The truth is so much smaller.

The light in Luc’s hand is a marble, glassy and glowing with a faint internal light.

“Is that all?”

And yet, Addie cannot tear her gaze from the fragile orb. She feels herself reaching for it, but he draws it back, out of her reach.

“Do not be deceived by its appearance.” He turns the glowing bead between his fingers. “You look at me and see a man, though you know I am nothing of the sort. This shape is only an aspect, designed for the beholder.”

The light twists, and shifts, the orb flattening into a disk. And then a ring. Her ring. The ash wood glows, and her heart aches to see it, to hold it, to feel the worn surface against her skin. But she clenches her hands into fists to keep from reaching out again.

“What does it really look like?”

“I can show you,” he purrs, letting the light settle in his palm. “Say the word, and I will lay your own soul bare before you. Surrender, and I promise, the last thing you see will be the truth.”

There it is again.

One time salt, and the next honey, and each designed to cover poison.

Addie looks at the ring, lets herself linger on it one last time, and then forces her gaze up past the light to meet the dark.

“You know,” she says, “I think I’d rather live and wonder.”

Luc’s mouth twitches, and she cannot tell if it is anger or amusement.

“Suit yourself, my dear,” he says, dousing the light between his fingers.

New York City

March 23, 2014

IV

Addie sits folded in a leather chair in the corner of The Last Word, the soft purr of the cat emanating from the shelves somewhere behind her head, as she watches customers lean toward Henry like flowers toward the sun.

Once you know about a thing, you start to see it everywhere.

Someone says the words purple elephant, and all of a sudden, you catch sight of them in shop windows and on T-shirts, stuffed animals and billboards, and you wonder how you never noticed.

It is the same with Henry, and the deal he made.

A man, laughing at everything he says.

A woman beams, radiant with joy.

A teenage girl steals chances to touch his shoulder, his arm, blushing with blatant attraction.

Despite it all, Addie is not jealous.

She has lived too long and lost too much, and what little she’s had has been borrowed or stolen, never kept to herself. She has learned to share—and yet, every time Henry steals a glance her way, she feels a pleasant flush of warmth, as welcome as the sudden appearance of sunlight between clouds.

Addie draws her legs up into the chair, a book of poems open in her lap.

She’s swapped the paint-spattered clothes for a new pair of black jeans, and an oversized sweater, lifted from a thrift store while Henry was working. But she kept the boots, the little flecks of yellow and blue a reminder of the night before, the closest thing she has to a photo, a material memory. “Ready?”

She looks up, sees the shop sign already turned outwardly to CLOSED, and Henry standing near the door, his jacket slung over his arm. He holds out his hand, helps her from the leather chair, which, he explains, has a way of eating people.

They step outside, climb the four steps back to the street.

“Where to?” asks Addie.

It is early, and Henry’s buzzing with a restless energy. It seems to worsen around dusk, sunset a steady marker of one day gone, time passing with the loss of light.

“Have you been to the Ice Cream Factory?”

“That sounds like fun.”

His face falls. “You’ve already been.”

“I don’t mind going again.”

But Henry shakes his head, and says, “I want to show you something new. Is there anywhere you haven’t been?” he asks, and after a long moment, Addie shrugs.

“I’m sure there is,” she says. “But I haven’t found it yet.”

She meant it to be funny, light, but Henry frowns, deep in thought, and looks around.

“Okay,” he says, grabbing her hand. “Come with me.”

An hour later, they are standing in Grand Central.

“I hate to break it to you,” she says, looking around at the bustling station, “but I’ve been here before. Most people have.”

But Henry shoots her a grin that’s pure mischief. “This way.”

She follows him down the escalator to the station’s lower level. They weave, hand in hand, through a steady sea of evening travelers, toward the bustling food hall, but Henry stops short, beneath an intersection of tile arches, corridors branching every direction. He draws her into one of the pillared corners, where the arches split, curving overhead and across, turns her toward the tiled wall.

“Stay here,” he says, and starts to walk away.

“Where are you going?” she asks, already turning to follow.

But Henry returns, squaring her shoulders to the arch. “Stay here, like this,” he says. “And listen.”

Addie turns her ear to the tile wall, but she can’t hear anything over the shuffle of foot traffic, the clatter and rattle of the evening crowd. She glances over her shoulder.

“Henry, I don’t—”

But Henry isn’t there. He’s jogging across the hall to the opposite side of the arch, maybe thirty feet away. He looks back at her, and then turns away and buries his face in the corner, looking for all the world like a kid playing hide-and-seek, counting to ten.

Addie feels ridiculous, but she leans in close to the tiled wall, and waits, and listens.

And then, impossibly, she hears his voice.

“Addie.”

She startles. The word is soft but clear, as if he’s standing right beside her.

“How are you doing this?” she asks the arch. And she can hear the smile in his voice when he answers.

“The sound follows the curve of the arch. A phenomenon that happens when spaces bend just right. It’s called a whispering gallery.”

Addie marvels. Three hundred years, and there are still new things to learn.

“Talk to me,” comes the voice against the tile.

“What should I say?” she whispers to the wall.

“Well,” says Henry, softly, in her ear. “Why don’t you tell me a story?”

Paris, France

July 29, 1789

V

Paris is burning.

Outside, the air reeks of gunpowder and smoke, and while the city has never been truly quiet, for the last fortnight the noise has been ceaseless. It is musket rounds, and cannon fire, it is soldiers shouting orders, and the retort carried from mouth to mouth.

Vive la France. Vive la France. Vive la France.

Two weeks since the taking of the Bastille, and the city seems determined to tear itself in two. And yet, it must go on, it must survive, and all those in it, left to find a way through the daily storm.

Addie has chosen to move at night instead.

She weaves through the dark, a saber jostling at her hip and a tricorne low over her brow. The clothes she peeled from a man who had been shot in the street, the torn cloth and dark stain on the stomach hidden beneath a vest that she salvaged from another corpse. Beggars can’t be choosers, and it is too dangerous to travel as a woman alone. Worse still these days to play the part of noble—better to blend in in other ways.