Read Chapter 29: The Hunter's Shadow

The tunnel air had gone thick with smoke and the distant roar of falling stone, but Alex heard something else beneath it—footsteps. Not the shuffling of their own escape. These were deliberate, measured, the click of a heel finding purchase on wet flagstone.

Camille heard them too. Her hand closed around his forearm, fingers cold even through his sleeve. "He followed us through the powder vault."

Alex pressed his back against the wall, dragging his useless leg behind him. The infection had crept past his knee now, a burning ladder of pain climbing toward his hip. Every step sent white sparks across his vision. Beside him, Pierre had stopped, head cocked like a hunted animal.

"How many?" Alex whispered.

Pierre's eyes were dark in the gloom. "One. But he walks like he doesn't need to rush."

The tunnel branched ahead—one passage angled toward the river, the other toward the Rue Saint-Antoine. Both promised streets. Both promised open ground where a limping man and a noblewoman would be easy prey.

Camille made the choice for them. She tugged Alex toward the left passage, the one that smelled of sewage and rotting timber. "The Saint-Antoine entrance is closer. The crowds there are thick enough to lose a shadow."

Pierre said nothing, but he moved ahead of them, his hand inside his coat where Alex knew he kept a knife.

The footsteps behind them quickened.

Alex bit down on the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out as he pushed his leg harder. The tunnel walls pressed close, slick with moisture. Somewhere above, the Bastille burned, its death throes shaking dust from the stones around them. The city beyond was shouting—thousands of voices welded into one great animal sound.

They burst through a rusted grate into an alley choked with refuse. Daylight hit Alex like a physical blow. He stumbled, caught himself on a wall slick with moss. The street beyond the alley roar with movement—men and women streaming toward the fortress, some carrying pikes, others clutching whatever they'd grabbed from their homes.

Camille was already moving, her skirts gathered in one fist, her other hand dragging Alex forward. "The crowd. We need to be part of the crowd."

Pierre vanished. One moment he was beside them, the next he'd melted into the flow of bodies. Alex didn't have time to wonder where he'd gone—the sound of the grate behind them had stopped swinging.

The man with the red heels stepped into the alley mouth.

He was taller than Alex expected, lean as a blade, his coat the color of dried blood. His face was ordinary—the kind that would disappear in any room—but his eyes were not. They fixed on Alex with the patient hunger of a wolf that had already counted its prey's steps.

He didn't run. He walked.

Alex's heart slammed against his ribs. "Move."

They plunged into the crowd. Bodies pressed in from every side, smelling of sweat and powder and fear. Someone shouted about the Bastille falling. A woman wept. A man with a tricolor cockade nearly knocked Alex off his feet. He staggered, and Camille's grip on his arm kept him upright.

"Keep moving," she hissed. "Don't look back."

But Alex looked. He couldn't help it. The red heels were there, cutting through the crowd like scissors through cloth. The man wasn't pushing—he didn't need to. People simply moved aside for him, some instinct of self-preservation rippling ahead of his progress.

He was gaining.

Alex's leg buckled. He went down hard, knees striking cobblestone, and the crowd surged around him like water around a stone. Camille hauled at his arm, her face white with strain.

"Get up. Get up."

"I can't—" The words tasted like failure. "The leg."

She didn't argue. She just hooked her arm under his shoulder and lifted. For a moment, the world swam, and Alex thought he'd fall again. But then a third set of hands caught him from the other side.

Pierre.

"Go," Pierre said. "Through the meat market. The scaffoldings will slow him."

They moved. Alex's leg screamed with every step, but Pierre was strong, taking most of his weight. The crowd thinned as they cut through a narrow passage, then opened into the sprawling chaos of the morning market. Stalls had been abandoned in the rush toward the Bastille, their goods scattered—apples crushed underfoot, a bolt of cloth dragging through mud, fish bleeding silver scales onto the stones.

The scaffoldings Pierre had mentioned rose ahead—half-finished timber frames for a building that would never be completed, their crossbeams creating a labyrinth of shadows.

They plunged into it.

Wood groaned overhead. Alex ducked under a beam, nearly lost his footing on a pile of nails. Camille was ahead, threading through gaps that seemed too narrow for her, her pale dress catching the light like a signal flag.

"The snuffbox," Alex gasped. "He found me through the snuffbox."

Pierre's face tightened. "The box Marchand gave you?"

"It fell. In the tunnel. When I found Camille—I dropped it." The realization was a knife in his chest. The old man's gift, the carved box that had somehow marked Alex as a traveler through time, had sat in the governor's quarters long enough for anyone to find. Of course the hunter had tracked it. It was probably the only physical trace Alex had left in this world that wasn't his own blood.

Camille stopped. Her hand went to her bodice, and when she turned back, she was holding something small and glinting. "This one, you mean?"

Alex stared. The snuffbox—identical to the one he'd lost, or nearly so. The same dark wood, the same inlaid design of a key and a door. "How—"

"Marchand gave me its pair," she said. "He told me to keep it with me if I ever needed to find you. He said they were mirrors of each other." Her lips pressed into a thin line. "I didn't understand what that meant until now."

Pierre's eyes went narrow. "He can track the box you carry just as easily as the one you lost."

The sound of footsteps on wood. Slow. Deliberate. The hunter had entered the scaffolding.

Camille's hand closed around the snuffbox. For a moment, Alex thought she meant to throw it away—but instead she pressed it into his palm.

"Then he needs something to chase."

She turned and ran deeper into the timber maze. Alex tried to follow, but his leg gave out again. He went down, and this time Pierre couldn't catch him—the impact sent a shockwave of pain up his spine that made the world go gray.

When he blinked back to focus, he was alone. The footsteps had stopped.

A shadow fell across him.

"You're not an easy man to catch, Monsieur Renard." The voice was soft, almost courteous. The red heels stopped an arm's length from Alex's face. "But you've made it easier on yourself now."

Alex forced himself to look up. The hunter stood over him, a thin-bladed dagger in one hand, and in the other—

The snuffbox. The one Alex had lost.

"Marchand's trinkets," the man said, turning it over in his fingers. "He always did have a weakness for doors. He thought this one would lead him somewhere worth going." He pocketed the box and crouched down, bringing his face close to Alex's. "But you're the key, aren't you? The thing that opens the way."

Alex's hand closed around something on the ground—a loose nail, its tip rusted, its length solid. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"No," the hunter agreed. "But you will."

Something moved in the shadows behind the hunter. A swirl of pale fabric. Camille had circled back.

The hunter saw Alex's eyes shift. He began to turn, but Alex was already moving—not to strike, but to throw his weight forward. He slammed into the man's knees, and they both went down in a tangle of limbs and mud.

The dagger slashed. Fire raced across Alex's shoulder.

Then Pierre's knife took the hunter in the arm, and the man hissed, releasing his grip. Alex scrambled backward as Pierre hauled Camille away from the fight.

The hunter rose, blood dripping from his sleeve, and smiled.

"Run," he said, almost kindly. "I know where you're going now. There's only one door Marchand cared about, and it's beneath the king's own feet. I'll see you in Versailles."

He vanished into the shadows before Pierre could strike again.

Alex lay in the mud, blood soaking through his shirt, the stolen snuffbox heavy against his palm. Camille knelt beside him, pressing her hands to his wounded shoulder.

"He knew," Alex managed. "He knew about the door."

Pierre's face was grim. "Then we have two problems. The assassin who wants you dead, and the one who wants you delivered." He looked at the snuffbox in Alex's hand. "The question is which one gets to you first."