Céleste Artois was quite a bit wealthier than she’d realized.
She and Rafe had both gotten roped into collecting the Enchantresses’ deposits from La Banque d’Ossements, retrieving francs from all sorts of mossy corners. A treasure hunt, Sylvie had called the chore. It was—though it wasn’t the glimpses of gold that made Céleste keep digging.
It was the stories.
She felt like an archaeologist of her own past, brushing the dirt from coin pouches and unearthing memory after memory. Countless cafés where she’d left her counterfeit canvases. Delacroixes and van Goghs and Monets. Lily pads and drowning women and wars. Or, rather, what the romantic artists had believed war to be… Céleste didn’t think she could copy the style now even if she’d wanted to, thanks to her time with Terreur.
“This was a hefty haul.” Rafe whistled as he plucked a heavy purse from the sepulchre of Susan Durant. He weighed the take in his hand for a moment before tossing it toward Céleste. “What did you sell? The Sistine Chapel?”
“Not quite.” Her lips quirked as she opened the pouch. “But I like the way you think.”
Rafe smiled back. His fox shadow crept through the ivy and brushed around Céleste’s ankles. He was even more of a wonder to her, now that she realized just how much he had survived. Over five years in Terreur’s service. Céleste had only managed a fraction of that, and it felt like a miracle that she was standing here.
It was, Céleste reminded herself.
She remembered this every time she saw her scar—not just on her own chest, but on Honoré and Sylvie and Gabriel and La Fée Verte. She remembered the miracle too, every time she traced Rafe’s old wounds. There was none over his heart, just a pocket watch that never ticked, yet when both their breasts were pressed against its golden surface, Céleste could feel the beat: I love you, I love you, I love you.
There was no more fear in this.
Only a lifetime of stardust. Possibly longer.
Nicolas Flamel and his wife, Perenelle, had lived for several centuries—though this couldn’t have been entirely due to the pocket watch. According to the Fisherman of the Moon, the timepiece’s technology was too modern. The alchemist had crafted the relic toward the end of his very long life. Why? Well, why did anyone make anything? Céleste figured that even men who’d learned how to conquer time would want to leave their signature upon it.
This was the reason Rafe had started adding e’s to all his canvases.
She’d interrupted after the first few flourishes with an offer to fill in his name—after all CéXeste Xrtois had an a and an l to spare.
The other artist shook his head and kept signing paintings.
“Why not? It would be a fair trade for the days you gave me,” she said.
His brush then paused. His eyebrows rose. “Since when have you cared about such things?”
“I care about you,” she said fiercely. “I know the letters won’t bring back the memories Terreur swallowed, but—”
Rafe had stopped her with a kiss. “All is fair in love and war, mon amour. You’ve already helped me find myself, and to be entirely truthful, I think I should prefer Rafe García to the boy who made it to Constantinople.”
Céleste understood.
She’d gotten better at signing her name too.
“This was one of my first attempts at a van Gogh—” Céleste said now, as she opened the coin pouch. “I painted a starry night, only I used the glass constellations in the mausoleum and placed them over a lavender field… He painted the original at a monastery in Provence, you know, so it’s the view he would have had from his window.” Lullabies of soft purple, washing in from the horizon. She’d remembered it well enough from her own turret. “Honoré came up with this whole spiel about how she could tell it was a lost masterpiece because of the flowers, but it was so sweltering outside that day that her moustache started sliding off. She barely made it out of the café with a straight face.”
Rafe laughed.
He had hardly changed, physically, since the morning she’d asked him to believe. Stubble forever shaded his face, and the rest of his hair had stopped growing. Crow’s feet would not deepen, nor would smile lines. His muscles would not waste. Neither would the rest of him. His body might as well have been stuck in amber, for how well the pocket watch’s magic preserved it.
But something fundamental had shifted, once Honoré trapped Terreur inside the dragon ring. Rafe moved differently. Freely, Céleste noted with a smile. He walked as if a one-hundred-kilogram weight had been lifted from his shoulders. His laughter was light too. It made her think of doves’ startled wings and steam rising out of a fresh broken croissant and the way the sun first danced across the river, come morning. The most terribly beautiful view in all the world, the Frivolous Prince had once called it.
No more.
Dawn was no longer something to dread. Sunlight did not reduce everyone’s imaginings to sparks—Céleste and Rafe could perch together on the Pont Saint-Michel and watch Île du Carnaval’s glow grow twofold.
“You must have made a hell of an impression, to get your mark to miss that. Honoré Côte and the melting moustache…” Dimples grew across the other thief’s face, and Céleste wondered how she’d never noticed them before. How well they matched his chin divot. His roguish grin.
She loved that there were still new things to discover.
They kept on digging, with Céleste recounting the Enchantresses’ escapades. More fiddle games, of course. Blackmailing the cemetery’s senior groundskeeper. Picking pockets and sweet-talking businessmen and a whole number of things that would land a person in handcuffs. Guilty as charged—these were the very same moments Terreur had used to judge her. I don’t have to pull your strings to get you to steal. It’s already in your nature.
But if he had pulled the strings of Céleste’s memory just a bit further, he might have realized his mistake. He would have seen more. Melting moustaches, duels with baguettes as sabers, forgotten watchwords, and picnic blankets full of smelly cheese.
These were her true treasures.
Still, when the withdrawals from the La Banque d’Ossements were counted and divided three ways on the paint-spattered tarp outside the mausoleum, Céleste found herself with a not-small pile of gold. And a few diamond necklaces, to boot.
“We’re rich!” Sylvie declared, doing a magpie dance.
Honoré watched with a knowing gleam in her eye. “Don’t go spending it all on pastries, ma rêveuse.”
“I won’t! Besides, I don’t need francs for that. Nicolas Stohrer gives me all the cake I want for the joy of it.” Despite this, Céleste had noticed a change in the youngest Enchantress’s diet. There was plenty of sugar, still, but there was more balance to her meals than before. She snacked on silver-skinned apples and regularly split cans of pâté with Marmalade. “I think I’d like to use this money to start my own establishment.”
Céleste was both surprised and not. Sylvie was turning into a powerful Sanct, certainly, but she’d figured the girl was happy floating along with the Carnaval des Merveilles. “What sort of establishment?” she wondered. “A café?”
“No,” Sylvie answered. She glanced at her stack of fairy books just past the mausoleum doors. “I miss Libris. And Lore. And… well, I should think Paris needs another magical bookshop.”
“You’re right,” La Fée Verte told her. “There’s nothing quite like the power of a good story.”
“What about you, mon amour? What will you use your cut for?” Rafe picked up one of the diamond necklaces as he said this, examining the piece with a practiced eye.
It wasn’t hard to see the irony—Céleste no longer needed the francs. Duchess d’Uzès had become her official patroness and was providing more than enough gold to outfit the League of Imaginers’ new ambulance service. And the castle, besides. There would be room and board and plenty of space to help them inspire injured soldiers. Céleste figured it was the least she could do, with the powers she’d collected during her time on the front. She couldn’t put the anima back into husked corpses, but what of the men next to them? The ones who’d survived?
She watched as the diamond caught the late-afternoon light, spraying a rainbow across Rafe’s face. It looked almost like a dream.
“I think I’ll donate my profits to La Ruche’s soup kitchen.” Sure, most of the men at the commune had gone off to war, but Céleste could only imagine how she might have felt if she’d found the studio when she’d first arrived in Paris. Penniless. There were plenty of other young women out there—with ink in their veins and hunger that was more than just a metaphor. “Artists have got to eat, right?”
Gabriel gaped at her from across the blanket. “You’re going to give all this away?”
Honoré also looked surprised. “Truly, mon amie?”
Sylvie looked gleeful. “You’re like… like Robin Hood!”
“Who?” Céleste asked.
“Robin Hood!” The girl waved at her stack of fairy books. She’d started reading their tales in earnest lately—with the help of English tea that she sipped in order to talk to the British soldiers who stumbled across the carnival on leave. “He’s a robber from England who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. An outlaw with a heart of gold!”
Céleste knew for a fact hers was much bloodier.
“It’s a smart investment,” La Fée Verte said from her place on the blanket beside Honoré. “Keep La Ruche running. When the war is over, you can come back to Paris and become their muse.”
That was the long game. Though Céleste found she preferred the way La Fée Verte had phrased the plan. Investment. Not something to be played, like a fiddle or a board of chess, but built.
Like a family.
Like a future.
Her heart swelled as she looked around the blanket. La Fée Verte’s green wings blended beside Honoré’s silver ones. Gabriel sat on the other side of his sister, mirroring her crouch. He copied Rafe too—picking up the sapphire necklace Sylvie had purloined after The Rite of Spring. The youngest Enchantress didn’t try to snatch it back. She was too busy scratching Marmalade’s belly. The tailless tomcat was laid out like a loaf, purring loudly.
Why would that thief name himself after such a tasty bird? he rattled in a drowsy, nearly drunk way. Perhaps this Robin was once a Sanct too? I will have to ask my London brethren…
They stayed this way until the sun slipped below the far wall. Clouds swept past steeples—setting themselves up for a magnificent sunset. The carnival would soon be rousing itself too. Some of La Fée Verte’s birds had already started flying toward the Seine as the Sanct stood.
“We should get back to Île du Carnaval,” she told Honoré. “The Frivolous Prince wanted to meet before dusk. He says he has suggestions for the league’s ambulance service uniform.”
“Uniform?” Honoré glanced down at her own outfit: Clothes fit for running. Boots too. The fanciest piece was her dream-filled bandolier. “What more does he want?”
“Knowing Jean?” Céleste snorted. “Who knows.”
Her oldest friend sighed. “I hope it involves pants.”
“You can hope that, you know.” Rafe laughed.
“The world has bigger problems than women’s lack of trousers—”
“Yes. Corsets,” Céleste teased. “Just think of what an entire half of Earth’s population might accomplish if they were allowed to breathe. How much more if they could dress themselves comfortably?”
“You’re not wrong.” La Fée Verte had quite the shining smile on her face. One of her birds landed on her head and pulled out a thought—and as the creature came to land on Honoré’s shoulder, Céleste saw a familiar sight. A painted pantsuit. Her first true dream. “I clung to this idea, even when Terreur tore everything else away, because I believed we could defeat him together. Now I know we can do even more than just fight…” The songbird slipped the imagining into Honoré’s bandolier. “We can imagine a better world. We can make it so.”