three and a half months before. The dreams she’d traded for long summer days. The slow nightmare that had unfolded from it all.

“I didn’t know what he was.” As soon as Céleste said this, she wondered if it was another lie. She had gone searching for the Balkans on their employer’s globe, after all. Right after she’d sipped that… wine. “I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to be able to breathe again. Then you and Sylvie found the salon, and everything has gotten so knotted up. If I stop forging dreams for this Sanct, he’ll kill me.”

“Shit,” Honoré said at the end.

An apt summation.

It got even shittier, when the other Enchantress told her side of the story—when Céleste understood the full meaning behind her employer’s new name. His recently acquired tavern territory. His plans to keep swallowing Paris. What that truly meant for the city… Her stomach churned when Honoré described the corpses she’d discovered in almost every arrondissement. Entirely exsanguinated. Just like the poor soul from the tale Henri had told at Foyot’s, fueled by far too much champagne, but mon Dieu, if it wasn’t starting to sound prophetic.

“I didn’t know about the husks.” Again, Céleste wondered if this was entirely true. Not just because of the blotted-out Balkans, but thanks to a different map. Those slashes in Rafe’s sketchbook… was that what they’d marked? Murders?

Was she really sharing a bed with such a calculated killer?

Céleste thought back to their first encounter there. The blood staining her lips that ruinous morning hadn’t bothered Rafe nearly as much as it should… Was that because he’d simply told himself it was a fine red Bordeaux?

The same way she did.

They were both very good liars, after all. Even to themselves.

She stopped at this thought, her lips tasting far more acid than iron. There was no blood in her bile as it splashed to the sidewalk stones.

Honoré looked back over her shoulder as Céleste retched. “Are you all right?”

“No.” She coughed bitterly. Not unless I keep drinking other people’s blood. That had to be the key to immortality, right? It was how their employer gave himself such ruddy full cheeks every few weeks. “Why didn’t you tell us that’s what you were finding on your patrols? Sylvie figures you’re just blowing smoke about the streets being dangerous, and I thought…” She straightened, realizing how close they were to the Fontaine Saint-Michel.

I thought I was the danger.

The thought wasn’t stardust, but the salon’s bronze guardians did not stir.

Honoré gnawed her lip. “La Fée Verte asked me to stay quiet. She doesn’t want fear of the slayings spreading through her imaginers,” the other Enchantress explained. “If they’re too afraid, they won’t dream. And if they don’t dream, she’ll have no power to push back Terreur. Her stores are already scarcer than they should be…”

Because of Céleste and Rafe.

Fuck. Her friend’s earlier sentiment came echoing back. This isn’t some fun little fiddle game! Céleste’s thoughts started to spin—as wobbly as the globe by her employer’s chair. The stakes are much higher than that. The Balkans. Russia. And Paris, now. What would the city come to, if Terreur finally got his missing wish?

What about the rest of the world?

She stared off at the fountain. It wasn’t quite late enough for the pedestal dragon to wake, and the other statues kept warring as they always had. They made quite the spread: angel, devil, Céleste, and Honoré. Each of them bound to the other.

The other Enchantress stared at the sculptures too. “I haven’t told La Fée Verte yet,” she said.

“Will you?”

Céleste could see Honoré was struggling—not just with her own dragon, but even deeper ties. “I’ll ask her to heal you.”

Céleste let out a breath, relieved. Her friend had already forgiven her, which was a miracle in itself because Honoré Côte held on to more grudges than she did knives.

As for the consumption?

“I don’t think it’s that easy, mon amie,” she said. “Rafe says she doesn’t heal imaginers—she didn’t even heal you when you agreed to become her knight.” Céleste nodded at her friend’s chin. There was a faint mark there, almost as silvery as her ring.

“That was just a scratch,” Honoré growled. “Besides, I told you Rafael’s full of shit.”

Right. Tigers and stripes and all that. Céleste still had a difficult time imagining him as an alleyway killer—though she probably shouldn’t try too hard this close to the fountain. “He was trying to save me, I think. He noticed the bloodstain on my opera gloves after the ballet—”

“Do you think it’s a coincidence that The Rite of Spring was the first night you coughed up blood?” Honoré’s voice was as pointed as her knives. “Have you seen what your ‘employer’s’ magic does to people? He drains them. He… he… controls them.”

Yes. Céleste had seen. More than that, she’d felt it, the tug of her shadow and the squeeze of her lungs. I will be worse. I will be so much worse…

“I don’t want to work for Terreur. I’m not sure Rafe does either.” It occurred to her then that the other thief might not be exsanguinating people willingly. “But if he was telling the truth, then my confession to La Fée Verte would be a death sentence.”

“Let’s test her, then.” Honoré nodded down at Céleste’s bloodied palm. “I’ll ask La Fée Verte to mend your hand. That way, if she says yes, we’ll know she has the power to save you.”