Read Chapter 28: The Glove's Owner

The cellar air was thick with the smell of damp stone, old rot, and Yvette's cloying rose perfume, still hanging where she'd stood gloating over me. The wards pressed against my skin like cold hands, and the chains around my wrists hummed with a low, sickening magic—the same corruption I'd smelled in Théo's perfumes.

I'd been counting my breaths, trying to measure how long I'd been down here. An hour? Two? Laurent was somewhere beyond the wall, and I had no way to tell if he was still alive. The thought clawed at my chest.

Then the air shifted.

The smell of damp and rot softened, replaced by something green—like the garden at the guild house before it burned, heavy with night-blooming jasmine and crushed mint. I knew that scent. I'd worn it woven through my own signature blend for years, and only one other person had ever shared it with me.

Adeline Malroux.

"You're thinking too loud," a voice said from the shadows. It was not the Guildmaster's voice—that rough, weary alto I'd heard when her spirit possessed me. This was smoother, younger, and it carried a bitter amusement. A woman stepped into the faint light filtering through the cracked door above the cellar stairs.

She looked exactly as my mother's portrait had, though the portrait had been painted before I was born. Pale hair, dark eyes, a thin mouth curved into an expression I didn't know how to read. She wore the same grey dress from the painting, and through her translucent form I could see the wall behind her.

"You're dead," I said. "You fell into the vat."

"I am," Adeline agreed. "But dead doesn't mean gone. Not here. Not with what the vat holds." She tilted her head, studying me with a look that made my skin prickle. "You've grown so much, Camille. You smell like me, did you know that? Under the smoke and pain and that boy's blood you soaked up on your hands. You smell like my garden."

I tried to pull my knees to my chest, but the chains stopped me. "You're trapped in the vat. The copper vat is still alive—it's still connected to you."

"And to the mannequins," Adeline said. "And to your brother's corruption. And to every drop of perfume ever brewed in the guild's copper kettle, from the first day to the last." She moved closer, and the cold of her presence washed over me. "But that's not why you're here, is it? You want to know about the glove."

My blood went cold. The bloodstained glove—the feminine one, found in Théo's workshop, the one the Guildmaster's spirit had pointed to. I'd carried it in my satchel until Yvette had taken everything. Unless—

"You're wearing it," Adeline said, answering my unspoken question. "No. Stop." She shook her head. "I'm not reading your mind. You're wearing it. It's tucked in your bodice, against your heart. The assassin's glove."

I hadn't realized I'd pulled it from my satchel before we'd been captured. It had been in my hand like a talisman, and when Yvette had ordered us bound, I'd slipped it into my blouse without thinking. The dried blood stiffened the leather, and the scent of copper and old perfume clung to it.

"This glove belonged to a woman who served the Valmont family for forty years," Adeline said. "She was my handmaiden once. A girl named Rosaline, who I trusted with my life." Her voice tightened. "She was the one who betrayed me to the Valmonts. She told them where to find the first garden's ashes, and she helped them burn it."

"Why?"

"Because she loved my brother." Adeline's gaze met mine, and I saw grief there, old and raw. "Before I chose the guild, before I bound myself to the vat, I was Adeline Valmont. I had a brother, Théo, who was three years younger than me. He adored me. He followed me everywhere."

I thought of Théo's cold eyes, his cruel smile, the way he'd spoken of my mother as a traitor who had abandoned their family for power.

"And when I chose the guild," Adeline continued, "he saw it as a betrayal. He was never able to forgive me. He built his entire life—his fortune, his influence, his hatred—around proving the guild was corrupt and that I was a monster. And Rosaline, who had always loved him from afar, chose to stand by his side."

"That's why the assassin knew my mother's recipes," I breathed. "Rosaline learned them from you."

"She learned enough to mimic them. Enough to poison with your mother's signature scent, so the blame would fall on the guild." Adeline's face twisted. "I didn't know. Not until the night I fell into the vat. Théo's men had come to the guild house, led by Rosaline in that glove. She held the vat open while he poured in the corrupted formula. I fought her, and I fell."

I looked down at the glove in my hand. "Yvette wears gloves. She has her father's ring, but she wore gloves when she captured me. Silk ones."

"Rosaline is Yvette's grandmother," Adeline said. "She passed away two years ago, but her glove was kept in the family vault. Théo uses it as a token to command her loyalty—and her magic—even from beyond the grave."

I stared at her. "Her magic? Rosaline was a witch?"

"Everyone in the Valmont bloodline carries a drop of the old power. Théo has it, though he's used it for cruelty. Yvette has it, though she doesn't understand it. And you—" Adeline reached out as if to touch my cheek, but her hand passed through me, leaving a chill like winter. "You carry more than most. Do you know why they stole your Gift? Why they bound it in the Crown of Scents?"

"I was told it was my destiny. That I was chosen."

"You were the last of Adeline Valmont's direct lineage," Adeline said. "Théo could not bear that my power would pass to you, not when he had been denied it. So he took what you were born with and locked it away in the Crown, and he gave it to his daughter to wear, believing it would make her stronger. But the Crown only holds what was taken. It doesn't grow. It doesn't bloom."

My throat tightened. "If I take it back, I take it from Yvette."

"Yes. And if you don't, you may not survive what's coming." Adeline's form flickered. "The ritual to bind the vat requires a sacrifice, camille. A willing one, steeped in the perfumer's art. Your mother knew this. That's why she hid the ashes in the Valmont foundations. Not to protect them from Théo, but from herself."

"Madeline said the ashes of the first garden are in the foundations," I said. "Is my mother lying?"

Adeline smiled, bleak and sad. "Your mother is telling you a story that will bring you to the door she needs you to open. The ashes are there, truly. But so is something else. Something Théo has guarded for thirty years, waiting for a keeper to return."

I didn't ask what. I didn't need to. The Guildmaster's spirit stirred inside me then, a faint warmth at the base of my skull, and I felt her urgency—her need for me to understand what Adeline was trying to say.

"Rosaline's glove," I said slowly. "If Yvette's grandmother was the assassin, then the guild must know. I need to show them."

Adeline's ghost laughed, a hollow sound. "Yvette has already spun that story, Camille. She's told the guild that you are the assassin. That you killed your own mother to take her place in the vat." She raised a hand. "The guards come in minutes. They will execute you before dawn, unless you are already gone."

"Am I?" I asked, testing my chains. The magic hummed hard, a vibration that set my teeth on edge. "The wards—"

"Can be broken, but not by force." Adeline pointed to the glove in my hands. "Her blood is on that leather, Camille. Rosaline's blood. Do you remember what you can do with blood, my daughter?"

The scent-shaping. I'd healed Laurent with my magic, using the blood in his veins as fuel. I'd been weaker since then, drained, but—

The glove was not my blood. But I could shape the old perfume still clinging to the leather, blended with Rosaline's trace magic, and turn it into a key against the same wards Théo had set down. Same bloodline. Same signature.

I pressed the glove to my lips and inhaled.

The world sharpened. The chains' hum shifted, and I followed the thread of that vibration like a scent trail, feeling the ward's structure. Rosaline's scent was faint but distinct—jasmine and vetiver, meant to soothe, poisoned with ambition. I pushed my Gift into it, coaxing the ward to recognize the leather as belonging.

The chains snapped.

I was on my feet before they hit the floor, the glove gripped in my fist. Adeline's ghost was already fading, her smile softer now.

"You know what to do," she said. "Tell them the glove's owner. Tell them who the killer was. And Camille—when you take back your Gift, remember that Yvette is a child who danced to her father's tune. She can still learn a new song."

Then she was gone.

The cellar door above me burst open, and boots thundered down the stairs. I smelled them before I saw them—Yvette's perfumed men, half-corrupted, their eyes glassy and empty. But I was no longer chained, and I still held the bloodstained glove.

I had a secret to share with the guild, and I was going to carve it into their hearts with the truth.