Read Chapter 31: The Poisoned Thread

The King’s study smelled of wax and wine, the fire crackling low as Marie Antoinette stood rigid beside him, her gloved hands clasped before her. The physician had been dismissed an hour ago, replaced by the weight of royal suspicion. Camille’s palms were slick as she set the lacquered box on the mahogany desk.

“Your Majesty,” she said, her voice steady despite the tremor in her chest. “I asked for this audience because I believe someone in your household wishes you harm.”

Louis XVI blinked slowly, his jowled face settling into a frown. “You speak in riddles, mademoiselle. The Queen has told me of your talents, but this—”

“Show him,” Marie Antoinette said quietly, and Camille did.

She lifted the lid. Inside lay a pair of ivory gloves, beaded with pearls, stitched with silver thread. They were beautiful. They were death.

“I made these under the direction of Rose Bertin,” Camille said, picking one up gently. “She provided the materials. She insisted on the exact weight of the beads, the precise tightness of the weave. I thought it was her perfectionism.” She turned the glove inside out, revealing the pale white powder dusted along the seams. “It’s arsenic. Mixed into the fabric softener.”

The King stared. Marie Antoinette went very still.

“She’s been doing it for months,” Camille pressed. “The headaches, the fatigue, the nausea—your physicians have treated you for melancholia, for a weak constitution. But it’s poisoning. Slow. Nearly undetectable.”

Louis stepped forward, snatching the glove from her grasp. He held it to the candlelight, and the powder shimmered like frost. “How do you know this?”

“Because I tested it. And because Bertin’s own ledger lists the purchase of arsenic under a florist’s name.” Camille withdrew the folded page from her bodice, placing it beside the box. “She’s been buying it in small doses for nearly a year.”

The silence stretched. Then the door burst open.

Rose Bertin swept in like a storm, her silk skirts hissing across the marble. She had clearly been listening. Her face was a mask of outrage, but her eyes—her eyes were feral. “This is slander! The girl is jealous of my position, a common seamstress who has bewitched the Queen with cheap tricks.”

“Then explain the ledger,” Camille said softly.

Bertin’s jaw tightened. She took a step forward, then another, moving past the King toward the Queen. “Your Majesty, I have served you faithfully for years. I have dressed you for balls and births and grief. I would never—”

Marie Antoinette raised her chin. “Then why does the physician say my hands tremble?”

It was the wrong thing to say. Bertin’s mask cracked, and in that moment, Camille saw the truth flash across her face like lightning. The poisoner didn’t flee. She lunged.

The Queen gasped. Bertin seized her by the wrist, the gloved hand raised, pressing the fabric against Marie Antoinette’s mouth. “You stupid girl,” Bertin hissed. “You never understood what I was saving you from. The revolution—the mob—they will tear you apart. I was making it painless.”

“Guards!” the King roared, stumbling forward.

But Camille was already moving. She grabbed Bertin’s arm, twisted, and sent the seamstress sprawling backward into the desk. The box clattered to the floor. Bertin scrambled, her heel catching the edge of a rug, and in that moment, Camille saw the chandelier above swing violently.

A rope snapped.

The great brass chandelier, heavy with candles and crystal, tore from the ceiling and plummeted straight toward Marie Antoinette.

Time turned to treacle. The Queen frozen, her hand outstretched, her eyes wide. Camille reached—too far, too slow. Bertin screamed. The King shouted something that Camille couldn’t hear over the roar of falling glass.

And then Étienne was there.

He had been standing guard at the door, always in the shadows, always watching. He crossed the room in three strides, his body colliding with the Queen’s, shoving her sideways as the chandelier crashed down.

The impact was sickening. A wet, heavy thud. Crystal shattered, candles snuffed, and the whole room filled with smoke and darkness.

Camille screamed.

“No—Étienne, no—!”

She crawled through the wreckage, glass cutting her palms, the smell of dust and blood thick in her mouth. He lay beneath the curve of the fallen frame, his face slack, his chest rising in shallow, jagged breaths. A piece of the iron structure had caught him across the ribs, punching through his coat.

“Get him out!” the King bellowed. “Someone—help me lift it!”

Hands appeared—guards, footmen, strangers. They pulled the wreckage away, rolling him onto his back. Camille pressed her hands to the wound, feeling the wet warmth of his blood soak through her fingers.

“Please,” she whispered, tears cutting tracks through the grime on her face. “Please. I came back for you. Do you hear me? I chose you.”

His eyes fluttered. For a moment, they found hers. His lips parted.

“Claire,” he breathed.

Then the light behind his gaze went dim, and his body went still.

The room swam. Camille heard Marie Antoinette’s distant wail, the King’s barked orders for a physician. She felt hands trying to pull her away, but she fought them, kneeling over him, her bloodied hands still pressing down.

“No,” she said, the word cracking. “No. You cannot leave me. I cannot—Étienne, I am not me without you.”

But the silence where his heartbeat should have been was already too loud. And somewhere outside, above the screaming and shouting and the chaos of the palace, she heard a sound like the closing of a door.

The full moon rose two days hence. And the future she had chosen was dying in front of her, one breathless second at a time.