Read Chapter 33: The Final Betrayal

The cobblestones of the Rue de Rivoli were slick with the morning’s rain, and Émile’s lungs burned as he ran. Beside him, Luc stumbled, his shirt still dark with Prussian mud and the long night’s grime. They had made it three streets past the Hôtel de Ville before the first shouts echoed behind them—de Valois’s men, relentless, closing the net.

“The alley,” Émile gasped, jerking his chin toward a gap between two shuttered buildings. “We can double back through the market.”

Luc nodded, his face pale, his hand pressed to his ribs. The watch hung heavy in Émile’s coat pocket, a ticking heart of glass and silver. He could feel its weight with every stride, the true plate wrapped in linen and shoved inside its case. If they could reach the catacombs, if they could lose the pursuit in those black tunnels, they might have a chance.

They reached the alley mouth. A figure stepped out of the shadows.

Céleste stood there, pistol drawn, her dark hair loose and wild around her face. Her eyes were flat, empty of the warmth Émile had come to trust, to need. Behind her, the alley was blocked by a stack of crates. Dead end.

“Céleste,” Émile said, breath catching. “What are you doing? We have to move.”

She didn’t lower the pistol. “I know what you’re carrying, Émile. The watch. The plate. All of it.”

Luc started forward, hand raised. “Céleste, listen to me—they’re right behind us. We can talk while we run.”

“No,” she said. And her voice was different. Cooler. Controlled. The voice of someone who had been waiting for this moment for weeks. “We talk now. You’ve both been very clever. More clever than I expected. Luc, hiding the plate in a dead man’s watch. Émile, blinding de Valois with a flash you never told me about.” Her lips twitched. “I trained you both too well.”

Émile felt the ground shift beneath him. “Moreau.”

“Moreau pays better than the Commune ever will,” Céleste said. “And he has connections in London, in Vienna. A woman can build a new life on a secret like this. A better life.” She took a step closer, the pistol steady. “I was there when you photographed the massacre, Émile. I was sent to make sure you captured it—and then to make sure it never saw the light of day unless Moreau chose to show it. But you had to keep it. You had to believe in the truth.”

“The truth is what he’s trying to bury!” Émile’s voice cracked. “That image proves the Commune and Versailles are playing the same game. The dead in that courtyard died for nothing more than a stage show of revolution. And Moreau wants to sell that lie to whoever pays best.”

“Moreau wants to survive,” Céleste said. “And so do I.”

Luc moved. Fast. He lunged for her weapon, but Céleste was quicker. She sidestepped, brought the butt of the pistol down on his wrist, and as he staggered, she produced a small glass vial from her sleeve and dashed its contents across his face.

Émile heard Luc’s scream before he understood what had happened. The liquid hissed where it touched skin, a sickly sweet odor rising—ether, or worse, a tincture of prussic acid. Luc clawed at his eyes, stumbled, fell to his knees in the alley’s mud.

“Luc!” Émile dropped to his side, grabbing his shoulders. Luc’s face was already flushing, his pupils blown wide. He coughed, blood streaking his lips.

“The watch,” Luc choked, gripping Émile’s coat. “Don’t let her—Émile, she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know about the camera.”

Émile’s mind raced. Céleste didn’t know. She thought the watch held the only plate. She didn’t know about Luc’s original, still hidden, still out there. But that knowledge was a knife that cut both ways—if he used it, if he played it, he would be betraying Luc’s final secret to save himself.

Luc’s grip tightened, then went slack. His eyes, already glassy, stared up at the grey sky. A final breath, shallow and wet, and then nothing.

Émile held him. For one heartbeat. Two. The world narrowed to the weight of Luc’s body against his chest, the faint warmth still in his skin, the echo of his last words. Then Céleste’s boots scraped the stones in front of him.

“The watch, Émile. End this farce.”

He looked up at her. The woman he had kissed in a darkroom, who had bandaged his arm, who had laughed at his cynicism and called him a sentimental fool. He saw the calculation in her eyes now. Always there. He had just refused to see it.

“I don’t have it,” he said. His voice was flat, dead. “I gave it to a boy. A street urchin. Ten minutes ago, at the fountain on Rue Saint-Honoré. I told him to run to the print office of *La Montagne*. He’s halfway across the city by now.”

Céleste’s face tightened. For the first time, something cracked in her composure. “You’re lying.”

“He was small, dirty, hungry. The kind of child no one looks twice at.” Émile gently lowered Luc’s head to the ground and stood. His knees were wet with Luc’s blood. “I told him to wait for a man named Moreau. Or a woman. Whoever came looking. But he won’t wait. He’s scared, and he’s fast, and he’s carrying the one thing Moreau cannot afford to let reach the daylight.”

Céleste’s pistol wavered. She glanced down the alley, then back at him, calculating her options. She could shoot him. But the plate was gone. He was no longer the prize.

“You fool,” she hissed. “You stupid, sentimental fool. That image will burn you too. You think the Communards will thank you? You think Versailles will spare the man who held it?”

“They’ll kill me,” Émile said. “But they’ll know the truth first. And so will Paris. Moreau can’t bury that. Not even you can.”

She was already running, her boots slapping the stone, disappearing into the grey morning. Émile stood alone in the alley, Luc’s body at his feet, the smell of poison thick in the air. The watch was gone. The plate was gone. All he had left was Luc’s warning about the camera—a secret he could no longer protect.

He knelt, pressed his palm to Luc’s cooling cheek, and closed his brother’s eyes with two fingers.

Then he began to run.