Read Chapter 33: Meeting the Maker

Camille did not go far. She waited in the shadow of a stone archway, her back pressed against the cold limestone, and watched the entrance to the catacombs where Élodie had vanished. The night air carried the scent of rain and rot, and beneath it, the faint metallic tang of her own hunger. She had not fed in two days.

Philippe's confession still burned in her chest—the portraits, the birthmark, the centuries of faces that were somehow hers. But the deeper truth was simpler: she could not trust her own judgment when it came to him. Her sister, at least, had never pretended to be anything but a blade.

Élodie emerged from the dark like she had been waiting for Camille to arrive at this conclusion. Her pale face caught the lamplight, lovely and cruel in equal measure.

"I thought you might come back," Élodie said. "It took you longer than I expected."

"Don't flatter yourself." Camille stepped forward, her boots crunching on gravel. "I'm not here for reconciliation."

"No. You're here because you ran out of places to go." Élodie tilted her head, studying her the way she had when they were girls, when Camille had come home with a scraped knee and Élodie had inspected the wound with clinical detachment. "Philippe told you a beautiful story. I can see it in your eyes. And yet you're here, with me. That tells me you don't quite believe it."

Camille's jaw tightened. "You told me you could reverse this. You told me you knew the ritual."

"I do."

"Then do it. No conditions."

Élodie laughed, a sound that had once been warm and was now only glass. "Oh, Camille. You know nothing comes free. Not from me, not from Philippe, not from the world we now inhabit." She stepped closer, and Camille forced herself not to retreat. "I will help you. I will reverse the turning, return you to your mortal life, let you grow old and die with a human heart in your chest. But first, you must do something for me."

"What?"

"There is a relic in the catacombs. Beneath Philippe's shrine, behind a door he believes only he knows about." Élodie's voice dropped, intimate and conspiratorial. "It is the only object in existence that can kill a vampire permanently. Not a stake, not fire—true death. The end of the line for every one of us."

Camille's blood ran cold. "And you want it for yourself."

"I want it so no one can use it against us. Philippe has been building his little collection of monuments to dead lovers while the real threat walks among us. He's not the monster, Camille. I told you that. But he's also not the savior. He's a man who has spent five hundred years mourning instead of acting." Élodie's eyes glinted. "You want to end this? Retrieve the relic. Bring it to me. And I will end your curse."

Camille studied her sister's face, searching for the lie beneath the smooth skin. But Élodie had always been harder to read than the headlines. "Why do you need me? If you know where it is, why not take it yourself?"

"Because the door is sealed with something older than either of us. It requires a willing heart." Élodie smiled thinly. "Philippe's shrine is protected by his love, twisted though it is. He only lets in those he truly believes are his. I am not one of them—not anymore. But you are. You carry her face. Her soul, if you believe him. He will not see you coming."

Camille's stomach turned. She thought of the gallery, the portraits, the weight of Philippe's confession as he traced the line of her jaw and said *I have loved you in every life.* And now her sister wanted her to use that love as a key to steal a weapon that could end him.

"What will you do with it?" Camille asked.

"I will bury it where no one can find it. Or destroy it, if such a thing is possible." Élodie stepped closer, close enough that Camille could see the faint lines of veins beneath her translucent skin. "I don't want to rule the night, Camille. I want to end it. For both of us. For every woman who has been turned against her will, made into a monster to satisfy some man's hunger. Do you understand?"

Camille understood more than she wanted to. She understood the rage of being made into something you never asked to become. She understood the desire to burn it all down.

"Take me to it," she said.

Élodie's smile widened, and for a moment she looked almost like the sister Camille had buried. "Follow me."

They descended into the dark together. The catacombs stretched before them, a labyrinth of bone and shadow, and Élodie moved through it with the confidence of someone who had memorized every turn. Camille followed, her enhanced senses picking up the drip of water, the whisper of rats, the distant scuttling of things she chose not to identify.

"We used to play hide and seek in the cellar," Camille said, her voice echoing off the walls. "Mother always found you first. You were never good at hiding."

"Because I didn't want to hide." Élodie didn't turn around. "I wanted to be found. There's a difference."

"Is that why you faked your death? Because you wanted to be found?"

Élodie paused. For a moment, she was silent, and when she spoke, her voice was stripped of its earlier edge. "I didn't fake my death, Camille. I died. Father Aloysius had me turn in a confessional and left me to burn in the daylight as punishment for my sins. Étienne—the real Étienne—found me before the sun rose and turned me properly. I survived. But by the time I came back, you had already buried an empty coffin. I thought it was easier to let you mourn than to explain what I had become."

Camille's chest ached. "But the artist. The greenhouse. You've been hiding for decades."

"I have been planning." Élodie resumed walking. "There's a difference."

They wound deeper into the earth. The air grew colder, heavier, thick with the weight of centuries. Camille could feel Philippe's presence somewhere above them like a distant heartbeat, and the irony was not lost on her that she was betraying him in the very place he had shown her his truth.

Then Camille smelled it. Blood, old and iron-tinged, with the sweetness of decay beneath. She stopped.

"Élodie."

Her sister turned. "What?"

"There's a body ahead." Camille's throat tightened. "Recent."

She moved before Élodie could answer, following the scent through a narrow passage until the tunnel opened into a small chamber. A figure lay crumpled against the far wall, limbs bent at angles that were not natural. Even in the dim light, Camille recognized the fall of dark hair, the cut of a dress that had once been the height of Paris fashion.

Isabelle.

The missing woman from the society pages. The one whose disappearance had set all of this in motion.

Camille knelt, her hand hovering over the cold cheek. Isabelle's eyes were open, glassy, fixed on something Camille could not see. There was no wound visible—no mark of violence—but her skin was pale, drained, and her lips were tinged blue.

Then Camille saw it. A folded piece of paper, pinned to Isabelle's collar with a silver brooch. Camille's fingers trembled as she pulled it free and unfolded it.

The handwriting was unmistakable. Looping, elegant, the same hand that had signed Élodie's letters to their mother for years before the disappearance.

*You were always too curious, little sister. This is what curiosity costs.*

Camille looked up. Élodie stood at the entrance to the chamber, watching her with an expression Camille could not read.

"She refused to stop asking questions," Élodie said quietly. "She came to me, said she knew the truth about the Baron. Said she would expose everything unless I paid her." A pause. "I did not ask her to die. But I did not stop it."

"You killed her." Camille's voice was barely a whisper.

"Someone would have. The hunters were already on her trail." Élodie stepped into the chamber, her shadow falling over Isabelle's body. "I told you I was not the monster, Camille. I never claimed to be the saint either."

Camille stared at her sister, at the woman who had once braided her hair and told her stories about princes and dragons. The relic seemed a distant thing now, a weapon for a war that had just become deeply personal.

"Take me to the relic," Camille said, her voice hardening into something cold and sharp. "And after this is done, you and I are going to have a very long conversation about Isabelle."

Élodie smiled, and there was something almost sad in it. "I would expect nothing less."

She turned and led the way deeper into the dark, and Camille followed, carrying the note in her pocket like a brand against her skin.