Read Chapter 32: A Bedside Vigil

The candle had burned down to a stub, its wax pooling like tears on the iron holder. Camille did not remember lighting it. She did not remember the hours passing, the palace bells tolling somewhere distant, the servants who came and went in hushed whispers with fresh basins and stained cloths. She knew only the rhythm of Étienne’s breathing—shallow, uneven, terrible.

The physician had done what he could. The chandelier’s falling arm had shattered ribs, pierced a lung. He had bled the man, applied leeches, muttered prayers in Latin. Then he had left, promising to return at dawn. Dawn had come and gone. Night had fallen again. The moon hung fat and silver beyond the window, mocking her with its fullness.

Two days. The full moon had arrived.

Camille sat on a low stool beside the bed, her fingers wrapped around Étienne’s hand. It was cold. Too cold. She pressed it between both of hers, trying to force warmth into his flesh, as if she could will life back into him through sheer stubbornness.

“You are the most foolish man in all of France,” she whispered. “You know that? Saving a queen who doesn’t even know your name.”

He did not answer. His face was pale as the sheets beneath him, his breathing a rattle that tore at her chest with every inhale.

The needle and locket lay in a silk pouch on the bedside table. She had retrieved them from her hiding place hours ago, when the palace guards had confirmed what she already suspected: Drouet’s carriage had fled north toward the coast before anyone could stop it. But he had left without his prize. The artifacts were here, in this room, weighing on her like stones.

She could leave tonight. The grotto in the gardens, the hidden archway, the alignment of moonlight through the rose window. She had mapped it in her mind a hundred times. She could walk there now, open the portal, and step back into her own time. Back to her studio in Paris, her tablet, her deadlines, her life.

And Étienne would die alone.

She squeezed his hand harder, and a traitorous sob escaped her throat.

“You told me once that I belonged to the future,” she said, her voice cracking. “But you were wrong. I belong here. With you. I just didn’t know how to say it until you stopped being able to hear me.”

The room smelled of blood and herbs and wax. Somewhere in the palace, servants were scrubbing the last traces of the chandelier’s destruction from the marble floors. The court was in chaos—Bertin arrested, the Queen feverish and terrified, whispers of poison and assassination echoing through the halls. But none of that touched this small chamber. Here, time had stopped.

Camille’s eyes drifted to the pouch. The needle that had sewn her way into this century. The locket that held the token of her own life. Two objects, both necessary. One portal home.

She reached for the pouch with her free hand and cradled it in her lap. The silk was cool against her fingers. Inside, the needle hummed with a faint energy she had grown accustomed to—a vibration like a struck tuning fork, always present, always waiting.

“I could go back,” she said aloud, testing the words. “I could wake up in my own bed, in my own body, and all of this would be a dream. A terrible, beautiful dream. I would never have to watch you die.”

Étienne’s chest rose and fell. Rose and fell. The rattle in his lungs seemed louder now, more desperate.

“But I would never have met you.” She smiled through her tears. “I would never have learned to sew with the light. I would never have seen Versailles at dawn from the attic windows, or danced with you in the kitchens, or hidden with you in a confessional while Drouet searched for us. I would never have known what it felt like to be loved by a man who sees me clearly—not as a peasant girl or a designer or a miracle, but as Claire. As Camille. As myself.”

She lowered the pouch back to the table. Her hand trembled, but her decision settled in her chest like a stone finally at rest.

“I was so afraid that staying meant giving up who I was,” she said. “But you showed me that I can be both. I can carry the future in my head and live in the present with my whole heart. You showed me that love isn’t a cage. It’s a door.”

The door to the chamber creaked open. Camille turned, expecting the physician or a servant, but instead found a slim figure in mourning black, her face half-hidden by a lace veil.

Elise.

The young woman closed the door softly and approached, her eyes fixed on Étienne’s still form. She did not speak at first. She simply stood at the foot of the bed, her fingers gripping the wooden rail until her knuckles went white.

“They say he saved the Queen,” Elise said finally.

“He did.”

“They say he was struck by a falling chandelier.”

“He was.” Camille’s voice was raw. “He pushed her clear.”

Elise nodded slowly. “He always was too brave for his own good.” She looked at Camille with an expression that held no malice, only a weary understanding. “You love him.”

It was not a question. Camille did not deny it.

“Yes.”

Elise released the rail, folded her hands before her. “Then sit with him. And pray, if you believe in anything.” She paused at the door. “I will bring tea. It is all I can offer, but it is something.”

She slipped out before Camille could thank her. The silence of the room settled back like a blanket.

Camille returned her attention to Étienne. His lips were tinged with blue. The physician had said the lung might fill with blood, that if it did, there was nothing more to be done. She pressed her ear to his chest, listening. The breathing was labored, but the blood had not come. Not yet.

“You’re still fighting,” she whispered. “Good. I need you to keep fighting.”

She closed her eyes and let herself remember the feel of his hand in hers as they fled through the palace corridors, the warmth of his voice when he’d called her Claire, the way he had smiled at her in the glimmer of candlelight as she knelt beside him, begging him not to die. He had whispered her true name with his last breath of consciousness—binding her two selves into one, making her whole even as he fell.

The night stretched on. The moon rose higher, then began its slow descent. Camille did not move. She watched the shadows shift across Étienne’s face, traced the lines of his jaw with her gaze, memorized the softness of his closed eyes.

At some point, a servant came with the tea Elise had promised. Camille drank it without tasting. More candles were lit. The wick of the first burned out, and she did not see it.

The full moon reached its zenith and passed beyond it. The portal would open, if it opened at all, and Camille would not be there.

She chose to be exactly where she was.

“I was so angry when I woke up here,” she said, late in the night, her voice barely a breath. “I thought the world had played a cruel joke on me. I thought I would never belong in a century so far from my own. But you made me belong.” She lifted his hand to her cheek, pressed it against her skin. “You saw me when I couldn’t see myself.”

The rattling in his chest eased, just slightly. She could not tell if it was a good sign or the beginning of the end.

She did not let go of his hand.

Hours passed. The candle flames flickered. The moon sank below the treeline. Somewhere in the distance, a nightingale sang a song that belonged to another century entirely, and Camille listened to it as if it were a promise.

When the first grey light of dawn crept through the window, she finally allowed herself to lay her head on the edge of the mattress. Her eyelids were heavy, her body hollow. She had not slept in days, had not eaten properly, had not thought about anything beyond this room and the man in it.

“Stay with me,” she murmured against the linen. “Please.”

The world did not answer. But Étienne’s hand, cold and still in hers, seemed to shift.

She was too exhausted to be sure. She was probably dreaming. But for one aching, impossible moment, his fingers curled around hers.

It was enough.

Camille closed her eyes, let the exhaustion take her, and surrendered to the first true sleep she had known since the night she had fallen through time—her hand still holding his, her heart already home.

When she woke, hours later, the morning light was bright in the room. The physician had come and gone, leaving fresh bandages and a tray of untouched food. The rattling had stopped.

Camille sat up sharply, her heart seizing.

Étienne’s chest was still. His face was peaceful, almost serene.

She reached for his hand, and it was warm. Warmer than before. She pressed her fingers to his neck, searching for a pulse, terrified of what she would find.

It was there. Weak, but steady. A drumbeat of life against her fingertips.

Camille let out a breath she had been holding for what felt like years. She collapsed back onto the stool, trembling, and raised his hand to her lips, pressing a kiss to his knuckles.

“Not today,” she whispered. “You stay. You stay.”

Outside the window, the sun rose over Versailles in a blaze of gold and pink, painting the palace walls in colors that could not exist in any world but this one. Camille watched it with eyes that no longer searched for a way home.

The needle and locket lay untouched on the table, their purpose fulfilled the moment she had chosen not to use them.

She was where she belonged.