Scene II Théâtre du Roi
Backstage
The corridors of the Théatre du Roi always smell like sorcery.
It’s a subtle scent, impossible to name by those foreign to magic, a creeping stain of iron and sage that stings the back of the tongue.
It precipitates in milky droplets on the aged wood, wriggles down the throat, and curdles in the lungs, turning every breath into a heavy, intoxicating thing.
It’s a smell that gnaws, a smell that hungers.
It’s the smell of home.
I take an eager gulp of it as I pull Marie d’Odette d’Auvigny down the stairwell and into the dressing rooms. I want to take her through quickly, to bring her to the spot where Regnault is expecting us, but Marie breaks away to marvel at the racks of vibrant clothing, the intricately painted masks arrayed upon tables, and the prop swords bristling from a chest along the far wall.
As before, she controls her expression carefully, but there is a wondering light in her eyes as she bends to pick up a feathery headdress.
I bite back a groan of annoyance. “We should go,” I prompt, taking the headdress out of her hands. “Staying too long in the dressing rooms can have… scandalous connotations.”
“Is that so?” Marie says distractedly, releasing the headdress and turning to dip her finger into a jar of red liquid. When she raises her now-crimson fingertip to the light, a single drop falls onto her pristine dress, and she frowns. “Good Mothers, is this blood ?”
“Mulberry syrup,” I say hastily, picking up the jar and setting it out of her reach. “I thought you wanted to retire soon.”
Marie sticks her finger into her mouth, casting a final longing glance around the room. “I suppose I did say that,” she admits. “It’s simply been some time since…” She breaks off.
I frown. “Since?”
“Since I’ve been able to breathe,” she murmurs, so quietly that I wonder if I’m meant to hear it at all.
I don’t pry. Whatever sob story she might have, it’s filled with expensive dresses and scurrying servants and goblets of crystal with golden rims. Why should I pity her pain, when she weeps into pillows of the most pristine silk?
After what feels like an eternity, Marie d’Odette strides back over to my side, the clack of her heels muffled on the stained carpet. “Where to now?”
“Right this way,” I say cheerily. I pick up a still-lit candelabra from the vanity as we go, taking the lead as we dive into the darkness.
The backstage hallways of the Théatre are unwelcoming things, the notched walls hung with ancient, abused paintings in desperate need of dusting. Cobwebs crowd every edge and corner, their stretched shapes flickering in the candlelight.
To my growing frustration, I hear Marie’s footsteps pause again.
I turn to see her staring at one of the vast landscape paintings.
I know what has caught her attention—it used to catch mine when I was younger.
Beautiful, brightly hued wildflowers scattered over an Aurélian hillside.
A lovely little mill in the distance, churning glittering water.
A lost hope, a what-once-was. Beauty, when the kingdom still had it, before Morgane took it away.
“These must be from before Bartrand de Roux’s betrayal.
” Marie speaks with a schoolteacher’s condescending air, making me bristle.
As though I, of all people, might need to be educated on the kingdom’s history.
She presses her fingertips to the flowers with a sorrowful look. “That sorcier took so much from us.”
I swallow back a bite of bitter fury. Everyone always blames the sorcier.
Bartrand de Roux, the Spider King’s advisor.
The story goes thus: after decades of serving the crown, Bartrand grew greedy for power, tired of having to bow at the feet of a red-blooded king.
And so one night he staged a coup, using forbidden magic to try to usurp the crown.
Whatever he did, it was so horrifying that it caused the three Bonnes Mères to flee.
The youngest, Morgane, cursed the kingdom in retribution: to never witness beauty again, to languish under gray skies and colorless fields.
That year, spring saw nothing but wrinkled, wilted blooms, and in the winter the snow fell black as soot.
In the end, only one thread of magic remained.
A gift, a gift the King claimed had been given to him by Morgane herself before her disappearance.
The Couronne du Roi, a crown of seemingly unlimited power.
When few crops grew that first year, the King placed the Couronne upon his brow and conjured more, ones that could survive under dreary skies.
When his palace’s famous roses withered away to nothing, he forged new ones with stalks of iron and petals of solid gold.
When his courtiers dared question him, he turned them into gilded statues and left them to stand in the entrance hall of the Chateau as an eternal warning.
But that was not enough. Nothing was enough. His paranoia was insatiable—it grew and grew, until he dared not look his own son in the eyes, until he saw enemies in every shaded alcove and lightless corner.
He ruled for one hundred fifty years, blessed—or cursed—with an unnaturally long life. And with every day, he plunged further and further into madness, until finally he snapped. Without warning, without reason, he fled, vanishing deep into his palace like a spider into the dark.
Two weeks later, they found him dead, withered away to a husk in a hallway none knew existed.
That part of the story is never talked about: how no one knows why the Spider King went mad, just like no one knows what truly happened the night of Bartrand’s betrayal or where the Couronne really comes from. All they care about is that a sorcier is to blame.
And if one sorcier, why not all? That was the Spider King’s reasoning when he’d outlawed any magic but that of the Couronne, declaring it evil.
Many sorciers fled the country. Those that remained lived half a life, forced to powder their wrists to hide the shimmering of their veins, to spend the next two hundred years cowering in fear from the hatred of the King and the masses.
Without sorcery, they were—are—powerless.
But if I succeed in this heist, their fates will change at last.
Marie is still lingering in front of the painting, lost in thought. I grit my teeth, rolling my shoulders to try and force myself to calm down. I ought to have simply knocked her out, I think glumly.
“Marie,” I say, feigning an alarmed glance over my shoulder. “I think I hear someone coming. Let us go before we’re caught down here.”
“I thought you said these tours were not all that unusual,” Marie remarks. “Why the rush?”
I dart a look at her, suddenly nervous I might have said too much. But she holds my gaze steadily, eyes bright and willful, candlelight slipping through their pearly depths. “I miss when we used to do this,” she says quietly. “Before it all went wrong.”
Is she trying to apologize? I nearly scoff. It’s too late for that. Five years too late.
“I’ll be honest,” I say lightly, ignoring her attempt at amends. “We usually do not show this part of the Théatre to noblesse, but I thought you might enjoy it. They say… well.” I lower my voice. “Did anyone tell you the true story behind Lac des Cygnes?”
She raises an eyebrow, clearly humoring me. “I did hear something about it being haunted.”
“Not only haunted,” I reply. “They say the ruins beneath its waters were once a shrine built in the center of the lake, dedicated to the Good Mothers. That after Bartrand de Roux’s betrayal, their wrath is what caused it to collapse. And do you want to know what else?”
“What?”
“They say there were people in the shrine when it collapsed… and that the skeletons of those people remain at the bottom of the lake. When there is a full moon like tonight, if you close your eyes and still your heartbeat, you can hear their screams carrying across the water.”
I break off as we arrive at the Théatre’s back doors.
They are plain and heavy, lacking in decoration—once they might have been used by a gardener, but in recent years they have been mainly used by actors seeking a place for trysts.
That is, until Regnault and I began to carefully spread rumors of ghastly apparitions haunting the overgrown garden beyond.
Since then, no one has dared to use these doors, and I can be certain that Marie and I will be alone.
Without hesitation, I push them open and usher Marie through.
“Here we are,” I say with a flourish.
The gardens are not much of a sight, spindly and skeletal and bleached by a wan November moon.
Naked trees hold the space hostage, entombed in their own rotting leaves, while ivy chews at cracks in the Théatre walls and furious briars grapple the legs of statues.
The grass underfoot is bristly and frost-ruined, blades scraping against one another as a cold wind rushes by.
The whole is blotted upon a small hill that slips into the lacquer-smooth waters of Lac des Cygnes.
“It’s lovely,” Marie says softly, and she must be lying, because lovely is the last word anyone would use to describe the miserable carcass that sprawls before us.
Even the lake, in the night, is a slippery black thing smeared over the landscape like an old bloodstain.
Fog writhes over its waters, veiling the distant bank and the Chateau Front-du-Lac beyond.
But I did not bring Marie here to marvel at its beauty. I brought her here because the gardens are a lonely place, isolating—the perfect hatching ground for an illicit plot.
As if on cue, the candelabra in my hand snuffs out. The doors behind us slam shut as though by an unseen hand, and the wind picks up, tearing at Marie’s cloak. She makes a startled sound and turns to me, brushing stray curls out of her eyes. She smiles, barely concealing a nervous unease.