Read Chapter 27: The Alliance with Paul

Camille stood in the rain outside Paul’s print shop, her knuckles still stinging from the knock that had gone unanswered. The lights were on—dim, yellow, leaking through the blinds like a secret—but he wasn’t coming to the door. She tried the handle. Locked.

“Paul,” she called through the glass, her voice hoarse from screaming Laurent’s name into the dark of Lucien’s house. “I know you can see me. I know what you are.”

Silence. Then the click of a deadbolt. The door opened a crack and Paul’s face appeared, older than she remembered, gray stubble framing a mouth that seemed to have forgotten how to smile.

“Camille,” he said, and the word carried a weight she hadn’t heard in it before. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Vasseur took him.” She pushed the door open, stepping past him into the shop. The smell of turpentine and old paper wrapped around her like a damp coat. “Laurent. He traded himself for me. And now I need to know everything you’ve been hiding, or he dies.”

Paul closed the door slowly, locking it behind her. He didn’t deny it. That was the worst part—the way his shoulders sagged, the way he looked at the floor instead of her. He gestured to a stool near his worktable. She didn’t sit.

“I knew your grandmother,” he said quietly. “I know what she gave you. I know the weight of that silver key.”

“Then you know I don’t have it anymore.”

“Vasseur does.” He rubbed his eyes. “I know.”

“So tell me what I don’t know,” she said, her voice cracking on the last word. “Tell me why Édouard’s blood runs in your veins. Tell me why you’ve been watching me since the day I inherited that gallery.”

Paul flinched. “It’s not watching. It’s... it’s penance.”

He moved to the back of the shop, pulled a cloth off a canvas propped against the wall. Camille’s breath caught. It was a portrait—small, intimate, the paint laid down with a tenderness that hurt to look at. A young woman with dark hair, a gentle smile, a hand resting on a book.

“My great-great-grandmother,” Paul said. “Édouard loved her. She loved him back. But he was already married—to the alchemist’s art, to his obsession with his brother’s gift. When he poisoned Laurent, he didn’t just destroy his brother. He destroyed himself. And he spent the rest of his long, miserable life trying to undo it.”

“Long?” Camille said. “You said Édouard was mortal.”

“He was. But he made a pact too. Not with the alchemist—with a lesser power. A dark exchange. He gave up his capacity for joy in exchange for enough years to see the curse broken. He watched everyone he loved age and die around him. My great-grandmother. His grandchildren. Her grandchildren. He outlived them all.”

Paul’s hands trembled as he covered the portrait again. “I’m his last living descendant. And I carry his sins the way you carry your grandmother’s warnings.”

Camille stood frozen. Pieces clicked into place—the way Paul always seemed to be near when she needed help, the way he’d warned her about Laurent’s work, the guilt she’d always sensed beneath his gruff humor.

“You knew the whole time,” she said. “You knew Laurent was real. You knew the curse was real.”

“I knew enough to know that Vasseur would come for you the moment you found the truth,” Paul said. “And I was too much of a coward to stop it.”

“Coward?” Camille’s voice rose. “What could you have done?”

Paul looked up at her, and for the first time she saw something in his eyes she hadn’t expected—fear, yes, but beneath it, a flicker of resolve.

“The key alone is worthless,” he said. “To break the curse, the key must be turned in the lock of the original pigment vault. The chamber beneath the old Pavillon de l’Horloge. It’s the same vault Laurent’s blood is meant to open. But Vasseur has fortified the entire site—a private security firm, motion sensors, armed guards. He’s been preparing for years, ever since he learned what the pigment could do. He doesn’t just want to destroy the curse. He wants to claim it.”

Camille’s stomach dropped. “The pigment. Laurent said Édouard accidentally sealed it away. But Vasseur... he wants to use it to paint his way into immortality.”

Paul nodded gravely. “He’s more dangerous than any enemy Laurent ever faced. Laurent’s enemies were artists, rivals, jealous men. Vasseur is a collector. He doesn’t care about beauty. He cares about ownership. And he will burn the true-love portrait to make sure Laurent cannot survive the ritual.”

“The portrait Édouard has.”

“Yes.” Paul’s voice was barely a whisper. “But you won’t find Édouard on your own. He’s been hiding in the oldest part of Montmartre, near the Sacré-Cœur, in a flat above a chapel that hasn’t held mass in forty years. He’s been waiting for someone worthy to trust with the truth.”

Camille stepped closer, her hands balling into fists at her sides. “Then take me to him. Now.”

Paul hesitated. “Camille, I need you to understand something first. The ritual to break the curse—it doesn’t just require the key. It requires the sacrifice. The vow. And your family’s blood has been entangled with Laurent’s for a hundred years. If you enter that chamber, you may not leave the same woman you are now.”

“I don’t care,” she said fiercely. “I already left that woman behind in Lucien’s house the night Vasseur walked out with Laurent’s life in his pocket.”

Paul studied her for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly, reaching under his worktable to pull out a heavy iron box. Inside was a map—hand-drawn, yellowed with age—showing the tunnels beneath the Pavillon de l’Horloge, a web of passages leading to a single chamber marked with a red X.

“Here,” he said, tapping the X. “The vault sits beneath the old bell tower. The entrance is hidden behind a false wall in the crypt of the adjacent chapel. But Vasseur’s security perimeter extends to the street. If we want in, we’ll need a diversion.”

“We?” Camille looked at him. “You just said you were a coward.”

Paul’s jaw tightened. “I said I was a coward. I didn’t say I planned to stay one.”

He looked past her, toward the window where the rain had begun to fall again, streaking the glass with silver tears. “There’s something else. The footsteps you heard at Lucien’s house—before Vasseur revealed himself. They weren’t just his scouts. Vasseur has a way of knowing things he shouldn’t. That house belonged to Lucien, but before that, it belonged to your grandmother’s family. Vasseur didn’t find you by accident.”

Camille’s skin prickled. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” Paul said slowly, meeting her eyes, “that Lucien wasn’t the first man in your family to cross paths with Laurent. Your grandmother told you warnings, but she never told you the full story. That’s because the bargain your family made with Laurent’s alchemist didn’t die with the generation that struck it. It passed down. And now it lives in you.”

The room seemed to tilt. Camille gripped the edge of his worktable, her knuckles white. “What bargain?”

But Paul was already shaking his head, folding the map and pressing it into her hands. “First we find Édouard. Then we answer the questions you were never meant to ask.”

He grabbed his coat from the hook by the door, and for a moment Camille saw the younger man he must have been—strong, quick, fierce. Édouard’s blood and his guilt, twisted together in a body that had spent a lifetime waiting.

“One thing,” Paul said as he opened the door to the rain. “If we do this—if we break the curse—the true-love portrait can’t survive either. It is the anchor of the pact. The moment the key turns in the vault, the painting will burn from the inside out. Laurent knows this. And I suspect that’s why he didn’t tell you.”

Camille thought of Laurent’s promise, the desperate grip of his hand on hers. *Don’t let it burn even to save me.*

But he’d also said the key would break the curse. And now Paul was telling her the two were impossible to separate: one could not perish without the other.

“What happens to Laurent if the painting burns?” she asked.

Paul’s face was grim as he stepped into the rain. “That’s what we’re going to find out.”