Read Chapter 2: ORPHÉE

The room at the top of the staircase had no music.

Élise found it by accident while looking for a bathroom. The door stood half-open, revealing a library paneled in dark wood. Around a long table sat twelve students. Their glasses were untouched. A bronze lyre occupied the center beside a stack of sealed envelopes.

She would have kept walking if she had not heard her own name.

“Moreau is the Necker fellow,” a woman said.

Élise stopped.

“Merit Fellowship,” another voice corrected. “Necker is the travel grant.”

“Same principle. Useful face. No family, no baggage.”

A few people laughed.

Then Lucien spoke. “No baggage is what people with inherited baggage call everyone else.”

Silence followed, not awkward but attentive.

Élise stepped away from the door before anyone could see her shadow. Her pulse had quickened, though she could not have said whether from humiliation or curiosity.

In the bathroom mirror she studied herself: olive skin flushed from heat, borrowed dress slightly loose at the shoulders, one curl escaping near her ear. Useful face.

She wanted to go home.

Instead, she returned to the reception and accepted a glass of champagne from a passing tray.

“Bad idea,” said a voice beside her.

Lucien stood close enough that she could see a faint scar crossing the base of his thumb.

“The champagne?”

“The expression. People here prefer resentment disguised as boredom.”

“I’ll practice.”

His mouth shifted, almost a smile.

“You were outside the library.”

She looked at him directly. “Your door was open.”

“It wasn’t my door.”

“Do you always answer questions by correcting nouns?”

“Only when the nouns matter.”

He took her glass from her hand, drank from it, and returned it. The gesture was intimate enough to be insolent.

“What is Orphée?” she asked.

“A dinner society.”

“With sealed envelopes?”

“Very dramatic dinner invitations.”

“Does everyone in the society discuss scholarship students like livestock?”

This time he did smile, but the amusement did not soften him. “You heard enough to be offended and not enough to understand.”

“Then explain.”

“I don’t know you well enough.”

“You seem to know my funding structure.”

“That was published with the admissions list.”

“Of course you read those for fun.”

“No. We read them because the school pretends admissions are the beginning of competition.” He leaned closer. “They’re not.”

A woman approached before Élise could answer. She wore a white silk blouse and had the precise beauty of a portrait commissioned to flatter its subject.

“Lucien. Madame Chastain is asking for you.” Her eyes moved to Élise. “And you are?”

“Elise Moreau.”

“Solène Artaud.” She said it as if there was no chance Élise had not heard of her.

She had. Solène’s mother ran a gallery in the Marais. Her grandfather had been culture minister for eighteen months in the 1990s. Solène herself curated student exhibitions before she was old enough to rent a car.

“The fellowship,” Solène said. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“It is generous of the school.”

Élise felt Camille tense beside her.

“The school says it is merit-based,” Élise replied.

For the first time, Solène’s composure shifted.

Lucien looked down, concealing another smile.

“Enjoy the evening,” Solène said.

After she left, Camille whispered, “Please try not to start a class war before midterms.”

“Why? Is there a form?”

They stayed another hour. Élise observed. It was a habit she had developed while sketching customers at her parents’ bakery: the man who touched every baguette before choosing one, the exhausted nurse buying pastries at dawn, the teenagers who counted coins and pretended not to. People revealed their hierarchies in small gestures.

At rue de Varenne, hierarchy was choreography.

Faculty members arrived and were greeted by certain students first. Collectors were introduced selectively. A curator from Palais de Tokyo spent twelve minutes speaking with Solène and ignored three other students hovering within arm’s reach. Lucien moved through the rooms without appearing to seek anyone, yet everyone important eventually crossed his path.

Near midnight, Élise saw the boy who had refused her invitation pass an envelope to a second-year student. The student opened it, read something, and went pale.

Outside, rain had stopped. Camille lit a cigarette beneath a plane tree.

“You know what they say about Orphée?” she asked.

“No.”

“They choose who gets shortlisted before juries meet.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” Camille exhaled smoke. “Last year, four of the six Delaroche finalists were members. The Montreuil residency? Three of three. The Necker travel grant has gone to someone connected to them eight years in a row.”

“You checked?”

“My brother studied architecture here. He hated them with an archivist’s passion.”

“Why doesn’t anyone complain?”

“To whom? The director whose fundraising dinners are hosted by their parents?”

A black car pulled away from the curb. Through the window, Élise saw Lucien in the back seat.

He turned at the same moment.

Their eyes met through glass and streetlight.

The car disappeared toward Invalides.

On the Métro home, Élise took out the orientation brochure and circled every major prize listed for the year.

If Orphée controlled the ladders, she wanted to know how.

Not because she planned to climb around them.

Because she had not come to Paris to ask permission.