Read Chapter 18: A Brother's Fate

The news arrived with the afternoon courier, three days late and stained with rain.

Élodie was hemming the queen's new morning gown when Liselotte burst through the curtained doorway of the workroom, her face the color of old parchment. The bolt of silk slipped from Élodie's fingers and pooled on the floor like water.

"Soldiers came to the palace gates," Liselotte said, gripping the doorframe. "Survivors from the Rhine."

Élodie's needle paused mid-stitch. "Survivors?"

"An ambush in the woods outside Strasbourg." Liselotte's voice cracked. "The whole company—cut down. They say barely a dozen men escaped."

The needle fell. Élodie heard it land on the parquet but could not move to retrieve it. The air in the room thickened, pressing against her ears until Liselotte's voice sounded like it came from beneath water.

"Who?" Élodie heard herself ask. "What names? Did they say—"

"They posted the list of dead at the chapel door. And another list. Missing." Liselotte's eyes were wet. She took a step forward. "Luc's name is on the second one."

The floor tilted. Élodie grabbed the table's edge, splinters biting into her palm. Her brother had been gone eleven months. He was nineteen years old. She had seen him off at the gates of Lyon with a new wool coat she had sewn herself, adjusting the shoulders twice because he kept shifting his weight, impatient to be off.

"Missing means they don't know," Élodie said. "It doesn't mean—"

"It means they found no body." Liselotte's voice was gentler than Élodie had ever heard it. "And it doesn't mean he's alive either, cherie. I'm sorry."

Élodie shook her head, a short violent motion. "I need—" She stopped. She needed her mother. She needed to be home, in Lyon, where the world made sense and the worst thing that happened was a spoiled gown or a jealous rival. Not this. Not a war that reached across the country to snatch her brother from a forest floor.

"I have to send word to my parents," she said. "They'll hear it from someone else. I have to—"

"I'll find you paper and ink." Liselotte crossed the room and took Élodie's hands, stilling their trembling. "But Élodie—there are men in the palace who can do more than send letters. Men who receive dispatches from the front."

Armand.

The thought struck her like a physical blow. Armand de Valois, who navigated the court's dark corridors with the ease of a man who knew where all the bodies were buried—and had asked her to hide his own secrets in the hems of gowns. He would know how to find a missing soldier. He would know who to ask.

"I have to go," Élodie said.

"Go where? You have a fitting with the queen in two hours—"

"The queen can wait."

Liselotte's eyes went wide. "Élodie Marchand, you cannot simply abandon—"

But Élodie was already moving, leaving the workroom at a run, her skirts clutched in her fists. She knew where to find Armand at this hour: the east gallery, where he gathered with the other young officers who lingered at court, drinking coffee and trading rumors. She had memorized his schedule without meaning to, the way one learns the habits of a predator.

She found him alone in an alcove, a letter in his hand, his brow furrowed. His face transformed when he saw her—concern flashing across his features before he smoothed it away, folding the letter and tucking it into his coat.

"Élodie." He rose. "You shouldn't be here. The Comtesse is—"

"I don't care about the Comtesse." She heard her own voice crack. "My brother. He's missing. The massacre at Strasbourg. His name is on the missing list and I need—" She stopped, struggling for breath. "You know people. You have information. Please. I'm begging you."

Armand's face went very still. He glanced down the empty gallery, then took her arm and steered her into a shadowed corner where a statue of Apollo shielded them from view.

"Strasbourg," he repeated. "You're certain."

"I saw the list myself." She had not, but Liselotte had read the names aloud, and Luc's had burned itself into her memory. "Claude-Luc Marchand. Grenadier Regiment." Each word came out precise, clinical, as if naming him formally would keep him safe. "He's been gone eleven months, Armand. He's nineteen. He doesn't even grow a proper beard yet—he was embarrassed about it, he wrote to me—"

Her voice broke. Armand's hand closed around hers, warm and steady.

"Listen to me." His voice was low, urgent. "I have friends in the quartermaster's office. Men who compile the lists and hear word from the field before it reaches the court. I'll make inquiries today. Tonight, if I can. I'll find out what happened to your brother."

Élodie looked up at him, at the hard lines of his jaw and the worry in his eyes. "Why would you do this? You have your own danger to manage. Your own letters to—"

"Because you saved me." He said it simply, without artifice. "You carried three letters to Hélène when any misstep meant your own ruin. You don't owe me kindness. But I owe you everything." He released her hand. "Tell me everything you know about his company. His commander. Where he was last stationed."

Élodie's mind raced. Luc's letters had been infrequent, censored by the military post, but he had mentioned names. Captain Roux. Sergeant Leclair. He had complained about the rations and the mud and the way the German forests all looked identical.

She gave Armand everything she could remember, watching him commit each detail to memory with the focus of a man accustomed to bearing secrets.

"The missing list is often wrong," Armand said when she finished. "Men wander off and turn up weeks later with a head wound and no memory. Or they're captured and exchanged." He paused. "And sometimes soldiers use the chaos to desert. Your brother may be alive and in hiding this very moment, afraid to show his face."

The possibility opened like a door in Élodie's chest. Hope, brittle and painful. "Do you believe that?"

Armand's eyes met hers. "I believe that until I have proof otherwise, you should assume your brother is alive. It's the only way to keep going."

They stood together in the shadow of the marble god, two people carrying secrets too heavy for their shoulders. The bell for the evening audience rang across the courtyard, distorted by distance.

"I have to go," Élodie said. "The queen expects me. There's a bodice fitting—"

"Hélène will be there." Armand's voice caught on his wife's name. "This is the final letter."

Élodie's hand went to her bodice, where she had hidden the folded paper this morning before she even knew Luc's fate. A brother missing. A husband separated from his wife. The palace was a house of mirrors, reflecting back every sorrow she tried to outrun.

"I'll deliver it," she said. "I'll deliver it and pretend my heart isn't breaking."

Armand stepped closer and pressed something into her palm. A folded paper, warm from his body.

"That's my last letter as well," he said. "If you can find a way to include both—"

She nodded, tucking it beside the first. "I'll find a way."

She left him standing in the alcove and walked toward the queen's apartments on legs that felt made of glass. Every step required the concentration of a tightrope walker. Don't fall. Don't break. Don't let them see that inside, you are nothing but a terrified girl from Lyon whose brother is somewhere in a foreign forest, bleeding or running or holding his breath.

The guards at the queen's door recognized her now. They opened the heavy oak panel without question, admitting her to the antechamber where Hélène waited beside the dress form, looking as composed as if she had not spent the past weeks terrified for her own future.

Élodie crossed to her, touching her elbow beneath the cover of the gown's train.

"The final letter is here," she murmured. "Armand's too. Both together."

Hélène's composure cracked, just for an instant. "And you? You look—"

"My brother is missing. In Strasbourg." The words came out matter-of-fact, as if she were reading a list of supplies. It was the only way to survive them.

Hélène went white. "Élodie—"

"I don't have time to feel it yet." Élodie stepped back, forcing her face into a mask of professional calm as the queen's footsteps sounded in the corridor. "We have work to do."

The work would save her, she thought. The orders and the measurements and the careful art of transformation. She would pin and stitch and smile, and beneath her bodice, two letters would press against her heart like twin blades.

She would deliver Hélène's letters, find Luc's fate through Armand's network, and try—God help her, try—to stay alive long enough to see either of them safe. The Comtesse still watched. The queen's enemies still moved in shadow. The borrowed royal silk still hung incomplete in her workroom, a cord waiting to cinch around her neck.

But her brother might be alive. And Hélène's marriage—the marriage Élodie had risked everything to protect—might still have a future.

Somewhere in that tangled knot of fear, she found the thread of purpose again. She would pull it, and keep pulling, until the whole tapestry of secrets drew taut in her hands.

The queen entered with a rustle of silk. Élodie curtsied deep, hiding her face, letting her grief fall away into the practiced grace she had learned so well.

"I am at your service, Your Majesty."