Read Chapter 17: A Grave Discovery

The crypt beneath the chapel reeked of damp earth and old bones. Camille held the lantern low, her heart hammering against her ribs as Étienne traced the rough-hewn wall with his fingers, counting niches in the near-dark.

“The diary said the third row, seventh vault from the left,” she whispered. “Unmarked. No name carved.”

Étienne’s hand stopped. “Here.”

The stone was plain, unlike its neighbors—no chiseled name, no date, no family crest. Just a faint discoloration where weathering had taken the surface differently. Camille pressed her palm against it, remembering the yellowed pages she’d memorized weeks ago, the previous tailor’s cramped handwriting describing his own burial. *They will not mark my grave, and that is fitting. What I am cannot be named. But I will leave what I found beneath the earth, where no living soul thinks to look.*

“Help me move it,” she said.

Together they wedged their fingers into the crack between the vault and its neighbor. The stone shifted with a grinding groan that seemed far too loud in the silence. Camille froze, listening for footsteps above. Nothing. The palace slept, or pretended to.

“Again,” Étienne grunted.

The stone came free with a wet sucking sound, and they lowered it to the earthen floor. Behind it, the niche was shallow—barely two feet deep—and empty. Camille’s stomach dropped.

“There’s nothing,” she breathed.

Étienne reached past her, his long fingers probing the back wall of the niche. “Wait. There’s a seam.”

He pressed, and something clicked. A small section of stone swung inward on hidden hinges, revealing a cavity no larger than a breadbox. Inside sat an iron box, rusted black with age, its latch crusted with verdigris.

Camille’s hands trembled as she lifted it out. It was heavier than it looked. She set it on the floor, and Étienne crouched beside her, his shoulder brushing hers.

“Open it,” he said softly.

The latch resisted, then surrendered with a sharp snap. Inside, nestled in a bed of rotted velvet, lay a single needle.

It was beautiful—impossibly so, given the rust that had consumed everything else around it. The metal gleamed silver-bright, catching the lantern light like a sliver of frozen moonlight. The eye was elongated, almost graceful, and the shaft was engraved with a pattern Camille couldn’t quite make out in the flickering glow.

She reached for it.

“Don’t,” Étienne warned. “It could be poisoned.”

“The diary said it was a gift.” Camille’s voice was distant, strange to her own ears. “From someone who came before him. Someone who knew his secret.”

She lifted the needle from its nest. It was warm to the touch, as if it had been held recently, though it had sat in this grave for over a decade. The engraving resolved into a pattern—interlocking circles, like ripples on water. Like the alignment diagram she’d drawn on her bedroom wall that night in the Hall of Mirrors.

“This is it,” she said, and her voice cracked. “This is what he used. This is how he traveled.”

Étienne was silent for a long moment. Then: “How?”

“I don’t know yet. But he wrote that it was the key. Not to a room—to the *passage* itself. He said the needle could find the seam between worlds, if you knew where to look.”

She closed her fingers around the needle, and for an instant—just an instant—the air around them shimmered, like heat rising off summer cobblestones. Then it was gone.

“Camille.” Étienne’s voice was tight. “Did you feel that?”

“Yes.”

A sound echoed down the crypt stairs. Footsteps. Multiple sets, moving with purpose.

Étienne was on his feet in an instant, his hand going to the hilt of his sword. “We need to move. Now.”

But the footsteps were already at the bottom of the stairwell, and a lantern swung into view, blinding them.

“Hold where you are!” The voice was sharp, authoritative. A palace guard, uniformed and armed, with two more behind him. “By order of the King’s household, you are both under arrest.”

Camille’s fingers closed around the needle, hiding it in her palm. The guard stepped closer, his eyes moving from the displaced stone to the open niche to the iron box at their feet.

“Grave robbing,” he said slowly, a grim satisfaction in his voice. “In the royal crypt, no less. The King will hear of this personally.”

“This isn’t what it looks like,” Étienne said, his voice steady despite the color draining from his face. “We had permission to inspect these vaults. Official business.”

The guard laughed, a short ugly sound. “Official business, is it? Then you won’t mind explaining it to the Captain of the Guard. And the King’s council.” He gestured to the men behind him. “Take them.”

Rough hands seized Camille’s arms. She felt the needle bite into her palm, sharp enough to draw blood, but she didn’t drop it. She couldn’t. It was the only thing she had left.

“Étienne,” she gasped, as they dragged her toward the stairs.

“I’m here.” His voice was strained, but present. A guard had his arms pinned behind his back, but he was fighting, twisting to keep his eyes on her. “I’m here. Don’t say anything. Not a word, Camille. Let me speak first.”

“Silence!” The guard shoved Étienne hard against the stone wall, and he grunted, his head cracking against the edge of a vault.

“Stop!” Camille struggled against her captors. “He didn’t do anything! I did—I forced him to come with me. He knew nothing about this.”

The guard turned to her, a cold smile spreading across his face. “Is that so? Then you admit to the crime yourself?”

Camille went still. The needle burned in her palm, warm as a live coal.

She had just made everything worse.

---

The guards marched them up through the palace’s service corridors, avoiding the main halls where the court would be stirring by now. The first gray light of dawn was seeping through the windows as they were thrust into a small antechamber off the Captain’s office, its walls lined with muskets and maps.

“Wait here,” the guard said, locking the door behind him.

Étienne sagged against the wall, pressing a hand to his temple. When he pulled it away, his fingers were red.

“You’re bleeding,” Camille said, her voice barely a whisper.

“I’ll live.” He met her eyes, and despite everything—the blood, the arrest, the certain ruin waiting on the other side of that door—he smiled. “You have it. The needle.”

She opened her palm. The needle lay against her skin, bright and unmarked despite the blood welling around it. “I couldn’t let it go.”

“Good.” He pushed off the wall and came to her, close enough that she could smell the dust of the crypt on his coat. “Listen to me. When they question us, you say nothing. Absolutely nothing. I will claim I was investigating corruption in the quartermaster’s office—that the crypt was a suspected hiding place for embezzled funds.”

“But it wasn’t. They’ll check your records.”

“They’ll check, and they’ll find nothing, but by the time they do, the Captain will have to decide whether to pursue a charge against a royal financial officer on the word of a palace guard who dragged him from a crypt at dawn.” Étienne’s jaw tightened. “It’s a gamble. But it’s better than the truth.”

“And me?”

“You were with me because I asked you to identify the vault records. You have the King’s warrant for your riding garments—you’re under his protection. Alone, that won’t save you. But together, it might.”

He reached up and touched her cheek, his thumb brushing away a smudge of grave dirt. “I won’t let them hurt you, Camille. I swear it.”

Voices sounded in the corridor. Multiple sets of boots, approaching the door.

Camille pressed her fist against her chest, feeling the needle’s warmth through her bodice. “And if they don’t believe you?”

Étienne’s smile turned grim. “Then we’ll need a miracle. And after what I saw in that crypt, I’m beginning to believe you might be full of them.”

The lock turned.

The door swung open.

The Captain of the Guard stood in the doorway, his face unreadable. Behind him, a figure in dark robes—a secretary of the King’s council, by his dress. And behind him, barely visible in the corridor’s shadows, a face Camille knew all too well.

Drouet.

Watching. Smiling.

The needle pulsed against her palm, warm as a heartbeat.

She had found the key. But she might not live long enough to use it.