Read Chapter 32: The Pyre of Love

The chamber smelled of turpentine and old dust, and the cold from the vault seeped through the marble floor, raising goosebumps along Camille’s arms. Laurent’s blood had come away on her hands, smeared across the letter opener as it clattered to the ground. She didn’t look at Vasseur. Not yet. The man had staggered back against the iron bars of the vault gate, one hand pressed to his side, a dark, wet bloom spreading across his white shirt. His eyes were fixed on Camille—cold, furious, but fading.

“You’ll kill him,” Vasseur rasped, teeth reddened at the corners. “You think you’ve won? The moment you open that door, the pigment is unbound. It’s not paint in there, girl. It’s my life’s work. And your grandmother helped me make it.”

Camille’s chest tightened at the name. For a split second she saw her grandmother’s face—those pale eyes filled with warning—and she shoved the image aside. She had a key in her pocket, a silver thing grown warm with her body heat, and she was done being afraid of old ghosts.

“Help me untie him,” she said to Paul.

They worked quickly. Paul’s knife sawed through the ropes around Laurent’s wrists, and Laurent came forward like a man surfacing through deep water. His face was pale, sweat curling his dark hair. There was a cut across his brow, drying dark. His gaze found Camille, and for one unguarded moment it held something raw—not the knowing smile he wore at galas, or the mask he used on television. Just Laurent. Whatever that meant now.

“Careful,” Laurent said, his voice low and rough. “He wasn’t lying. The portrait has to burn as the key turns. Both at once.”

“How do you know that?” Camille asked, but she was already moving. The vault gate stood before her, its face a mosaic of brass and black iron, and at its center a single keyhole shaped like a comma, or an eye. She slid the silver key in. It stuck halfway.

Behind her, Vasseur laughed—a wet, terrible sound. “He knows because I told him. The same bargain I made with your grandmother. She lost, too.”

Camille ignored him. She jiggled the key, felt the tumblers shift, and then something old and heavy clicked. The gate swung inward, groaning on rusted hinges. Inside, the walls were lined with lead, and in the center on a marble shelf sat a single jar of pigment. Carmine red, so vivid it seemed to glow against the dull lead, and when Camille touched the glass, the surface was warm as a heartbeat.

She snatched it up, cradled it against her chest, and backed out. Paul had Laurent half-standing. Vasseur had fallen sideways, propped against the gate’s frame, his hand still pressed to his side. His face was graying. But his eyes were still alive.

“Make him watch,” Vasseur said, nodding at Laurent. “He’ll burn his own heart.”

Laurent stumbled forward. Paul steadied him, and together they crossed to where Camille stood. On the vault wall beside them was a barred vent that opened into a narrow shaft. Faint daylight filtered down from the Pavillon’s lantern far above. Camille felt for the edge of the portrait Laurent had painted—the one he’d slipped into her bag hours ago, before everything broke open. She pulled it out now, stretched canvas on light wood, the image of her own face staring back at her in oils, rendered so finely the eyes seemed to follow her.

“It has to burn,” Laurent murmured.

“I know.” Camille’s hands shook. She hated the shaking. The pigment jar was heavy in her other hand. “We’re out of time. Do it.”

Laurent struck a match. In the same heartbeat, Camille unscrewed the jar and plunged her fingers into the pigment. It was thick and warm and pulsed once, like a live thing. She loosed the canvas from its wood frame, laid it flat on the marble floor, and traced her fingertips across it, dragging the pigment in a streak across her eyes. From above, Vasseur screamed—a broken noise, no longer human—and the candle flame Paul lit caught the canvas’s edge.

The fire raced along the linen, faster than any natural burn. It ate the blues and greens of the painted background, the careful dark of her hair, and when it reached the painted lips, the air around them seemed to bend. Vasseur’s scream cut off. Camille looked at him just as the fire consumed the final stroke of his face on the canvas—a self-portrait Laurent had hidden in the weave, she now understood, buried under her own. Vasseur’s body seized, and the pigment on Camille’s fingers flared hot as an ember. She dropped the jar. It shattered, spilling red across the stone.

Laurent was beside her, pulling her hand open, pressing his palm to hers. “The pigment has to bind,” he said urgently. “To the artist and the truth.”

Inside her mind’s eye, she saw her grandmother kneeling, sharp key, stained hands, and the foolish old vow she’d made to remain true to the art. And she understood, at last, the truth she’d been running from. She didn’t have to love Laurent to save herself—she had to love him because it was real, and she had fought it at every turn.

“I’m sorry,” Camille whispered, and she turned her palm into his, smearing the burning red between them. The fire roared up the wall behind them, catching on the lead sheeting.

Vasseur’s body toppled backward into the vault, and the doors clanged shut behind him. Through the iron grating, his eyes met hers one last time—not angry now, only terribly calm—and then the flames twisted around him.

Camille yanked Laurent toward the narrow shaft. Paul was already there, gripping a rusted ladder. Fire licked the stone at their heels.

“Go!” she shouted.

Laurent climbed, and she followed, and beneath them the old vault burned like a heart turned to ash.