Read Chapter 21: Unmasked

The maid’s scream still echoed in the marble foyer when Camille reached the steward’s body. Bertram lay crumpled beside the service door, his throat opened in a precise, almost delicate arc. Blood had pooled in the grooves between the parquet planks, dark and viscous, already beginning to congeal. But it was not the wound that made Camille’s stomach clench. It was the symbol carved into the floorboards beside his outstretched hand—a crescent intersecting a circle, clean and deliberate. Élodie’s mark. Not the eclipse. Not the sun. The other one.

Philippe came up behind her, his breathing labored. Even that short climb from the bedroom had cost him. His hand pressed against the doorframe for support, knuckles white, and Camille saw the tremor in his fingers. The wound from the observatory had closed but left him pale, veins visible beneath his skin like cracks in porcelain. He could no longer heal. He could no longer fight. He looked at the body and then at the symbol, and something dark passed through his eyes.

“That is not my brother’s work,” he said quietly.

“No,” Camille agreed. “Your brother is ash.” She crouched beside Bertram, careful not to disturb the blood. The steward had been a quiet man, efficient, loyal. He had served Philippe for decades, or so she had assumed—but now she wondered how much any of them truly knew about the staff in this house. “Who else knows we’re here?”

Philippe shook his head slowly. “Bertram was the only one I trusted with the location. He arranged the safe house himself.”

“Then someone followed him.” Camille studied the wound again. The cut was too clean for a blade. Too precise for rage. This was ritual. This was message. “Or someone knew he would lead them to us.”

“The council.” Philippe’s voice was thin. “They would not kill a servant to send a message. They would simply walk through the door.”

“The rogue faction, then. The ones who escaped the observatory.” Camille stood, wiping her hands on her skirt. “We assumed they scattered when the Marquis died. We assumed wrong.”

The maid still sobbed in the corridor, another servant trying to console her in hushed Breton French. Camille ignored them. She moved to Bertram’s hand and pried open his fingers. Clenched inside his palm was a small glass vial, empty but for a residue that shimmered faintly green in the morning light. She held it up to the window.

“Do you know what this is?”

Philippe squinted, taking a step closer. His weight shifted unsteadily. “I don’t recognize it.”

“I do.” Camille’s heart quickened. She had seen such vials before, in the evidence rooms of Le Figaro’s crime chronicles. “Guao. A poison from the Amazon. The natives use it on their darts. It’s not commonly known in Paris—too expensive, too difficult to import.” She turned the vial over. The glass was hand-blown, the stopper sealed with red wax. “But the Jardin des Plantes has a botanical collection. They import rare specimens from the New World for study.”

Philippe’s face tightened. “The gardener.”

“The poison garden,” Camille corrected. “They cultivate exotic flora. If someone wanted guao, they would need access to the garden’s supply rooms. Someone with credentials.”

“Or someone who knew a botanist there.”

She looked at him. “Your brother’s research.”

Philippe sagged against the frame. “He funded several expeditions. Private patrons, botanical societies. He had contacts at the garden for decades.” He paused, and a cough rattled his chest. Camille moved toward him but he waved her off. “There was a woman. Lady Isobel—a botanist of some note. She assisted him with his research on nightshade derivatives.”

“Lady Isobel?” Camille’s mind raced. The name was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. “English?”

“Scottish. Widowed. She lives at the garden’s residence when she is in Paris.” Philippe’s eyes met hers, and there was something fragile in them now, a vulnerability she had never seen before. “I cannot come with you, Camille. I cannot even stand without this wall.”

The words landed heavily between them. For two centuries he had been invincible, immortal, untouchable. Now he had become a man—a wounded man, in a house with a dead servant and a killer who might still be lingering nearby. Camille reached out and took his hand. His skin was cool, but not cold. Alive.

“You stay here,” she said. “Bolt the doors. Take the maid and the other servants into the cellar. Do not open for anyone but me.”

“And if you don’t return?”

She pressed his hand tighter. “Then you’ll know I found the answer.”

His jaw tightened, but he nodded. He was learning, she realized, to trust her. To let her lead. A mortal Philippe was still proud, but he was no longer the guardian. The roles had shifted, and they both understood what that meant without speaking it aloud.

Camille retrieved her coat and a small revolver from the study. The weapon felt foreign in her grip—she had used it only twice, both times for practice, never in earnest. But the weight of it steadied her. She tucked it into her waistband and slipped out the service entrance, avoiding the street where the gendarmes would soon gather.

The Jardin des Plantes was a twenty-minute walk through the rising city. Morning light filtered through the chestnuts along the Seine, the air still cool with the remnants of night. Vendors were setting up stalls at the markets, and a man on a bicycle rang his bell impatiently at a cart carrying milk jugs. Ordinary life continued, oblivious to the body draining onto the parquet a mile away.

Camille passed through the garden’s iron gates and followed the gravel path toward the greenhouses. The public wouldn’t open for another hour. The gardeners were already at work, their breath misting in the cold as they tended to the beds. She avoided them, cutting across the lawn toward the research wing—a squat stone building behind the main glasshouses, marked only by a brass plaque that read *Laboratoire de Botanique Appliquée*.

The door was unlocked. She slipped inside.

The air was thick and green, humid, heavy with the scent of soil and crushed leaves. Specimens lined the walls—pressed ferns, dried flowers in glass cases, jars of seeds suspended in amber liquid. In the center of the room, a woman in a grey dress was bent over a workbench, examining a petri dish beneath a magnifying lamp. She did not look up when Camille entered.

“The door should have been locked,” she said, her voice lightly accented, Scottish brogue worn smooth by years abroad. “The public hours begin at nine.”

“I’m not here for the tour,” Camille said.

The woman straightened and turned. Lady Isobel was perhaps fifty, her hair iron-grey pulled back in a severe bun, her face weathered but handsome. She studied Camille with eyes that were sharp, unafraid. “You’re the journalist.”

“Camille Delacroix. And you’ve sold guao to a killer.”

Isobel’s expression flickered—just a tremor at the corner of her mouth—and then settled into something careful. “I’ve sold many things to many people, Mademoiselle Delacroix. A botanist’s life is full of uncomfortable transactions. You don’t always know what the buyer intends.”

“But you knew this time.”

Isobel turned back to her workbench, deliberately casual. “What makes you say that?”

“Because you don’t seem surprised I’m here. You knew I’d come.” Camille stepped closer, her hand brushing the revolver beneath her coat. “You left the vial in the steward’s hand. That wasn’t an accident. You wanted it found.”

Isobel set down her tweezers and faced Camille fully. For a long moment, the two women simply looked at each other.

“The poison,” Isobel said at last, “was purchased three days ago by a man with a scar across his left hand. He paid in gold and asked no questions. He did not tell me his name.” She paused. “But I saw the mark on his cuff. The Saint-Sulpice crest. He was a priest.”

Camille’s blood went cold. “Saint-Sulpice?”

“The assistant pastor. A man called Father Fournier.” Isobel’s eyes were unreadable. “He refused to bless your father’s funeral, did he not?”