Chapter 42

The Kiss at the Glass Casket

Sylvie of a Single Name sat outside the Enchantresses’ mausoleum, rummaging through the handcart that belonged to the Fisherman of the Moon. Waiting for Honoré to return was far easier if she had something to keep her hands busy. She’d hardly sat still since the Sanct had freed her from the necklace. She couldn’t. There was too much to do, so much lost time to make up for—

“Careful!” the ragpicker called out from the mausoleum step. Sylvie paused, her hand hovering over a gold-leafed tiara set on the head of a bust. “You put that crown on, and you might never take it off again!”

Sylvie shuddered. She had no desire to get tangled up inside another piece of jewelry, so she set the unhappy-looking statue aside and kept digging through the Fisherman’s loot. He’d managed to save a number of things from Terreur’s fire—thanks to the warning of the Whisper Network. He’d packed only the essentials: thimbles and spools of stray ribbon and old posters.

She chose to pluck out one of these, unrolling it to find a beautiful advertisement for the Carnaval des Merveilles. The tents looked almost like lilies, the way they sprouted from the carnival grounds. If Sylvie stared for long enough, she could see their edges flapping, open and inviting. She glimpsed Madame Arcana too, peering into the twisting fog of her crystal ball. The fortune teller hadn’t been much help since she’d netted La Fée Verte’s body from the river. The few times Sylvie had tried to sneak out to the Sanct’s houseboat, she found the door locked tight. Even though she heard sounds on the other side, she hadn’t tried to pick it open the way she’d once broken into Libris’s fancy display case…

The bookseller had been right to keep Sylvie from spoiling her own story.

She certainly would’ve skipped the chapter with the necklace.

And erasing Anastasia’s memory.

But if Sylvie of a Single Name had not lived through those things, she figured she wouldn’t be sitting here now, staring at this reminder of what had risen from the Revolution’s ashes.

“Do you have any more of these?” She held the poster up for the Fisherman to see.

“There should be an absinthe advertisement in there—”

“No, I mean for the carnival.”

“That’s my only copy. Though there may be more on Île du Carnaval.” The Fisherman of the Moon tilted his head, his masque gleaming the same color as the brass telescope he’d been peering through. Not searching for stars but Honoré. “Why do you ask?”

Sylvie wasn’t sure she wanted to say. She glanced back at the poster’s flowery script. Surely Rafe could copy it onto fresh pieces of paper… They would need to change the dates blooming at the bottom anyway. “No reason.”

Yet.

“That reminds me, you know what I do have?” The Fisherman let go of the telescope to start rifling through his coat. “The photograph from that plate you asked me to have developed.”

Sylvie’s breath suddenly felt as sharp as the glass she’d handed the ragpicker several days ago. She’d wanted something less fragile to carry around in her pocket, alongside the key to the door at rue de la Réunion, but the paper the Fisherman handed over didn’t feel much sturdier. Neither did Sylvie, when she caught her first sight of the portrait. Blue and pink. A princess and a phantasm.

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna was smiling.

Sylvie—next to her—was a blur.

Just as much a ghost in the picture as she was in the grand duchess’s memory.

Sylvie folded her hand over the photograph, instantly regretting the motion as the paper bent and warped Anastasia’s face. Had their friendship been worth it? Truly? Or was this just something she told herself to sleep better at night? Never mind how many evenings she spent standing in front of the pink door, staring through its keyhole, trying to catch glimpses of the grand duchess. She didn’t dare try to unlock the portal. Not while the Mad Monk still lurked on the other side. According to the cats of Saint Petersburg—well, Petrograd, it was Petrograd now—the sorcerer kept himself quite busy with the royal family. The tsarina and her two eldest daughters had even taken an interest in healing people, training to become sestry miloserdiya. Sisters of mercy, dedicated to the Red Cross.

As for Alexei?

The prince lives on borrowed time. All the Romanovs are unraveling. They are too tangled up in Rasputin’s shadow to last much longer…

And there was no way for Sylvie to save them.

She’d known this when she finally caught sight of Anastasia, not through the keyhole, but a mirror in the grand duchess’s bedroom. It was just a glimpse—her spell couldn’t last long against Rasputin’s wards—but she knew the room belonged to Nastya, thanks to the butterflies stenciled around the pink walls. Sylvie felt immediately at home, as if she were the one who shared the room with Anastasia, instead of the grand duchess’s older sister. Both girls were in their beds. Maria seemed to be sleeping. Anastasia looked awake, though it was difficult to know for sure. Shadows stained her pillow. They shaded the princess’s eyes as well, but a candle flickered on her bedside table. Its light danced across the story Anastasia was reading.

The lilac fairy book.

It was no longer truly lilac. The blood on the cover had dried enough to match the singe marks—rusted brown. Sylvie found she could see the gilded fae on the front better for it. Stars at her feet. Moon through her hair.

Anastasia’s own hair was a tangle of black. She’s so afraid… Sylvie ached at the thought, and she knew that even if she could somehow step through the mirror and use a dream to cut the grand duchess free from Rasputin’s grasp, the princess would not leave.

I don’t know what I would do without my family. They’re my heart…

Sylvie’s own heart felt just as crumpled as the photograph. She wanted it to be smooth again. She wanted hide-and-seek games in Libris’s bookstore. She wanted to laugh in a ballroom full of colorful wigs. She wanted tea parties lit with firebirds. She wanted her friend back.

“Here.” The Fisherman of the Moon pulled more prints from his pocket and handed them to her. “I had several copies developed, just in case.”

“In case what?” Sylvie asked.

The ragpicker shrugged. “You never know when you’ll find yourself needing a reminder of how to hope. That ball was your first real muse magic. If you ever struggle to make more, you can look back at these photographs and see proof of your power. You bring joy to those around you, Sylvie of a Single Name. You brought joy to Russia’s youngest grand duchess too. That is never wrong. And it’s never wasted.”

Sylvie bit her lip as she looked down at Anastasia’s smiling face.

It went blurry with tears.

She tucked the fresh photographs into her own pocket before she could ruin those too. She wiped the moisture from her eyes and looked back down at the Carnaval des Merveilles poster. No, Sylvie decided, it will not be wasted. She wondered if she could ask Rafe to add a firebird to the carnival’s next iteration.

She was rolling the advertisement back up when Marmalade appeared by the handcart’s wheel, his paws moving in a quick dance.

The prickly one! She comes!

Sylvie craned her neck to look at the sky. In the song, Honoré was compared to a comet—but there was no new light above them, only the cemetery wall the Enchantress had lined with broken glass well over a year ago. A bird flew down and landed between the pieces. With how dark it was outside, it took Sylvie an extra moment to realize the feathers were green. The beak, gold.

“Oh!”

The leaves of the nearby tree whispered as a cloaked figure stepped beneath their branches.

“Honoré!”

The newcomer halted by the mausoleum steps. “Ma rêveuse! Back to stealing necklaces instead of being them, I see! Oof!”

Sylvie threw her arms around Honoré’s waist and hugged tight enough for the cloak to fall away. “You’re… shiny!”

She looked more like the song than Sylvie had first believed. The glowing sword of dreams hung at her hip, yes, but there was a shimmer around her eyes as well. Silver beams. The color of a knife sharpened by moonlight. This shine caught the edges of her wings, which had somehow grown feathers… No wonder the soldiers thought Honoré was an angel!

“Oui,” the other Enchantress sighed. “I feel like a walking torch.”

“At least you’re feeling something,” the Fisherman of the Moon said from the steps. He was scanning Honoré’s armor with his telescope. “I wasn’t sure you’d be able to keep your relic under control, especially in a place so bloody as war.”

“I managed,” Honoré answered.

“You’ve done more than that!” Sylvie told her. “Everyone is talking about you, Honoré! Duchess d’Uzès even carved a statue. She wants to display it at the château hospital, but I think we should unveil it at the carnival.”

Honoré’s eyebrows rose. “Carnival?”

“Yes!” Sylvie waved the poster she was holding. “We’ll need something to distract Terreur while we stab his heart, and I figure La Fée Verte will want a new place to gather dreams anyway once she wakes up—” She glanced through the mausoleum’s iron doors, where the songbird sat on the edge of the glass casket. It seemed to be waiting for Honoré. Of course it was. Sylvie cleared her throat and tucked the advertisement behind her back. “I suppose you should go do that.”

Honoré Côte stepped into the tomb that held her name. Her name and her love. This was a sacred moment, too private to allow for an audience, so she shut the iron doors behind her and stared into the box crafted by the Fisherman of the Moon. She knew it wasn’t a coffin. Not really. She knew it wasn’t glass she pushed away from La Fée Verte’s form but a spell that had held the Sanct still since the moment Honoré left her here.

Her body anyway.

Her heart—the songbird Honoré had caught in the ash-choked sky—hopped onto the Sanct’s unmoving chest. Its wings spread out over her breasts. Trembling. Its dark eyes looked back up at Honoré. Again, it seemed to be waiting.

Honoré took a deep breath, trying not to tremble as well. In all her time in the trenches, she hadn’t dared doubt, but now that the moment was finally here, now that she was staring at La Fée Verte’s waxen form, she couldn’t help but question herself.

What if Honoré touched those cold lips and nothing happened?

What if she wasn’t enough?

What if—

What if she kissed the woman she loved and it all worked out splendidly well?

What if La Fée Verte rose up from the grave and kissed her back?

Honoré had only one way to find out which ending was true. She leaned down into the glass casket—her hope as sharp as hurt—and pressed her lips to La Fée Verte’s.

The dreams gathered over the past eight months swirled up all at once, pouring into La Fée Verte’s masque like molten metal, swallowing both women in light. Life. Power. Honoré felt feathers quiver around her head, felt the chest beneath hers rise and fall, felt the bird vanish.

“My dame…”

The shine faded as Honoré pulled away just enough for her to see La Fée Verte’s wings were no longer stripped down to bone. Her feathers had filled back in, and her cheeks were rosy, and her smile was everything good in this world… Honoré wanted to fall back into it, but the Sanct was already sitting up, her hair spilling off her shoulders as she rose from the casket. As she reached out and cupped Honoré’s face in her hand.

Honoré mirrored the other woman’s motion, tracing the beautiful whorls of her masque. Lit once more. They sat this way for a small eternity, saying nothing. They might have sat longer, if there weren’t a not-so-shy knock on the door.

“Did it work? I saw a flash!” Sylvie’s head poked through. “Oh, good! Have you told her about Stohrer’s secret basement and that the Seer of the Seine was really on our side and Céleste is too, of course—”

“She didn’t have to,” La Fée Verte said, as she stretched her wings wide so wide that they brushed Honoré’s own. “I’ve been with her this entire time.”

Strange but true.

She’d never known such closeness, letting someone in even nearer than skin. For the past eight months, La Fée Verte had been under Honoré’s every breath. She’d colored every thought. She’d kept every secret. She’d shared every dream. They’d both become bigger than themselves. And while Honoré had long yearned for this moment, a small part of her had begun to dread it too… Would there be new gaps in her armor, now that the songbird no longer nested there?

Her ring’s wings were still shaped like feathers, however.

And when Honoré glanced at the open coffin, she could see her silver masque reflected in the glass. The song of the soldiers kept humming through her—it felt even louder here in the city. If Honoré focused, she could hear thousands of voices, thousands of hopes, lighting up the night. She felt the mothers tucking their babes into bed. She felt the priests in their cathedrals, clasping their hands, offering up prayers like incense. She felt the radio operator at the top of the Eiffel Tower, sending even more messages. She felt the cataphiles and the boulevardiers, the taxi drivers and the moonlight sinners, the belly dancers inside Moulin Rouge’s elephant, the rich youths who’d once watched them, another young man sitting on the roof of an opera house…

She felt La Fée Verte too.

The other Sanct watched her with a smile. “Their hope suits you, Honoré.”

“I—” Honoré wasn’t quite sure what to say. “I didn’t mean to become a Sanct. I figured all the power would pass to you.” But it hadn’t. And now that Honoré studied La Fée Verte more closely, she saw the woman’s masque was flickering. Not with a spell, but more like a candle in the wind. “You need more, don’t you?”

“Here!” There were still dozens of rose-colored dreams hanging from the ceiling, but Sylvie pulled one from her head instead. Honoré glimpsed a carousel inside, as it passed to La Fée Verte. “Use this!”

“The Carnaval des Merveilles…” Wooden horses kept spinning around and around between La Fée Verte’s fingers.

“I know why you closed it now,” Sylvie said, her voice strangely soft. “I know why you were so afraid to let me into the salon after you invited Honoré… but you did it anyway, and now you have two more Sancts to help you fight Terreur. If you open the carnival again and invite every imaginer in Paris to join you… well, I don’t think he’d stand much of a chance.”

Certainly not, if Céleste had gotten ahold of his heart—though Honoré knew the youngest Enchantress was right. They’d need a distraction. Something sparkly to divert Terreur’s attention so he wouldn’t stop them from stabbing it.

“One night is all we need,” she said.

La Fée Verte’s masque sputtered as she shook her head. “I don’t have enough magic to open the carnival.”

“We do!” Sylvie chirped. “The League of Imaginers, I mean. Rafe and Duchess d’Uzès and Jean Cocteau and Guillaume Apollinaire and… well, everyone who’s been gathering dreams under Stohrer. There’s a lot. And once we move to Île du Carnaval, there will be even more! We can inspire other imaginers. We can share enough power to rebuild everything Terreur destroyed. The cafés and cabarets and your salon…”

“Perhaps.” La Fée Verte stared back at the dream she was holding.

Honoré could feel her want.

She could feel the other woman’s fear too: that history might repeat itself, that their dreams might not be enough.

“Would anyone even venture out when war is so close to the city?”

“They might if you gave them a reason.” The Fisherman of the Moon had appeared in the doorway. There was a roll of ADMIT ONE tickets in in his hands. They looked far fresher than the stub he’d offered La Fée Verte last time. “Let them see more than the rot, Verte. Let them be more.”