You Enlightened the princess of Russia?”
The three Enchantresses were back in their tomb again, sitting in their respective corners. To Céleste it felt just like old times, aside from the fact that several of her opera gowns were beaded with dreams. The ledge of her easel was covered with imaginings too. As was the gap beneath Honoré’s pillow where she normally kept her knives. Sylvie had also copied the bookseller’s method: pressing dreams between the pages of her fairy books.
But of all the stories tucked away inside this mausoleum, the one Sylvie had just shared was the wildest.
“Anastasia is a grand duchess,” the girl said, taking a generous bite of butterfly pie. It had been almost twenty-four hours since Céleste and Honoré had acquired the pastry from Stohrer, but the cake hadn’t staled. Its candied insects were as lively as ever, whirring around the tomb’s glass dome, while Marmalade watched from Sylvie’s lap. Entranced.
“You Enlightened the grand duchess of Russia?” Céleste repeated faintly.
“She’s not the grand duchess. She has three sisters.”
“Oh,” croaked Honoré. “Did you Enlighten them too?”
“No.” The girl shook her head. “Only Anastasia. I showed magic to the tsarevitch, but I think he was already young enough to see it. It’s hard to say… The whole family is friends with a Sanct.”
“The Mad Monk?” Céleste asked.
“Anastasia told me his name is Grigori Rasputin. He gives me the creeps, but he heals the tsarevitch almost every week.”
Céleste couldn’t help but glance toward Honoré’s corner then. One day had passed since their own exchange of blood, and the other Enchantress was still wearing a thin bandage on her palm. She hadn’t wanted to think too hard about the deeper implications of La Fée Verte’s statement that each breath her lungs drew had once belonged to someone else. That the vintage wines she’d sipped weren’t the kind poured into a communion chalice, unless your priest happened to be the Mad Monk…
“Rasputin?” Honoré echoed. “I’ve read about him in the papers—he’s that mystical priest from Siberia, no? It makes sense that he’s magical. But how did you cast a spell, ma rêveuse? I thought only Sancts could Enlighten people.”
“I thought so too,” Sylvie said. “But it’s more complicated than that. Have you noticed that all the Sancts have started calling me ‘daydreamer’? I thought it was just a nice nickname, but Marmalade tells me it’s a title. It’s what you call a person who can conjure dreams during the day.” The ginger tom let out a yowl. “He says it’s an in-between stage. Like a cocoon.”
Céleste could feel her own insides fluttering—she couldn’t tell if her stomach was ill or excited or a strange combination of the two. “In between what?” she asked.
Marmalade meowed once more.
“Humans and Sancts,” Sylvie translated. “Turns out if a person stays Enlightened long enough, they can collect their own dreams and gather enough power to allow them to start performing larger spells.” She waved at the dreams around them. “That’s why I was able to Enlighten Anastasia!”
“You?” Honoré let out a flabbergasted breath. “You’re a Sanct?”
Céleste’s exhale was sharper. This theory might have been easier to dismiss if it weren’t for Sylvie’s shining face. There was an undeniable glimmer around the girl’s eyes—a sparkle that had nothing to do with the rose-colored dreams strung from the ceiling.
Or perhaps… everything.
“I’m not a Sanct yet,” Sylvie told them. “I’m still a daydreamer, but if I keep collecting dreams, I’ll eventually become like La Fée Verte.”
Céleste had been Enlightened for over three and a half months, but she was starting to see just how blind she was as well. “That’s why Rafe told you to save your imaginings,” she said slowly, remembering the thief’s other hints: Dreaming is surviving. You can be more. His devastation about the windmill was far worse than she’d first thought. It wasn’t his contingency that their employer had burned but Rafe’s potential power. His shadow had fallen so flat because he’d had no magic left to shape it with… “That must be why La Fée Verte snuffs out her imaginers’ memories every morning. To keep them from keeping their own dreams.”
If a priest from Siberia could become a Sanct, then so could an orphan from nowhere. So could thieves from the streets of Belleville and the castles of Provence. So could painters and poets and princesses…
A thrill went up Céleste’s spine, just sparkling enough for her to imagine wings there.
“She told me she erased their memories to keep the salon safe,” Honoré said.
“When I gather enough magic, I can help you with your patrols!” the youngest Enchantress exclaimed. “I can fix everything! I’ll find a way to break Rafe’s curse. I’ll help the Romanovs too—”
“Curse?” Honoré interrupted. “Rafael is cursed?”
Céleste’s nostrils flared with another razored breath. Again, she felt blind. Or rather, like a candle falling through a cavern, as Rafe had so eloquently put it. “He hates that he can’t remain Enlightened. Is that what you’re talking about?”
“No.” Sylvie frowned. “I thought you knew—”
She was interrupted by the clamor of bells. They were too tinny to belong to Saint-Germain de Charonne or any of the other nearby churches. Someone had—finally—set off Honoré’s perimeter alarm.
The other Enchantress shot up from her mattress, arming herself with one of Sylvie’s dreams and padding toward the scrolled iron doors.
Something flickered over the roof, quick as Céleste’s heartbeat. She grabbed one of the imaginings from her easel, holding it like a brush as she followed Honoré to the tomb’s entrance. There was no sign of anyone outside. No stray mourners. No spooked groundskeepers. No bright eyes peering through leaves. Those belonged to Sylvie alone, as she joined the other Enchantresses on the mausoleum steps—flashing more rose-tinged light across the clearing. A spell. It lit up the surrounding foliage, enough to show the stray shadow that sat at the center of the Enchantresses’ camp, over a paint-splattered picnic blanket. It looked almost like another stain. Flat. Black. Fox shaped.
Céleste’s heart felt like a struck match.
Her veins became fuses.
Rafe was hiding in his own shadow once more. Hiding from her. She wondered where his new stash of imaginings was located. What other secrets was he keeping so close to his scarred chest…?
“How did you find us?” She spoke to the darkness.
Their secrecy wasn’t one-sided. Not by a long shot. She’d been so careful yesterday evening, trying not to tip Rafe off to the fact Honoré knew about their operation, trying not to show her own awful revelations. The key to immortality: blood on her lips, blood on his hands. She struggled—still—to envision Rafe as a vampiric killer. He just didn’t seem to have that in him. At least not in a way that could be splashed onto a canvas at La Ruche or conjured in the Quartier Secret.
But Rafe García was a hunter.
Céleste could see that now, as the dark air over the paint-splattered blanket began to shiver into a man. Rafe had tracked her back to Père Lachaise. How long had he been prowling outside Honoré Côte’s grave, watching her with those broken brown eyes? It was still impossible to tell what shade they really were as he stared at the three Enchantresses.
“Oh!” Sylvie waved brightly. “Hello, Rafe! We were just talking about how to break your curse.”
“So I heard.” His voice was coal dust. His dark hair was unbound and wild, wild like the rest of the cemetery’s shadows, wild like the fox twisting at his heels. He took a step toward the mausoleum. “I can see why you consider La Ruche an upgrade, mon amour.” Céleste wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that Rafe was still using their false terms of endearment—that her skin still prickled with something more than danger when he edged closer to her on the step, squinting up at the tomb’s bold granite letters. “Is… is that your name, Honoré?”
To Céleste’s great surprise, the other Enchantress did not raise her dream blade, nor did she stop Sylvie from taking Rafe by the hand and pulling the thief through the doors, showing off her hoard as if she were a proud baby dragon.
“See? I saved all these! Just like you told me to! Now we can become Sancts together!”
“One day. I hope.” Rafe’s eyes glittered even more as he gazed up at dreams and glass stars. There was a faraway look on his face—not distant, but wistful. The kind of expression the original Honoré Côte must have had whenever he peered through a telescope. “You’re a good deal closer to that goal than I am though, Magpie.”
“Ma rêveuse.” Céleste’s hand tightened over the rosy imagining she was holding.
Honoré’s gaze narrowed.
Sylvie’s eyes stayed wide. “What?”
“He’s not who you think he is. He’s—” Céleste licked her lips; she couldn’t just kiss the truth of Rafe García away this time. She didn’t think she could stab him either, but she could at least put herself between Sylvie and danger. The girl’s butterfly wings fanned out in surprise as Céleste pushed in front of her. “He isn’t safe.”
“None of us are,” Rafe replied. “Not if Terreur finds out about… whatever this glitzy grave situation is.”
“The Enchantresses!” Sylvie’s wings kept fluttering, so she managed to poke her head over Céleste’s shoulder when she spoke. “That’s the name of our gang because Céleste said that lying well was the closest thing she could think of to magic. That was before she found the salon, of course!”
“What do you mean he’s not safe, mon amie?” Honoré’s dragon coiled up her arm and spread its own silver wings so wide that it blocked the doorway. Again, Céleste was reminded of the bookshop, as Rafe stiffened into the first position of défense dans la rue.
“He’s the one who’s been husking people to keep Terreur alive,” she said, her own heartbeat high in her throat.
The other thief’s eyes flashed. “Is that the kind of man you think I am?”
“I don’t know,” Céleste admitted. “Are you a man? Still?”
When Rafe flinched, his fox shadow did the same. It was growing, growing on the opposite wall, to the same size it had been their first evening together in the windmill. Right after she’d opened that sketchbook of his, plucked from a desk filled with literature on sliced-open hearts and embalming techniques. “I found maps of every arrondissement in his possession. When I asked Rafe about the Xs that covered them, he said he was hunting down the key to immortality for our employer.” It hadn’t been too hard to piece the rest of the puzzle together, after she’d learned about the bodies from Honoré.
Rafe cursed under his breath.
The silver dragon snaked from the doorway, wrapping itself around the thief’s hand, causing him to drop the watch he’d been palming. Two gold chains shimmered from his vest pocket—had he been planning to escape with the timepiece? Céleste’s heart kept thunderstorming through her. The entire tomb felt charged.
“Is this true?” Honoré hopped up onto the central gravestone. The way her ring was moving made it look as if the dragon had pulled her there. “Don’t you dare try to bullshit me, Rafael Martín García.”
The other thief shut his eyes. “Elements are.”
“Which elements?” pressed Honoré.
“Don’t hurt him!” Sylvie squealed, as the silver kept clawing around Rafe.
The other thief was barely able to nod toward his vest pocket. “I have the maps here, but they aren’t what Céleste believes them to be.” He paused, as Honoré pulled the sketchbook from his garments. “They don’t mark the murders.”
“Murders?” Sylvie squealed again.
Honoré flipped through the pages. Once, twice, three times. They must not have matched the locations of the corpses she’d discovered, because when she finally shut the book, she asked, “So what do they mark?”
Rafe hesitated. It wasn’t Honoré his eyes had settled on, but Céleste. “I… I’m not trying to keep Terreur alive. Trust me, there’s nothing I want less. He’s made my life a living hell for the past five years. I’ve been searching for a way to escape him.”
Something soured on Honoré Côte’s face. “Why don’t you just hop on a train again?”
“It’s not that easy—”
“No. It’s not,” the other Enchantress snapped. “But you left me and Gabriel anyway. You left that note… Did you know my father was the one who found your letter? He was so fucking furious because he thought I was going to steal his son away. I was only a few hits away from ending up like Maman, and then…”
The dragon shuddered.
Rafe did too.
Honoré went on. “I thought about you a lot afterward, about that better life you’d set out to build for yourself, painting the golden spires of Constantinople in person and washing off Belleville’s muck in a hammam. I always hoped you’d actually made it happen, despite everything. After we ran into you at The Rite of Spring… and Céleste started talking about your work. Well, I was inspired. I figured if you could escape our past, then maybe I had a chance at shedding it too. But it was never true, was it?”
“In somnis veritas,” Rafe replied.
“What’s that?” growled Honoré. “A curse?”
“It’s the inscription above La Fée Verte’s door,” Céleste recalled. Rafe’s eyes were still locked with hers. It wasn’t a plea that shone through them, but something stronger—the shiver of flame, the glitter of stardust. The longer she stared, the more her heart took the shape of moth wings. “It means…” Céleste’s mind whirred. She’d had a Latin tutor, long ago, before her father had stepped out that tower window, without any wings of his own. “It means ‘in dreams there is truth.’”
Rafe nodded. “I didn’t understand the inscription, when I first darkened her threshold, but dreams are the only true thing for me now. I know you feel the same, Honoré. I can’t think of anyone in Paris more fit to be La Fée Verte’s protector.”
Another shivering moment.
Honoré’s dragon began to retreat. Her face looked stricken. “So why are you still doing Terreur’s bidding? Are you dying as well?”
“No,” Rafe told them. “I’m damned.”