Read Chapter 28: The Last Chrysanthemum

The train carriage smelled of coal smoke and damp wool, and Camille kept her gloved hands pressed flat against her thighs to stop them from trembling. Outside the window, the flat grey of the Paris suburbs gave way to rolling fields, then to the skeletal silhouette of poplar trees lining the Loire. Philippe sat across from her, his hat on his knee, watching her with the careful patience of a man who had learned not to startle a wild animal.

“You haven’t told me everything Moreau said,” he said quietly.

“I’ve told you what matters.” She kept her voice low, though the compartment was empty but for them. “There’s a flower. It grows in a greenhouse on an estate outside Amboise. The artist who owns it has been cultivating it for decades. Moreau believes it can help me master the thirst—truly master it, not just dampen it.”

“And the artist?”

“Marguerite Valois. Reclusive. Painter. Moreau said she’s been pulling strings for longer than the Church has been in play.” Camille hesitated. “He said she wears a familiar face. He wouldn’t elaborate.”

Philippe’s jaw tightened. “That’s not a comfort.”

“Nothing about my new life is a comfort.” She smiled, thin and sharp. “But I’m learning to take what I can get.”

The estate appeared at the end of a long gravel drive, walled in grey stone and crowned with ivy that had gone brown at the edges. A gatekeeper in a worn coat eyed their cab with suspicion but waved them through when Philippe produced a letter from Moreau, crested with the seal of a healer’s guild Camille had never heard of. The house itself was modest for a country estate—two stories, shuttered windows, a garden gone wild with roses that had bloomed too early and were now rotting on the vine.

No one met them at the door. The knock echoed into empty marble. Camille exchanged a glance with Philippe, then tried the handle. It turned.

Inside, the air was thick with turpentine and dried pigment. Canvases leaned against every wall, stacked three and four deep, their faces turned away. A grand staircase curled upward, its banister dusted with a fine white powder that caught the light from a high window. Camille touched it, rubbed her fingers together. Chalk dust. Or plaster. Or something finer.

“We should announce ourselves,” Philippe said, his hand drifting to the pistol at his hip.

“Moreau said she expected us.” Camille moved deeper into the house, following the smell of solvent toward a set of French doors at the back. Through the glass, she could see it: a greenhouse, domed and ribbed like the skeleton of a whale, its panes fogged with humidity and green with moss.

She pushed the doors open.

The heat hit her first—tropical, wet, alive. Then the flowers. They lined the gravel path in beds of black soil: orchids, lilies, roses in colours that didn’t exist in nature, and at the centre, on a pedestal of carved stone, a single pot of white chrysanthemums. The petals caught the light like they were spun from frost.

A woman knelt beside the pedestal, her back to Camille, one hand resting on the pot’s rim. She wore a simple grey dress, silver hair pinned in a loose knot, and she did not turn when the door groaned.

“You’re early,” she said. Her voice was low, musical, with an accent Camille couldn’t place. “Moreau’s letter said you’d come by nightfall.”

“We made good time.” Camille stepped forward, Philippe a shadow at her shoulder. “You’re Marguerite Valois?”

“I am.” The woman rose, brushing dirt from her skirts. When she turned, Camille felt the floor drop out from under her.

She knew that face. She had seen it in photographs, in the gilt-framed portrait that hung in her father’s study, in the hollow of her own mirror when she was young and the light was wrong.

Élodie.

But Élodie was dead. Élodie had died in the spring of 1874, fever and blood, and Camille had stood at her grave and thrown a handful of white roses into the dark.

The woman smiled, and it was Élodie’s smile—the slight asymmetry, the way the left corner lifted a beat before the right.

“Camille,” she said softly. “You look just like her.”

“Like who?” Camille’s voice came out raw.

“Like our mother.” Élodie stepped closer, her grey dress whispering over the gravel. “You have her jaw. Her stubbornness. I’d have known you anywhere.”

Philippe’s hand closed on Camille’s arm. “Camille. Who is this?”

“My sister.” The words felt like glass in her throat. “She died when I was twelve.”

“I did die,” Élodie said. “And then I was turned. By the Marquis de Vaudreuil, in the winter of 1875.” She tilted her head, studying Camille with a tenderness that made her skin crawl. “He needed eyes. Someone who could move through the salons and the churches without suspicion. Someone who looked like an angel.”

“You work for him.” Camille’s hand went to the dagger at her belt. “You’re part of the conspiracy. The culling. The Church.”

Élodie laughed, and it was bright and bitter and achingly familiar. “I was part of it. I am the part of it that has been watching you since you were a child, Camille. Do you think it was an accident that Moreau sent you here? Do you think the chrysanthemum exists by chance?”

“Then you know why I’ve come.”

“I know you want to control the hunger. I know you want to hunt the Baron and burn the conspiracy to the ground.” Élodie’s smile softened. “I know you blame yourself for my death. That you were the one who told Father Aloysius about my nightly walks. That you confessed your sister’s secret affair to a priest who used it to find her.”

The air left Camille’s lungs. She had never told anyone that. Not Philippe. Not her mother. It was buried in the deepest vault of her memory, the shame she had carried like a stone for twenty years.

“Father Aloysius told me,” Élodie said gently. “Before I killed him.”

“You killed him?”

“He was culling the unworthy, and I was his instrument once. But he lied to me about you, about your role in my death. He told me you betrayed me out of jealousy. But I know better.” She stepped forward again, close enough that Camille could smell the faint sweetness of old blood on her breath. “I know you loved me. And I know you carry that guilt like a wound that won’t close.”

Camille’s hand trembled on the dagger. “You’re not my sister. My sister was kind. My sister wouldn’t have—” She stopped, unable to finish.

“Wouldn’t have become a monster?” Élodie’s laugh was sad now. “I didn’t choose this, Camille. The Marquis chose for me. And I’ve spent every decade since trying to find a way to undo it. To find a cure.” She gestured at the chrysanthemum. “This is it. The last one of its kind. The only flower that can reverse the turning.”

Camille’s heart stopped. “Reverse it?”

“Yes. You can be human again. You can walk in the sun, eat bread, grow old with your lover.” Élodie’s eyes flicked to Philippe, then back. “I’ll give it to you freely. On one condition.”

“What condition?”

“Kill Philippe.”

The words hung in the humid air. Camille felt Philippe tense beside her, but he didn’t speak. He didn’t move. He trusted her.

“Why?” Camille managed.

“Because he’s a traitor,” Élodie said. “He’s been feeding information to the Church since before you met him. He’s the reason the hunters found you in Meudon. He’s the reason your editor saw your fangs.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded telegram, held it up. “Read it. He’s been sending copies of every letter you’ve written to the Bishop of Orléans.”

Philippe went very still. “That’s a lie.”

“Is it?” Élodie’s smile didn’t waver. “Camille—read it. And choose.”