Read Chapter 11: The Lies of the Court

The water broke around the body in a slow, lazy circle, dark and indifferent, as the river patrol hauled the shape onto the stone quay. Élise pushed through the small crowd of gendarmes and dockworkers, her credentials already in hand, and stopped cold when the floodlight hit the face.

It was the servant. The one who claimed he saw Louis near the gardens. The same man she had interviewed three days ago, the one whose statement she had filed and flagged for follow-up. He lay on his back now, his eyes open, his skin waxed and gray, a thin line of dried blood tracing from his temple to his ear.

“When?” she asked, her voice flat.

“Fished him out an hour ago,” a sergeant said. “Was in the water maybe two days. Some kids spotted him near the bridge.”

Two days. The same night she had confronted the man in the grey coat at Delorme’s rooms. She had been protecting the chambermaid, and somewhere across the city, another witness had been quietly silenced.

She knelt beside the body. No visible wounds beyond the head laceration. Could have been a fall. Could have been a push. The river took its time giving up its secrets, but Élise didn’t need a coroner’s report to know what this was.

Someone had found her informant before she could bring him in.

She pulled out her phone and called Ravel. He answered on the second ring.

“The servant who saw Louis,” she said. “He’s dead. In the Seine.”

A pause. Static crackled along the line.

“I heard,” Ravel said. “The direction is already aware.”

“Already aware? He’s been dead for two days, and nobody told me?”

“Moreau, you’re not the only officer working this case. The direction has protocols.”

“The direction has been lying to me since the beginning.” She stood, moving away from the crowd. “I filed his statement. I flagged him for protection. Nobody moved on it. Now he’s in the river.”

“I know what this looks like.” Ravel’s voice lowered. “But you need to come in. There’s going to be a hearing.”

“A hearing.” She almost laughed. “For what? Doing my job?”

“For a witness under your purview turning up dead. For failing to secure the chain of custody on his statement. For—” He hesitated. “For going outside channels.”

“I went outside channels because the channels are corrupt.”

“That’s not a defense you want to give in front of a disciplinary board, Moreau. Come in. Say nothing. Let me work the room.”

She looked down at the body. The servant’s hands were pale, his fingers slightly curled, as if he had been reaching for something when the water took him. He had a name. Bernard. She remembered his face when he told her about seeing the Crown Prince, the fear in his eyes as he begged her to believe him.

“I’m not coming in,” she said.

“Moreau.”

“They killed him because he talked to me. They killed Lefèvre because he talked to me. The Grand Chamberlain is dead. Delorme was almost dead. Are you going to be next, Ravel, or are you going to help me?”

The silence stretched.

“There’s nothing I can do from inside if you’re suspended,” he said finally.

“Then I’ll work from outside.”

“That’s not how this works. You’re a captain in the royal security service. You don’t just walk away.”

“Watch me.”

She hung up before he could respond. The gendarmes were starting to look at her strangely, their hands hovering near their service belts. She had been on the force long enough to recognize when the machinery began to turn against you. She had twelve hours, maybe less, before her credentials were revoked and her movements tracked.

She walked away from the quay without looking back. The rain had started again, a fine mist that clung to her coat as she moved through the narrow streets of the fifth arrondissement. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. A text from her superior. *Report to the direction immediately. Do not deviate.*

She turned the phone off and slipped it into her pocket.

By the time she reached her apartment, the suspension notice had already been posted to the internal system. She read it on her personal laptop, skimming the official language: *pending investigation into negligence and failure to protect a material witness.* She was relieved of duty effective immediately. Her badge number would be deactivated within the hour. She was ordered to surrender her service weapon.

She looked at the pistol on her desk. The cufflink sat beside it, the silver lily catching the lamplight. Two objects that had cost her everything. Her career. Her standing. Her family’s respect, if they ever learned of this.

Her father would tell her to stop. He would tell her the monarchy had been good to their family, that a provincial girl from a working-class home did not rise to captain by fighting the crown. He would tell her to trust the process.

But the process had killed Bernard. The process had forged a dead man’s signature. The process was a lie, carefully constructed and maintained by people with silk cufflinks and access to royal gardens.

She took a deep breath. Then she began to pack.

A small bag. A change of clothes. The cufflink, wrapped in cloth. Her personal phone, stripped of anything that could be traced. She left her service weapon behind—they would expect her to take it, and she needed them to underestimate her.

She was halfway out the door when she saw the envelope slipped under it.

No stamp. No postmark. Just her name in handwriting she recognized.

Her father’s hand.

She picked it up, held it for a moment, then opened it. A single line, written in his careful, schooled script:

*Stop now, Élise. While you still can. For your mother's sake.*

She folded the note and put it in her pocket. The conspirators had already reached her father. Or he had heard something—someone in the provincial networks, a whisper passed through the old channels of the Church or the guilds. Either way, the message was clear.

They were closing in.

She slipped out the back door into the rain, her breath clouding in front of her face, and set off into the night.