Chapter 25

Straw and Gold

Dreams were harder to pull from one’s head than forgeries, as Céleste discovered later that night. Her pantskirt had been simple enough—but that idea had had weeks to simmer, growing in the back of her mind like one of those stubborn dandelions that popped up among Père Lachaise’s tombstones at the tail end of autumn. Now that she’d uprooted it, the rest of her mind felt bare. As white as her surroundings. She and Rafe were back in the landscape room, but this time, they both held brushes. A songbird was perched on Céleste’s shoulder, tiny gold talons digging into her shoulder as it waited for another dream to grow.

No pressure.

Rafe had several birds on his jacket too. They were less stationary, swooping in and out and around and around, gathering ideas. He was one of La Fée Verte’s best imaginers, after all. He hadn’t been lying about that.

But Céleste?

“Did you ever hear the fairy tale of the miller’s daughter who was forced to turn straw into gold?” she asked, as Rafe began to paint. Orange streaked from his brush—bright as the fur between a tiger’s stripes.

He shook his head. “No, but that sounds like a handy talent to have.”

“On the surface, certainly,” she said. “I always figured she’d spend the rest of her life looking twice at a coin, never really knowing its worth.” Or burying it beneath a stranger’s grave, never to be touched again. “If everything could be gold, can’t it all be straw too?”

“Is that how the story ended? With the heroine stuffing francs into scarecrows while she questioned all of existence?” Rafe wondered.

The image made Céleste laugh. “Not exactly.”

“Good,” Rafe said, with the twirl of his brush. “That’d be pretty damn bleak.”

His landscape, on the other hand, was looking fluorescent. A sunset took shape over lines of vineyards. Their leaves—Céleste noted with a smile—weren’t green or straw-colored, but gold. Cheeky, that. Or just Rafe. He’d used the shade plenty of times before, going well beyond the walls of the ice palace or the outlines of her corset. Though those were certainly the most memorable instances…

She let her gaze linger on the other artist. His brushstrokes were no longer frantic; now they reminded her less of a street fight and more of the way his touch had moved along her thigh that first afternoon in La Ruche. A careful yet eager caress. It made Céleste clutch her own brush more tightly.

Somehow, their encounter on the graveyard mattress had felt even more intimate. I’m damned. You are my salvation. That was a lot of pressure to put on someone, but Céleste found she preferred it to the alternative: Good, but not good enough. I’m afraid you don’t have what it takes.

Her art mattered to Rafe García.

Her awfulness too.

It was a rare thing, Céleste knew, to have someone who treasured every part of you. The straw and the gold. Rafe had stayed by her side in the darkest of places. He hadn’t flinched away when she’d been coughing up her lungs or stealing to survive. He wasn’t shrinking back now either.

Rafe had come so close that Céleste could count his eyelashes. She could see herself reflected in his gaze—her white hair almost, but not quite, glowing. “If I might offer my two cents, I don’t think you have to worry about barnyard vegetation. Try not to worry at all. I know that’s easier said than done when our lives are at stake, but it’s amazing what a little cognitive dissonance can do.”

She swallowed. “How have you managed, all these years?”

“I didn’t, at first,” he said, his voice husky. “After Budapest, I was… well, frankly, it’s a miracle I managed to get past the Fontaine Saint-Michel’s guardian statue. I spent the first week of midnights getting shuttled around the salon by Jean. He taught me how to embrace the ephemeralness of this place, how to remember the beauty in my bones, if not my mind. That’s the trick, you see: Focus on the light. The joie de vivre. The things that make life worth living.”

“And when you’re with Terreur?”

Rafe shook his head. “I try not to think of him here. I can’t.”

Céleste understood. “Then what do you think of?”

“A fresh set of pencils. My first sip of morning coffee. Cherry blossoms in the spring. Laughing with you…” He added this last item so quietly. “I’ve gathered more of my own imaginings since June than I did all those years prior. My magic’s even stronger now than it was before the windmill burned.”

She felt her own cheeks start to burn at this, flushing all the way up to the roots of her hair.

“Don’t hold yourself back, mon amour.” Rafe reached out and touched her brush hand. “Just start painting.”

Céleste took a deep breath as the other artist stepped back.

She lifted her brush and started sketching fruit on the vines.

Garnet grapes.

No, that made her think too much of wine, so she turned them into stars instead. Small every-colored orbs of light that could be plucked and squeezed into a glass—oh! Céleste felt a gentle tug and watched as the songbird launched from her head, soaring into the bright orange sky. Beyond. Her thought streaked from its talons like a comet. Her hand tightened around her brush. The calluses were back—thanks to her days at La Ruche—and they had hours yet before dawn.

It wouldn’t hurt to keep going.

She painted a flock of paper cranes that swirled past a winking moon. On the far hill, she called up a cathedral with windows that winked back. Rafe, meanwhile, was painting a train. It would have been an exact match for the Orient Express—if its carriages hadn’t been crested with a circling fox. Gold as well.

Bits of the color remained on the brush as Rafe tucked it behind his ear. His shadow leapt onto the gleaming car with him, curling into one of the first-class seats, while the artist himself swung from the steps. One arm stretched toward Céleste.

“Care to join me for a ride?”

Again, she didn’t think it would hurt. She tucked her own brush behind her ear and grasped his hand. “Where are we going?”

“We can go wherever we want—it’s one of the perks of an imaginary landscape.” A smile lit Rafe’s face as he pulled her onto the steps. The train began gliding forward.

The edges of the grape leaves blurred, melting into each other. Rafe’s body swayed with the car as he held Céleste close. She could feel the tautness of muscles through his garments. His bicep fit oh so well around her waist—the only thing between Céleste and the growing rush of the tracks. The engine kept picking up speed, but the other artist made no move to go inside.

The vineyards turned molten.

Rafe’s eyes gleamed as he stared out at the fields. “I spent a lot of time studying travel posters as a young man, so I thought I knew what I was in for when I stole away on the Orient Express, but that second evening… well, there was this sunset.” Fiery light washed over his face as he nodded at the horizon. “It was beyond incredible. It was wild. Too wild to capture—and I didn’t have any of the paint colors, besides—so I put down my brush, and I stuck my head through the open window of the baggage car. There was this rush of wind, and for one moment, I became a part of the sky, and damn if I haven’t been chasing that feeling ever since.”

Wind whipped through Céleste’s hair. She understood now why so many of La Fée Verte’s early imaginers had been entranced by the idea of wings. “Flying?” she asked.

Rafe looked back down at her. “Freedom,” he said.

She could see the painted tracks wavering ahead. Soon, very soon, these would come to an end, but she didn’t want to think about that. She couldn’t. No, instead of the mess, Céleste would choose to focus on the beauty. To be in this moment. Fully. She let herself fall with the next tilt of the train so that Rafe’s chest met hers, and his arm tightened around her waist. His own want was thinly veiled by his trousers. It pressed into Céleste’s navel, and she felt those familiar fires stir to life.

At La Ruche, she would’ve turned over on their mattress and bit her lip. Now there was no reason to hold herself back. There were no Enchantresses to impress and no dreams to steal. If Rafe was to be believed, their kissing would not be a distraction but a way to summon the shiniest parts of her own soul. Why stop herself? Why not stand on her tiptoes and press her lips to his?

Céleste could not think of an answer; she wasn’t really thinking at all as she rose to kiss Rafe. This wasn’t their first kiss. Hardly. That had happened in the windmill. Dozens upon dozens of others had followed—their lips meeting in secret gardens, flowers everywhere, hot and blooming—but none of them had felt quite like this.

This wasn’t their first kiss, but it was their truest.

RafXeX García and Céleste Artois.

Together.

At the edge of their world.

Rafe’s braced arm was the only thing that kept Céleste from slipping off the steps. The ground rushed below her heels. Wind tugged at her skirts, but neither of these compared to the soaring sensation of his mouth on hers. It was as if she’d just discovered magic for the first time again—velvet curtains drawn back to shock and delight. Stopped in her tracks by the understanding that this was just the beginning. The beginning of something much, much bigger…

There was a jolt.

Rafe’s lips parted from hers as the floor tilted beneath them. His arm tightened around her waist. When Céleste followed his gaze over her shoulder, she saw why. The painted tracks had ended, but instead of stopping, the locomotive kept climbing, over the spires of Céleste’s cathedral, toward the fire-splashed sunset.

Into it.

Rafe let out a delighted laugh that reverberated in Céleste’s own chest. She understood why: They were becoming a part of the sky. None of her short trips flying to the top of Notre-Dame compared to this. Neither did any of Paris’s sunsets. How could they? Clouds prowled like jungle cats: orange, pink, purple—blazing. A shower of falling stars sparkled across the scene as well.

“Shit,” she said, as reverently as she could. “I thought we’d wrecked.”

Rafe shook his head, and there was a new burst of light, followed by a flurry of green feathers—oh! Those weren’t meteors. They were the couple’s imaginings brightening the sky.

“I told you, mon amour,” he murmured. “We can go wherever we want.”

The train kept climbing through the neon roar of clouds, so high that Céleste could no longer see the vineyards. The moon she’d painted had grown from the size of a thumbnail to a smile.

She was grinning too as she looked back at Rafe.

“I want you,” she said.

The artist inhaled. His nicked brow quivered. “Are you sure?”

Rafe wasn’t really asking about Céleste’s desire, she knew. It was Terreur looming behind his words. But that bastard didn’t belong here, so she nodded. Then she took the other artist’s hand and led him into the dining car.

The tables were set to serve a first-class feast—but Céleste brushed the plates and goblets away. She ripped at the laces of her own corset. Rafe peeled off his shirt, letting it join the cloth napkins and their politest knives. He shoved these aside as he lifted Céleste to the table’s edge, kissing her lips, her throat, while tracing her hips, her thighs, the burning parts between them. There were no secrets here, no need to be careful in this wild sky, so Céleste wrapped her arms around Rafe’s neck and kissed him back, so long and so fiercely that she saw stars. There were stars behind her eyes—matching the brilliance of his touch down there—but she spotted actual stars too, floating just outside their closed carriage windows. Her lunar landscape hovered there, orbited by emerald birds unable to find their way inside the train. Rafe’s hair was so threaded through with silver that she could hardly see its original color. Hers glowed too—more shooting stars on this side of the glass.

Rafe looked over his shoulder to see what had caused her pause.

“Ah.” The artist didn’t pull back the way he so often had before. Instead, his shadow rose from its seat and stretched so that the fox covered every one of the cabin windows. “Call me a prude, but I’d rather not be on display.”

“Prude?” Céleste arched an eyebrow at him. “That’s certainly not the word that comes to mind.”

“A poor choice. To be fair, I’m hardly thinking with words at all.” Rafe shifted so that his bare chest was over hers. So that his imaginings spilled around her face. Skin to skin. Dreams to dreams.

Céleste pulled him even closer.

He was in her.

Oh, the fullness. Her entire body flushed with it. Her skin felt like the sky on Bastille Day—bursting with colors and heat. She dug her fingers between Rafe’s shoulder blades, where a pair of wings might go. Her hips rolled in time with his. He held her gaze with such intensity, such tenderness, that Céleste couldn’t help but gasp. Then moan. Rafe bit his own lip at the sounds, then leaned back in to kiss her on the neck. She shut her eyes, focusing on the thrilling heat of him inside her, building and building. She took Rafe’s lips, his hands, his hope, until every single one of her hairs shone, and Céleste was lost inside the light of it all.

No words.

Just stars,

stars,

stars.

Finally she landed back inside herself, and Rafe curled into her chest, his scars pressed into her page-pale skin.

They lay this way for as long as they dared.

Until the train began to slant down and stray silverware came clattering back toward them. Soup spoons and cheese knives and two loose fob chains belonging to a pocket watch. Céleste caught them both. Rafe sat up with a sigh.

“I don’t want to go back to the Caveau,” he murmured. “I— There’s so much more to hide from him now.”

She understood what he meant, especially after his fox fell away from the carriage windows. The night was nearly over. She could no longer see her moon, and their train was falling back through a thick mist, broken only by La Fée Verte’s birds. Her fist tightened over Rafe’s pocket watch—tempted to squeeze out an extra hour. Céleste knew that as soon as she stepped off this train, the birds would hold up her end of the bargain, flocking to her head like it was a wheat field.

She knew too that her dreams were worth something.

They had to be if she already missed them.

“We’ve come this far.” Though the thought of Rafe’s windmill burned even more now. Along with the memory of XXXXXXX pulling it out of her head. “Besides, you told me Terreur isn’t omniscient, remember? He only scents our fear. If we just keep thinking about how much we want to survive, that’s the only thing he’ll see.” Besides, it’s like she told Sylvie: “The best lies are rooted in truth.”

Rafe’s ink-drop tear crinkled as he pulled his shirt back over his head. “I prefer the Latin version.”

In somnis veritas.

“It is more poetic.”

Instead of winding the pocket watch, Céleste flipped it open: 8:45, the hands read. Still. They stayed that way, even after she handed the timepiece to Rafe. Their fateful hour hadn’t changed—even after all this.

There were no more dreams growing from Céleste’s head as she walked down rue des Ombres—strangers’ ideas rattled inside her pockets instead. She focused on darker thoughts as she approached Terreur’s door. It’s like the stardust trick, but opposite.

That had been Rafe’s advice, all those mornings ago. She could tell the other thief was trying to heed it by how stiffly he moved beside her, how silent he’d been on the taxi ride here. His fear was thick. Real. The same as Céleste’s. Conjuring the feeling was easy enough. The real trick was reining it in so that their employer wouldn’t follow the threads and catch wind of the Enchantresses’ plan. So Sylvie and Honoré wouldn’t get tangled in his web any more than they already were. Céleste’s pulse fluttered like the daydreamer’s butterfly wings. Her heart felt sticky. This is just another costume change, she told herself. Just like slipping on an opera glove or a mourning veil. Just like pinching her skin to summon tears. Believe yourself and he’ll believe you.

Be the taker or be taken.

Céleste’s motto turned into a mantra, circling through her head over and over again as she turned the door’s knob. It opened to Caveau des Terreurs. She saw the space with new eyes, not just because it was a glimpse into Honoré’s past, but because it might hold hints of their fate as well. Was her employer’s heart tucked away in the piano? Was it one of the flies alighting on the sticky bar top? The barmaid wasn’t there to wipe it down or to greet Rafe like a stranger.

Terreur was pouring his own drinks.

Red wine.

If it was wine…

Rafe paused. “Where is Eleanor?”

“Gone.” Terreur snapped his fingers, and the decanter tipped itself over his empty glass. “She proved difficult to work with, so I no longer require her services.”

What’s the opposite of stardust? Céleste wondered. Rust? Iron? The smell that’s swimming from that wine glass?

“What about you?” their employer asked. “Have you brought me my dream?”

Rafe had to be smelling the same scent, but his nose didn’t wrinkle. The rest of his face remained stony as he set several ideas on the bar. None showed Paris, of course. In exchange for the power La Fée Verte’s birds had harvested after their train ride, the Sanct had given them a smattering of imaginings—seahorses with saddles and that sort of thing. Images that made Terreur twist his lips. This expression didn’t shift with Céleste’s offerings, but he did push his drink toward her.

“For your trouble,” said Terreur.

Céleste’s stomach sloshed too.

Her lungs were fine—she wasn’t due to visit the Mad Monk for another few days. So what was this? A test? Was he suspicious? He would be if she kept sitting here, staring into the drink, trying not to see its oily sheen, the way ghastly images floated across the top. She recognized the barmaid. What was her name? Eleanor? The young woman’s life flashed before Céleste’s eyes: Mud-pies served to dolls and kisses wrangled from boys in back alleys. The same alleys she used for target practice. Throwing darts and knives and bottles. Just in case. The second-to-last bottle smashed past Honoré’s feet. The final one on her friend’s dragon armor. She’d wanted to scream when those silver wings spread to fly away, but her jaw would not move, and her throat kept getting tighter, tighter, tighter, and—

“Is something the matter?” their employer asked.

Céleste’s hand tightened around the glass’s stem. She’d done this before, she reminded herself. XXXXXXX had served her La Belle’s blood after The Rite of Spring. Eleanor herself had poured that special reserve at this very bar. It was harder to swallow, now that Céleste knew what it cost to keep her alive.

Or, rather, who.

“Is this not rich enough for your taste?” the Sanct wondered. “You have been spoiled, I suppose. I usually save royalty for special occasions.”

It was hard not to think about Sylvie’s story—of the tsarevitch in his playroom. The boy’s blood didn’t truly vanish when Grigori Rasputin “healed” him, she realized. It was just transfused to the Mad Monk’s masque. And then to Céleste. All under the guise of prayers…

Mon Dieu.

She focused in on her own prayer then: Be the taker or be taken. She brought the goblet to her lips. The taste—ugh—was like horseshoes, but she forced herself to keep drinking. Down, down. Until there was no longer a ghost in the glass.

Céleste slid the drained cup back toward Terreur. “I want more.”

The Sanct arched his eyebrow and reached for the decanter.

“I want more than days,” she went on, before he could pour a second serving. “I want to become like you.”

It was her employer’s turn to pause, his hand clenching the glass neck. “Monsieur García has told you about my heart, I see.”

Rafe stayed very still at the end of the bar, staring at the sandy floor, just as he’d gazed into the garden pool. Céleste focused her own eyes on Terreur’s—their thirsty blue. He didn’t seem to be staring at her hair or any memories lurking beneath their surface. He didn’t really see…

Yet.

“He told me about hermits who live forever in mountain caves and pharaohs who locked pieces of themselves into pyramids. If there are eternities to be claimed, then why should I settle for days? I want more.”

Terreur smiled then.

His lips were a terrible red. Hers were a perfect match, according to the mirror behind the bar. It looked almost like rouge—another piece of costume. She hated how damn convincing it was, how Rafe still couldn’t bear to look in her direction.

“Leave us, Monsieur García. We don’t need your bleeding heart here.”

It was hard to tell if Terreur’s words were a command or a spell—there were so many extra shadows in the Caveau that Rafe almost had to wade through them to reach the exit. The door shut and locked behind him, becoming a storage closet once more. “I’m surprised Monsieur García spoke of such things… he’s never shown much interest in following my footsteps.”

“He’s a wanderer,” Céleste said.

“A wonderer too. He believes La Fée Verte’s magic is better than mine.”

“Prettier, perhaps. All smoke and mirrors and vines, but I want something that lasts past sunrise. Something more potent.” She made a show of licking her bloodied lips. “Could you show me how to become immortal?”

“If you were willing to go that far,” the Sanct said. “Few are. Even the Mad Monk hasn’t been able to bring himself to remove his heart, though he’s come up with an inventive substitution system. Tell me… about your arrangement with Monsieur García… Do you really love him?”

The question caught her off guard.

“No.” Céleste wasn’t quite sure if she was telling the truth. Wanting to kiss someone was not love, nor was sharing their bed, nor feeling fireworks at their touch. Love was… well, it was the sort of thing that kept Sylvie turning the pages of whatever story she was reading. The girl was always so determined to see whether or not the characters would ride off together into the sunset.

Ah shit.

Terreur’s eyes narrowed. “He’s grown attached to you, I think,” her employer said. “His heart is too soft. It snagged when he saw your bloody glove after The Rite of Spring—so I doubt he could remove it without dying. The spell I performed requires you to sever yourself from everything, leaving not even a string… That way no one can break your heart.” There was something strange in his voice—beyond its coldness and rust. “Nothing can touch you because you have nothing to lose.”

“How did you cut it out?” She glanced at the top buttons of his shirt. There were no scars peeking through. But why would there be if he had the power to erase them all? “Did you use a knife?”

“A comb.”

“For… hair?”

“It was symbolic.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Nothing hurts anymore.” His voice kept stretching into some unknown distance. Silence followed, until Terreur looked back at the dreams at the bar’s end. “But if you want more of my power, you’re going to have to earn it, Mademoiselle Artois. Find me my lost dream, and I’ll show you the way to life everlasting.”

A curt dismissal.

Céleste had gone as far as she could, so she rose from her stool and went to the door behind the bar. Usually, when she twisted the knob, the lock shifted back to the rue des Ombres. Not this morning. This morning she stepped into darkness. No cobblestones. Something softer. No sunrise at the end. Merely a wall papered with the remains of an Orient Express poster, aged to the point that Constantinople’s spires no longer shone gold.

The body at Céleste’s feet looked brittle too.

Fingers snapped like straw beneath her boot as she flinched away. Eleanor. It bore no resemblance to the barmaid, but somehow Céleste knew this was her skeletal husk. She felt this truth in her own bones. She bit her lip until their blood mixed, forcing her thoughts back to straw and gold, straw and gold. The story of the miller’s daughter and the king who would have killed her at dawn, if she failed her impossible task. The young woman had survived—not by dreaming but by making a deal with a demon, who then came, many years later, to claim what was his.

A bleak ending.

Or rather, it would have been, if the miller’s daughter had been less cunning.