Read Chapter 6: The Rivals' Bouquet

The dressing room the guild had given her smelled of old velvet and cheaper roses than her own stock. Camille stood before the mirror, pinning back a strand of hair that had escaped its coil, when the door opened without a knock.

Violetta entered like a summer garden in full, furious bloom. Her gown was deep crimson, cut to show the pale column of her throat, and her scent preceded her—damask rose, heavy and opulent, with something darker beneath it. Belladonna, Camille realized. A touch of poison under the sweetness.

“The prodigy,” Violetta said, circling her. “The one who couldn’t even keep her mother’s name.”

Camille’s fingers tightened on the pin. “First day of the trials hasn’t begun, and you’re already rehearsing your victory speech.”

“I don’t rehearse. I arrive.” Violetta stopped directly in front of her, close enough that Camille could taste the rose on the air—thick, cloying, almost suffocating. “I know what they told you. That the crown chooses by nose, not blood. That anyone with the gift and the grit might sit on that throne.”

“And you don’t believe it?”

“I believe what I can smell on you. Fear. Confusion. The stale trace of a shop gone quiet since you ran through the rain.” Violetta tilted her head. “You don’t even know what you are yet, do you? Not truly. You’ve been groping in the dark, making pretty bottles while the rest of us have spent decades learning to wield our craft like a blade.”

Camille forced her shoulders to stay loose. “Then the trials should be easy for you. Why waste time talking to me?”

Something flickered in Violetta’s eyes—too quick to read, too deliberate to be accidental. She stepped back, folding her arms.

“Because I want you to withdraw.”

“Why?”

“Because the council is frightened,” Violetta said, her voice dropping low. “There are three dead women in Paris who shouldn’t be dead. They’ve been sniffing at the traces, and what they’ve found doesn’t smell like any member of this guild. It smells like *outside*. Like someone who learned our secrets and never swore our oaths.”

Camille remembered the ledger page, the wrong paper stock, the imposter who knew where her mother’s note was hidden. “And you think competing for a crown will protect you from outsiders?”

“I think hiding in a shop with a secret gift is what got your mother killed.” Violetta’s mouth curved, but her eyes were flat. “The crown isn’t just power, little perfumer. It’s protection. Whoever sits on that throne commands the guild’s full strength. If they scatter and hide now, we’re all dead before the equinox.”

“If they scatter and hide?” Camille repeated. “The guild has stood for three centuries.”

“The guild has stood because we were invisible. But someone’s making us visible.” Violetta looked away, toward the narrow window that showed a slice of Paris rooftops. Her voice lost its edge for just a moment, becoming something almost human. “They say the council has been meeting in private with emissaries who carry no guild mark. Men with official papers and soft hands. Men who talk about ‘regularizing’ our work. Bringing us under a new authority.”

A chill ran down Camille’s spine. “Men. Not craftswomen.”

“Men,” Violetta confirmed. “And I don’t know what they want, only that the council has started listening to them. There’s talk of changing the trials. Opening them to outsiders. Making them about *loyalty* to some charter I’ve never seen.” She turned back to Camille, and the taunting mask was gone, replaced by something closer to genuine urgency. “I don’t trust them. And I don’t trust that whoever killed those women is working alone. So I need to win. Not for the glory, or the title—but because if someone else takes that throne, someone beholden to these men, we’re all done for.”

Camille studied her rival’s face. The rose scent still hung thick around her, but beneath it, Camille’s trained nose caught a new thread—sharp, metallic. Anxiety. Violetta was afraid.

“If what you say is true,” Camille said slowly, “then wouldn’t you want me in the trials? Two of us against whoever they’re backing?”

“One of you, maybe. Someone who understands what’s at stake.” Violetta’s eyes narrowed. “But you don’t. You’re still playing at being a perfumer, hoping this all goes away. You don’t know what the crown does, what it *costs* to wear it. And you don’t know who’s really pulling the strings among the council. You think I’m your enemy because I want to win a contest. But the real enemy is already inside these walls, and she’s been here longer than either of us.”

Camille’s breath caught. “She? You know who framed me?”

Violetta’s lips parted, as if she was about to speak, then she shook her head. “I know someone has been feeding information out of this guild for months. Names, addresses, rituals. I don’t know who it is. But I smelled it, in the council chambers, three days ago.” She touched her own throat, where her pulse beat visibly. “The scent of a betrayal so thorough it left a stain on the air. I tried to trace it, but it was layered too deep under everyone else’s perfume. By the time I isolated it, whoever wore it had slipped away.”

“Tell me the notes,” Camille said. “Reconstruct it for me.”

Violetta laughed, but it was hollow. “I’m a rival, not a friend. I’ve shown you enough.” She moved toward the door, then paused, not turning around. “One more thing. That vial they found at the death scene. The one with your custom blend?”

Camille stiffened. “How do you know about that?”

“Because the council’s been discussing it. And they’ve been discussing the fact that the batch you claimed was never sold—it *was* sold. To a man named Corbeau, who runs a shop on the rue de la Lune that trades in antiquities and older, darker things. He’s been buying your perfume for six months, using a proxy. The council thinks you’ve been feeding a black-market ring. I think you didn’t even know your own inventory was being siphoned.” Violetta finally turned, a ghost of real sympathy crossing her face. “Either way, that makes you a liability. And the council doesn’t keep liabilities alive through a succession war.”

The door clicked shut behind her, leaving Camille alone with the smell of roses and dread.

She stood frozen for a long moment, her mind racing. A man named Corbeau, buying her perfume through a proxy, for six months. She had never sold a batch to anyone but her own regulars. She kept meticulous ledgers, knew every bottle that left her shop. Unless—she thought of the imposter who had rearranged her mother’s shelf, who had written in her ledger, who knew the hiding place of the hidden note. The same person could have been tampering with her inventory for months, siphoning blends into the black market without her knowledge.

But why? What were the deaths? What was the crown?

What did any of it have to do with her mother’s debt?

Camille pulled out the note she had found behind the perfume bottles, reading the words for the hundredth time. *The debt is not paid. The crown is not safe. Trust the nose that knows your name.*

She had assumed the note meant her own nose, her own gift. But Violetta’s words echoed back now: *“The real enemy is already inside these walls.”*

Camille looked up at the mirror, at her own pale reflection, and felt a new certainty settle in her chest. She would not withdraw from the trials. She would not simply compete for a crown.

She would find out who had sold her perfume, who was poisoning the guild from within, and who had killed her mother. And she would do it with every scent she touched, every note she unravelled.

The crown might choose by nose. But Camille would choose her path by the truth.

She tucked her mother’s note into her bodice, grabbed her cloak, and slipped out of the guild hall before the sun had fully set. There was a shop on the rue de la Lune that sold antiquities and darker things. And Corbeau was about to receive a very interesting visitor.