Read Chapter 9: The Brother's Lie

The key turned in the lock at half past nine. Élise had been sitting in the dark of her childhood bedroom for an hour, listening to the distant crump of shells, when she heard her brother's boots on the stairs. She should have known he'd come. Jules always came when he wanted something.

The door swung open without a knock. He stood in the frame, backlit by the gas lamp he'd lit in the hallway, his silhouette sharp and military even in civilian clothes.

"You're still here," he said. Not a question.

"I live here, Jules. Or have you forgotten I exist when you're not reading my correspondence?"

He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. That gesture—careful, deliberate—sent a cold thread down her spine. He wasn't here to argue. He was here to trap.

"I received a letter today," he said, drawing an envelope from his coat. "From a colleague in the National Guard's intelligence office. They intercepted a communiqué from a Communard nurse to a man named Roux. The nurse mentions her brother by name. Mentions that he 'reports to Versailles' and that she 'knows where he sleeps.'"

Élise's stomach dropped through the floor. The letter she'd written to Dr. Roux's contact—weeks ago now, before the doctor had died—had been a plea for medical supplies, scribbled in haste and sent through channels she'd thought were secure. She'd named Jules only to warn him away from the barricades, not to expose him.

"I never—"

"They don't know it's you," Jules cut her off. "The nurse's name was scratched out. But I recognized the hand, Élise. Mother's cursive. You always did take after her."

She stood up from the bed, her hands pressed flat against her skirts. "That letter was about medicine. I asked for quinine and bandages. I mentioned you because I was worried the National Guard would mistake you for a Communard sympathizer if they saw you near the school."

"A sympathizer." Jules laughed, but there was no warmth in it. "You think I care what the National Guard thinks of me? I'm the one who told them to watch that school, Élise. I'm the one who flagged a certain schoolteacher with too many wounded children in her care."

The room tilted. She gripped the bedpost. "You've been watching me."

"Someone has to." He stepped closer, and for the first time she saw the exhaustion in his face—the hollows beneath his eyes, the tightness around his mouth. He wasn't enjoying this. That almost made it worse. "Father asked me to bring you home. Not the house—home. Versailles. A carriage leaves tomorrow at dawn. You'll be on it."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then I tell him about the letter." Jules held it up between two fingers. "I tell him his daughter is a spy for the insurrection. I tell him she's been treating Communard soldiers, hiding them, feeding them—"

"They're wounded men," Élise said, her voice rising. "They're not soldiers, most of them. They're printers and tailors and clerks who picked up rifles because the National Guard was shelling their neighborhoods."

"They're traitors to France."

"They're starving, Jules!" She heard her own voice crack. "The city is starving. The government abandoned us, and when we tried to feed ourselves, they called it rebellion. You wear their uniform. You eat their bread. You don't get to judge what we do to survive."

Jules was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, softly, "The letter survived because the man who intercepted it is loyal to me. But there are others, Élise. Other eyes. Other letters. You're not as careful as you think."

She stared at him. "Is that a threat?"

"It's a warning." He folded the letter and tucked it back into his coat. "You have until dawn. Get on the carriage, and this letter never existed. I'll tell Father you came willingly, that you've seen the error of your ways. He'll forgive you. The family name will survive."

"And if I don't?"

Jules looked at her, and for a moment he was her brother again—the boy who'd taught her to skip stones on the Seine, who'd held her hair back when she was sick with fever. Then his face closed.

"Then I do my duty," he said.

He left without another word. His boots echoed down the stairs, and the front door slammed, and Élise stood alone in the dark with her heart hammering against her ribs.

She had until dawn.

She didn't pack. There was nothing in this house she wanted to carry into hiding—only ghosts and obligations and the weight of a name that had never belonged to her. She pulled on her darkest cloak, stuffed a satchel with bandages and the last of the quinine, and slipped out through the kitchen door into the alley.

The night air was cold and smelled of smoke. Shells still fell in the distance, too far to threaten this quarter, but the sound was constant now, a drumbeat under the city's silence. She moved quickly, keeping to shadows, her feet knowing the path even as her mind raced.

The clinic on the Rue de Sèvres. It was the only place she could think to go, the only neutral ground she knew. The sisters who ran it were not partisans; they would take her in without question, at least until she could find another way.

She was two streets from the clinic when she heard footsteps behind her.

She didn't turn. She lengthened her stride, turned a corner, ducked into a doorway. Pressed herself against the cold stone and held her breath.

The footsteps stopped. A man's voice, low and familiar: "Élise. I know you're there."

Jules.

She closed her eyes. Of course. Of course he'd followed her. He'd never intended to give her till dawn—he'd wanted her to run, to lead him to her hiding places, to give him cause.

She stepped out of the doorway. He stood at the end of the alley, a pistol at his side, his face unreadable in the dim light.

"Don't do this," she said.

"I'm not doing anything." His voice was quiet. "I'm giving you one last chance. Come home. Get on the carriage. Live."

"I can't."

"You can. You just won't."

She shook her head. "There are children in my care. Wounded men. They have no one else."

"And you think you can save them?" Jules's voice cracked. "You think you can hold back the entire army of Versailles with bandages and good intentions? Father has thirty thousand men at the gates, Élise. Thirty thousand. The Commune will fall within the week."

"Then I'll fall with it." She said it without thinking, and the words hung in the air like a verdict.

Jules stared at her. Then he raised the pistol.

"Get on the carriage," he said, "or I'll carry you to it."

Élise felt something in her chest go very still. She looked at her brother—at the gun in his hand, at the fear in his eyes—and she understood, finally, that the boy who'd taught her to skip stones was gone. The man standing before her served a different master now.

She stepped forward, not back.

"Go ahead," she said. "Shoot your sister in the street. Tell Father his daughter was a traitor and you were the one who put her down. See if that earns you his pride."

Jules's hand trembled. The pistol wavered.

"I'll wait at the house," he said finally, lowering the weapon. "Until dawn. After that, I send word to Father that you chose the barricades over your family. Whatever happens to you after that—" He swallowed. "It won't be my doing."

He turned and walked away, his shadow stretching long behind him in the gaslight.

Élise watched him go. She waited until his footsteps faded, until the night was quiet except for the distant shells, and then she let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding.

She had until dawn. And then Jules would tell her father everything.

There was no time to reach the clinic now. If Jules had found her so quickly, his people could find her anywhere above ground. She needed somewhere lower. Somewhere the government's eyes didn't reach.

The catacombs. The Communard hideouts beneath the city.

She turned south, toward the old quarry entrances, and began to run.