Read Chapter 16: The Letter of Marque

Étienne found her in the workroom just past midnight, his coat dusted with chalk and something darker along the cuffs. He carried a folded parchment, worn at the creases, and the candlelight caught the tension in his jaw before he spoke a word.

“You need to see this.”

Camille set down her needle. She had been embroidering the King’s riding coat sleeve, the one she’d promised for the hunt on Thursday, but her hands had been shaking all evening. Drouet’s words from the corridor still rang in her skull. *The diary fits you too well, mademoiselle. Either you are a liar, or you are something far worse.*

“What is it?” she asked.

Étienne laid the parchment flat on her cutting table, smoothing its curled edges with both palms. It was a royal decree, dated 1762, bearing the faded signature of Louis XV and the seal of the Ministry of Finance. At the top, in formal script: *Commission for the Supply of Royal Garments — Records of Appointment.*

But it was the marginal note that made her breath catch.

*Tailor’s name struck from record by order of the Comte de Vergennes. Subject: suspicion of unlawful correspondence with foreign powers. See attachment regarding 'the needle of return.'*

“I found it in the archives beneath the Ministry,” Étienne said quietly. “Three floors down, in a box marked ’Discontinued Trades.’ It was misfiled, deliberately I think — someone wanted it lost.”

Camille traced the words with her fingertip. “The needle of return. That’s what the diary called it. The previous tailor — the one who left it — she wrote about a needle that could—” She stopped, looking up at him. “I thought it was metaphor. A poetic way of describing the portal. But what if it was literal?”

Étienne pulled a second sheet from inside his coat. This one was newer, rougher, written in the same cramped hand as the diary she’d found in the secret room. Camille recognized the looping *L* and the way the writer pressed hard enough to leave grooves in the paper.

*If the portal cannot be reopened, the needle alone may suffice. It requires blood and alignment — the same celestial hour. But it must be buried with the one who wielded it, or it will lose its binding. Who will think to dig beneath the chapel floor? No one who fears the dark. I commit this to memory, for I cannot risk the written word being found. If you read this and do not know me, know that I came from elsewhere, and I wish to go home.*

Camille read it twice, then a third time, her heart hammering against her ribs. “She buried it. The needle is buried with her.”

“In the chapel crypt,” Étienne said. “I’ve already checked the records. The tailor died in 1783 — two years before you arrived, which fits the diary’s timeline. No marked grave exists, but the crypt beneath the chapel has unclaimed sections. If she was buried in secret, that’s where she’d be.”

Camille’s mind raced. The chapel at Versailles was heavily guarded at night, patrolled by the Swiss Guard, and watched by the Queen’s own confessor during services. Breaking in would be near impossible.

But near impossible was not impossible.

“We need to find the grave,” she said slowly. “But they won’t let us dig up the crypt unless we have permission from the Church or the King. And if Drouet catches us there, he won’t need to spread lies — we’ll be hanged for grave robbing before he even opens his mouth.”

Étienne’s expression darkened. “That’s not the worst of it. The decree was initiated by the Austrian ambassador’s predecessor. The same office Drouet reports to. They’ve been hunting this tailor’s secrets for twenty years. If they know the needle exists, they’ll have someone watching the crypt already.”

Camille looked down at the parchment again. The faded marginal note seemed to pulse in the candlelight. Twenty years. The Austrian ambassador’s office had been chasing a way home for twenty years — they knew what the tailor was, and they wanted what she had.

“Why,” she whispered, “would they want to find their way back if they’re already here?”

Étienne’s hand closed over hers on the table. “Maybe they’re not trying to send one of their own home. Maybe they’re trying to bring something here. Someone.”

The thought chilled her. If the Austrian ambassador knew about time travel, knew about the needle, then Drouet wasn’t just a threat to her personally — he was a gatekeeper for something far larger. And she had just walked directly into his sightline with a royal warrant in her pocket.

“We move tonight,” she said.

“Camille, it’s nearly one in the morning. The guards change at two, and the crypt door requires two keys — one held by the chapel master, one by the palace steward. I can get the steward’s key, but the chapel master—” He shook his head. “He answers to the Queen’s confessor. He won’t be bribed.”

“Then we don’t bribe him. We wait until morning and attend Mass.”

Étienne’s eyes widened. “You can’t be serious. You want to walk into the Queen’s own chapel, in daylight, while wearing—” He gestured at her working clothes, the simple muslin dress she’d been given when she first arrived. “You’ll draw twice the notice you did at the salon.”

“Exactly why we shouldn’t go as ourselves.” Camille moved to her wardrobe, pulling out the small leather case she’d been hiding beneath her spare shifts. Inside lay a set of folded garments she’d been working on for weeks — a plain grey novice’s habit, carefully stitched and aged with tea stains to look properly worn. “I made this after I found the diary. In case we ever needed an innocent excuse to move about the palace unseen.”

Étienne stared at the habit. “You’ve been planning this since before you told me the truth.”

“I’ve been planning to go home since I woke up in this body,” she said softly. “Every seam I’ve sewn, every ribbon I’ve tied — it’s all been in service of that one goal. This coat for the King buys me favor, but it doesn’t buy me time. Drouet will expose me before the month is out. I can feel it.”

He crossed the room, taking her hands in his. “And if we find the needle? If it works? What then?”

The question hung between them. She looked at his face — the honest lines of it, the way his concern for her cut through his usual implacable calm. He was a man who balanced ledgers and tracked expenditures, but he’d risked his career, his position, perhaps his life for a woman who wasn’t even from his century. And she was about to ask him to do it again, in the dark, beneath a chapel floor where they might be caught at any moment.

“Then I go home,” she said. “And I take this story with me, and I never stop wondering what became of the financial officer who believed the impossible.”

Étienne’s jaw tightened. He released one of her hands, pulled a folded paper from his inner pocket, and pressed it into her palm. “A letter of marque,” he said. “Signed by the King’s own hand, permitting the bearer to conduct certain confidential repairs within the chapel crypt in service of the crown. I drafted it this afternoon and had a clerk at the Ministry witness the signature.”

Camille unfolded it. The King’s signature was unmistakable — that broad, sloping royal scrawl she’d seen on her warrant. It was a forgery, and a good one.

“If we’re caught,” Étienne continued, “this will buy us exactly long enough to be taken to the Bastille instead of hanged on the spot. It’s not much, but it’s something.”

She laughed, a brittle sound. “You forged the King’s name for me.”

“I forged the King’s name for us.” He met her eyes. “Now put on the habit. We have a grave to dig before dawn.”