Read Chapter 8: The Secret Room

Camille’s fingers trembled over the brass key as she slid it into the lock hidden behind the tapestry’s dusty folds. The seam was invisible until you pressed at the exact spot where the woven threads sagged—a trick the old tailor must have used a hundred times. The key turned with a groan, and a section of the wall swung inward on silent, well-oiled hinges.

Étienne let out a low whistle. “The palace has more secrets than the Queen has lovers’ whispers.”

“Don’t say that too loudly,” Camille murmured, slipping through the gap. The air inside was cold, still, and smelled of cedar and beeswax—older than any room she’d yet seen in Versailles. Moonlight filtered through a single high window, illuminating racks and racks of gowns. Centuries of them, it seemed, their silks faded to ghosts of their former colors. Hoops and panniers sagged like collapsed lungs. Petit-point slippers sat in neat rows, dust thick as frost on their buckles.

“This must have been the atelier before it was sealed,” Étienne said, staying close to the door. “The old Queen’s tailor worked here. When she died, the rooms were locked. No one remembered why.”

Camille moved deeper in, her hand trailing over a bodice crusted with seed pearls. Her own craft felt small beside these relics—hand-stitched wonders, each one a diary of labor and longing. But she wasn’t here for the dresses. Not yet.

On a low table against the far wall, beneath a cracked leather folio, a stack of paper lay bound in crimson ribbon. Camille tugged the ribbon loose with shaking fingers. Sketches. She blinked. The first page was a simple shift dress, but the proportions were wrong—too streamlined, too modern, with a dropped waist and a cut that would have shocked even Madame Bertin’s boldest ambitions. The second sketch showed trousers for women, cut sharp as a blade. The third was a dress she recognized from a magazine spread in 2024.

“Oh God,” she breathed.

Étienne came to her shoulder. “What is it?”

Camille turned the pages faster. There were notes in the margins, in neat French but with odd spellings, abbreviations she recognized as shorthand for textile weights and synthetic blends that wouldn’t exist for two hundred years. Under the stack lay a leather-bound journal, its cover cracked and soft as skin. She opened it at random.

*July 3, 1772. The Queen dismissed me today. She says my designs are too bold, too strange. But she will see. When I return to my own time, the world will know my name. I have three years left to find the alignment. The moment when the stars open the way. The key will turn only then, at the hour of the descent, when Saturn and Jupiter kiss above the chapel spire.*

Camille’s heart slammed against her ribs. She flipped forward, scanning.

*I have made a map. I will not fail.*

A thin card fluttered out. Camille caught it before it hit the floor. On it, drawn in fine ink, was a diagram of the sky—the position of the constellations over Versailles—and a date marked with a dark circle: *August 22, 1785. Five nights after the gala. The hour of three in the morning.*

“That’s days away,” she whispered. “Not years. Days.”

Étienne read over her shoulder. “The alignment,” he said slowly. “You truly mean to go back.”

Camille turned to him, clutching the journal to her chest. “There’s a way home, Étienne. She did it—the tailor before me. She left instructions. I just have to be ready.” She flipped to the back of the journal, where the handwriting grew rushed and frantic.

*They are watching me. She is watching me. The Comtesse knows more than she lets on. But the door is real. The key was forged for this purpose. I must finally walk through.*

The last entry was undated, the writing barely legible.

*If you are reading this, you are like me. Do not trust the Court. Do not trust the King’s men. They will try to keep you here, bind you to this world with gold and silk. But the sky does not lie. Find the alignment. Walk through before they learn what you are.*

Camille closed the book. Her hands had stopped trembling. Something else had taken over—a cold, certain calm. She had a date. She had a key. She had a path.

Étienne’s hand found hers, warm and steady. “August twenty-second,” he said. “You’ll have to survive the ball, du Barry, Bertin, the Minister of Police, and the Comte de Vaudreuil, all before you can walk out of this world.”

“I’ve survived worse,” Camille said, though she wasn’t sure it was true. “I design. I sew. I don’t back down.” She tucked the journal into her bodice, next to the brass key, which now hung on a chain against her skin, warm from the heat of the night.

“I’ll get you to the chapel spire,” Étienne said. “Whatever it costs.”

His eyes held hers, and for a moment, she let herself feel the weight of what he was offering. He had already staked his career on her innocence. Now he was staking something else—his future, his safety, his place in this world—on her departure from it.

She should have said something. Thank you, or I’ll be sorry to leave, or stay. But the words tangled in her throat.

“We should go,” she said instead, stepping toward the door. “The Queen expects her muslin gown, and I can’t design it from a hidden room.”

Étienne nodded, but his hands lingered on hers a beat too long before he let go. As Camille slipped through the hidden door and back into the cold, polished corridor, the diary pressed against her ribs like a second heartbeat.

August twenty-second. Three in the morning. The stars were waiting.