Chapter 32

Fairy Hair

Sylvie of a Single Name had never had her portrait taken before.

She wasn’t sure if the photograph from Duchess d’Uzès’s ball truly counted. The photographer didn’t register her presence—he seemed much more focused on capturing Anastasia in her bright blue wig. The grand duchess obliged with a smile. “You’ve posed before!” the man behind the camera exclaimed, half a minute into the process. “Most children turn out a blur because they can’t sit still.” It was difficult, certainly. Sylvie was itching to explore the ballroom, which the champagne heiress had managed to decorate with flowers, even though there was a thick coat of snow blanketing the world outside. Potted orchids sat on stands, looking as delicate as a rich lady’s slippers. Several of the guests had chosen hairpieces that matched the flowers. The dance floor was dizzy with color. Sylvie felt something even brighter bloom inside her chest as she watched the kaleidoscopic waltz.

All this had grown from a single inspired seed.

Her magic was no longer just make-believe.

The wigs were solid. Everyone in the room could see the fantastical colors they wore—and Duchess d’Uzès was already insisting they wear their hairpieces home. “Let us make it all the rage this new year! Everyone shall be clamoring for fairy hair in 1914!” She prodded her own oceanic curls, which covered her head like a swim cap, and waved to where the daydreamers were posing. “Especially after they see how well we wore it!”

It then occurred to Sylvie, as the photographer stepped back and pulled a glass plate from his camera, that their portrait was also very real. Anastasia’s sapphire hair wasn’t yet visible on the autochrome slide, but after a wash of chemicals, all that would change. No doubt one of L’Illustration’s readers would recognize the Russian princess…

It was a good reason to steal the exposure. Not that Sylvie needed a reason. She would have pocketed the picture anyway—a souvenir of her very first ball.

“Was it everything you dreamed it would be?” Anastasia asked, when the pair of them finally drifted back toward rue de la Réunion.

Sylvie considered. She had, after all, spent an unseemly number of hours imagining what it would be like to attend a ball where women sipped sparkling drinks and men wore mysterious velvet masks and at least one great love story unfolded during the waltzes. It seemed entirely possible that pieces of this fantasy had somehow woven into her idea for the rainbow wigs, before growing into the glorious party Duchess d’Uzès had just hosted.

“It wasn’t as magical as the dances at Versailles.” The ghost balls she’d witnessed in those mirrors had been dripping with enchantments, golden crowns growing on revelers’ heads while they danced on the painted ceilings. “And this ball didn’t have a prince.”

“Nonsense! Wasn’t your friend Jean there?”

The Frivolous Prince had made an appearance toward the evening’s end, after the photographer had packed up his gear. There was no one to document his presence. Or the lavender wig he plucked from the doorman’s head, after giving the man a peck on the cheek. It hadn’t been quite a bisou. It had not been unwelcome either.

“I meant a real prince,” Sylvie said, as they drew closer to their pink door. It looked especially inviting with the fresh snow—while most of the flakes that fell on rue de la Réunion’s cobblestones had already melted, the ground that bordered Russia was powdery white. As if the presence of enchantment weren’t obvious enough, icicles clung from the doorframe.

“Well, you can come and say hello to Alexei. He’s been asking about you—” Anastasia tugged the wig from her head. Her smile also slipped when she opened the door. “He’s been asking about ‘Our Friend’ too.”

The chill that went through Sylvie’s spine had nothing to do with the ice hanging from the doorframe. She’d given Grigori Rasputin a wide berth since the night Honoré had been stabbed, after Céleste discovered that Sylvie and Anastasia had watched the healing of that wound through Catherine Palace’s windows.

“Mon Dieu, Sylvie!” the oldest Enchantress hissed. “It’s bad enough that you steal the princess from her bed every night! If the Mad Monk catches you…” She fell silent, her eyes iced with fear.

It had been enough to make Sylvie stay quiet too. Céleste did not spook easily.

This was another reason Sylvie found her friend’s behavior around the grand duchess strange. To say the least. Honoré had a soft spot for Anastasia—laughing at her jokes and even teaching her a bit of knifework. But Céleste never stayed in the same room as the princess long enough to watch.

This did not sit well with Sylvie.

Neither did the stories Anastasia brought back from Russia every evening. The dark cloud around Tsarina Alexandra’s head was growing worse. Alexei’s too. “I know the starets is evil. And I know we’re not supposed to daydream on my side of the door anymore.” The princess looked out over the floors of the Children’s Palace. The tin soldier regiment had built a fort using gumdrops as building blocks. They were sturdy. Rock-hard, yes, but also enduring. In the four months since they’d been imagined, not a single candy had disappeared. This was the biggest reason Sylvie had decided not to enchant the tsarevitch’s playroom anymore. “But… my brother needs our magic. It’s all he talks about when we’re alone. He keeps trying to sneak over here so he can play, and he keeps getting hurt, and Mama keeps asking for Rasputin…” Anastasia shuddered. Her fingers tightened around her wig. “I know we can’t heal my brother’s hemophilia until we’ve found the heart, but I’m afraid Alexei might break before then.”

Sylvie looked from the cobalt strands of the hairpiece to Anastasia’s long chestnut braid. They were too far from Paris’s streetlamps for Sylvie to tell if there were any darker strings growing there. “You shouldn’t be afraid.”

“I know.” The princess’s voice trembled. “But I am.”

Sylvie didn’t know what to say. She figured she should probably take Anastasia’s wig—that was another rule they’d established, that no items from Paris crossed over to Russia—but she slipped her hand into her pocket instead. The glass-plate exposure there felt as thin as the ice creeping over the outside lake. As fragile as the windows of Alexander Palace. The tsarevitch’s room was glazed with moonlight.

A short flight.

“He’ll be waiting up to hear about Duchess d’Uzès’s ball,” Anastasia said. “He’s been waiting to hear about it ever since I told him about how you planted the idea in her head. He’ll be so excited to see how close you are to becoming a Sanct.” She held up the blue hairpiece. “But I know he’d be even more excited to see you.”

“I guess a quick visit couldn’t hurt,” Sylvie answered, as she stepped into the Children’s Palace.

Little did she know how wrong she was. Later, much later, Sylvie of a Single Name would spend hours studying the photograph in her pocket, wishing she’d known to stay still… all the autochrome plate had picked up of her presence was a glowing pink blur and the faintest outline of wings. Anastasia stood beside her. Hands folded. Hair stained the color of tears. Her smile seemed true, but Sylvie knew better now.

She wished she could turn back time and turn to her friend.

What would she say then?

Au revoir? Adieu? I’m so, so sorry.

Something about Catherine Palace felt different when Céleste Artois followed Terreur through the Door to Everywhere. It was cold. Damn cold. This was to be expected—Rasputin did not use the ceramic stoves made of delft tiles, and the snow was as blank as the days on a Parisian socialite’s calendar. January 1914. Aside from the buzzed-about fête at Duchess d’Uzès’s Champs-Élysées palace nearly a week ago, the City of Light had fallen into hibernation. It was hard to tell whether this was because of the weather or because more nameless bodies were surfacing—enough that street singers were starting to weave warnings into their songs: The darkness shall eat you if you dare to tread, so heed your clocks and stay in bed.

Céleste wasn’t sure if Terreur had directly inspired the tune, but he didn’t stop the musicians in Belleville from strumming it. He did halt at the center of the ballroom, however. His pale nostrils flared.

The Mad Monk’s robes shifted with a nervous bow.

Other parts of the palace were shifting too. Gods on the ceiling hoisted spears and swords; the golden-bright angels over the doors looked ready to launch. Céleste tried not to let her own muscles coil as she paused beside Terreur.

“What’s wrong?” her employer growled in Russian.

Rasputin’s icy gaze flicked from Céleste to Terreur. “It could be nothing—”

“What?”

“I made a strange discovery when I went to collect some of the young tsarevitch earlier.” The Mad Monk’s spidery hand dipped into his robes, tangling the chains of his saint necklaces. “This was in his playroom.”

The hairpiece was as blue as the walls of the palace and the winter sky beyond. Céleste trained her stare there, hoping neither of the Sancts would notice that extra pause in her pulse. Sylvie. Oh, Sylvie. She knew the girl had taken Anastasia to Duchess d’Uzès’s party.

I was at a real ball with a real princess! It was a dream come true! So many dreams come true! You should’ve seen all the different wigs, Céleste!

Well, she was seeing one now.

“What am I staring at?” Terreur snarled. “A half-frozen rabbit?”

“I believe this is a wig.”

“A… wig? The tsarevitch put that on his head?”

“He put it on his giant stuffed dog, but that’s beside the point.”

“And what is your point? That the prince of Russia plays dress-up?”

“I—” The Mad Monk faltered. “I don’t know. But something isn’t right. When I asked the boy how he acquired this, he refused to say.”

“So pluck the answer from his head!” her employer snarled.

“The boy’s anima is so thin, that might very well unravel him,” Rasputin said. “The label says this wig was made in Paris, but the tsarina would not have ordered it. Alexandra isn’t fanciful enough. She hardly lets her girls wear anything more than pearls—”

“Has it occurred to you that perhaps I have better things to do than listen to you wax poetic about dynastic wardrobes?”

“I am simply trying to be vigilant,” the Mad Monk replied coolly. “You asked me to stand guard here, after all.”

“It’s a wig,” Terreur told him. “It’s nothing.”

Yet Céleste could see the ballroom’s murals stirring in the corners of her vision: wrecked ships and warring deities and a two-headed eagle flapping its restless wings. Nothing can touch you, she remembered her employer crowing, because you have nothing to lose. What a lie. If Terreur really believed this, why was the dark cloud of his mask still flaring? Why were all the gods bristling, their weapons pointed in the same direction? What had the Mad Monk been placed here to protect?

Only one answer made sense.

And it was not nothing.

“Terreur’s heart is in Catherine Palace.”

The salon also stirred, when Céleste delivered this news, but not with vengeful angels. La Fée Verte’s birds rushed toward the settee she was sharing with Honoré. The chandelier’s butterflies scattered as Sylvie spilled out of her vine hammock. Marmalade batted at them from the bar top. The blue elephant behind him made a trumpeting noise.

“How do you know?” the youngest Enchantress shouted over it. “Did you see it there? Did he tell you?”

“Not in so many words.” Céleste raised her flask, which was down to the dregs with its language-learning tea. No matter. She repeated the exchange in French, sparing no details. Especially not the colorful wig.

Sylvie, at least, had the awareness to blush when she heard this, her cheeks matching her own bright hair. “Oh.”

“Oh?” Honoré’s voice was as piqued as her dragon. Despite the Fisherman’s warnings, the other Enchantress claimed she’d found a way to manage the jewelry—and mostly that proved true. The silver seemed contained to her right arm, though at times like this, it started swallowing the skin past her shoulder. Molten metal crept alongside her neck veins. “You let Anastasia take a Parisian wig back to Alexander Palace, and all you have to say for yourself is ‘oh’?”

“It wasn’t a magical wig,” Sylvie protested. “I figured it would be fine. And it is! It’s better than fine! Now we know where to send the cats!”

“She’s right, my dame.” La Fée Verte touched Honoré’s knee.

Céleste did not miss how her friend suddenly softened, how the ring melted back from her throat as Honoré turned her gaze to the Sanct. “Cats are fine enough as scouts, but we can’t send them to Catherine Palace. Not when we’re this close. I’ll go myself.” Honoré looked to Céleste. “Did Terreur say anything about where the heart might be? Under a floorboard or something?”

“No,” Céleste said. “But all the palace’s paintings began pointing their weapons in the same direction when they believed there was a threat.”

“Just like the statues in the Palais Garnier!”

“I’m not sure they’d be so helpful,” Céleste told the youngest Enchantress.

“Perhaps not on purpose.” Honoré grinned. “My guess is they’re standing guard. If we go the opposite way of the weapons, maybe we’ll find what they’re so set on protecting. Could you tell which direction they were pointing?”

“Northeast, judging by the sunrise.” The golden light had come too quickly for her to pass this news along to Rafe, who was asleep in La Ruche at this very moment. We know where the heart is hidden. We’ll find it soon. Our hour is almost here. He would no doubt check his watch when she finally told him. They’d sit together on the dusk-washed mattress and pass their shared fate back and forth, until the golden chains were a-tangle between them.

Soon, very soon, they would both be free.