“What the hell are you saying?” I do not rein back my seethe. “The complete truth of it, woman.”
Her chest, beneath that painstakingly flimsy chemise, billows in and out. “You kissed Magique last year…but that was her, not me. I don’t remember a thing about it because I wasn’t there.”
My head rolls in something like a denying shake. “Is that the part I am supposed to understand now?”
She readjusts until securing my forearms beneath her grip. “I wasn’t there last year because for me, last year was twenty—”
She completes the assertion, but my mind does not register her last numbers. They are inconsequential beyond her century marker.
Her century marker.
My head rolls around again. For a moment, I wonder if it will just easily snap off. It will be easier to realign all the contents. Clearly, something has gone wrong. Very wrong. She has not just told me…if so, she cannot be serious…
“Bastien? Hey, are you ok—” Her harsh huff penetrates my mental vortex more than her babbling. Which is only that, oui? Her own way of explaining all of this. Her personal denial of being murdered by her own brother. “All right, you aren’t okay. Come here. Maybe you’d better sit down again.”
I jerk away. I must. Sanity will not come when being so close to her.
“Leave me be.” I march across the room while stabbing hands through my hair. “Just…leave me be. Please.”
At once, I want to retract the nicety. It is not nice at all, gashing the air like an angry expletive. In my periphery, her fast flinch confirms it.
“I know it’s a lot. And…I’m so sorry about that. But that wardrobe in the bedroom…it’s some kind of time transportation thing. You’ve used it to get here, to New York City. It’s in the United States of America, and—”
“America?” My jolting head leads the way for my whole body to spin back. “The backwoods where Lafayette went?”
Her spine stiffens. “Backwoods, hmm?” she murmurs, nodding toward the window. The muted dawn beyond the big glass panes is at least bright enough to illuminate the vista beyond.
An entirely new world.
“Mon dieu.”
There is a vast river, though not the Thames or Loire. It cannot be. The landscape… There are so many lanterns, all illuminated at once. They are in so many colors, as if we are inside a brilliant seashell. Noises echo back at us the same way, cacophonous and loud…and once more, so many.
“What…is…this place? How can those ships move without sails? How are those carriages pulled without horses? And why are they so far aw—”
My stunned grunt is my own interruption.
“Putain de merde.” I save myself from spraying it across the window by scrambling back as frantically as I can. “The carriages are that small and far because we are…this high and far?”
“Okay, breathe,” she urges. “You’re perfectly safe. I promise.”
Her statement does not confirm my theory. But does not deny it either. After learning I am not so dizzy when looking to the horizon instead of the park directly below the windows, I can construct clear thoughts again. “Exactly…how high…”
All right, reasonably clear thoughts.
“Twenty stories,” she supplies, as breezy as before. “I’m not sure what that adds up to in exact feet, but—”
“Not necessary.” I underline it with a sharp wave of one arm. The other, I use to steady my descent onto the nearest safe surface: one of the couch’s sturdy arms. “I already want to forget the approximation.”
A long pause, filled by her full but unsteady inhalation. “You are perfectly safe, Bastien.”
“As you have insisted before,” I growl.
“This building has been standing solid since the eighties. Everything is up to code. And it’s not even the tallest one in the ci—”
She clamps her lips with an audible sound as I grunt and grip the couch tighter. While my head swims, my torso gives in to a watery kind of weave. I fight the urge to fall all the way over, back to the cushions next to her. If that happens, I will long to touch her again. And if that happens, we will never get to the actual reasons behind the bizarreness of last night. What was real. What was not. What parts were dreams and what parts were, pray God, just deranged nightmares.
Or…a mystifying mix of both?
An explanation that becomes the safest buckle in my brain, as I home in on a new object of fascination.
Of terrible recognition…
Step after dreading step, I close in on the weird little box. I stop but do not want to. If I freeze, so do the images inside the box.
Images? Am I certain about that? I have to be. If this is not an elaborate trick of mirrors or play on paint, what in the actual hell is this thing? Is this cube a creation of angels or demons? White magic or dark sorcery?
Cease your ramblings. You do not believe in sorcerers. You make your own destiny, damn it.
The last of it tumbles out aloud—and I am unsure whether to thank or curse myself when the picture in the box seems to respond. I startle and step back. The image reacts again, this time becoming a whole new scene with whole new movements.
“Mierde!” I abandon all my caution, which feels foolish now. I lunge over and grab up the box. “Maximillian?” I demand to it. “Brother? Can you hear me?”
The couch’s leather creaks. There is a defined shift on the air. But the female behind me does not move beyond that spot. Her effort is pointless. The distance she keeps does not prevent me from feeling her longing. From comprehending her need to rush to my side.
How?
How is it possible for me to sense her like this, to know her heart so clearly, if her claim is true? If she is not my Magique, after all?
One of us is subscribing to the wrong truth.
I hate the increasing surety that it is me.
I fight the sensation by picking up the rectangular box and shaking it. I turn it end over end, struggling to comprehend what I am looking at. It must be a trick of light and mirrors, but there are no hidden latches or doors to lead me to those intrinsic secrets.
“Max,” I demand past locked teeth. “Damn it! Talk to me! How do I get you out of there?”
That has to be the substance of it. No matter the diabolical methods they have utilized, mysterious wretches have taken my brave brother captive. Perhaps not so mysterious. Are Marquette and Alonzo behind this? Have they found more ways to betray our family? Or is this the work of someone else in the insurgents’ ranks, who has unearthed the deep secret—and likely truth—about Maximillian’s heritage? That he has the king’s own blood in his veins?
That would make him quite a prize to keep under glass. ’Twould also explain why his hair has been markedly shorn. Why he is not wearing so much as a scarf around his open neck, let alone a cravat. Why his shirt, striped with a bizarre red and blue pattern, is so plainly tailored. Most notably, why it is tucked into a pair of full-length pantaloons, with a thin black belt around his waist. But there is no constraint attached to that. Perhaps that means he has somehow escaped his jailors. Perhaps that is why he waves at me again. I have no reasoning for his wide smile—which might not be that at all. He is so small. How can I truly tell?