The Fortune Tellers of Rue Daru

The Past

The Grand Duke

Paris, France

The Samovar tearoom on rue Daru slid into his blurred view, and he knew he was almost out of time.

The tearoom’s owner, that Lenormand woman, was the only one who could provide a cure. After all, she had done this to him. But she would sooner see him die the violent death she had intended than save him.

The poison inside him writhed and beat like the wings of a deadly black moth. It strained against his burning skin as fever racked him from the inside out.

Still, he would not give in.

He dimly sensed the night’s darkness, its strange-for-June cold. Paris was abandoned this night, a moody and brooding city, not unlike his desolate northern capital of Saint Petersburg. A fitting last day of his life. She must have planned it this way.

Despite his twitching limbs, he staggered toward the tearoom’s double doors. They were as dark and soulless as the grave yet surprisingly unlocked.

He burst inside to the jangle of the bell he had heard so many times.

Its chaotic ring reverberated—once, twice, three times—then went eerily still.

He was all the more aware of his rapid breaths, the loud, racing thud of a heart on the precipice of stopping forever.

He slammed into some furniture—the table he used to sit at with her, drinking their tea, eating their food, never expecting to be in any kind of danger.

Never imagining they could end him at any moment.

Two shadows appeared at the table, him and her.

He blinked, and they vanished. He was seeing things again.

“Where are you, woman?” he demanded in between breaths. The dark, herblike smell of tea leaves, usually so comforting, only stirred up his panic. Especially when his head gave a sickening whirl, blackening for a second, and his limbs seized again.

He stumbled deeper into the space, his surroundings doused in ghastly shadows that leaped at him like vengeful spirits.

“What have you done to me?” He desperately cast about for relief, his eyes catching on the glint of the scarlet metal tea tins he used to think charming.

His own poisoned tin felt like it burned in his trouser pocket.

He hurled the tin across the room, hearing it strike the wooden floorboards as though through layers of space and time.

Empty, all horrifically empty. “Make it stop,” came out in a jagged moan.

He lunged toward the back shelves and rifled through the tins for anything that could help him. Another spasm came on, his limbs no longer his, and he collided with the shelves. He didn’t realize he had fallen, or how much time had passed.

Something warm and sticky was trickling from his pounding head, down his face, getting into his eyes, tangling with his tongue. Metallic and nauseating.

Blood. Everywhere. He clawed at the floor. Managed to haul himself up.

Heard something heavy crash nearby—a samovar? Blast the beastly thing.

Suddenly, a give of a floorboard, a footstep—somewhere to the left of him.

“Where are you?” He swiveled his head. “Help me. Give me something, an antidote, a remedy, anything. Oh, damn you. Give it to me, woman!”

This is what you deserve, he thought he heard. But no, there was no answer.

His hands resumed their search, the tins crashing down. He was losing control of his limbs, the twitching and spasming squeezing the breath out of him.

More footsteps, brisk now, and closer. So close he felt the swish of the air.

“Where are you?” he ground out, pressing down his nausea. “How about a light?”

The darkness and footsteps were dizzying, disorienting. He whirled on his heel, looking for the source of the footsteps, for the woman. She was there, the expected reckoning hastening toward him faster than he could process how to react to it.

A fresh burst of footsteps—determined, clearly aimed at him.

He felt the push, a bare touch of her hands. He no longer had control of his body, and he fell, his shoulder colliding with the floorboards. He let out a strangled sound, cut off prematurely by the vomit that spewed from his mouth. Blood. More of it.

Another twitch, a convulsion he instinctively knew would be his last.

He fought to breathe through it and his now erratic pulse, clinging to every second.

He tried to haul himself up again. But he couldn’t move.

It was slippery, blood and sick everywhere.

And he was cold, so cold, even though his skin had reached a boiling point.

His vision, already fading, merged with the blackness all around him.

He imagined he heard her laugh just as the moth clutched at his heart, beating out his death knell.

She had done it. Really done it. Had her way and took revenge on him.

He would die. She had killed him. Another laugh, another hallucination.

Then his heart beat its last, and the poisonous moth embraced him. Tendrils of a very different blackness slithered over him. An endless night that with the clarity of the dying he knew was the end.