Read Chapter 25: The Sacrifice

The floorboards creaked above them, and Camille’s heart slammed against her ribs. She pressed her back against the wall beside the shuttered window, Laurent’s breath shallow beside her. The footsteps were unhurried. Deliberate. Whoever it was knew exactly where they were hiding.

Vasseur’s voice drifted down the stairwell like oil through water. “I smelled the smoke from Suresnes. A clever little fire, but you forget, Mademoiselle Moreau—I know this house. Lucien Moreau’s house. Your family’s house.”

Camille’s blood went cold. Of course. He had traced them not through the city but through the bloodline itself.

Laurent’s hand found hers in the dark, his fingers trembling with fever from the wound. “The back door,” he whispered. “We move now, together.”

But before they could rise, the cellar door burst open, and Vasseur was there—not winded, not angry. He was smiling. In his gloved hand he held the silver key, dangling it like a watch fob.

Camille’s breath stopped. He had already searched Édouard’s workshop. He had already found it in the ash.

“You see,” Vasseur said, stepping into the low light, “Édouard was never particularly clever. He hid it in a tin of turpentine, of all places. He thought the fire would destroy it—and you let him believe it had.” He pocketed the key with a soft click. “But I watched him take it from the vault before you arrived, and I watched him hide it. Patience is its own alchemy.”

Laurent moved in front of Camille, shielding her with his wounded body. “You have what you want. The key. Let her go.”

“Oh, the key is only half the equation, painter. The vault in the Catacombs, the one your dear brother sealed away—that door requires your blood. And the pigment inside,” Vasseur’s eyes glittered, “that pigment is the thing I truly want. Not to stop your curse, Laurent. To take it. To burn your true-love portrait myself and inherit everything you have suffered. But I need you alive to open the door.”

Camille stepped out from behind Laurent, her voice steadier than she felt. “You can’t. The key is the blood pact. If I destroy it, Laurent dies. You’d have nothing.”

Vasseur laughed, a dry, scraping sound. “You misunderstand, Mademoiselle Moreau. I don’t need your key to be intact. I need it in the vault’s lock. The vault was built by the alchemist to require both the pact and the painter’s blood. Once both are present, the door opens. And then”—he shrugged—“I can destroy the key, destroy him, and claim the pigment as my own. Fresh blood will make a new pact.”

Camille’s mind raced. The vault. She had seen it in Édouard’s confession letter—a chamber beneath the Catacombs, hidden for a century. Laurent had the map in memory. Vasseur had the key. And they had only one chance to be ahead of him.

“You’ll take us there,” she said. It was not a question.

Vasseur tilted his head. “I will take *him*. You, Mademoiselle, are a loose thread I will cut before I leave.”

He drew a knife—not the one from the workshop, but something older, serrated, with a handle of blackened bone. Camille felt Laurent tense beside her.

“No,” Laurent said. His voice cracked but did not break. “You need me. I will walk into your vault. I will open the door. I will bleed for you, if that’s what the lock requires. But she walks free. Now. Unharmed. Or I’ll cut my own throat and your century of waiting ends in a puddle of useless blood.”

The silence stretched like canvas over a frame. Vasseur studied Laurent with the cold appreciation of a collector appraising a damaged masterpiece.

“You would die for her?” he asked.

Laurent did not look away. “I have died for less. I have lived for nothing. She is the first thing in a hundred years worth more than my next breath.”

Camille’s throat closed. She wanted to argue, to scream that she would not be bargained for, but Laurent’s hand tightened around hers, and she understood. This was the only way. He was buying her time, not surrendering.

Vasseur considered the proposal, turning the silver key over in his fingers. “Agreed. She walks free into the night. You come with me to the Catacombs. If you are truthful, if the vault opens, I will release you both—after I have taken the pigment and burned the portrait myself. If you are lying, I will send her your ears by post.”

“You’ll have to find me first,” Camille said, but her voice was already a whisper swallowed by fear.

Vasseur stepped aside, gesturing toward the door. “Go, Mademoiselle. Your grandmother’s ghost is waiting somewhere in the city, no doubt, with more warnings she never gave.”

Camille’s feet refused to move. Laurent turned to her fully, his face half-shadowed, his eyes holding a century of lonely mornings. He pressed his forehead to hers, just for a breath.

“Find Édouard,” he murmured. “Find the portrait. And whatever you do, don’t let him burn it. Not for me. Not even for me.”

She opened her mouth to answer, but Vasseur grabbed Laurent by the collar and pulled him toward the stairwell. Laurent went without resistance, casting one look back over his shoulder—not of fear, but of farewell.

Then the door closed, and Camille was alone in the dark of her grandfather’s house, the echo of footsteps receding like the final beats of a heart.

She sank to her knees. The key was gone. Laurent was gone. And the only thread left to pull was Édouard—a man who had poisoned his brother, stolen his art, and still carried the true-love portrait like a loaded gun.