Unfortunately, I did not place in the top 15. But I hope you guys enjoy what this story ended up being, especially for having been written predominantly in the last 90 minutes before the submission window closed. However, the challenge was full of phenomenal results and wonderful authors, and the story batch this time around was perhaps the best we’ve ever received. I’d like to give an additional shoutout to another writing friend of mine who did place and who I know for a fact is on Substack: . If you’d like to watch the livestream, you can click here:

You can also join the Writing Theory Discord community server here:

Writing Theory Discord Server

The competition theme was: Under the Surface.

I don’t want to waste any more of your time, so without further ado, here’s my entry:

Mole

by deranged_handrail_III (E.A. Morales)

Strange lights keep calling to me. Above the surface, it was the flashing lights of the slot machines and the marquee bulbs and the lasers at the raves.

Here, in the tunnels, it’s whatever’s left of the headlights shining through the little gaps in the manhole covers, the occasional bin fires where these other losers roast their hot dogs and rats.

Well, I call them strange lights, only to explain exactly what they are a few sentences later. But just because we know exactly how they work doesn’t make them any less strange. More than anything, it’s strange how they all manage to hold my attention. I’m like a moth.

One of these days, I swear, I’m gonna get burned.

That is, if I haven’t already. You see, I’m kind of between jobs. I just got laid off from the Silver City Casino. I was a blackjack dealer, but from what I hear, the place is really running out of cash. My last few months were dead as all hell. I hardly got a chance to work.

All I’ve really got left is this little laminated ID badge, with a bad picture of me looking like a saloon waitress, my name right under it: Mia Kolpa.

That’s the one thing separating me from all the rest of these hoboes in the sewers.

That’s the one thing I’ve got to remind me I still have a chance to make it back up to the surface.

Why don’t I just sleep in my apartment?

Well…

I kinda subleased it to a friend of mine, and now he won’t let me in. He mostly uses it to host parties.

Yeah… some friend. I know.

I never got paid enough to afford attorney fees. But that’s really for another time. Right now, as you could probably imagine, I’m staring at the reflection from the fire, flickering on these little damp patches on the concrete walls. It’s like a thousand tiny fires on little droplets, some of them pattering on the floor, some of them trickling down the wall.

There’s something really pretty about it.

“Hey, kid,” the burly man by the fire calls out.

I turn my head, trying to hide whatever emotion’s on my face.

“You want some cooked rat?”

I nearly gag.

“Oh, it’s not that bad. Hey, I thought us mole people were tougher than that, eh?”

Before I know it, I’ve succumbed to disgust and shame.

“Oh, I’m not… I’m not one of you guys. Just staying for a little while… until I can get my apartment back.”

“So what are you doing here? There’s plenty of homeless shelters.”

“Oh… uh, I don’t know. I’m not technically homeless, I figured, and, uh… well, you know how those places are, with all those junkies. I don’t really know. I’ve got a friend here, fell on some hard times, but she says it ain’t so bad.”

“Ain’t so bad, huh?” he chuckles.

His two lanky friends follow suit.

I turn away for a moment. He calls me right back.

“You sure you don’t want any? Tastes like chicken. I’ve got you some salt, pepper, some dry rub. And Marley here can tell you it sure ain’t undercooked. Not the way I do it.”

I shudder nonetheless.

“I’m good, thanks.”

He frowns for a beat.

“More for me.”

And we sit in silence for a bit. I shift a little further away. But not too far - someone’s sleeping just a little up ahead, and I don’t want to disturb them.

At least, I assume they’re sleeping. I don’t know for sure.

A little droplet from above falls on my head.

Damn.

I mean, I get that it rained just a little while ago, and it stopped the moment I remembered there was shelter under the road here, but it didn’t have to rub it in my face.

Without really thinking about it, I start clicking the tip of my tongue like a clock.

“You know, it’s a pretty good life to be living before the end of the world,” he says again, to no one in particular.

“Oh, shut it, Bryce. It ain’t ending. You’ve got time.”

“Says who? Six months from now, all the computers are gonna go haywire, and we’ll be back to the Stone Age.”

“Oh, you don’t really believe all that Y2K stuff, do you?”

“Marley, if there is a God, he sure ain’t happy with all these computers. It’s all human pride, thinking we could make machines that beat the calendar system.”

“And who made the calendar system, Bryce?” the other lanky man asked.

“Well, if it wasn’t God, I don’t know who.”

“Humans, Bryce. Humans made the calendar.”

Another couple droplets fall on my head. Now some are heading in through the manhole cover.

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re one of them ‘man invented God’ types, are you, Johnny? You know, that Carl Sagan fella really messed with you guys’ brains when you were kids. Me, I listened to my pastor and my momma.”

“And where’s that got you now, Bryce?”

“Where’s Carl Sagan got you, Johnny?”

“Aw, you fellas really ought to quit arguing,” Marley bit back. “None of us have got it right if we’re down here, have we? We’re all on the same footing.”

The other two sighed.

That rat cooking over the bin fire really did smell a little like chicken, if I was being honest.

“Say, what do you think, lady?” Bryce called back at me.

“Me? About what, God?”

“About the end of the world. Y2K. It’s all over the news, I tell ya.”

“Oh… well, I think it’s really up to you what you believe.”

“That ain’t an answer, hun. What do you believe?”

I pause for a minute.

“I guess it’s a lot like believing in ghosts. I mean, someone’s got to have found out how to fix the whole computer problem, right? It just sets back to zeroes-”

The rain got harder still. Now it was coming in big drops, almost hail-sized, down the manhole cover.

“Uhh… hey, lady, you might want to wake up that fella over there. I think there’s another flood coming.”

“Another flood? What do you mean?”

“Well, it sure ain’t the first one.”

“Oh, come on, this is Vegas. It’s the middle of the desert! We get some bad rains every so often, but never floods.”

“Oh, you bet your ass we get floods. You only see an inch or two up on the surface. Where do you think the rest goes?”

I scoff.

I don’t want to believe it, whatever it is. Not from this guy. I don’t want to know what he did to end up here.

“Alright. Whatever you say. I’ll see about this blanketed fella.”

I get up and walk over to this sleeping form under a patchwork quilt and layers of disheveled clothes.

I reach down and shake his shoulder. He looks really gaunt. His beard is unkempt.

“Hey! Hey, these guys over here say there’s a flood coming; you want to wake up or not?”

He doesn’t respond. I take a closer look.

“Take his blanket off! That’ll wake him.”

I obey. It’s not that intrusive when you’re worried, is it?

Then I see it.

He’s got maggots crawling all over.

I gag again, hard enough to step back and trip on the ledge. I fall into the water channel.

It’s cold. It’s bad. I don’t like it here.

I resolve to get out of here as soon as I can. Maybe survive whatever “flood” is coming.

Then the torrent starts. I’m right under the manhole cover and roll out of the way on pure instinct, wiping my sopping hair out of my eyes.

I smell like shit.

“Hey there, you alright, lady?” Bryce calls out. “Let me go check- holy moly! He’s super dead.”

I try to stand up again and slip back down.

Now my butt hurts.

“Here, let me help you up,” he says, putting out his hand.

I don’t trust it at first.

“Well, I haven’t got my wallet on me, if that’s what you’re wondering,” I spit.

“Oh, I ain’t that kind of guy. The muggers are all on the surface.”

“So what’s one find down here?”

“Just people trying to survive. Trying to hide.”

“Hide from what?”

“Well, are you gonna take my hand or not?”

“Fine,” I say, taking his hand. He pulls me out of the water channel. The level’s risen to about ankle-height, even where we were sitting earlier.

“We gotta move,” Marley says, already stuffing his things into a duffel bag. It’s still pretty dry. Bryce is kicking dirt onto the fire. I look up and down the sewer line. A couple more fires go out just as quickly, hundreds of feet down the line.

“Move where?” I ask.

“Well, duh. Up. There’s higher ground past the second bend, a ledge.” He says it like he’s giving directions to the bathroom.

I look down at myself. I’m soaking, reeking. My hands are shaking. I don’t think it’s from the cold.

Then I realize I don’t have it.

My badge. My laminated, sad-eyed, saloon-waitress photo of myself clipped onto my jacket. It’s not there.

“Wait,” I say.

“No waiting,” Bryce says, already walking, water sloshing around his boots.

“I dropped something.”

Marley turns around, and for a half second, his face gets tired, almost like he’s heard these exact words before.

“Whatever it is, it ain’t worth it.”

“It’s mine,” I say, like it settles anything.

‘It’s my lifeline’, I want to say. ‘My ticket out of here.’

I don’t want to sound stupid.

I look back into the rushing water in the channel. It must have fallen off in there. Maybe under the manhole cover.

No, then it would have started flowing with the current. I try to focus on what my hands can feel, because it’s gotten so dark. I can hardly see anything.

The water’s louder now. It’s starting to roar in my ears. I catch the blanket, floating in the water, dragging past me toward the bend, and for one useless second, I think about grabbing that instead, like I could still apologize to the dead man for looking.

The water’s knee-height now. I’ve got to find it. My fingers trace the bottom of the water channel, trying to find some plastic laminate thing.

I make my way down the channel, following where it could have gone. But the water has a weight to it now. I’m not sure I’ll make it all the way. Then - they catch something. I’m not sure what it is. Everything stinks. The water’s murky as all hell. I pull it up against the current.

I hear someone yelling my name. I can hardly make out if it’s Bryce or Marley or Johnny.

The thing’s out of the water now, and I can just barely make out a little rectangle in the darkness.

I think I’ve got it.

My fingers close around it.

I don’t really remember what happened after that. I’ve tried. It comes back in pieces. Cold, loud, not knowing which direction is up. I think I passed out.

When I woke up, I was still here. Still by the bin where the fire was. The water was all but gone, except for the little trickle down the channel.

Bryce is still here. So are Marley and Johnny.

I don’t think I ever told him my name.

I still wear the badge. Clipped right to my jacket, where it belongs. Mia Kolpa.

It’s still my lifeline. My ticket out of here.

I think.

Thing is, I never found my way back out. Something in me either never bothered to or forgot.

No one really pays attention to me anymore.

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© E. A. Morales. All rights reserved.

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The news could not have arrived at a worse time for Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, the Marquise de Pompadour.

“The king is out of funds for the yearly trip to Compiègne,” her femme de chambre had said.

She sighed at her writing desk, taking a sip of her coffee in the silver morning sunbeams.

Just right.

Small comfort that was, for such a problem.

A scratch came from the white-paneled door.

“Who is it?” she intoned.

“Just a hummingbird,” came a high feminine voice.

Chloé.

“Come in.”

And the door opened to let in Chloé Varese, in plain service clothing.

“You always did enjoy wearing that apron, didn’t you?”

The spy smiled.

“It suits me, don’t you agree, Madame?”

Pompadour eyed her up and down.

In truth, no…

“Only as much as my dress suits me, Mademoiselle Varese.”

Chloé averted her eyes and focused on the other little trinkets strewn about the room, smile unbroken. The little clock on the fireplace mantel, it seemed, was of exceptional interest.

“Forgive me if I only give you half my attention,” Pompadour began. “I’ve got an urgent letter to write to my godfather. Again.”

“Is the king out of funds?”

“I almost expected you to know; this is your area of expertise, after all.”

“Just… testing my information against yours,” Chloé defended.

“Hmm!”

Chloé swallowed. Pompadour nearly felt a pang of regret for her callousness. She picked up a pen.

“Well, my dear, have we got any new information over the printers? Are any of our suspects actually guilty?”

‘Dearest Godfather,’...

“I’ve got evidence to say neither the priest nor the housekeeper are printing anything. They are safe.”

‘It has come to my attention that I need your most urgent aid’…

“And the footman? Or acting valet, or whatever he is? M. Dupuy?”

“He is the most suspicious of the household. I can almost guarantee his involvement.”

…‘the King is absolutely broke, and cannot make it to Compiègne this year, much less with his court’…

“Very well. And are your leading gossips still oblivious?”

“For the most part. Blanche is still talking as usual. He suspects nothing…”

…‘if you would be such a dear and let him borrow 2.000.000₶’…

“...and Josie is in about the same position. But Éloïse, I have not seen or heard from in many days.”

Pompadour put down her pen.

“Many days?”

“From what I’ve gathered, it seems she has fled the country with the aid of Père Colombe. Wanted to pursue her dreams of poetry, if no one is mistaken.”

“Where has she gone to?”

“Some say Spain, some say Montreal. Some say Mexico or Guatemala.”

So no one knows? And Colombe has helped her escape? That is dangerous. That is very dangerous. I will have to ask again.

Pompadour scoffed. “Well. If the volcanoes and mosquitoes suit her, I am not one to wish her ill.”

Another scratch came from the door.

“Who is it?” asked the Marquise.

“Only a pianist,” came Julien’s voice.

She was almost dreading seeing that blithering man again. He only ever reminded her of how much it hurt to give away that little palace on the Seine.

She quietly moaned to herself, picking her pen back up.

“Come in.”

…‘I would most appreciate your generosity. I embrace you warmly, mon cher parrain. May God bless you!’

Julien walked into the room, again in plain clothing, black tricorn covered in dirt.

“Oh, whatever happened to your hat, Julien?”

“I dropped it on the way. Got caught on a branch and fell into a wet patch. Couldn’t brush much off.”

‘ - your beloved goddaughter, J.A. Poisson’

“Didn’t you stop to change it or wash yourself in your chambers before you came here?” Chloé asked.

“The thought did not occur to me. I was running late.”

“For what?”

“His appointment,” Pompadour answered.

“He had one, too?”

“All three of you did. Éléonore is running late.”

Chloé turned her head to the side and whispered to herself, “I’d forgotten we were supposed to be three now…”

“Well. Let’s see about filling her in whenever she comes. How did the Dossier do, Monsieur Marchand?”

“Simply genial, Madame. It’s destabilized them completely. They have no idea what to do.”

“That does not tell me much. Have they taken an offensive position, or a defensive one? Have they held a meeting over it? Who has accused whom?”

Julien looked at Chloé for a moment, unsure, before turning back to Pompadour. “It appears, Madame, that the group has taken the defense. They held a meeting on the day of the Duc’s anniversary, and Gaspard tried to put out new security protocols. It did not go as planned. The head gardener, Émeric, quickly became suspicious of one of the unlisted members.”

“Did you get a name for the unlisted member?”

“Marguerite.”

“And what became of Émeric?”

“Gaspard gave him a stern talking-to in his office, but nothing much else.”

That made Pompadour twitch.

Not much else?

Gaspard, you are more forgiving than I remember…

She folded the letter to her godfather in her hands and opened the drawer for an envelope.

“If I may ask, Madame, what are you doing?”

Pompadour looked up. “Hm? Oh, nothing of your concern right this moment.”

Julien nodded and looked downcast.

Another scratch fell on the door.

“Mademoiselle Barrande, is that you?”

“Oh - er - just a wild lynx, Madame!”

Pompadour sighed.

“Come on in, Mlle. Barrande.”

And Éléonore came in through the door and pulled up a floral-upholstered chair from the back of the room.

“You haven’t heard anything of what Julien just told me, have you?”

Éléonore shook her head.

“Very well. Can you tell me your version of how they took the dossier over at Bellevue?”

She nodded. “Yes. Er - they are taking a defensive position. Gaspard has tried to hold a meeting, but it did not go over well. The head gardener accused one of the unlisted members.”

She nodded while hearing all this.

If even Éléonore was able to gather this much… I can trust it.

“And did anything else come of it? Is Gaspard giving out his new security protocols?”

“Well, he must be. I don’t see why not.”

“Ah - ” Pompadour stopped her with a raised hand. “Let’s not assume. We’ve talked about this, Mlle. Barrande.”

“Sorry, Madame.”

Why I ever hired her, I haven’t the foggiest…

“Very well. Have either of you three gotten information on what the Duc has been up to? Apart from his anniversary, of course? How did he take the dossier?”

Julien spoke up first.

“He delegated it immediately to Gaspard upon reading it. Not much has been said about how he responded.”

The Marquise sealed the envelope with the red wax that had been heating up over the candle. “Anyone else?”

Chloé answered, “he has been quite depressed, the anniversary notwithstanding. The household has been under several ordeals already.”

“You refer to the matter of the organist?”

“Yes, Madame.”

“And what of Père Colombe?”

“Pardon?”

“Père Colombe. The priest. He must have something to say about all this. Has he not addressed it?”

“If he has, it must have been in private, Madame.”

“I hear the Duc was having a conversation with him the moment before the dossier arrived. He has not yet had a chance to say a Mass since then,” Éléonore added. “Perhaps on Sunday, I may catch something.”

“The man is either oblivious or playing a very clever game. Has he truly said nothing, in all the time you have been there, Chloé?”

Julien and Éléonore exchanged glances. Pompadour noticed it deftly, like a fly crossing the window from curtain to curtain in a split second.

They’re growing suspicious.

“M. Marchand, Mlle. Barrande, you are both dismissed. Mlle. Varese, you may stay.”

Éléonore looked shocked, but Julien was swift to escort her out of the office just the way they came.

Only once the door locked behind them did Pompadour see fit to continue the conversation with her longest-employed and most prized artist of espionage.

“Proceed, Mlle. Varese.”

“I truly do not know whether or not Père Colombe has addressed the matter. I do not know whether or not he has found me out.”

“Do you ever confess to him?”

“Oh, all the time, Madame.”

“What do you say?”

“Only that I engage in gossip, among my other sins.”

Pompadour raised her eyebrows.

“I will leave your other sins between you and God. Please, please, please, for the love of God, keep a closer eye on him. He is helping scullery maids escape the country without anyone else’s knowledge, and that is not something I can afford to deal with. What of M. Marchand? Have you found out the extent of his loyalty to the Duc?”

“It does not appear he has committed himself to the Duc nearly as much as he maintains his connection across the channel.”

“Lord and Lady Hastings.”

“Yes, Madame.”

“While we stand on the topic, do you know if the Englishmen have spoken at all? I know the Lady Hastings has a bad habit of letting her mouth run.”

“In truth, Madame, she is so old and has let it run for so long that no one believes her stories anymore. Everyone in Hastings who has heard the tale of the Duc’s true parentage has dismissed it.”

“And London? Do Lord Hastings’s friends in the House of Lords know what to make of all this?”

“As far as I am aware, they have not yet heard the matter.”

“At all?”

“No, Madame.”

The Marquise chuckled.

“I must admire those English for their sobriety. They have never taken fairy tales very seriously, no matter how true.”

“Indeed,” Chloé chuckled back before smacking her lips. “Would you like another coffee, Madame?”

Pompadour looked down at her coffee. It was empty.

When did that disappear? Have I finished it already? Oh, dear…

“As a matter of fact, yes, Mlle. Varese, just one. Oh, but before you leave, one more question.”

“Yes, Madame?”

She took a breath.

I cannot believe I have come this far… to be able to ask such things as these…

“How would you estimate Lord Hastings’s condition? Is he getting better, or worse?”

Chloé raised her brows and averted her eyes. “Well, Madame, you know it is such poor etiquette to ask about an old man’s health in this way.”

“I am aware. But that man is the greatest threat to Sa Majesté’s reign in the known world. We are in private, are we not?”

Chloé nodded slowly. “Yes, we are. Er - my sources tell me his malady has worsened, though they dare not tell him just yet. They say he may only have until the winter.”

“The winter? That is far earlier than I’d anticipated…”

Only eight months? What sort of disease…

“Indeed. You might soon be able, God willing… to send the Duc back home to Clermons. Take him out of his golden fishbowl. You and Sa Majesté could have your palace back before this time next year.”

She lightened within, for a moment.

Immediately, guilt cast it back down.

I did give it to him as a gift, did I not? Or was he truly so reluctant to come?

She looked up, and Chloé was out of the room. The empty cup of coffee had disappeared with her. Another pang of pity hit her heart at the thought of Hastings. She looked for a memory to distract herself.

‘That was not a request,’ she had said to Ètienne only two years ago.

Back when I believed he wanted the throne. When I feared he might have started some peasant revolt in Clermons… perhaps even Clermont just a half mile to the southeast. What a fool I was! Fifteen years of waiting, for what? Unless he had been avoiding it all along!

Pompadour jittered.

Perhaps I had drunk the coffee after all…

She looked down at the envelope and, finally, as though she’d forgotten it in the midst of all this conversation, dedicated it to a M. Monmartel.

When Chloé came back with more coffee, the Marquise wasted no time.

“Before I forget, Mlle. Varese, when you leave, will you please bring this to my godfather? Thank you ever so kindly.”

“Of course, Madame,” she responded, placing it in her apron pocket. “He’ll have it as soon as I can manage.”

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Back to Directory

Previous Episode

Ladies and gentlemen, it has been a year.

365 days since I started this Substack.

And it’s been… something.

First and foremost, I want to thank every last one of you for your continued support, and I want to thank God for keeping the dream alive. All good things come from Him, and I have been immeasurably blessed to be able to keep this stack going, however slow it’s gone, and still have prospects for the future.

And to think it all started precisely at midnight, between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, on my worn pleather $160 Amazon futon between my bed and my Lego shelf, which by the way, is still there. And the very first thing I did was post a comment completing someone’s story prompt. It was something about taking off your “skin” and running free into a moonlit forest in the dead of night. I don’t even remember what I commented exactly, only that it was about 50 words and a good bit longer than everyone else’s one-liners.

Now, granted, the one-year anniversary of the Bellevue series won’t be until the 19th, but that’s secondary information. I didn’t even start to think about Bellevue as a serious serial until the 17th, after I’d published my farce, “Wedding Day", and even then it was only going to be a quick little spy thriller. It was really just something to pass the time with every week, and now it’s grown to 37 episodes and counting, about a tremendous alternate-history storm brewing in the courts of 18th-century France.

And to get an idea of how deeply influential it’s been so far, here is a recent shoutout I am still incredibly proud of from one of my best friends on this app, :

I mean… wow. Thank you again, a million times over, Charlotte. This kept me going. You are a phenomenal writer in your own right, and the way you engage with historical works is simply inspiring. And you reminded me exactly why I fell in love with writing the series in the first place: it’s a tight, compelling plot that these poor characters have to navigate with all their flaws and emotional issues. It’s not so much about the secrets going around themselves as it is about what these characters do with secrets once they have a hold of them.

Additional thanks to my parents for supporting me throughout all this, my friends at the Catholic Center, and my best friend IRL, who was one of the first to read the full series and give me proper feedback on it, whose name I won’t mention here for privacy reasons, though I have talked about him here before, in this post here:

(whoa, things must have changed on the app recently; I don’t remember in-text links being that big…)

Oh! And my one paid subscriber. We’ve talked in person. You know who you are. I love you, man. You’re the best.

Right. That’s the thank-yous all said and done.

Let’s get to where this series is going.

The Plan

As you know, since November 2025, I have been releasing Bellevue episodes only once a month to protect my progress on my other novel WIP, When the Earth Moves On, which predates Bellevue by about six months. Understandably, this loss of momentum has led to a substantial decrease in loyal readership. Charlotte, if you’ve gotten to this point, you are perhaps one of my only remaining loyal, visible readers, if my recent notes have been any indication, despite my somewhat large subscriber count. If anyone else has been reading, I highly recommend you make your presence known and support this charming little 75,000-word series as it continues to grow.

However, I have also stalled progress on WEMO. I want to be entirely transparent with you. Since about March, I’ve been terribly shy about posting novel updates because I’ve gotten to that infamous mid-book slog. For the past several months, the words, if they came at all, came very slowly, and I was too embarrassed about the lack of visible progress to talk about it publicly.

But the creative rhythm is finally coming back, and to celebrate this anniversary, I’m going to lay out a definitive roadmap from now until November to mark one year since grinding Bellevue momentum to a near-halt.

The Summer Grind

My primary creative energy is locked onto finishing the remaining 63,000 words of WEMO to bring it to its planned completion at 130,000 words. Bellevue will maintain its steady pace of one episode a month during this time. The upcoming episode 38 will take us entirely inside the calculating mind of Madame de Pompadur for her very first POV chapter. Many things will be revealed that I think you guys will really love.

The Early Autumn Storm

As WEMO nears completion, the domestic pressure cooker at Bellevue is going to intensify. We’re navigating the fallout of the dossier from episodes 35-37, an explanation for why Gaspard didn’t hold his meeting outside the billiard room in episode 37 (despite his intense plans for new security measures over the previous two days), a lovely day between Lucien and Anatole, and… Claude’s arrival at the Château. The archivist we’d been anticipating since episode 6, summoned by letter in episode 18, and met for the first time in episode 30 as he was taking care of his mother in Lyon with Père Émile and his troupe of lay ministers to the sick. THAT Claude.

Not the AI.

The November Relaunch

November is our finish line and our new beginning. Once WEMO is hopefully done (I’ve extended my personal deadline three times before… can you imagine there was a time when I thought I’d finish it by September 2025? 😂 Each and every time, I realize just how little I know my own writing speed) and moves into the formal publishing query phase, I am officially returning Bellevue to its originally intended, fast-paced schedule of one episode a week.

Not two episodes a week. Not a three-episode dump every Saturday. Not a near-daily rush to some finish line.

One episode a week.

We’ve got to be sustainable here.

To mark that return to weekly schedules, I am also preparing to launch the physical, print edition of Volume 1 (comprising episodes 1-16) as a beautiful collector’s book. It will be the perfect way to hold a piece of this clockwork plot in your hands, complete with a formal character directory and historical research notes on the real-world espionage of the era.

Truth be told, I have no idea how I’ll do it.

If anyone here knows a good place to send manuscripts for free printing services, I would love to know, because I am broke as all hell.

Thank you again for your patience, your loyalty, and your shared love for some good historical espionage action.

God bless.

And here’s to another year on this wonderful app.

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Thursday morning was a nightmare for the head gardener, Émeric Daumier.

He’d scarcely been awake five minutes before Sister Apolline had knocked on his door, asking him personally to come quickly to the salle de billard. He was just halfway through shaving, the pattern of his five o’clock shadow matching eerily that of one of the hagiographies told of St. Philip Neri - that is to say, only half of his face was shaven before the Sister ordered him to come as quickly as possible.

He did not much mind his appearance, so long as the matter was urgent enough, but it was quite the annoyance dealing with itchiness on only one side of his face, and soft jeers besides from his compatriots in the plain hallways of the service quarters.

The young, grey light of the morning shone upon Théo Dupuy, fiddling with his fingers on a chair right by that lone window beside the entrance of the quarters.

“Why are you idling about, Théo?” Émeric whispered. “Do you not have duties to the Duc?”

“Waiting on Marguerite—say, what is up with that beard?” Théo whispered back right as Émeric made an apologetic face and hurried out, down through the stairway and corridor to the cellars of the main block of the château, to that all-powerful salle de billard.

It would have been nice to be able to answer him - and find out what on earth he was waiting on Marguerite for.

“Bastien in Paris; Claude en route; Monseigneur le Duc is indisposed for his anniversary,” Gaspard began, the early morning sunlight from that high latticed clerestory outlining the back of his wig as though it were a halo. His shadow on the cold baize of the billiard table gave a graver impression than his face did. “We are four where we should be seven.”

Marguerite’s gaze lingered on Émeric’s jaw for a moment longer than courtesy permitted. She stifled back a chortle. “A saintly beard, Monsieur Daumier,” she murmured. “Which one’s the holy side?”

Émeric’s hand brushed his cheek. “The sister was impatient.”

“Evidently.”

Gaspard cleared his throat, gravel in a dried-up creek, and unfolded a paper on the baize with the deliberation of a man placing his last wager, smoothing its creases with fingers that betrayed the faintest tremor.

“Versailles,” he said simply. “Read it, pass it; do not speak until everyone has seen.”

He stepped back from the table, his shadow’s disappearance making ever so slightly brighter the space. Émeric took the paper first, being the closest, and held it where he could see - his eyes had not been the best of late. His gardener’s eyes were accustomed to cataloguing damage: rot, blight, unexpected frost. They read quickly. He was not surprised by the Duc’s entry. His eyebrows raised at Gaspard’s.

Poor Anatole…

He blinked at Apolline’s entry.

Tribaderie… defending a novice…

He chuckled a bit at his own entry.

They haven’t got anything on me!

His mouth opened at Bastien’s.

“They know about Bastien’s foot,” he said, keeping his eyes on the paper. “The shot, the Porte Saint-Honoré.”

“Read on,” Gaspard said.

But how on earth could Versailles have gotten all this information? How could they have been surveilling us so thoroughly?

Émeric read Julien’s entry.

He was not surprised to see Julien working for so many people at once, though it amused him to see the name as an “unofficial” member of the “Bellevue Espionage Operation”.

Amusement was an excellent distraction from the growing panic.

But one name was missing.

“Where is Marguerite?”

“Ahem,” Gaspard interrupted, as though scolding him for speaking before everyone had read. Émeric assented sheepishly and passed it across the baize to Marguerite, just to his right.

She read slowly, her lips shaping each name as though tasting it. When she reached the end, she looked up and passed it to her right, to Apolline.

I wonder if she feels at all shocked by any of this… her name was omitted for a reason, was it not?

She read without moving her lips, her Dominican discipline intact. When she finished, her eyes met Gaspard’s with pity, themselves unable even to look back at her in what looked like shame.

“There are six names,” Gaspard said at last. “Marguerite is not among them.”

“Neither is Claude,” Apolline said, setting the paper down on the baize, covering it with her hand.

“Claude is still en route from Lyon, is he not?” Marguerite asked.

“Perhaps. If he has seen fit to obey me,” Apolline muttered, perhaps a little annoyed.

Could she be the mole? Well, it would be difficult for anyone else, and why else would she not be on the dossier?

“He is not here, is what’s important,” Émeric said. “Marguerite has been here all along. So why,” he added, turning to face her, “is she not listed?”

At this stage, Émeric was getting quite tired, and that atop the lingering frustration of only being half-shaven was getting on his nerves.

“I don’t know,” she said, her fingers curling inward.

“You don’t know.” Émeric’s voice carried more edge than he intended. “You have attended every meeting since the mutiny. You hear every plan. You know about—” he glanced at Apolline. “You know enough. And Versailles, which knows of your secret, Sœur, and yours also, Monsieur Vautrin,” he added, turning to face Gaspard. “They know everything, and they somehow omit the chapel gardener?”

“Émeric,” Apolline intoned.

“No, let him,” Gaspard said. His voice had tightened. “I want to see where he’s taking this. I have my suspicions also.”

One man on my side!

Apolline huffed and crossed her arms.

Marguerite stared, wide-eyed, barely concealing her nerves.

Oh, what can be the damage if I ask?

“Marguerite, can you confirm for me that you are not a spy?”

“I - no! I am a gardener,” she defended. “I tend herbs and flowers. I change altar cloths. I am not—” she paused, smacking her lips. “I have never written a letter I did not first show to Père Colombe.”

“Good. But how do we know Colombe is not a co-conspirator?”

“I—” Marguerite paused and sighed. “You’re just going to have to take my word for it, aren’t you?”

“Marguerite, please, take this seriously. Our livelihoods depend on it,” Gaspard interrupted, his voice growing tighter with frustration.

“You think I’m not?”

A starling warbled in the distance: a symbol of chaos, Émeric had been taught, somewhere in the deepest recesses of his memory.

Oh, shut up, will you?

Marguerite cleared her throat.

“Perhaps,” she said, “I am not important enough to list.”

“Not important?” Émeric laughed dryly. “You were at the Rue de la Verrerie. You heard me confess Blanche’s gossip and my own intrusion of Julien’s confession. You know about Claude, about the letter, about Bastien’s false name. You are one of only eight members, counting Julien, of this godforsaken Billiard Court. Don’t you tell me you alone are not important; it is like saying there are only fifty peasants in all of France. So explain to me how you are not a spy?”

“If I were a spy, Monsieur Daumier, I would have something. A salary. A patron. A future beyond the chapel garden and this billiard room in the cellar. I have nothing else. No husband, no family but a mad father, no position but what charity grants me. Does that sound like the position of a spy to you?”

“Spies do not spy for futures,” Émeric argued. “They spy for debts, for blackmail, for the simple pleasure of watching others fall. I mean, look at Julien!”

Marguerite’s mouth tightened.

Émeric noticed the tightening. He had already thought of counterarguments himself as to how Marguerite could not be a spy. He knew it was beyond courtesy to continue to accuse the girl, but he figured he had already gotten the ball to roll, and he was frustrated besides, and hey, he may as well see it to the end. He made his strike.

“I see your lip is tightening at Julien’s mention. Have you been trading whispers for protection?”

“Émeric,” Apolline warned.

Another nuisance—

“NOT now, Sœur,” he snapped. “Monsieur Vautrin, do you not agree that the elimination of her name was perhaps meant as protection, but has turned out to be practically a confession?”

Gaspard stood silent, almost as though dumbfounded had a shadow not come over his face to hide his expression. Not an ounce of effort was made to come to Marguerite’s defense. Marguerite gulped, her throat tightening.

“Some help you are,” she muttered to herself.

Émeric caught it again. He almost felt pity for her. But his litigation continued as though he’d been possessed.

Possessed by what, perhaps?

God help me if it’s my pride…

“Now that is no way to address your Majordome, girl. Didn’t your father teach you better? Aren’t you reminded of those lessons he gave you all those years ago now that you spend so much time tending to him?”

There was almost something freeing about speaking so slanderously. Who was he to care about what Gaspard or Apolline thought? They had turned out to be as timid as sheep!

Presently Marguerite began to falter. “I—”

“And, don’t you know, it is terribly convenient for your father to fall ill at such a time like this. Only a few days before the dossier comes here to begin with? Why, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say he’d been in on the ruse! You knew about all of us and had plenty of time alone to write such a dossier as this one. You have always been terribly literate for your age. And perhaps it was you yourself who had sent it to Versailles.”

“I- I have never even been to Versailles, I wouldn’t know where to send it—”

“—Why, with all that time alone you could have had access to all our records. You were good friends with Claude. Perhaps you omitted him because you wanted to cover for him—”

“—If I compiled it, why would I omit myself at all? Even I know—”

“—and of course, how else could you have gotten access to our birth dates? Our Sœur Apolline’s expulsion papers? Some proof of Anatole’s descendancy? Well, suppose you asked around while we were searching for Bastien in Paris. Could you not have met with Désirée somewhere and asked her yourself?”

“Monsieur Daumier, I—”

“—And of course, we all discussed the nature of the Duc’s little secret together, there’s no arguing that. And of course—”

“Will you just listen?!”

“—What better cover than that invalid father of yours? Or should we say lying father, if he is going to make up such an act as the one he made to cover for your spying?”

“—I thought he was possessed!” Marguerite yelped, face reddening with frustration.

One more step…

“Possessed? Why, that is the womanliest excuse I have ever heard. And don’t you know, it is a terribly womanly thing to lie to one’s face so brazenly, and how much more so for your father, who all the while thought he was deceiving us so cleverly? Well, I see right through it!”

“That’s enough!” shouted Apolline, red with ire. Marguerite’s lip had begun to visibly quaver.

“Émeric, you are the cruelest, most shameless man I have ever known! I regret having ever thought a decent thought of you. And Gaspard!” she spat.

It was the first time in years she had ever used his first name. It was improper to do so, yes, but on instances like this, it was well-known that he feared her too much to retaliate. He gulped.

“Shame! Shame, I say, for not having come to poor Marguerite’s defense. Why, you didn’t move a muscle to help. How will God judge you now? Oh, my dear Marguerite, are you alright?”

And the holy sister walked towards the young chapel gardener offering her arms in comforting embrace, and the moment she made contact, Marguerite collapsed into silent sobs.

“Oh, there, there, now, my dear,” Apolline cooed. “It’s alright, he knows not what he does.”

Émeric felt his heart sink with the growing realization of what he’d done.

Ohhh, what will become of me now?

He still felt a terrible relief at how free he’d felt in berating the poor girl, and that immediately followed by guilt at himself for feeling it.

What sort of a monster acts as I’ve just done?

“Ahem,” Gaspard began. Émeric looked toward him. “We’ll talk in my office. Just you and me,” he ordered under his breath, gesturing between them.

The door creaked open to let in the head of Théo Dupuy.

“Monsieur Vautrin? Sœur Apolline? What’s going on? I heard shouting.”

“That’s—”

“That’s none of your concern, Théo,” Gaspard interrupted before Émeric could finish.

“Théo, did you get the flowers for Madame la Duchesse?” Apolline asked.

“Oh yes, ages ago. Marguerite helped me - say, what is she doing here, and in such a sorry state? What happened?”

“We’re not going to talk about that just now,” Apolline replied.

Good that it be she who says it, she’s the most right to do so…

“In fact, I was just going to get Marguerite back up to her chamber, if that’s alright with you, dear?”

The poor girl nodded, and the pair left without another word.

Théo, of course, had to get out of the way to let them through. He didn’t come back in.

Émeric gulped as he looked at Gaspard one last time.

Gaspard stepped forward to retrieve the paper from the baize, his fingers leaving no impression on the felt. “We clearly were not ready for this,” he muttered to no one in particular, “as a household.” He folded the dossier like a man handling evidence at a crime scene and stepped out of the room without so much as a glance back as the door closed behind him.

It was commonly understood that Gaspard’s invitation was meant to be taken for the immediacy. Rarely had it been used for things such as these.

The butler’s office had never before seemed so dreadful to the head gardener as it did that day.

Copyright Notice

© E. A. Morales. All rights reserved.

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Next Episode

Back to Directory

Previous Episode

Special thanks to for suggesting this story.

Again, sorry it took so long!

I hope you enjoy it.

Part 1

Yokohama in February looks like a city that gave up trying.

The train from Kannai deposits me at a platform that smells of rust and old rain. I check my phone.

Sergeant Hayashi and the others are already at the building. I’m four minutes behind schedule, which means I’m eleven minutes early by any reasonable measure. I count it against myself regardless.

The building is easy to find. Abandoned things always are—they have a particular quality of stillness that draws the eye the way a heron off the side of the highway does, stalwart on the rice paddies.

It’s in a pocket of the city that high urban development hasn’t reached yet, but will eventually catch up to, which is presumably why someone wants it badly enough to make this meeting necessary. But what do I know?

I’m just a police detective.

My name is Fujikawa Kiko.

I’m twenty-three years old, and I am the first woman in my family to become a detective. My family in Okinawa has been blessed. We live together in a large, colorful compound on an otherwise cold and gray island that only performs warmth for the tourists.

Yokohama is gray and cold in a different way. It knows what it is. A port city. I like its honesty.

I almost prefer it here.

Six floors of dirty concrete stand before me, lower walls tagged in overlapping layers. The graffiti is better than the building deserves.

I look at it for a moment longer than necessary, trying to read it, and then stop looking at it. My eyes belong to the job.

Hayashi and the unit are waiting inside. We take our positions. I check my sidearm. I think about the voicemail I haven’t listened to.

Suresh Dheer arrives, just as planned. But he’s brought someone else. Someone younger who almost looks like him.

His son?

“Good morning, officers. This is my son, Aryan.”

The kid raises a single hand, keeping his mouth tight. He couldn’t possibly be over 20.

“He’s here to finally learn what it means to be my heir, eh?” Suresh nudges Aryan’s shoulder. Aryan rolls his eyes. “Alright. We ready? Everyone? Good, good… sergeant? Good. Tchk. Let’s go.”

He’s damn lucky we speak English.

We turn the corner in unison, to the best of our ability. We find ourselves in a cold, gray, abandoned apartment, with a few knick-knacks and pieces of furniture from the ‘70s still set up as though the family left in a hurry.

There’s a little graffiti on the walls here, too, and I spot at least five empty syringes and several cigarettes on the ground. I’m frankly amazed the windows are all intact.

Then Aryan whispers, in his sleepy voice, “Dad, do we really have to do this?”

“Yes, Aryan,” Suresh answers, just as quietly. “It’s important. The Dheer family name is built on trust.”

“I truly do not give a shit.”

“Aryan! Language.”

I hear footsteps coming in from the other end of the building, and a soft door creaking open and shut.

“Whatever. Not like I hear you saying the same shit to your clients.”

“Shh—” I interrupt. “The client is coming.”

The two frown, but obey.

We stare across the dimly sunlit room.

The client walks inside from the other end. They’re not who I was expecting. Certainly not the people I was briefed to see. I look at Suresh.

He’s calm. It’s like he expected them.

I don’t question it. But it is a little concerning.

All of them are armed.

All five clients in front of us are tattooed under their all-black suits. One of them is missing an eye. One of them is shirtless.

I know their type from experience.

These people are Yakuza.

What the hell is Suresh doing dealing with the Yakuza?

The bearded one in the middle—presumably the leader—steps forward.

“Omae no nimutsu wa teniireta. Oretachi no kin wa dokoda?”

Suresh responds first.

“No Japanese. English, please.”

The leader grunts and motions with his mouth to the shirtless man on the far right. He translates: “We have your payload. Where’s our money?”

Suresh scoffs and looks at his son.

Aryan lifts a briefcase from the ground and tosses it onto the no-man’s-land in the middle of the room.

“Kono hito-tachi wa daradesu ka?” the leader asks, gesturing vaguely with his pointer finger.

The shirtless one translates: “Who are these people you came with?”

“Protection,” Suresh says.

“Mamori,” shirtless translates.

The leader furrows his brow.

“Hitori de kuru yō ni tanomimashita.”

“I asked you to come alone.”

Suresh replied, “Well, you can never be too cautious.”

“Yōjin shi sugiru to iu koto wa arimasen.”

Aryan adjusts his beanie and looks at me. The left of his mouth curls slyly. I motion for him to focus.

Then a gun clicks.

The leader looks to his right—our left—one of his goons has aimed his pistol at us. The leader shakes his fingers over his throat. The man stands down. He looks to the fourth henchman and motions him to collect the briefcase on the ground.

The henchman does so and turns back to safety just as quickly.

Then Suresh speaks up.

“Where’s our payload?”

The henchmen all exchange glances. The leader pouts at each one of them before he comes to his conclusion.

A nod.

The leftmost henchman whips out his pistol. I take mine out at the same time. I don’t look to see whether anyone else has done the same.

BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG.

Glass shatters.

BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG.

Yet more gunfire from both sides, the Yakuza and my officers alike. The whole room is torn to shreds. By the time the leader escapes, half the room has fallen dead. Not Suresh—he’s hiding behind a couch.

His son, meanwhile, decides to jump ship. Aryan bolts out the newly broken window.

Kuso!

Suresh was under our charge. That means Aryan, too. I don’t care how much he hates it. I bolt right out, hot on the boy’s heels.

“Aryan!” I call out.

He keeps running.

“Aryan!”

Kuso!

I’ve just got to trust my coworkers to keep Suresh secure.

How on earth did it come to this?

Part 2

There’s a dinner I come back to. Not the last one: just a regular Tuesday, sometime when I was fifteen. My grandfather at the head of the table, my grandmother at the foot, my uncle to my grandfather’s right, and my father somewhere in the middle. Always the younger brother. Quiet, as he was trained to be, because he’d learned it was safer.

Grandmother had made champuru. The TV was in the next room over, the volume low. Outside, grey rain pattered on the parasol trees.

I don’t remember what started it. Something I must have said, maybe. Or didn’t say. My grandfather put down his chopsticks and looked at me dead in the eyes.

“She needs a man beside her, you know. A woman alone is defenseless.”

“Chaa, who’s to say for sure with this one, love?” my grandmother called out from the other end. “She’s a fierce one.”

“I do. You know it’s true, fierce or not. Isn’t that right, Kinjō?” He said, matter-of-factly.

I remember I looked at my father.

I was fifteen. I had not yet learned to keep my face empty.

He looked at his bowl and said nothing.

That was it.

That was the whole thing.

Nothing.

I’ve been carrying it the way you carry a stone in your shoe. It’s not exactly debilitating, but it really affects how you walk, and even more so how you run. It hurts. The dinner ended. The television was still on in the next room. My grandmother cleared the plates. No one bothered to fight.

It’s been with me even as I became a detective. It was certainly part of what inspired me to become one.

My grandfather died three years ago. My uncle still calls me on my birthday and asks about my cases with a degree of pride, though he still looks at me like I’m an equation he got a different answer to than he expected.

My father, of course, never says anything about it. We talk about everything else.

I think he’s proud of me. I also sometimes think he’s never forgiven himself for that bowl of champuru.

I think about calling him sometimes, on assignments like this one, and I think about what I’d say. What he’d say.

I listen to my own heartbeat, my own hurried breaths, a passing car. There’s never any silence. Especially on a chase.

“Aryan!”

The kid keeps running, footfalls mute on the sidewalk, passing streetlights and trash cans like a local from youth.

The amount of trash on the streets despite them still irks me.

He makes a sharp left turn into an alley. There’s a drunkard pissing on the wall. I try my best to ignore his elated gaze and whistles as I pass behind him.

“Stop right there!” I shout one last time, echoing in the gulley between a pair of grimy residential towers.

The air is starting to taste of weed.

I cough.

A right turn.

Another left.

All the same story.

We end up back on the sidewalk on a much busier street. I barely catch a glimpse of the black-hooded boy jaywalking past the traffic. He’s attracting attention as he goes. He gets a few cheers, a few boos, a few shouts from old ladies.

He makes his way into a corner Lawson. I hear a little bell go off.

More memories.

My dog.

Dinner time.

Training.

I can’t afford to think right now.

I follow suit into the little convenience store and look around for any sign of him.

I check one aisle, then the next.

I think about the possibility of him having jumped across aisles, but… nah. He’s probably athletic, but it can’t be that serious for him. He can’t be that good.

And I’m right. I find him hiding at the end of one aisle like a ninja. Right next to the beverages.

He looks intensely pale under the fluorescent light. Especially for a Tamil. I almost catch his arm, but he grunts and shakes it off, dashing for the exit as fast as he can.

I make no complaint.

I follow.

Back out onto the sidewalk, he tries to fake a right turn and head left. I brush a hand on his hoodie again. I even grab it. But he’s quick to drop to the ground and slip it off. His hair is unkempt. He’s wearing a dress shirt.

Who wears a hoodie over a dress shirt?

I make a mad dash for Aryan, and just as I’m about to grab him, a black Toyota Century parks right next to us.

Aryan’s scared.

I can see it in his eyes.

He stops just long enough for me to grab hold of him and follow my instinct.

That car does not belong to his father.

Nor does it belong to the police.

“Follow me,” I rasp into his ear, before dragging him into another alley, this one a dead-end, with an open dumpster.

I toss him inside first. He lands with a grunt on the garbage bags. I come in next, closing the lid behind me just as I catch sight of the tattooed man walking out of the Century.

It’s the leader from before. I hear him bark orders to his men to look for Aryan and any other witnesses from the scene.

After some time, the lid opens to let in another garbage bag that lands between us. I do my best to hold my breath, heart pounding behind my ears for what feels like forever. Then it shuts again. I breathe out, only to regret having to breathe in again.

I can only describe the smell as rank. That’s just what it is. We’re there for maybe ten more minutes.

And we waited.

And we wallowed.

And for ten minutes, that was my life.

The Yakuza man had to have left at some point since then. I couldn’t stay in there forever.

I know I should have probably called for backup when I got out with Aryan, but I attempted to open the lid solo anyway, hoping it would be an easy job to escort him back to his father.

Nothing.

It wouldn’t budge.

“It’s locked.”

They’re my first words in a while.

Aryan attempts to open the lid himself. He gets the same result.

I can’t see his face. His reaction is a mystery to me.

I can only sigh.

“I’m gonna call for backup.”

“You know what Star Wars needs? A lava planet called Colth.”

Those are his first words since escaping that old apartment.

“What?”

“Tchk. You know. To match the ice planet called Hoth.”

I pause, half hoping he’ll explain to me why he chose now to talk about that. He doesn’t.

“What the fuck?”

“What, do you not agree?” he asks.

“Why are you talking about Star Wars? We’re locked in a dumpster, and I’m about to get us out. What is the need for this?”

“Everyone needs a laugh every so often.”

“Sure, but now?”

“Tchk. I was hoping you’d be fun.”

“I can be fun! But there’s a time and a pla-”

“The time and place for fun is always. What are you, 90?”

“I am 23, thank you very much.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m also 23, and you don’t look a day under 40.”

“How can you tell? It’s pitch black.”

“Your voice.”

“Don’t tell me you’re deaf.”

“Nah, I’ve just got a feeling.”

“A feeling? What, can you read minds or something?”

“Yeah, I read it on YouTube.”

And I just have to laugh.

It takes me a good moment to recover. And when I do, the thought occurs to me: “wait… it’s blind, isn’t it? Not deaf. Blind people use echoes. I’m stupid.”

“Heh. Nah, you’re not stupid. You’re cute.”

“Don’t push it,” I snap back. “You know, I’m supposed to escort you back to your father.”

He shifts on the garbage bags.

“And anyway,” I continue, “weren’t you just telling me I didn’t look a day under 40?”

I hear him settle and get comfortable, which is bizarre, given our circumstances.

“I like older women.”

“Ew.”

“Not ew. Yim yum!”

“Shut up.”

And he sighs, and we wait for a few seconds before he says, “well, are you gonna call for help or not?”

“I’m paging Sergeant Hayashi right now, but he’s not picking up.”

It’s true. I paged him without really thinking about it while Aryan was talking, and Hayashi’s been silent. I try my friend Yonamine.

He tsks. We sit in silence for a little while longer as we wait for Yonamine to pick up.

Before you ask, I’m not calling the station. This is too embarrassing.

“So,” he says. “Since we’re stuck—”

“We’re not stuck. Backup is coming.”

“Since we’re stuck for now. Can I ask you something?”

“You were going to anyway.”

“Your instincts are incredible.” He pauses. “How’d you end up here? Like. Specifically here. Yokohama. Dumpster. Following some guy you don’t know.”

“I was assigned to protect you and your father.”

“Yeah, but you specifically. How does a person end up becoming—” he gestures, which I can’t really see but I feel it— “this?’”

I don’t answer.

I respond with an Uno reverse card.

“How did you end up here?” I ask instead.

The city goes on about its business around us, outside the dumpster, a distant train, rain starting on the dumpster lid, a cat attacking another cat.

“Well, as long as we’ve got time… you sure you want the whole thing?”

“We’ve got time, yeah.”

“We’ve got time…” he repeats, like he’s tasting it, like time is something he hasn’t had in a while, either.

And he begins to talk.

“Okay. I guess… I’ll start with my dad. He’s, like, really exacting. You’d never guess it just by looking at him, I know, but, like… he used to inspect me every day to make sure I was perfect. I had to be.”

Part 3

My name is Aryan Dheer.

I am 23 years old.

My father is the CEO of Dheer Capital Partners, a banking institution he founded about 30 years ago.

The inspections started when I was seventeen.

I was sitting in his corner office on the thirty-first floor of our headquarters in the Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai. You know how rich folk always have these crazy expectations for their children? Like, British military levels of crazy?

Well, my father always wanted to be richer still than he was.

“Aryan, you know what it means to be a Dheer, don’t you? You project the image of power. Respect. Confidence. And the first step is posture. Sit up straight.”

I tried to sit up straight as best I could, puffed out my chest, and everything.

“Don’t exaggerate. You want to look comfortable,” he said, now holding out a baton.

How can I be comfortable in a place like this?

I try to relax my muscles.

“Good. Now, what’s the first thing you say to a shareholder when they walk into the room for a meeting?”

I don’t have the slightest clue.

And the inspections would go on like this for about an hour or two every day. I don’t know where he got the patience from, that man, nor where he got the time. But after a while, I got really, really sick of it.

Sometimes he’d whack me with the baton. Sometimes he’d call in one of the board members to whip me into shape. Sometimes the company would see my mistake and laugh, and I’d be made an example of. But I learned, eventually.

At least, I learned how to fake it as well as I could.

Let me tell you a secret.

The Dheers have never been rich or powerful before my dad made it big in banking.

Yeah, banking. I know, right? The man can think of nothing but money.

No, we were a line of artisans and artists on the outskirts of Mumbai. We made baskets and henna. Sometimes, clay pots and tiles. We were poor as all hell, but we were happy. At least, until my grandpa got into a gang to pay the rent, became an alcoholic, started beating up his wife and kid.

Suresh Dheer vowed to himself never to be poor again from that moment on, so his family would never have to resort to gang affiliation or violence. It’s a noble promise, it really is, it’s just…

Not the life for me.

I’m not a banker.

I’m an artist.

So, one night, I decided to be free.

Long after the headquarters had closed up for the night, I turned off the alarm system and snuck into the lobby. It’s a beautiful room, very large and grand and modern.

It’s just very plain. There’s an accent wall made of plain white marble with nothing on it. I figured it might need some decoration.

I’d brought in cans of spray paint in red, orange, gold, purple, blue, and white.

And before I really knew what I was doing, I began to spray.

Granted, a teenager in a black hoodie spray-painting a lobby that’s totally open to the public via a big glass wall right to the sidewalk is not the best look. I don’t know whether or not anyone spotted me, but I lost track of time as I painted. Lost in the rhythm of making lines and shadows and contours and flecking white paint on the letters like stars.

When I was done, I stepped back to look at my masterpiece.

I’d made myself an alias.

In all its glorious color, surrounded by sprayed-on fire and spangled with aerosol stars, the accent wall in the lobby now read: “SERAPH”.

Now, I told you I didn’t know whether or not anyone caught me as I painted. I know for a fact I got caught when I was done.

Right to my left, as I was admiring the piece, I saw an onlooker staring at me, taking a picture, presumably to show the police.

What did I know? I was seventeen and paranoid.

Paranoid enough to wear a mask even when alone. We were a few months into COVID. I thank my lucky stars I was wearing it, elsewise my father would have caught me the very next day.

And, you know, it kept going on like this.

Not necessarily in the lobby, that was much too exposed, and my father overreacted when he saw it. He ordered a whole crackdown, and my inspection that day felt more like an interrogation… leading questions, blinding light, threats, everything, to find out why I let this happen.

He never found out I was the vandal.

But I kept tagging my name in alleys, on billboards, in windows of abandoned buildings across Mumbai…

At one point, I got mad enough at him that I sought out a local gang at a barbershop they were known to frequent. It was some renegade branch of the D-company that had resorted to petty crimes you could barely even call organized anymore, and even then, its activity had been reduced to pretty much small vandalism. It was really nothing big. Led by some Aman Sharma, who went by Geely, because he owned a Geely. I walked into the barbershop in my black hoodie and mask, asked for him, shook his hand, got a burst fade cut, and we went out to get some drinks later.

I was eighteen at the time. Slightly illegal in Mumbai. I simply told my dad I was meeting with a client who seemed promising.

And it was true! It was just a client for the Geely Gang, as we called ourselves. He was some rich boy looking to buy some edibles for the most unreasonably high price we’d ever managed to swindle. And we delivered.

The next few years, I lived a double life; one mostly spraypainting walls with the gang—Geely, Pigsty, Loafer, Arjun, Wes, Vick, and myself: Seraph—and the other doing business with dear old dad.

Sometime around when I was 20, we started losing money as a business. Dheer Capital Partners was failing to find clients because we couldn’t afford to lower our interest rates.

The inspections got crueler. The batons came out more often. But these times around, the board members did not.

These were the times the baton started to draw blood.

When they did come, the baton went away entirely. One time he made me recite our quarterly projections in front of forty employees after I’d gotten three numbers wrong in private. I got through maybe half of it before my voice gave out. He didn’t stop me. He let the silence do that instead.

I started sleeping less, painting more. Some nights I didn’t come home at all. He stopped asking where I’d been, because by then I think we both knew the answer would only make things worse for both of us.

Anyway.

Three years of that. I got a little sick of it. I organized for us to meet with a mystery client I believed would be of great benefit to the company, or so I told my dad.

The Geely Gang and I knew it was the Yakuza. But how would my dad suspect? Why on earth would I bring him to Japan?

I gave him a suitcase of what the client was looking for. Machi Eizo—the local leader, that is—knew it was a sham, that I was just getting back at my dad. I wanted to scare him a little bit when he realized we were dealing with the Yakuza. I never expected the guns to come out.

I never…

Anyway.

That’s how I ended up here. A washed-up heir hiding in a dumpster with—

“—a cop,” I say. “Sorry. Detective.”

“Detective,” she repeats, just making sure I got it right.

“Detective,” I say again.

She’s cute.

Part 4

Is it back to me?

It’s back to me.

Hi everyone.

Kiko again.

The lid opens without warning, and for a moment, all I see is sky: gray, indifferent, exactly as I left it.

A man in a stained apron is standing over us holding a garbage bag, and the look on his face upon seeing two people sitting in his dumpster blurs the line between confusion and the deepest pity.

“Sunimasen,” I say, already climbing out.

He steps back and lets us pass without giving it a second thought. We are a small whirlwind he has decided not to engage with.

Aryan climbs out shortly after me, and I notice he’s still got a banana peel stuck to his shoulder. I say nothing.

“Okay,” he says, brushing himself off, looking up and down the alley. “Okay. So.”

“So,” I agree.

Neither of us moves for a second.

I should call this in properly. I really should. I should radio it through, get Aryan back to his father, file the report, let the machinery do what the machinery does. That’s the job. That’s the whole job, actually—not the gunfights, not the chases, just this part. Where you put someone where they’re supposed to be. That’s where my responsibility ends.

I look at him.

I look at the banana peel on the floor.

I almost wish he’d kept it.

But then I think about those inspections. The baton. The board members. The humiliation that beat it all.

If I bring him back to that office right now, what exactly will I be returning him to?

“So, Aryan…”

“Actually, can you do me a favor and call me Seraph? Bad memories.”

I look at him.

“I haven’t felt like Aryan in a long time, nor do I ever want to again…”

It’s a strange thing to be asked to rename someone. It’s not nothing. Names are meaningful where I come from. My own name carries a great deal of weight, carries my grandmother’s voice and my grandfather’s verdict and three generations of expectation—that I can count, that is. God only knows how far back it goes. Asking someone to call you something else is a lot more than a word.

There’s a kind of freedom to it.

“Seraph,” I repeat, testing it.

“Yeah.”

“You know what the name means, right? It’s a lot to live up to.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

I almost laugh. Almost. I choke on my saliva first.

“O-cough-okay-cough-cough-cough. S-cough-cough-cough-cough-cough-Seraph-cough-cough.”

“You good?”

I cough some more and hold up a finger.

“Y-yeah.”

He’s looking at me like he’s seeing a cat puking up a hairball for the first time.

It’s the first time I notice he’s got a slightly recessed chin.

Seraph.

I can give him that much, at least.

We start walking back toward that abandoned apartment building. I sincerely hope those Yakuza are gone. I’m not strong enough to take them on alone.

The dinner table comes back.

A woman alone is defenseless.

I shake the thought out of my head.

Not this time.

When we get back to the building, there are no flashing lights. That’s the first thing—no lights, no tape, no perimeter, none of the choreography that follows a scene like the one we left behind. Just stillness. Just the building, exactly as abandoned as it was an hour ago, except now there are shapes on the ground I didn’t notice earlier.

I start counting before I can stop myself. It’s the reflex. It’s my job.

Hayashi. Mori. The two others, Yonamine and Fukumoto.

All of them accompanied by pools of blood. Their faces are gray with death.

Aryan—sorry, Seraph—is close to the entrance, looking at the body behind what’s left of the door.

Suresh.

I don’t move for a long moment. Neither does Seraph.

“Dad,” he says.

It’s not really a question. It’s barely even a word.

I want to say the names of my coworkers.

I wish I could grieve.

Why can’t I grieve?

Why don’t I feel anything?

I should feel something.

Hayashi never answered his radio. Yonamine never picked up. We spent an hour in that dumpster while this happened, while whatever this was happened, close enough that we might have heard it if the city hadn’t been so loud, if we hadn’t been laughing about Star Wars and dad jokes while—

I stop that thought before it finishes.

Seraph takes a step forward. I put a hand on his arm, and he stops, like he was waiting for permission to stop.

“We can’t,” I say. “Not yet. Not until we know who’s still out there.”

“Can’t what? What are you talking about?”

I don’t know.

“Should we call the station, Ms. Detective?”

He looks at me. I look at the building, at the shapes on the ground, at the absence of anything that should be there—no backup, no response, which means either no one’s called it in yet, or someone made sure no one could.

I think about radioing it in myself. I think about what happens if I do—Seraph, in my protective custody, surrounded by exactly the kind of official process his father spent twenty-three years teaching him to survive, except this time there’s no one left whose name will get him through it.

The dinner table comes again.

A woman alone is defenseless.

“Shut up!” I tell my grandpa.

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry, Seraph, not you.”

He furrows his brow and steps back.

“Are we gonna call the station or not?”

This is gonna be a really stupid decision.

I need to get as far away from the Yakuza as possible. They could still be here.

I’m an idiot.

“Okay,” I say, mostly to myself. “Okay. New plan.”

Part 5

Getting to the terminal takes less time than it should. That’s its own kind of wrong. A taxi that doesn’t ask questions, a badge that opens a door it probably shouldn’t. Seraph doesn’t say much. He still smells like garbage, faintly, under everything else.

Granted, so do I, but his stench is stronger.

I buy two tickets in cash, Okinawa-bound. The overnight ferry, the kind that mostly carries truckers and old women visiting grandchildren and nobody who’ll remember our faces in a week.

“Okinawa,” he says, when I tell him. Just the word. He’s immediately suspicious.

“It’s where I’m from.”

“Really?” He pauses. “Huh.”

Waves crash beneath us on the dock. A foghorn sounds somewhere in the distance.

“I didn’t know that.”

We board together. He asked to board separately, but I have to keep him in custody.

We make our way belowdecks, near the windows. He sits with his knees pulled up like he’s trying to take up less space than he already is.

I sit down next to him. Not too close. But close enough.

I really pray there’s at least someone coming soon on the exact opposite end of the ferry. I have a huge thing with proper weight distribution on vehicles. The only exception is driving alone, because I really can’t help it. But damn, I would love it if cars were made with central steering wheels.

For a while, neither of us says anything.

The ferry pulls away from the dock, and the lights of Yokohama start sliding past the window, first tremendously slowly, then faster, then gone, replaced by the black waves and the occasional buoy light blinking somewhere out in the dark.

An old couple makes their way to the seats on the other side of the boat. My weight distribution fears are mostly sated.

That’s when it hits me.

In pieces, that is. Not all at once. Hayashi’s voice on the radio, the last time I heard it, hours ago, asking if I’d checked in yet. Mori’s laugh from that morning, something about the cold, something I wasn’t really listening to because I was thinking about the assignment, about doing my job, about getting through the day.

Yonamine, who didn’t pick up.

Their faces on the ground. I counted them like evidence instead of people, because that’s what I was trained to do, and I’m only now, on a boat, starting to feel what I should have felt standing right in front of them.

I want to cry now, but it doesn’t come.

No, instead, my heart shakes inside me, and I find my hands clenching. They’re as clammy as, well, a clam—don’t judge, I’m tired—and I have to wipe them against my knees.

Seraph notices. Of course he does. He’s spent his whole life being inspected; he knows what it looks like when someone’s holding something together by force.

He doesn’t say anything stupid. He doesn’t say it’s not your fault, which is good, because I don’t think I could have handled hearing it, true or not. He doesn’t make a joke, either, which surprises me more.

He just sort of stays quiet. After a minute or so, very carefully, like he’s not quite sure he’s allowed to, he moves his hand an inch closer to mine on the bench between us. Not touching yet; just closer.

I look at it.

All the hands that have been near mine in my life and never quite reached it—my father’s, at that dinner table and so many others like it, staying exactly where it was, my grandfather’s in its certainty—every hand that ever had the chance to reach over and didn’t.

I move my hand the rest of the way.

It’s such a small thing. His hand is warm, and a little rough. Paint-stained, most likely. I look down again.

Yeah.

My hands are still clammy.

“Hey,” he whispers. “Can I ask you something?”

“Not like I can tell you no. You’ve never once waited for the answer.”

“Fair,” he breathes, chuckles. “Why Okinawa? Like, really. You could’ve gone anywhere. Tokyo. Hidden in a city this size, easy. Why home?”

It’s a good question. It’s the question at the moment, probably, and I don’t have a clean answer for it, so I give him the truth.

“No one will look for either of us there. Not the Yakuza, not the police, no one,” I say. I’m such a coward. Why am I running away? Coward! “My family’s… not exactly known for welcoming outsiders. The last place anyone would think to find us is in my grandmother’s old colorful compound, eating champuru, surrounded by people who’d sooner die than let an investigation onto their property.”

No response.

He’s drinking it all in.

“What about you?” he says. “Going home. After everything. I mean, you kinda ran away from the police back there. You sure you’re not gonna come back a huge disappointment?”

I think about my father. The bowl of champuru. The voicemails I never listened to.

“I don’t really know,” I say, honestly. “They never expected much of me, anyway.”

“But?”

“But I’d rather not know what happens next by myself.”

I look at the water in its endless blackness, not even kind enough to reflect anything back at you. I’ve always found it comforting, in a way.

Ahead of us is an island that’s never been kind to people who don’t fit, including, on more days than I’d like to admit, me.

His hand is still in mine.

I don’t know what this is yet. I’m not sure either of us does.

But I’m certainly not thinking about the job anymore.

Copyright Notice

© E. A. Morales. All rights reserved.

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He rose at five, reviewed the household accounts, verified the alignment of numbers - the one thing that could still obey him: sixty-three livres for wax, one hundred twelve for the butcher’s meat, forty for the apothecary’s delivery to Madame de la Croix. Each entry was to him a small perfection, a proof that the world remained ordered.

By ten o’clock, after his breakfast of porridge and coffee, he’d decided he deserved a break, and so went about the house to make his rounds checking for spots.

He knew the third soup tourine from the left in the china cupboard upstairs needed some touching-up. So he made his way out the door from the service stairway, out to the salle à manger to check on the china cupboard.

And just as he was crouching down to pick up the tourine, the front door creaked open.

He paused, paralyzed for the moment.

Who might have entered the home so readily? Is Monseigneur not in his quarters?

He backed away from the cabinet so as not to bump into it as he stood himself up, his cheeks hot and puffing. He straightened his waistcoat before turning around to see none other than the Duc himself striding urgently across the vestibule.

“Monseigneur.”

Ètienne’s face lit up at the sight of him, but quickly composed itself to its look of grave concern. “Gaspard.”

Then he saw the Duc had a paper in his hands, gripped quite firmly. When the two had approached close enough to shake hands, Ètienne handed him the paper, saying simply:

“Versailles.”

He patted his shoulder twice before turning to leave, entrusting him completely with whatever the matter was.

It wasn’t like him.

At least, not until he read the contents of the paper itself.

Ètienne Hastings, Duc de Belval

-Born 8 January, 1707, Hastings, England, French since 1736…

Standing claim to the French throne, co-orchestrator of Bellevue espionage operation

His forehead crumpled upward as his eyes widened and scanned frantically across the page. The next entry was his own.

Gaspard Vautrin, Majordome at Bellevue

-Born 14 April 1709, Tolouse, France, lover of Désirée Tomas, father of Anatole Mercier, co-orchestrator of Bellevue espionage operation

His mind had skimmed over the words without comprehending them. He looked back to see that he wasn’t dreaming.

father of Anatole Mercier,

His heart plummeted past his stomach, nearly ceasing entirely. He had to clutch it.

Where had they gotten that?!

He rolled the words over and again in his head until he could no longer do so, supporting himself against the stone wall as though he’d had a heart attack.

They know about Anatole.

Slowly but surely, he came to realize he might not be alone in the large space for long. He took great pains to recompose himself and take the paper at once back down the service stairs and straight away to his office, that safe, safe space: his cluttered desk, his whitewashed limestone, his high latticed transom window, his portrait of the Sun King.

The safety of his ledgers.

He set the paper down on his desk and fell into his chair, panicking again for the slightest moment for fear he’d broken it. He squirmed around a bit: no, it was intact. A sigh of relief escaped his mouth, which very quickly became desperate, dreading sighs at the godforsaken little piece of parchment on his desk, atop this morning’s ledger.

Slowly, he mustered up the courage to pick it up again and continue reading.

Émeric Daumier, chief gardener at Bellevue

-Born 9 September 1695, Verdun, France, no relations, member of Bellevue espionage operation

He placed a hand up to his temple. They knew about Émeric’s involvement as well, but not much else about him. They didn’t get anything about his old flame from his early days at Clermons.

What her name was, he couldn’t remember for the life of him.

He’d have to ask him one of these days.

Focus!

He took a deep breath.

Apolline de Saint-Ange, Housekeeper at Bellevue

He slammed a fist to his forehead.

“No. No. No!” He grunted silently to himself.

-Born 30 August 1692, Paris, France, former lay Dominican sister at Saint-Clément chapter, expelled for defense of a novice convicted of tribaderie, member of Bellevue espionage operation

And on any ordinary day, he might have read this entry and been filled with rage for the secrets Apolline had kept from him. She’d never mentioned this to him before.

But today, it was a dark day for everyone. His own secrets had been just as exposed. He felt more the Pharisee in that moment than he’d ever had in his life.

Bastien Grelot, valet at Bellevue

-Born 4 December 1729, Villejuif, France, lover of Abelone Joubert, shot in the foot at the Porte Saint-Honoré, currently attended to in the Hôtel-Dieu, member of Bellevue espionage operation

He looked away. It was too much to bear. They’d even gotten Bastien, and the fact that he’d been shot at the Porte Saint-Honoré. The shot foot became the letter to Lyon became the name Lenoir scratched out and Grelot restored, and Gaspard understood that his only hope for normalcy had already been spent away long ago.

He wouldn’t have been surprised to find Marguerite or even Claude had he continued reading.

But then, who could possibly have given this information?

He continued to read, and this entry was perhaps the most interesting of all.

Julien Marchand, pianist of the King

-Born 18 November 1726, Rouen, France, lover of Éléonore Barrande among others, spy under the employment of Louis XV, Ètienne de Belval, and Thomas Hastings, unofficial member of Bellevue espionage operation

“Unofficial?” he whispered to himself.

Either another mutiny had occurred within the court’s ranks, or whoever had produced the information did not truly know the goings-on at Bellevue - at least, not to perfect accuracy.

But neither Marguerite nor Claude was listed in the dossier.

But Claude has not had time to respond to the letter, if it ever even arrived…

So perhaps Marguerite had been the leak.

No. Marguerite? She would never. And she knows about Claude.

Perhaps Théo?

He wanted nothing more than to believe it was an outsider.

Blanche?

The biggest gossip in Paris, surely, might have had something to do with it. But who could blame him? He very likely didn’t know who it was he was talking to.

Then he tasted blood. He winced as soon as he realized there was pain. He’d bitten his lip.

He sat silently at his desk for several minutes, staring at the wall, letting himself rest for just a moment from the written bomb Versailles had blown at the very foundations of Bellevue.

What do they want?

What could they possibly want from us?

The game had been lost.

He had to either dissolve the Billiard Court… or keep up the game and get arrested in the process. Perhaps executed for espionage and high treason, regardless of whether or not it was true.

After all, the whole purpose of the operation had been to keep an eye on Julien. Protect the household from spies like him. But then whoever had leaked the information had counted Julien on the Duc’s side. They’d exposed him just as much as everyone else. And Versailles, at that.

Has Pompadour simply gotten bored with her toy?

The implications were too terrifying to rest on for long.

No, he had to keep the operation going; find out whoever was spying now and put a lid on the matter for good.

He considered asking Ètienne to co-host another meeting of the Billiard Court. This time, not in the salle de billard for security reasons.

But he needed time.

Time… for what?

He sat with the question for another while before he begrudgingly came to an answer in his heart of hearts.

Security countermeasures. I must establish communication protocols.

Why hasn’t Marguerite been listed?

Can I use it to my advantage?

Should I even do so?

Anatole…

The question of whether or not to finally tell Anatole and fulfil Désirée’s wishes nagged at him like a splinter.

But by now, he had expended so much energy worrying that he let out a yawn and felt the overwhelming desire to fall asleep.

No.

Remain steadfast.

He forced himself to stand and walk out of the room to get himself some more coffee.

Whatever questions the other servants may have asked him, he patently ignored as he walked up the Grand degré to the petit galerie looking out towards the gardens.

A part of him wanted to smash the vases in front of him. He turned swiftly away before the urge could overtake him and walked out the front door as discreetly as he could, across the gravel courtyard, and to the stables.

Each horse noticed him as he walked along the stalls. He didn’t know what he was doing here any more than they did.

He felt watched, even naked, not by the obvious horses in front of him, but by something else. Something darker, more mysterious.

And finally, the stablehands tending to the horses and to their own matters at the end of the stalls turned to look at him.

Anatole was not among them.

He sighed in relief - but not so much as in regret.

“Monsieur Vautrin. May we help you?”

Gaspard blinked.

“No, no. Carry on. I’m just making my rounds. Checking everything is…” he wiped dirt off his fingers. “In order.”

They nodded and went back to their duties.

He pretended to inspect the stables, waiting for the off chance Anatole might come out. He did not.

He ended up simply walking back to his office.

The day passed in an utter stupor. Gaspard did not know what to do. He couldn’t return to his regular duties as though nothing had happened.

By half past eleven, he understood that he would not be ready for a meeting by morning. The protocols - what little he had of them - were incomplete, the leak unidentified. The question of Anatole…

That question required a word he did not possess. Protection was operational. Love was theological and suspect. Fatherhood was a biological fact and a social impossibility. He had protected the boy by absence, loved him by surveillance, fathered him by-

I cannot bring myself even to think of my own sins. Mon Dieu, have mercy!

He found himself at Apolline’s door in the attic, the moonlight reflecting from the other side of the octagonal corridor, through the lanterne, so the light almost rippled amid the flickering candlelight from his chamberstick. He did not remember walking there. His other hand was on his master key. The metal was warm in his palm, and it smelled coppery, despite the candle wax closer to his nose. He hadn’t permitted himself such intrusions as these in all his time as a majordome at the Château, but perhaps this was the exception where it was necessary.

He put the key in the hole and turned until he felt the lock click.

He felt like a burglar. The sensation made him reel at himself.

As he opened the door into the moonlit room, into the smell of lavender and herbs hanging from the exposed wooden beams in the ceiling, he heard the sound of snoring beside him. Apolline was asleep, but rather quickly she faltered and blinked herself awake with a small groan.

He breathed, wanting to say something.

“One must question your charity, Monsieur Vautrin,” she mumbled from her waning stupor. She’d beat him.

“Well, what is it?”

He caught himself standing, staring stupidly at her, not really knowing what to do. The first words to come from his mouth were simply, slowly, “Versailles… knows about us.”

She sat up. The moonlight caught her face: sixty years mapped without vanity, the Dominican’s graying hair let loose on her shoulders. “Us,” she repeated, more an assessment than it was a question.

“A dossier. This morning, Monseigneur le Duc…” he stopped. The sentence required words he could not supply. “Your name. My name. The operation. Ètienne’s claim to the throne.”

She absorbed all this in silence, the likes of which she’d perfected in cloister and Château alike.

“The throne,” she said finally. “That is… more than I expected.”

“I had not expected it either.” The admission cost him strength. “Your entry specifies -” he faltered, then delivered it as he’d deliver inventory: “Former lay Dominican sister at Saint-Clément chapter, expelled for defense of a novice convicted of tribaderie, member of Bellevue espionage operation.”

She looked away and shut her eyes in resignation. Again, he stood clueless as to what she would respond.

He felt all the more cowardly for not disclosing his own secret.

No, I’ll tell it myself at the meeting. They all deserve to know.

“Pauline,” she said. “Her name was Pauline. She was twenty, I was forty-two. It was a few months before I’d come into the Duc’s employment.” She paused, her words growing ever so slightly graver. “I have told no one here, not in seventeen years of service.”

“I believe you,” he said candidly.

“Except…”

Gaspard’s eyebrows raised.

“Lucien. But that’s a story for another time. When he’s ready. It’s terribly intimate. I doubt he’ll remember it anyway.”

He cleared his throat.

“The question is how Versailles learned. The convent’s records? Lucien himself?”

“Oh, no, no. Lucien will keep the secret to his grave if we let him. He’s rather good at that.” She smiled.

“It would have to be the convent, then.”

“Or someone who has purchased access to convent archives,” she said, starting to match his rhythm. “The Order keeps its own histories, but walls have grown rather porous with time. Especially in… recent years.”

She meant the Jansenist controversies, the Crown’s pressure on religious houses, the general loosening of old certainties. Gaspard understood. He’d built walls at Belevue, believing them sufficient.

“Did they give you an entry as well? Or is it just the Duc and myself?”

He gulped.

“Oh, they gave one for everyone. Myself included. Save for Marguerite and Claude.”

“So why did you come to me? Marguerite might be awake at this hour, you know how twenty-year-olds can be.”

She looked away at once, her lips pursed as though she’d just remembered what had happened with Marguerite and her father, and that she knew she’d spoken out of line.

“Marguerite has had enough trouble for one week. I am considering excluding her from the meeting.”

“The meeting? When?”

“I don’t know. Soon. I need time to think… create security protocols, formalize our communication methods. We need to be absolutely watertight if we are to survive and continue to protect this house from future spies.”

“You’ve thought about this.”

“I have. Extensively,” he grimaced.

She lay back against her pillow, almost in recognition that the night’s work was done. He had nothing more to say, anyway.

“Survival,” she said, “has always been a collective endeavor, Monsieur Vautrin. Even when it appears solitary.”

He nodded in understanding.

Coward! You could have told her!

“Good night, Sœur. I will see you in the morning.”

He closed the door without waiting for a response.

The night was far from over. He made his way back down to his office, desperately fighting the urge to sleep. He forced himself to cooperate, taking a glass of water to his desk to wake himself up.

There was work to be done.

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Père Colombe had announced it only yesterday at the private daily Mass held for the family.

Usually these Masses were held for the dead. Jean-Charles was still alive and mostly well, save for the strange ailment that had befallen him on Sunday. So Colombe had offered the Mass for his healing instead.

Ètienne had been kneeling just next to Geneviève and Lucien. All of them kept their heads down. Geneviève silently mouthed the words of the rosary, telling the beads beneath her fingers. Lucien seemed like he’d recovered substantially from his fainting episode. Perhaps his talk with Henriette at the ball had gone better than expected, though neither he nor Geneviève would talk about it.

The bells of consecration rang, a single sharp chime to break the near-silence with its echoes.

Ètienne straightened on the kneeler by pure instinct.

At the altar, Père Colombe took the host in his hands and prayed quickly, almost silently, not something Ètienne could hear from his pew.

The server shifted beside the altar rail. Silence gathered.

The curé bowed low over the missal and declared, Host in hand, “Hoc est enim Corpus Meum.”

Ètienne bowed his own head as another bell rang, as Colombe elevated the Host and the bells rang thrice more and Lucien and Geneviève quietly struck their breasts once.

Mon Seigneur et mon Dieu…

Why have you taken my family away from me?

He realized, a heartbeat later, that he’d forgotten to do the same.

Pay attention.

The Host descended. Colombe genuflected, the rustle of silk and wool filling the chapel as the household shifted on their knees.

Ètienne tried to force his thoughts back to the rhythm of the Mass. He failed.

The bell rang again.

Colombe took the chalice in his hands at the altar and continued praying, then bent over the chalice and declared, “Hic est enim Calix Sánguinis Mei, novi et ætérni testaménti: Mystérium Fídei…”

The words flowed on ever softer, nearly swallowed by the chapel walls.

The server leaned forward, waiting and watching. The bell rang once again. Colombe raised the chalice, met with three sharp rings, the candle flames trembling.

He lowered the chalice, the last bell fading.

Geneviève finished her prayer and lifted her head a fraction too quickly, almost as if eager to be done.

Ètienne noticed it immediately.

So did Lucien.

So did Colombe.

Geneviève lowered her head right back down as quickly as she’d raised it up.

Colombe kept almost perfectly still, returning to his prayers as though nothing had happened.

But the fact that he had noticed was abundantly clear.

That notion followed Ètienne all the rest of the Mass, as he knelt at the balustrade for communion, as the Gospel of John was said, and as the congregation filed out into the misty Tuesday morning.

The crunch of the pebbles underneath Ètienne’s black clogs was a surprisingly soothing change from the hard stone tiles - not that the stone was any less comfortable.

The few of the household present for the Mass muttered somberly amongst themselves in the courtyard. Colombe, having removed his vestments, stayed closer to the chapel doors this time as he greeted the outgoing congregation, but when Ètienne passed by him, he was stopped.

“Monseigneur.”

“Mon Père.”

“Come with me.”

Ètienne obeyed and walked back into the chapel with Colombe.

The pair walked in silence for a time. The room, to Ètienne, appeared to grow warmer by the second. It cooled somewhat when they sat at a pew, but droplets of sweat quickly began forming again at his brow.

Colombe sighed as he sat beside Ètienne, eyes fixed on the gold-and-silver tabernacle. The two sat in silence for a minute.

Finally, Ètienne began to lose patience and asked, as quietly and reverently as he could, “What is the meaning of this, mon Père?”

Colombe blinked.

“Ah - my apologies, Monseigneur. I was distracted. I wanted to ask you how you feel about the state of your household.”

Ètienne paused.

The state of my household?

He stared at the tabernacle, his lips parting pensively.

Mon Seigneur, is this Your answer?

Taking a deep breath, Ètienne began, “I don’t see what the problem is. Bellevue is working as it should. A handsome estate, giving generously to its servants, paying right homage to the king.”

“The king in Versailles? Or the king in this room?”

“Never mind that.”

“Better yet, the king in the pew next to me, or the King in that tabernacle in front of us both?”

That one cut deep into Ètienne’s soul, faster than it had any right to; indeed, faster than he even noticed at first.

He opened his mouth in response, lifting a finger in protest, then backed down as the full weight of the matter made itself known.

Instead, he simply nodded in understanding, each bob of the head slower than the last.

I don’t suppose I have been all that faithful, have I?

Or have I, indeed?

“You don’t suppose,” Ètienne started to say, before trailing off. “No, I… forgive me, Mon Père, it seems wisdom has left me.”

“I see. No, it is of no object. Do not fret. Perhaps a moment of silence is just what we need.”

“Thank you, Père.”

And so the two sat for a little while longer in the pew.

The silence within the chapel’s walls became, to some, a profound peace; to others, a restless, awkward crucible.

Ètienne was no stranger to silence. But his sort of silence was a relaxing sort; listening to the cicadas sing their song in the evening as he thought of nothing but took in the sounds around him; a break from the endless river of thoughts as wide as the Seine that drowned his mind in the current.

The silence in the chapel presently forced him deeper than he had ever ventured, into the undertow, and towards the vast, open sea, where such things as monsters and hurricanes awaited.

And those monsters and hurricanes were not the sort of thing the Duc de Belval was in a state to see.

“Excuse me, Mon Père, but I feel it is getting quite hot. Shall we take this outside, to the courtyard?”

It was a paltry excuse, but he hoped it would work.

“Of course,” Colombe answered.

And so the pair got up from their pews and left the chapel, where the cool and misty morning had begun to clear into a damp and cloudy day.

Ètienne held his hands behind his back as he walked almost shoulder to shoulder with the priest.

“I do not apologize for prodding, if that is what you are wondering, Monseigneur,” Colombe said.

“No, not at all. But I would like to ask what you mean by whether or not my household is following the King in the tabernacle.”

“Our Lord?”
“Of course, but in what ways have we not served Him? Is there a scandal among us we have not already confessed to you?”

“That is precisely my concern. Even if you have confessed it all to me already, there are machinations afoot that give me concern for the state of your souls.”

By now, the pair stood in the middle of the courtyard, precisely in line with the front door and the long gravel driveway.

Ètienne considered the thought for a moment; machinations being a danger to one’s soul. He stared for a moment, down the driveway, then to the right.

In the stables, from the look of it, work continued as normal, some horses being walked in the cool midmorning air. One of the stablehands smiled at Ètienne and Colombe.

Ètienne ignored it, but he didn’t look to see if the priest returned his favor.

“In truth, Monseigneur, I have a confession to make.”

Ètienne raised his eyebrows.

“And that is that I dislike the goings-on in this house. Everything from what I have heard suggests that you have let your secret slip, and furthermore you have all been spying and counterspying for information and contacts… what for, I could not imagine. Do you know one of your servants was shot?”

“Bastien, yes. I visited him only yesterday.”

“How long after the fact?”

“About a week.”

“A week?”

“It should have been a day, but it took my servants until Thursday to find him, by no fault of their own.”

“Very well.”

“Is there anything else you’d like to confess?”

But at that moment, Ètienne realized he’d overstepped. His callousness had gone beyond right noble propriety.

He blinked. “My apologies, Père, I have been over-demanding.”

Though it occurred to him then also the relative silliness of his eager submission to a man nearly fifteen years younger than him. He waved the thought away. A priest was a priest, and he himself was getting old.

“That is quite alright, mon fils, but the fact of the matter is this: one of your servants was shot doing your work, sending a letter to summon Claude from his leave in Lyon. You knew his mother was ailing when you sent for him.”

“I had not forgotten, Père. A savage consumption, God bless her. But it was not I who coined the letter. Who it was, I will not tell you - I will let them confess themselves if they have not done so.”

“That is alright as well. But I do worry that all this secrecy is becoming a hindrance to your love for your neighbors.”

Ètienne gently closed his eyes in recognition.

Perhaps this secrecy needs to end.

He would have responded immediately upon opening his eyes again, had he not seen a figure on horseback entering the driveway at high speed instead.

He furrowed his brow.

The man was plainly dressed, carrying only a leather satchel with him.

Perhaps a messenger?

He kept his pace as he approached, the hooves clip-clopping on the gravel in perfect rhythm.

Colombe was also watching with a measure of curiosity.

Only when the messenger was five feet away from them did he steer the horse rightward and stop it, garnering a harsh whinny from the beast.

“For Monseigneur le Duc!” The messenger cried out.

“That - that would be me,” Ètienne stammered, exchanging glances with Colombe.

The messenger handed him a letter, sealed in red wax, evidently from Versailles, and then hurried off as quickly as he came.

“How… odd,” Ètienne mused.

Colombe did not respond.

Ètienne did not much care for formalities now, especially not for an urgently delivered message such as this postman had been bearing. He ripped off the wax seal with his fingers and opened the letter.

Ètienne Hastings, Duc de Belval

-Born 8 January, 1707, Hastings, England, French since 1736, husband to Geneviève de la Croix, father to Lucien Hastings. Standing claim to the French throne, co-orchestrator of Bellevue espionage operation

Gaspard Vautrin, Majordome at Bellevue

-Born 14 April 1709, Tolouse, France, lover of Désirée Tomas, father of Anatole Mercier, co-orchestrator of Bellevue espionage operation

Émeric Daumier, chief gardener at Bellevue

-Born 9 September 1695, Verdun, France, no relations, member of Bellevue espionage operation

Apolline de Saint-Ange, Housekeeper at Bellevue

-Born 30 August 1692, Paris, France, former lay Dominican sister at Saint-Clément chapter, expelled for defense of a novice convicted of tribaderie, member of Bellevue espionage operation

Bastien Grelot, valet at Bellevue

-Born 4 December 1729, Villejuif, France, lover of Abelone Joubert, shot in the foot at the Porte Saint-Honoré, currently attended to in the Hôtel-Dieu, member of Bellevue espionage operation

Julien Marchand, pianist of the King

-Born 18 November 1726, Rouen, France, lover of Éléonore Barrande among others, spy under the employment of Louis XV, Ètienne de Belval, and Thomas Hastings, unofficial member of Bellevue espionage operation

Ètienne’s eyes grew wider with each name, each relation, each accusation of espionage.

But interestingly, neither Claude nor Marguerite had made the list.

Whoever compiled this list does not know our inner operations… they do not know the name Billiard Court… I wonder if…

“Monseigneur? What is it?” Colombe asked, his voice growing yet more pastoral in its curiosity.

Ètienne hesitated for a long moment.

“You wouldn’t like it,” he said simply, before patting his shoulder twice and turning around to enter his house once again.

Gaspard had to hear about this letter immediately. The servants had to be convened.

Versailles knew who they were.

What they were doing.

Ètienne’s clogs landed one after the other, up the slight stone steps, heavy with solemn panic.

He opened the centermost set of double doors.

Then he took one look behind him, a little ashamed he had left Colombe behind. The priest simply stood, ostensibly bewildered, staring at nothing in particular. A single chaffinch chirped from the junipers and pines behind him.

Ètienne shut the door, his heart a stone upon the weighing-scale.

The King in the tabernacle, it seemed, would have to wait.

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Julien looked groggily to his left and right. He hadn’t expected to wake so early. Not on a Monday morning, before the break of dawn.

He’d been woken up on three hours of sweet, sweet slumber by a servant at Versailles and dragged here before dawn, wherever “here” was, surrounded by the wolves of the court.

Éléonore sat to his left, her straight posture and still countenance a truly sickening thing. He shivered, but whether from cold or from tiredness he couldn’t tell.

To his right was an aging, clean-shaven man in a Prussian military uniform, his posture even stiffer than Éléonore’s. His enormous cavalry boots, the glint of the saber hilt at his waist, and the deep red sticking out from his dark blue coat immediately placed him as a man of power. The gilt metallic thing hanging around his throat and catching the candlelight only strengthened the theory. Julien gulped, for he could not afford to be nauseous.

And on the other end of this great round table at which Julien sat, full of officers and courtiers and spies alike, was the Marquise de Pompadour herself: the spy-master; the ring-leader; the Reinette of France and “friend” of the King, her hair in a powdered chignon, her dress as ornate as at a court ball, fanning her pale self despite the cold.

She cleared her throat precisely twice, and it silenced the already-quiet chatter of the room.

“Messieurs et Mesdames,” Pompadour began. “Presses in Paris have grown ambitious.”

The room began to chatter again, this time with undertones of shock and scandal.

“In the past fortnight,” she said, louder, but never wavering from her perfect composure, “we have seized nine illicit pamphlets in three parishes, thank you kindly to Messieurs Mesny, Baschet, and Hartmeyer.”

The Prussian gentleman bowed his lead lightly in humble thanks.

“Eight of them had something to say about the vingtième tax. I do not blame them. Six of those eight, however, were staunch proponents of Jansenism. One of them even incited the riot in front of the Hôtel de Ville last night. We know this only because it was found in great numbers tossed around the square. Paris police confiscated several themselves.”

There was a riot last night?

He looked to Éléonore. Her expression had become studious, even suspicious. Her eyes flicked to his, then went right back to Pompadour. He did likewise.

“This riot was not the first, nor will it be the last, but the point it made was important enough for me to convene this meeting. The sheer number of pamphlets confiscated of this particular edition,” she said, holding up the offending pamphlet, “means the printers have organized. And paper of this quality does not appear by charity.”

She took a deep breath as the room darkened, both from the flickering candlelight and from the weight of the implication upon all those present.

And then her expression lightened considerably.

“But before we go on any further, I would like to introduce you all, if I have not already done so, to our newest member, Monsieur Julien Marchand.”

This she said with the welcoming tenderness of a mother, magnanimously extending her open hand at him from the other end of the room. Everyone in the room turned to look at him with a variety of expressions from thin smiles to brief nods to quiet “Bonjour”s to curious glances. Even Hartmeyer offered his weathered hand in greeting. Julien took it, if awkwardly, before everyone gradually turned back to the Marquise.

Pompadour turned to whisper to a servant, who promptly made her way out of the room.

“He has been observing matters at my old pleasure gardens at Bellevue, now the residence of the Duc de Belval. He has gone to verify the legitimacy of some claims that have been made about him.”

Julien’s eyes widened.

That was not meant to be public!

Before he could say anything, a cup of coffee appeared in front of him, on a little saucer with cream and sugar cubes.

“Thank you-” Julien whispered to the servant behind him as he turned his head, only to find that servant gone.

He discreetly went back to making his coffee and taking odd sips where he could afford to.

“Suffice it to say, he has found those claims unfounded and returned to me, thank Heavens, in one piece.”

A few courtiers weakly applauded him.

Pompadour’s expression did not.

“But what he has found is that the Duc de Belval has organized a ring of his own: counterspies out of a select few of his own servants.”

“Excuse-moi, Madame,” interrupted a high voice from several spots to Julien’s right. “I do not see the reason for this detour. Were we not just talking about the riot in Paris?”

Pompadour turned her head with a steely calm that might have hid the fury of Jupiter beneath it.

“I was getting to that,” she said, quietly clearing her throat once more.

“Monsieur Marchand’s discoveries, along with those of our dear Éléonore,” she added, with another magnanimous hand to the oafish viper on Julien’s left, “pose the question of loyalty to France. For every servant in the Duc’s inner circle there are five who gossip about the goings-on. Nothing is kept secret for long.”

“And is one of these servants, perchance, a pamphleteer in the shadows?” another voice asked, from the left.

“We are very close to an answer,” Éléonore answered, before turning back to Julien. “Aren’t we?”

Those are the first words you’ve spoken around me since the night you abandoned my bedside.

“Er - yes,” Julien said. “Very close.”

“My informants,” interrupted Hartmeyer in a low voice and a thick accent, almost whispering to Julien, “tell me you also have correspondences across the channel.”

His heart dropped, well into his stomach.

A bead of sweat appeared on his brow.

“Is this true?” Hartmeyer pushed.

Julien gulped.

His breaths became heavier than he wanted them to be.

Pompadour sat politely smiling from her chair.

If only he could disappear right then and there.

If only he had never said “yes” to the Hastingses.

If only-

“Because if so, I applaud you. I, too, have heard rumors of this false king.”

False king.

Ètienne.

“I-”

“I shall be very interested to read your full report, Monsieur Marchand,” Hartmeyer half-smirked.

“We have a list of suspects,” Pompadour continued, now having stood from her chair.

Suspects? I don’t even have names!

“Several of whom are under the employment of the Duc de Belval. But not all of them.”

“Do we have their names, that we may look for them?” another voice piped up.

“I dislike all this ceremony,” Éléonore whispered to Julien. “Oh, I can tell you do, too. Just give us our assignments and get on with it!”

Julien smiled despite himself. She made a point, however awkward.

“Apolline de Saint-Ange,” Pompadour listed, evidently unaware of the whispers. “Père Matthieu Colombe. Théo Dupuy. Eugénie Beauvais. Sabrina Auguste. Marc Duchemin. And of those not employed by the Duc: Abélard Lemaigre. Paul Chéreau. Jacques Desmoulins. Roland Duchamp. Clotilde Corne. Antoinette Raoult. Francine Vérany. Those are all the names we have. They may or may not be involved with dissidents and Jansenists, and they may or may not be involved with the offending printing-houses.”

Père Colombe? No, he would never…

Apolline, I could see, but not Colombe…

“Ah - you will forgive my curiosity, Monsieur Marchand,” Hartmeyer murmured. “Men who correspond abroad often discover their loyalties… become complicated.”

Julien turned to look at him, making a face more puzzled than he felt inside.

Oh, you bastard, you know more than you let on, don’t you?

“I won’t hold any of you much longer,” Pompadour continued. “The sky is lightening, and you will have to go to your posts. I leave you all with this: pursue the names we have across Paris. If you find they have escaped, search all of France. The crown’s justice will not be undermined. May God guide your noses. Go and hunt!”

Several spies arose from their seats. Julien and Éléonore rose also, but Pompadour looked at them directly.

“Monsieur Marchand, if you’ll remain a moment. You as well, Mademoiselle Barrande.”

Éléonore stopped to stare.

“The two of you are already acquainted with the household at Bellevue. It would be inefficient not to make use of it. Éléonore, you have a talent for noticing what others… overlook,” she added, looking to Julien at that last word. “Mademoiselle Varese will assist with coordination.”

Pompadour cleared her throat twice again.

And the very servant she’d asked to bring him coffee appeared right beside her.

“Chloé. I would like you to meet your partners, Julien and Éléonore.”

The slight young woman extended a polite hand of greeting to the both of them. “A pleasure.”

Julien was still recovering from Pompadour’s subtle jab. I notice things! …Most of the time. If you’d asked me what I’d missed, I couldn’t tell you.

“You will all go to Bellevue and determine, with certainty, whether the Duc’s household is merely indiscreet… or actively disloyal.”

In earnest, Julien could not imagine anyone in that household being disloyal to France, much less running a printing-house.

“I do hope it is the former,” he muttered.

Pompadour rested her eyes on him for a moment.

“As do I, Monsieur Marchand. I have every confidence you will be thorough. After all, you have never given me reason to expect otherwise.”

Her gaze lingered upon him a moment longer than courtesy would have preferred, but with that, the Marquise turned to leave.

The three of them were alone in the room.

“How did you like your coffee, Julien?” Chloé asked.

That snapped him back to the waking world.

“Oh! Er, very much, thank you.”

“How did you do that?” Éléonore asked. “That was very impressive, you just placed it there and disappeared, and now you reappear in front of the Marquise like some magic trick-”

“Oh, please, no,” Chloé giggled, waving away the mystery. “I am only quiet. There is no magic here,”

Julien was beginning to quite like this Chloé.

“Julien, your waistcoat buttons are misaligned.”

But not if she was going to correct him like that.

He looked down.

Indeed, he’d done his buttons improperly in the haste of a tired morning. He reached for the topmost one, but was interrupted again.

“So, then, The English Duke.”

That got his attention enough to stop his hands where they were.

Her eyes darkened, her tone deepening.

“Claimant to the throne,” Chloé continued. “You don’t really believe him, do you?”

Julien searched frantically for an answer.

“Er, I suppose not.”

Thank goodness, you don’t know…

Chloé smiled, again in that polite, shallow way. “So would say anyone trying not to betray the crown. Come, we must make haste.”

It took a moment for Julien to register what she’d said.

Not trying to betray the crown?

He looked to Éléonore.

She seemed just as lost as he did.

The rumors had been spreading.

Ètienne is in danger.

He gulped.

The pair followed Chloé as she opened the glass paned doors to a vast parterre garden just now beginning to lighten with a premonition of the rising sun.

Julien looked to the left; a looming brick château stood gallantly atop a terraced hill.

Behind him, a six-story pavilion rose just above an ivy-covered retaining wall.

Meudon.

The king’s other pleasure palace.

A few other outgoing spies lingered in the garden, each one moving to wherever their stations were.

I was sent to make Ètienne king, was I not?

Anything I can do to throw these wolves off of his trail… anything will have to do.

His heart began to quicken.

Éléonore and Chloé both were giving him odd glances as he lagged behind them.

“Well, hurry up, then!” Chloé beckoned. “Our carriage awaits!”

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But now, without further ado, here it is:

The Fisherman and the Magic Eyes

The ospreys shrieked again.

Tirash hauled the one-man net onto his boat, sea spray stinging his arms where the sun had already baked upon them a crust of salt. The sky shone perfect blue today: a gift from the gods, his father would say, when his father could still see the sky.

Now, his father sat in the middle of their boat, his eyes (or where there once were eyes, now covered by a tied cloth) turned away, his hands working by touch alone to mend a torn two-man net. He’d been blind since before Tirash could walk.

“Stolen by a magician,” his father claimed.

“Pecked out by ospreys when he rowed too far into Yam’s waters and crashed upon a rock,” claimed everyone else in Byblos, when they bothered to speak of the poor fisherman at all.

Tirash didn’t much care which story to believe, but he knew the black rock was real, at least. He’d seen it at low tide on the horizon, jutting out from the water like a shrub in the desert.

“Yam gives of his realm, and Yam takes what crosses back in,” the old man had said, that being his proverb of late. He loved to repeat the proverbs he’d make up every so often, without cause.

But at least that much, Tirash believed. Everyone knew the sea gave, and the sea took.

He looked down upon his net and frowned.

Yam had not deigned to give much.

“It won’t be enough,” Tirash lamented. “We’ve searched all day, all across the shore, and we’ve only got four fish.”

His father looked to where he heard Tirash’s voice coming from.

“That’s quite alright, son. We’ll find something.”

“But the rent is due this evening! The landlord asked us for a hundred fish to sell at the market. How is this alright?”

“You think I haven’t slept on the streets before? It’s not so bad. I know a few good spots.”

“When you’re blind, maybe. And when you’ve lost all hope of making up your honor. But what about mother? What about my sister? They can’t sleep on the streets.”

Tirash’s father considered this for a moment, his face looking somewhere in the distance.

“I’ll go and deal with the landlord. I can get you and your mother and your sister another few nights in the house. Get me to the shore.”

Tirash nodded, pitying his father, and rowing the fishing boat back to the sands and the white rocks of safety. He helped his father off the boat, watched him go to the landlord’s house in the main city (for he knew the way by touch and sound), and pondered.

I won’t have my father grovel like this.

If Yam will not give us more fish of his own accord, I will make him do so.

So it was decided: Tirash would go to confront the waves beyond the shore and try for more fish there. Bigger, meatier, more expensive fish.

And so the fisherman’s boy rowed the boat back out into the water, arms and nose alike burning again in the late afternoon sun and the pungent sea spray, shrieking ospreys circling overhead, the water turning ever bluer and rougher, the black rock coming ever closer.

Tirash cast his one-man net into the water and waited a few seconds. Before long, the whole net began to wriggle, tugging the boat with it. He gasped.

Surely, I could not have caught so many fish so soon!

He pulled the net back in, and was nearly thrown into the water himself. When he pulled the net onto the boat, it was nearly bursting. He’d caught more than thirty fish.

Two or three more passes will be enough to pay the rent and more!

And so Tirash kept at it for another few minutes, and the count of fish came up to seventy-nine. Before he could cast the net once more into the water, however, he noticed he’d come terribly close to the black rock which the ospreys had made their home. But no ospreys could be seen on the island: it was deserted, with the birds circling about restlessly without a place to go.

The waters grew calm, even to stillness - and clear to where Tirash could see the bottom as though it were only three feet down.

And then the rock shook, first slowly, then faster, then to where it should have crumbled like coarse flour.

And from the rock came a sound unlike any Tirash had yet heard, and a smoke of many colors unlike any Tirash had yet seen.

And from the smoke came a mouth that folded in on itself and multiplied and went away in cycles, and the mouth boomed in a legion of voices, “Who is this mortal who takes what is not his from the seas of Yam?”

Tirash gasped and yet felt as though the wind were knocked out of him from behind. He prostrated himself in front of the creature, who had now taken the form of a fat, many-robed man with a crocodile’s head and a long, beaded beard.

“Ba’al Yam!” Tirash whimpered, which roughly means “Lord Yam”.

The creature only laughed a strong belly-laugh, its head folding itself away in exchange for a new one from behind made of cheese with hair of grapes. “You - you call yourself Ba’al Yam? You are not Yam, little one. I would know: I am his servant.”

Tirash looked up in amazement.

“Then what should I call you?”

“I am ‘Iwwar, the mighty”, it said as its arms became muscular and golden. “‘Iwwar the all-knowing,” as its head multiplied into dozens of heads side-by-side. “‘Iwwar without end!”, as it levitated, sitting cross-legged upon a pink-petaled flower, skin midnight blue, with a shining crown on its head. “And you, as I can see with my magic eyes, are Tirash, son of Shemen, son of Addir. And you have disobeyed your father. Shame!” it pointed with its whole hand, which had become one hundred hands stacked about themselves.

Tirash could only tremble in awe.

If only my father could see this!

“Ah, but I see your trouble now, little one,” ‘Iwwar cooed. “You must make the rent, so your father does not sleep on the streets,” it said, taking the form of Tirash’s father. “But what if I told you there were a way to save yourself, little one?”

Shaking still, Tirash managed, “H-how?”

‘Iwwar delighted, and became a copy of Tirash himself. “Worship me. Make idols of me and offer burnt-offerings to them, and I will give you not only fish to your heart’s content, but also the whole of the city of Byblos and all its worshippers, which are mine by right, and also the magical eyes, which are mine by right, for your very father surrendered them to me years ago when he trespassed on the realm of Yam.”

The name echoed around Tirash as though from a thousand voices. He stumbled and fell on his back.

Tirash’s heart raced. Byblos, the city entire. He could save his family, elevate his name.

I’d never beg again…

“But see how magnificent are these magical eyes! I took them from your father and gave them to Yam, who returned them to me enchanted. With them, I can see all things and give you all secrets. Do you know,” he began, becoming a gray crocodile as pungent as week-old fish, “of the wonders I have seen? Horseless carts, star-reading kings, moons of cheese?”

Tirash furrowed his brow. He ached to learn more.

Those eyes would make me as powerful as ‘Iwwar…

“And I can see the future as well. I could ask you now, “what color is your Bugatti?”, and you would not know what I meant, but your children’s children would cower in shame, for they would know I had insulted their poverty.”

But Tirash found this statement at once to be suspicious.

It spouts nonsense, and calls it wisdom…

“Ah, but I see your heart is hard,” said ‘Iwwar. “So I will tell you now: I see in your future that you become a great, wise, and noble king.”

And ‘Iwwar, putting on Tirash’s face once more with a beard and kingly robes and a crown, smiled the proudest smile he could summon.

A king whose name would be spoken with respect rather than pity.

The fisherman’s boy salivated.

“Wiser even than I, and I must admit, I envy you already. Would you not deign to have me by your side as an advisor, who can see all?”

And there came the first error. Tirash’s hopeful smile faded.

Did you not just tell me I would have the eyes that see all?

And getting himself up from his back, wincing from a small splinter from the wood, he asked ‘Iwwar, “How did you come to rule Byblos? I would think it belongs to the king.”

‘Iwwar lifted a dozen stacked eyebrows as he became a bronze bull. “Do you not know? I was a king of Byblos once, as well. When I died, Yam bound me to its shore as its eternal guardian and a minor god, who needs worship just as you need breath.”

That was where Tirash saw his entrance. “But if you have worshippers already, and Byblos is yours as you claim, why do you hunger so desperately for the worship of one fisherman that you’d trade your city for it? Show me these worshippers. Tell me their names.”

And ‘Iwwar recoiled. It could not answer.

“You have no authority over Byblos, do you? You cannot offer any such thing,” Tirash said, more confidently than he had a right to. “Your bargain is void! A servant has no right to lie in his master’s name. And if you rule Byblos as you claim, why have I never seen you outside of this rock? Are you only the guardian of this rock?” Tirash laughed, growing more confident as he spoke, rising to his feet.

“How dare you-”

“If you are truly a servant of Yam, call upon him. Let him tell me to worship you.”

What followed was utter silence. Yam did not come. ‘Iwwar could not even bring itself to summon him.

Then a rage washed over Tirash’s heart.

“Those magical eyes are my father’s by right. You have stolen them from a fisherman and from the domain of Yam. You are no more than a petty thief, lower even than my father, who is blind! How can you make me king? Shame!”

And with that, ‘Iwwar gave a dreadful screech, its colorful form stretching and contracting and melting and freezing every which way, before the creature disappeared. The waves entered the cloudy blue water once again, and the rock - with a thundering crack - split in two, revealing the magical eyes.

In truth, they looked entirely like ordinary eyes.

Another, squeakier voice intoned from behind the rock: “Do not place the eyes in your father’s sockets. You must grind them into a paste and make it into a soup for your father to eat. Only then will he see again.”

But Tirash waved it away.

“Everything you have said thus far is a lie. Why should I believe you now?” he called out into the open air.

No voice responded.

A proud Tirash went to pick up the eyes from the rock. They were warm in his palm, and when he closed his fingers around them, he saw such wonders as he could not even describe…

He could keep them… leave… his father would never know…

No.

He opened his hand. They were simply his father’s stolen eyes.

He placed them in his tunic, gathered the fish, and rowed his way home.

The eyes were placed in his father’s sockets, and Shemen could see once again. He embraced his son and danced with glee.

And Tirash returned, alone knowing what might have been, to his perfectly, plainly, painfully ordinary life.

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He lunged to tackle Père Colombe directly.

Colombe flinched.

There was only one thing he could think to do.

Thunk.

He took out a crucifix and struck Jean-Charles over the top of the head with its backside.

The old man fell face-first toward the hardwood floor. Colombe grabbed hold of his collar at the last moment so he wouldn’t break his nose. The man lay unconscious.

He stood panting for a moment.

What have I done?

He may very well have killed the man.

In front of his own daughter, no less! Lord, have mercy!

The room fell into a deep silence. He turned his head up to where Marguerite was, her face frozen in shock.

“Come on, Marguerite,” he said, more shakily than he wanted to. “Help me put your father back in bed.”

He was supposed to be a priest.

The example of composure and God’s grace in the world.

And he may have just struck a man dead.

Marguerite nodded just as shakily, coming over to lift Jean-Charles by the legs. With little effort - the man had been growing rather frail of late - the pair placed him on the bed.

Colombe pressed his fingers against the side of Jean-Charles’s neck to check for a pulse. He held them steady…

Thump. Thump. Thump.

“Oh, loué soit le Seigneur!”

The man was alive.

Marguerite smiled and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Can you go get some water for him? And a cloth?” He asked Marguerite.

“Yes, of course,” she said, leaving the room hastily.

Now was the time to see to a diagnosis.

He loosened Jean-Charles’s collar to give the man breathing room. He placed a hand to the bare chest to ensure he was breathing.

As expected, steady swells and falls, however small, came and went. Jean-Charles was breathing, and well.

He placed, also, the back of his hand to Jean-Charles’s forehead. There should have been a fever.

But this was the first test that gave unexpected results.

Jean-Charles did not have a fever. In fact, his forehead was somewhat cold.

“Here is the water and cloth you asked for,” Marguerite said, walking into the room, holding exactly what she promised.

“I - thank you, Marguerite,” Colombe muttered.

She stared at him for a second.

“Is everything alright?”

He blinked.

“Y-yes, ma fille. Everything is… alright.”

But nothing was alright.

Jean-Charles was entirely too well for this to be a natural illness. Certainly not a fever of any sort, anyway.

“Is my father alright? I suppose that’s the more important question, anyway.”

“Well, he lives. Deo Gratias, he lives.”

“Yes, that’s good, but is he alright?”

“Well, you can see firsthand he’s not alright. His pulse is quick, but not failing. I’ve loosened his collar. But there is no fever.”

“No fever?”

“No.”

“So it cannot be delirium.”

“Perhaps. But delirium can still come without one,” Colombe said with a long sigh.

“Tell me, if you will: has he eaten recently? Last night? Today? Think carefully.”

Marguerite furrowed her brows. She walked over to a chair and sat, thinking of an answer.

“Well, this is the first time I have seen him today, but he wouldn’t take his dinner last night.”

Colombe raised his eyebrows.

“No dinner… has he seemed himself these past few days? To you? I know he has been less warm to me this past week, but I assumed it was a grudge for something.”

“I - no, I suppose he has not.”

“Was this his first time speaking strangely?”
“Well, of course. I would have come to you otherwise, and not you to me.”

“Oh, of course,” Colombe said, placing a palm to his forehead. “Silly me.”

Marguerite offered a reassuring hand. Colombe waved it away, not unkindly.

Then an idea occurred to the priest.

“Has he fallen of late? Even a small fall?”

And to that, Marguerite paused to think.

“I… he… I suppose he must have fallen last night. I didn’t see it myself, but over dinner, I glimpsed him catching himself on the doorway.”

Colombe nodded.

That must have been it.

“Ma fille, I was considering writing a letter to the archbishopric asking for permission for a formal exorcism, but it seems to me we were mistaken.” He took a breath. “I do not yet judge what afflicts him. I cannot say anything for sure, but I do know this: we must proceed with great prudence.”

He hoped it would mean something to Marguerite. In truth, Colombe was fishing for words based on what other, older priests had told him.

“I see,” she said. “So what does prudence look like? Will you not at least sprinkle holy water on him?”

“Yes, yes, you are right in saying so,” Colombe stuttered. “Forgive me, I lost myself for a moment.”

“No, no, don’t worry about that.”

Colombe, again, waved her reassurance away, not unkindly, and raised the vial of holy water he’d been holding in his hand the entire time.

“Marguerite, if you will do me the favor of placing the wet cloth on your father’s head? I know he is not feverish, but I would hate to see the measure go wasted. Perhaps it may do some good.”

Marguerite assented, getting up and walking over to where she’d placed the bowl of water. She dipped the cloth deftly and placed it on Jean-Charles’s forehead.

Colombe walked to the foot of the bed, dipped his fingers into the vial of holy water, and sprinkled it on Jean-Charles’s body with the following prayer: “Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor; lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.”

Droplets fell on the old man’s body. Marguerite’s cloth cooled his head. And, as if summoned by those words and by the cloth, Jean-Charles moaned, first softly, then harder. He blinked, and was awake, if groggy. He grabbed the cloth and threw it to the side.

Then he growled, not in a terribly aggressive way, but in a tired way; a terrified way.

Marguerite stepped back.

The man could not find words.

His voice began to rise, but the noises were incoherent. His frail torso rose from the bed, supported by two frail, shaking arms.

Colombe’s eyes widened in horror. He made the sign of the cross three times, praying deliverance.

Natural disease or not, the devil can still deceive!

Jean-Charles noticed him. Immediately, he got up from the bed outright and stumbled his way to Colombe, each step gaining strength.

Then the notion occurred to Colombe: was my earlier reaction knocking out Jean-Charles with the back of his crucifix borne of mercy, or of fear?

And above all else, he feared an unsavory answer.

He resolved not to do any more violence against the man.

If I am to suffer harm at the hands of my organist, then let it at least be in the name of caring for him.

Jean-Charles lunged at Colombe.

And from behind cried Marguerite.

“Papa!”

The organist turned slowly and shakily at Marguerite.

“Élise.”

Marguerite’s eyes widened.

“No… no, papa, I am not Élise.”

“Élise.”

Jean-Charles kept stumbling toward Marguerite, his eyes hungry, empty things.

He groped at Marguerite.

She squealed and stepped back.

Jean-Charles did not relent.

The plain room around them brightened with a ray of golden daylight as a cloud passed and ceased to block the sun.

“Élise!”

Marguerite stumbled. Jean-Charles’s hand grabbed her dress. She broke free of it rather easily, but tripped on a stray book and fell backwards, breaking her fall on the corner of the wall.

She fumbled frantically around her pockets for something - anything - that might have worked.

Mon Dieu! What am I doing? Why am I standing around? Curse me!”

Colombe stepped forward.

“Jean-Charles.”

The organist did not stop.

“Jean-Charles!”

Marguerite had gotten a crucifix from her pocket and, huddled in the corner, held it up shakily, hoping for something - anything - to happen, murmuring broken prayers.

And Colombe would have grabbed hold of him in that moment, had it not been for the last development in the situation.

At the sight of the pitiful scene, Jean-Charles stopped in his tracks.

His lip began to tremble.

Colombe heard something like, “Mon Seigneur,” come out from Jean-Charles’s lips.

The man stumbled back a step, composed himself, and fell to his knees.

What on Earth could this be?

No demon could do this…

“Jean-Charles,” he tried again.

This time, the man responded.

“Père,” he stammered.

Thanks be to God!

Marguerite slowly came out from her huddled shell and put down her crucifix.

“Papa?”

Jean-Charles turned back to his daughter.

“M-Marguerite?” he whispered.

She stared at him, completely uncertain, before approaching.

She embraced him carefully, stiffly.

He returned the favor just as awkwardly.

“Wh- why are you here?” he murmured.

Marguerite released herself.

“What do you mean? Papa, we’re here to see that you’re alright.”

Jean-Charles peered at her. “I - I’m alright,” he said. Turning to Colombe, he added an uneasy, “Am I alright?”

Colombe hesitated as he stepped forward to guide Jean-Charles back to bed.

“In truth… no.”

The organist nodded.

“Oh.”

He helped the man back into bed.

Marguerite gulped. Colombe looked to her.

“Papa,” she stammered as he lay down. “You frightened me.”

Colombe raised his eyebrows.

Jean-Charles nodded again once his head fell on the pillow.

“...Good night,” he murmured, the silver daylight falling on his face, before he fell asleep.

It was then that Colombe decided it was best to take Marguerite aside.

“Do you wish to leave, ma fille? Or shall we pick up these things on the floor?”

Marguerite considered for a moment, almost frantically flicking her worried eyes about.

“If there is any discomfort, I can-”

“No,” she interrupted. “I’ll stay. It’s only right.”

Colombe nodded in approval.

And bit by bit, trinket by trinket, they picked up the mess at Jean-Charles’s bedside, and the room, at last, fell quiet.

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Disclaimer: for those of you who don’t know, I’m still talking about a fantasy novel I’ve been writing for a little over a year now, titled “When the Earth Moves On”. You can read about it and my progress on it:

Here

Then Here

Also here

And, finally, here

I have bad news (1) and good news (2 & 3):

1. I haven’t been nearly as “productive” as I would like to have been on WEMO. I’m only about a third of the way into chapter 16, but hey - that’s already almost halfway through the whole book. Just that middle slog you gotta get through.

2. That hasn’t stopped me from being productive in other areas. I’ve written and backlogged Bellevue episodes 33-35 for release in the coming months. And let me tell you, 34 has a name-drop you won’t really get the full weight of until you read episode 99, and then again in episode 199, and yet again in episode 296. But of the ones I’ve written, I think 35 is my best one yet.

3. I’ve spent time with my friends and family and been present. I’ve deepened in prayer. I discovered an awesome Indian restaurant. I’ve been learning how to play more board games. I discovered Outlander on Netflix and haven’t been able to stop watching. I’ve been living life.

And none of that detracts from the notion that I’ve only become ever more certain that writing is my vocation. This is, without a shadow of a doubt, what I want to do for the rest of my life. Because I have a plan for my stories. I have a message. I have faith that in Christ Jesus, I will bring them to their full potential and give the world stories worth remembering. And I don’t ever intend to stop.

Hey, here’s a little conversational topic I came up with on a whim in these last 15 minutes: how about the origin stories behind the stories? Where did my ideas for WEMO and Bellevue come from?

Well, let me see if I can fit them in here:

The Origins of My Written Works:

Part 1

It’s the summer of 2024. I’m on vacation in Miami with my dad, turning in our papers for citizenship of Spain at the Spanish consulate - they had this thing called the ley de memoria democrática that basically allows families who were sent out of Spain as refugees from Franco’s reign reapply for citizenship. My grandparents got in first, as they were the children of refugees, and then my dad and I were able to get in as well.

On that trip, we ended up visiting Villa Vizcaya. We were in utter awe at the opulence of the place, especially handled in such a way that it embraced the warm climate so well. And the gardens, too; those were spectacular. And immediately, what struck my fancy was the notion of writing a murder mystery.

Before long, an idea was born.

The evening of April 8, 1924. Villa Vizcaya. A gala for the 50th anniversary of Glover Automobiles at the home of its president, Lawrence Glover, and his family. Essentially, each chapter would be told in tandem, each from the perspective of one of the characters invited. Every single guest must have at least one chapter, a maximum of two, and every single guest must interact with at least one other character they know at the party. There are 150 people in attendance, and about 40-42 permanent live-in staff. The plot would revolve around the observed and assumed murder of someone seen being tossed into the harbor by two dark figures. The idea was that eventually, rumors would spread, theorizing whodunnit and why, and most suspected their enemies or exes, and motives would range from a stolen heirloom to a betrayal to simple religious radicalism. At the end, the gala erupts into chaos: at least one additional murder, and the murderer’s reveal at the end. There would be no detective involved until nearly the end of everyone’s subplots, and he only comes in with the police after the second murder. The people at the gala don’t really trust the police too much, and all they know is that there is at least one murderer among them, and so some of them ignore the problem, choosing to do their own thing, whether it be to converse about politics or business, or engage in romantic drama, or even just sit bored in the corner, longing to go home, and some of them take it upon themselves to actively investigate in secret, disguised by the social pressure to conform to the aristocratic rules and manners.

Now: this is an incredibly experimental narrative model. I didn’t end up writing a word of the draft, but I came up with about four plot throughlines and the beginnings of a fifth before I got burnt out. But the itch to write something never left.

Then I got on Webtoons. My English teacher last semester had gotten me addicted to Lore Olympus. I then introduced myself to other comics and eventually came upon an isekai-based one about a South Korean engineer who got transported to his favorite fantasy manhwa and became a titan of industry, for the sole purpose of getting as rich as possible so he could be as lazy as possible. It was pretty funny, just seeing his plans get thwarted with more and more power creep as he slowly gained godlike powers.

The idea to write about engineers was seeded, and after several months, I got the idea to write about one who woke up in the future, to a barbaric world, with the ruins of his gleaming utopia homeland simply massive moss-covered ribs jutting out from the hillside.

In this early version, my engineer was going to learn how to be a good leader by slowly learning the language of the new inhabitants of the world and making them work for him as effective slaves, before they eventually melted his heart and became a found family of sorts. He would learn patience, fatherhood, and generosity in a lot of very humorous ways.

And I left the idea for several months.

And it lay there, collecting dust in the recesses of my brain.

Part 2

Now, if you recall the murder-mystery idea, I had pretty much abandoned it by this point. It was too many POVs for too little time, for too small of an event. Experimentation in this degree would become mind-numbingly boring, because not everyone’s perspective of a single party is worthy to become a story in and of itself; not everyone is wired like that.

I wasn’t at all concerned with it when I took up the practice of looking at historic floor plans on Pinterest. At some point, I came across one of a beautiful-looking château called Bellevue. And I decided to build it in Minecraft.

Now, it’s not a perfect recreation by any means, but at least completing the exterior inspired me to do something with it. It needed a story of some sort. So I made one up.

I was in a mood to do a spy thriller.

Early 1740s. An English duke who had been living in France… but was actually secretly plotting to get the throne himself. An aging Prussian pianist-spy who would tutor the duke’s son. Louis XV’s Secret du Roi plotting right back against this English duke. The pianist would play both sides. Secret messages would be sent in the form of piano codes, among other things. It was meant to be, pretty much, an eternal, ongoing spy vs. spy dynamic, very mission-of-the-week style of storytelling. Nothing would ultimately get done for a while, but then I wanted to play with the idea of a climax of some sort, so I pondered what it would have been like if I were to have the English duke kill the king somehow.

That was a nice thought for a climax.

And I left it at that for a while.

Part 3

It’s January of 2025. I’d been going to UGA for a while now as a biochem major, wanting to become a neurosurgeon one day, making great friends with the Catholic Center. But what I didn’t want to admit to myself was that the dream of becoming a doctor in any capacity was already growing less and less appealing. I had been putting up a facade so as not to disappoint my parents, or anyone else whom I’d told I wanted to be a neurosurgeon. By then, it was almost entirely predicated on not being a disappointment.

But then, one of my closest friends at the Catholic Center (I won’t disclose his name here) told me he was writing a book.

This instantly intrigued me, because I had been wanting to write a book for years. Even since before Vizcaya. My childhood was rife with so many ideas for stories I just wanted to put down on paper or Word document but never quite had the discipline to do yet.

And he told me the book he wanted to write was about a 400-year-old monk who was a member of a special order who would travel across time and help the saints become more fully who they are, giving them special graces directly formed from a sort of energy that resulted from someone else in the world offering up their prayers and sufferings for the glory of God.

And that was beautiful to me. I told him I would become his accountability partner, and that just to make sure it was an even effort, that I would start writing a book myself.

And what idea did I go back to for this concept?

That’s right.

The engineer out of his own time.

We agreed we would meet biweekly to discuss our respective book progress, and so we did for a while.

And I was inspired to make my engineer somewhat of a religious type, himself.

And so I wrote the first words of the first chapter:

“Leonius knelt on the padded ledge, his hands clasped together holding a string of beads atop the marble balustrade in front of him as he fixed his eyes on where the moonlight hit.”

That’s right.

My engineer was originally going to be called Leonius. Not Alcander.

At one point, I decided I didn’t like this name. I had already gotten pretty far in the chapter, but I didn’t know what name to give him. So I looked for an online name generator loosely connected to late Roman antiquity. I didn’t find such a generator, but I did find a list of common historical names meaning “strong” or “resilient”, because that was a character trait I wanted to emphasize in this guy. Otherwise, how else would he survive the grief of losing everything and having to start all over from scratch again?

And the name I happened upon was Alcander, very closely related to Alexander. Same basic meaning: “leader of men”. I figured, hey, that sounds pretty strong. Yeah, that sounds like a vibe. Why don’t we?” And Leonius became Alcander. It was a tough switch to internalize - Leonius seemed wanting to come back into the narrative somehow. And so in chapter 2, I introduced him as a veteran gatekeeper Alcander would talk to and befriend on his ride to work.

Remember Stella the Berelikon from the excerpt a couple weeks ago?

Her name was originally going to be Luneta, and she was first going to be a giant purple bipedal bird. Like a cross between a dodo and an ostrich, with a toucan beak and peacock and torogóz tail feathers.

The idea sounded intriguing to me, especially to describe such a thing as a “Berelikon”. But then I asked myself, “What does a Berelikon really sound like it is?” - and I fought with my ego for a long time about it. But I eventually came to the conclusion that a bipedal bird would not be the most stable animal to piggyback on, and that maybe it should be a drake instead. But Luneta - who would later become Stella - was going to be a shimmering drake with peacock and torogóz tail feathers, and whose scales would gleam in purples, blues, turquoises, and golds.

And she was going to be one of the only ones of her gender in the empire.

Only the females would get to be shiny and flamboyant - the males were incredibly numerous and practical, far less decorated, and far cheaper. But for a master engineer like Alcander? I think the empire’s favor would have allowed him and his family a special breed.

Then it also came time to name Alcander’s wife and daughter. And the names that kept popping up into my head were Irenaea and Florina, and so those were the ones I stuck with. I liked them.

Florina was also initially going to die at the hands of the Praetor I mentioned in the excerpt I gave you guys, chapter 2.5. Fortunately, I decided against it, because it would give Irenaea more of a reason to keep fighting and railing against the Praetor as opposed to just giving up, and it would give Florina a nice healing arc as well.

Over the course of the next few months, my good Catholic friend shifted pursuits toward his ongoing DnD campaign and started writing about his character instead, and it was still beautiful. But it meant I was practically alone in writing my novel, which by now I had decided to title “When the Earth Moves On”.

I had a nice surge of productivity over late April and early May of 2025, but by the end of the month, I was as burnt out of the work as I would ever be. I had stalled on chapter 12, and I had no intentions of continuing.

And then came the big shift.

I had developed the bad habits of doomscrolling, oversleeping, and not leaving my apartment when I was at UGA. Naturally, this made my grades plummet. I lost my HOPE scholarship at the end of the semester, and as a result, I had to move back home and transfer universities to KSU - Kennesaw State - because my parents couldn’t afford both tuition and rent for such a university as UGA.

When they interrogated me as to why I had let my grades plummet, whether or not I’d done it on purpose, if I even cared for my life anymore, I was so shook I couldn’t bring myself to give an answer. When I did give one, it was that I simply wasn’t interested in pursuing medicine anymore.

I was directionless - literature didn’t count because it didn’t pay - a failure.

But I still wanted to write somehow.

I couldn’t not write.

Part 4

Tuesday, June 28, 2025.

Around 11:15 PM.

I had been hanging out with one of my very best friends, from when I’d first moved to Georgia in the 4th grade (I won’t disclose his name, either).

And for the past several months, I had been slowly been developing a crush on him.

One of the strongest I’d ever had.

And I decided that night, as we were both saying our goodbyes, that I would act. I would ask him what he thought of the notion of us becoming “more than just friends”.

And so I did.

And he told me he’d considered it, but that he wasn’t gay.

He reassured me I’d find a man someday, as I internally screamed at myself, I can’t do that in the way you think I can!

He’s not Catholic.

But he texted me when he got home 20 minutes later apologizing for his dismissiveness and recognizing that he wasn’t the best at being vulnerable, but that he hoped we could still remain chill. Friends.

I forgave him immediately, and reassured him that he’d get naturally better at being vulnerable the longer we stuck together as friends. And that was it for the night. I couldn’t cry myself to sleep, because I spent the whole night awake overthinking the matter.

A few days later, we met up again, and he brought up the subject again.

He still felt guilty about it.

I had been preparing to let him know there was nothing sexual behind my desire for him - my sexuality is a little weird and doesn’t quite work like that - but that all I wanted was a greater intimacy of sorts. I couldn’t have a boyfriend in the traditional sense because it would go against my Catholic catechesis of the past few years. He disclosed to me that he was ace and that he wasn’t interested in that sort of thing with anyone, but that he had a lot of gay friends up in North Carolina he would be glad to set me up with, if he’d still lived there, or if I’d moved up with him.

I kept my boundary firm, but gentle. I brought up the idea of a secret third option, because “friends” or even “best friends” had too casual of a connotation for what we already had, and neither of us could go as far as “boyfriends” for our own respective reasons.

He liked the idea.

Tuesday, July 15th, 2025.

It had been a couple weeks since “the incident” which we’d so maturely resolved together. But I was still in some pain, on the inside. I was still prone to emotional relapses where I would project my fantasies of intimacy onto a pillow. But by this stage, I had grown tired of it, and wanted to distract myself with something else.

And then, on a YouTube video, I heard about Substack for the first time.

An online platform for sharing stories of any sort.

A launchpad for author newsletters.

A place which, if his judgment was correct, desperately needed good writing, because it was so full of AI slop.

I downloaded it precisely at midnight of the 16th, after a phone call with my other friend from the UGA Catholic Center. We’d taken up the practice of praying Night Prayer every night and checking up on one another to see we were alright.

It’s a beautiful thing.

And I wondered, what would be the best sort of story to publish continually on Substack?

My first post was “Wedding Day: A Farce” - a competition entry for a YouTuber’s writing discord server I’d written over the course of six hours about two months ago, in early May. You can read it:

Here

But it wasn’t enough for me. I knew I’d rushed it.

And then my thoughts circled back to the Château de Bellevue.

What of that?

I decided to write the first episode of my spy-thriller, now informed by the writing I’d done, and the Catholic motifs I wanted to make a hallmark of my work.

The episode got to about 4,000 words. Too long for a single post, where the average reading time for a Substack post was about 2-4 minutes. So I split it into three, and that was how we got episodes 1, 2, and 3 of the Château de Bellevue, released on Saturday, July 19th, 2025.

I promoted myself relentlessly since then, but I didn’t really know where my story was going. I wanted it to be maybe 42 episodes long, have Louis XV get assassinated at the end, and then maybe at some point have Ètienne try to have Père Colombe hanged for outing his secret, after which Julien would rescue him.

But after several episodes, I realized that simply wasn’t Ètienne’s character. No, he deserved better than that, and so did Colombe.

So I kept pantsing episodes. It wasn’t until maybe episode 7 or 8 that I decided to play around with ChatGPT and start imagining fanfiction works for Bellevue, because I’d just been working on my 50-subscriber special: an essay on the origins of fanfiction.

As a joke, I suggested the idea of a ship between Julien and Ètienne. We took it for a while, but then it lost steam. Then I shifted to Julien and Lucien, but that turned out even worse. And then, I thought, “What if Julien was straight and Lucien was gay?”, again, as a joke. But for whatever reason, the idea stuck, because of how I’d been portraying Lucien’s character from the beginning: a quiet, artsy, melancholic young man. And we ended up with episode 10, “The Shape of a Name”, an utter improvisation on a joke that ended up becoming far more serious than I’d ever intended it to be. I didn’t want it to revisit anything I’d experienced with my friend. And so I didn’t let it. I made it diverge on purpose toward an entirely different kind of relationship.

It wasn’t until I’d gotten to episode 16 that I decided to make a directory for the series, because it was starting to get long.

That was when I decided I wanted 100 episodes.

I planned and outlined up to episode 32, “The Plea for Something New”, and made standalone outlines for episodes 97-100, which you won’t get to see until I’ve released episode 78.

The rest, I suppose, is history. I eventually outlined all 100 episodes of season 1, and then this past January, I outlined the remaining 200 episodes for seasons 2 and 3.

By the way:

Stay tuned for the release of Episode 33, “The Demon in the Organist”, on March 13th. It was originally supposed to be the Halloween Special, but as you know, my “big home stretch” in the last days of October and the first days of November of 2025 were a huge workload for me because of the massive content speed: I got episodes 23-29 done in a matter of about 2 weeks, and I was ready to simply give up and focus my efforts once again on WEMO, because I decided I didn’t want to abandon it completely.

I guess that leads us precisely to where we are today.

Where I Am Now:

Don’t worry. I made it to a nice major at KSU - marketing. I’ve got to market my books somehow, and it serves as a safety net for finding a day job if my books take a little while longer to get published and publicly accepted.

And maybe I’ll get an MBA after I graduate, because I think it would be nice to start a publishing company one day.

My parents have cooled off a good bit from the debacle at UGA, because my habits have improved somewhat. I’m no longer oversleeping as much, I’m no longer doomscrolling as much. I learned my lesson. And business classes are much less stressful than biochem, anyway. I can see where people get the stereotype from that business and finance students don’t take their education seriously. Losing oneself at constant, never-ending frat parties is a real concern. I was simply never one for parties, much less with people I didn’t know.

My love has always been for the craft of writing. Not necessarily marketing my work, though I must admit, it can be fun sometimes.

I have nothing else to say, really, but to praise God.

Everything I’ve experienced, every hardship over these past 15 months, every victory, every pain, every loss, every celebration, every radical change, has led me to where I am today. I wouldn’t trade a moment of it. Certainly not if it meant I wouldn’t have as much narrative drive to complete these two awesome stories I want to complete and publish before I’m 30.

So let’s praise the Lord. All good things come from Him.

Maybe our biggest upheavals have always been blessings in disguise.

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© E. A. Morales. All rights reserved.

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“God bless!”

“How are you doing?”

Pleasantries and compliments flooded the congregation filing out of the chapel in their usual Sunday rhythm, both about one another and about the lovely weather. Anatole stood near the door, nodding at familiar faces, offering pleasantries of his own without really hearing his own voice.

This had been his habit for the past two days, filling his space with other people, letting their chatter drown out his own thoughts. If he kept moving, kept talking, kept present in the everyday machinery of the household, maybe the millstone in his chest would lift.

So far, he’d failed.

“Anatole!” Josie called out, catching his arm as she passed. “You look pale. Are you eating properly?”

This was not how she usually spoke to him. For him were reserved complaints and reprimands on a regular basis. It was simply the high of a Sunday morning that had gotten to her.

“Yes, Madame, I’m fine,” he said automatically, managing a vague smile.

“Well, see that you do. Can’t have our stablehands wasting away.” She patted his shoulder and moved on.

He’d had variations of this conversation at least five times since Friday. Everyone seemed to think he looked unwell, though none of them could put their finger on why. He’d been helpful, hadn’t he? He’d volunteered to help Théo move some furniture yesterday. He’d carried extra water for the kitchen on Friday evening. He’d been at every meal, every service, every moment where his fellow servants gathered.

None of it had helped.

Blanche shuffled past, greeted him politely, and went on his way.

After a few minutes of mostly mindless chatter, the crowd had thinned. Anatole’s eyes drifted toward the chapel entrance, where Père Colombe usually stood to greet the departing congregants. He had been working up the nerve all morning to ask for confession.

Not the whole truth of the matter, he wasn’t a fool enough for that, but just enough to get to the heart of it and count it as a sin confessed. I was unkind to someone, Père. I said something cruel and I don’t know how to take it back.

At the very least, it would be a relief to say it aloud.

But when he finally spotted Colombe, the young priest wasn’t smiling his usual gentle smile. His face was drawn and pale, and he quickly rushed back inside with alarm.

Anatole hesitated. Something was wrong. Very wrong. It clearly was not the time to burden Colombe with his own petty guilt over a rejected invitation.

He exhaled slowly and turned away from the chapel, drifting back toward the courtyard. The millstone in his chest felt heavier still. He’d tried company, he’d tried work, he’d even tried prayer.

Nothing was working.

I think it would be better, Monsieur, if we kept to our places.

Every time the words circled back, they came sharper. The look on Lucien’s face. The way his voice had faltered before he turned away.

Anatole’s hands curled into fists at his sides.

He knew already what it was he needed to do. Perhaps it was time to stop worrying about it and do it.

No priests, no deflection, no hiding behind chores and small talk. Just the two of them, alone, facing his apology head-on like a caravel in a storm.

His heart began to pound before he’d even made the decision consciously, but once the thought took root, it wouldn’t let go.

He scanned the courtyard. Most of the household had dispersed, off to the kitchens for the midday meal, to their quarters for rest, to whatever Sunday tasks awaited. But there, near the far edge of the formal gardens, a figure in a blue tailcoat moved slowly between the hedgerows in the west gardens, behind the chapel and the service quarters.

Lucien.

Anatole’s breath caught once more.

Before he could second-guess himself, his feet were moving.

He didn’t approach directly. That would be too obvious, too risky. Instead, he circled around through the chapel gardens, past the verdant hedgerows which smelled of the deep forest on the far end of the parterre, until he stood perfectly opposite Lucien across the long expanse of grass, just between the break in the hedgerows.

Hands in trouser pockets, he didn’t mean to stand where he stood. It was meant to be discreet. He thought he would circle the garden completely and meet Lucien from behind, but Lucien, framed perfectly by the short stretch of Lutetian limestone blocks between the two great glass doors and their balcony railings, noticed him at once and paused to stare.

He looked smaller, now, and entirely less sure of himself. Anatole swallowed so hard he thought his throat might sprain.

It seemed Lucien had gulped as well.

And for a minute, the two simply stood in their places. Chaffinches chirped amid the blue expanse of the sky. A gust of wind blew Lucien’s wig a hair out of place. He was quick to correct it.

His heartbeat feeling as though about to stop, Anatole stepped forward along the gravel pathway, back from where he came, never once taking his eyes off Lucien.

Lucien looked as though he wanted nothing more than to leave.

Anatole took another step along the path, each one growing easier with time. Now, Lucien began to walk as well, each one with a countenance as serious as a cardinal’s, each one with their eyes bound to one another’s as though by a string.

And neither by the time they approached one another behind the servants’ quarters were they able to speak.

Until Anatole broke the silence.

“Monsieur Lucien.”

A bird chirped on the rooftop.

“A-Anatole.”

Both boys took a breath.

“What are we doing? What is this?” Lucien asked.

Anatole chuckled. “That is a good question. I don’t know-”

“I did not mean to startle you,” Lucien smiled sheepishly.

“You didn’t,” Anatole lied. “I was just… walking.”

“I can see that,” Lucien commented.

“I was wondering,” Anatole began. Lucien responded only with the tilted look of curiosity a dog might get when you gave them a new word.

Anatole feared he might blush.

“...I was wondering if you wanted to talk. If you had time, of course. If not, I totally understand-”

“No, no, I would - ahem - I - I would love to,” Lucien breathed. “What, erm… what about?”

His nervousness was palpable.

“Do you think we are hidden enough? Here, I mean?” Lucien added.

“Oh, certainly. Émeric’s on the other side of the gardens today. I doubt he’ll come over.”

Lucien nodded.

Neither one bothered to question why they would need to be hidden.

For a while, neither one bothered to speak, either, until Anatole opened his mouth once again. And before he could utter a word, a sudden crash echoed from above.

Both of them jumped.

“Get out! GET OUT!”

The voice was raw and furious, unmistakably coming from one of the dormer windows above them in the servants’ quarters. More crashes followed in various degrees.

“You won’t have her! She’s mine! MINE!”

Anatole and Lucien exchanged wide-eyed glances.

“Is that…?” Lucien started.

“Jean-Charles,” Anatole said quietly. “Marguerite’s father, the organist.”

“I thought Julien played today.”

“He did.”

“Papa, stop!” came Marguerite’s voice from the window.

Incoherent rambling came next, until Jean-Charles began to shout again, with, “I see you, priest! I see your scheming! You will never have her! Never! I’ll kill you first! I’ll-”, before stopping entirely.

Both of them let out half-laughs, half-nervous exhales.

“You don’t suppose…?” Anatole began.

“Suppose?”

“You don’t suppose Père Colombe is taking advantage of Marguerite?”

Lucien simply made a face.

“That is beyond me. I am not one to start a rumor.”

Anatole gestured in resignation. “Fair point. That makes two of us.”

“As it should,” Lucien reassured.

“GET OUT!” Jean-Charles screamed again from upstairs.

Both of them instinctively agreed to get away from the wall of the servants’ quarters and simply begin walking along the far end of the parterre.

For a moment, neither of them said anything.

Then (and neither one could remember which), one of them began to chuckle. Then the other one, and before long both of them were laughing seemingly for no reason.

“Not exactly the setting I imagined for this conversation,” Anatole muttered.

“No?” Lucien’s smile was small, but real. “What did you imagine?”

Anatole looked away, heat creeping up his neck. “I don’t know. Somewhere quieter, less… chaotic.”

Lucien waved it away. “For this conversation, I mean? What is this about?”

The words hit Anatole square in the chest. He forced himself to meet Lucien’s eyes. And in them, he saw what he could only describe as hope. A fragile, tragic, tentative, but undeniable hope, and it made him crack.

“I was cruel to you,” Anatole said at last, the words tumbling out before he could stop them. “On Thursday, in the stables, when you asked about the orchard.”

Lucien’s expression shifted, now to one more guarded. “You were protecting yourself. I understand-”

“No,” Anatole cut him off, shaking his head. “You don’t. Or, maybe you do, I don’t know. But that does not make it right.” He exhaled shakily.

“Anatole-”

“Let me finish,” Anatole stuttered, his hands trembling now. “I’ve been trying to… to fix it. To forget it, rather. I worked myself half to death on Friday, I helped everyone I could find yesterday, I went to Mass this morning hoping Père Colombe could… I don’t know. Give me absolution, or wisdom or something,” he laughed bitterly. “But he’s got his own crisis, apparently. It would not have been right. None of it would have worked anyway. I had known all along the only person I need to say this to is you… I was just… forgive me, I was afraid to talk to you.”

Lucien was staring at him now, his lips parted in surprise, his eyes as wide as a doe’s.

But then Lucien snapped back to consciousness.

“Whyever would you be afraid?”

Anatole’s heart nearly burst. He had shared too much already. “I… “

The truth is, when I’m around you, I forget what my place even is… Lucien, I am afraid of you because…

He couldn’t even admit to himself why he felt afraid.

“I don’t know.”

He settled for the most comfortable lie he could.

He had shared too much already.

The silence that followed felt infinite, even as Lucien nodded in understanding.

Then he reached slowly into his coat and withdrew something small: a handkerchief, pale blue, embroidered with a golden L.d.B.

His noble initials.

“Here,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, barely audible in the face of the rustling junipers. “For… Well, you have been working. You’ll need this.”

It was a flimsy excuse. They both knew it.

But Anatole reached out anyway, accepting the gift. And when their fingers brushed as he took the handkerchief, the world narrowed to that single point of contact.

Lucien’s hand was warm, his touch gentle.

Anatole looked up to see Lucien staring at him with an intensity that made his breath stop.

Neither of them moved.

Neither of them looked away.

They’d made their way to the far end of the parterre now, where Anatole had stopped before. From the dormer window, Jean-Charles screamed something incoherent.

They couldn’t help but chuckle again at the matter, all tension breaking in that moment.

Anatole swallowed again and tucked the handkerchief into his pocket with shaking hands. “I should… I should get back, before someone, ahem, notices.”

“Yes, of course,” Lucien answered, his voice hoarse.

Anatole turned to leave, then stopped and looked back. “The orchard… if you still wanted to walk sometime…”

He couldn’t finish. He couldn’t risk any more than that.

“Well, we’re walking now, are we not?”

Anatole nodded understandingly.

“Yes, I would love to. Any time you want,” Lucien corrected himself. “What am I saying? Yes, of course.” Then he nodded once, sharp and quick, and walked away before anything else could be said.

Anatole heard an exhale as he was walking along the parterre, long and shaky, but relieved, almost a laugh.

He himself could not help but do the same as he walked along the servants’ wing, back to work. Back to Fauvette, Morel, the other horses, and whatnot… back to François and the other stablehands… back to everyday life.

He could not have despised the thought more.

All he wanted to do now was rest with Lucien.

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Sure, it’s not as cold, which is a great plus. But what it is is humid. Stupid humid. Forget your coat, you’d be better off wearing a refrigerator. It could be 45 degrees down there and 80% humid, and the result is that it feels like 18. 18! That’s about the same as it gets up here! And you don’t even get any snow to show for it! Forget “about the same”, Georgia’s worse!

Sorry, you’ve caught me rambling. My name’s Teela.

I’m supposed to be writing for the Red and Black.

Something about Valentine’s Day at home for the editors, just a nice gesture to the people who make our little campus newspaper a thing. Go Dawgs. Woulda been even nicer if we hadn’t been assigned topics.

We’re on a bit of a tight deadline, as you can imagine. Me? Oh, fuck me, I’m doomscrolling at a tiny little table at a tiny little place called MainStreet Coffee. It’s in East Greenwich. Look it up. It’s next to Town Hall. It’s pretty cute, they’ve got this Italian cottagecore thing going on. Great coffees. And if my parents are at all reliable, there’s supposed to be even better espresso martinis starting at 5.

It’s 2:47 PM right now. I’ve been here since noon.

The article I’m supposed to be writing is titled - I shit you not - “Valentine’s Day: Why Single Students Aren’t Missing Out”. My editor, Jess, pitched it to me last week with this sick gleeful energy like she was doing me a favor. “You’re single, right? Perfect! You can write from experience!”

Gee, thanks, Jess. Really feeling the love.

I’ve got maybe two paragraphs written, and they’re both lies. The kind of upbeat, empowering bullshit that would make a Hallmark card look cynical by comparison. Being single on Valentine’s Day doesn’t mean being alone. It’s an opportunity for self-care! Treat yourself to your favorite meal! Spend time with the people who really matter!

Yeah, the people who really matter are all in Athens right now, presumably doing Valentine’s things with Valentine’s people.

My best friend, Sheila, hasn’t responded to any of my texts. Some friend.

Meanwhile, I’m up here in Rhode Island because my mom guilt-tripped me into “spending more time at home”.

Which apparently means sitting alone in a coffee shop avoiding her texts.

I should be working.

I put down my phone and started watching the door.

It’s this thing I do when I’m procrastinating. People-watching, but I make up a narrative as I go along. I first got into it in Gatlinburg after watching a Jim Gaffigan comedy special. Everyone who walks in gets a story. The woman in the peacoat with a wedding ring tan line? Newly divorced, treating herself to an overpriced latte as an exercise of her beautiful free will. Or maybe cheating. The chubby high school aged kid with the backwards baseball cap? Definitely supposed to be in class right now. The elderly man who orders black coffee and sits by the window? Waiting for someone who died thirty years ago and hasn’t let himself let go yet.

I know. I’m delightful company.

The barista with the nose ring refilled my coffee about twenty minutes ago without me asking. Nice girl.

“Still writing?” she’d asked, nodding at my laptop.

“Still… procrastinating,” I’d said.

She laughed like I was being funny instead of pathetic. “Refills are free if you’re staying awhile. Valentine’s crowd doesn’t show up till five.”

Wonderful. A countdown.

I should’ve said thank you. I think I just nodded.

Then the bell rang again. The door opened.

Two guys, late twenties maybe, they walked in. They had this kind of easy familiarity between them that makes you wonder if they’ve known each other since kindergarten or if they’re just that comfortable together. One was taller, with dark hair, wearing a Carhartt jacket that’s 100% seen better days. He held the door open for the other, who was already mid-sentence about something, his hands gesturing like he was conducting an invisible orchestra.

They’re both pretty cute, I guess.

They didn’t look around for a table. They just knew. That booth by the bay window, the one with the good light and the slightly wobbly table that no one else wants. They slid into it perfectly. Like I’m watching a living John Hughes movie.

I told myself I wasn’t going to eavesdrop.

I’m a liar.

The shorter one, with his glasses and flannel shirt and the kind of face that probably gets carded at bars even though he’s clearly pushing thirty, he pulled out his phone and started scrolling. “Okay, so if we leave Saturday morning, we can hit the Berkshires by lunch, then push north through the Greens -”

“Are we stopping at Foxwoods?” the tall one interrupted, shrugging out of his jacket.

“Do you want to stop at Foxwoods?”

“I mean, it’s on the way.”

“It’s absolutely not on the way.”

“It’s near the way.”

“It’s an hour detour.”

“An hour we could spend winning money.”

“An hour we could spend losing money, you mean.”

I went back to my screen. Typed a sentence in. Deleted it. Looked back at the beginning.

Being single on Valentine’s Day doesn’t mean being alone.

God, I’m gonna throw up.

“There’s a diner in Conway,” Flannel guy said, zooming in on his phone. “Four-point-eight stars.”

Carhartt guy leaned over to look at the screen.

“I don’t see any pictures. This better not be another fucking Swiss Burger King.”

I blinked.

Swiss Burger King.

I don’t even want to know. Actually, I do, but I’m not going to Google it in public. The way they laugh. Oh, I’ve heard that laugh before, it’s the kind that comes after someone mentions The Thing You Did That One Time.

I glanced at them again. The way Carhartt’s hand landed on Flannel’s shoulder when he laughed. The way Flannel leaned into it.

Oh.

OH.

Good for them, I guess.

I want to know the etymology of the naming. I mean, I guess everyone’s got their preferences.

I guess it makes sense, anyway. Valentine’s day. Two guys at a coffee shop in the middle of the afternoon, planning a road trip, laughing at inside jokes that sound vaguely pornographic. Of course they’re together.

Of course they are.

And of course they look happy about it.

I went back to my article. I stared at the cursor blinking on the empty page.

Being single on Valentine’s day doesn’t mean-

“Nope,” I muttered, and closed the laptop.

I wanted to leave. So bad.

But I couldn’t stop listening.

Not in a creepy way. Or - okay, maybe in a little bit of a creepy way, but in my defense, they weren’t exactly whispering. And I was right there, at the table next to them. What was I supposed to do, plug my ears?

Flannel Guy was scrolling through what looked like a Google Maps route, narrating potential stops. “We could do breakfast in Brattleboro, then cut over to - wait, didn’t we try that place last time?”

“The one with the weird bacon?”

“No, that was Burlington. I’m talking about the place with the… the the the the the, the pancakes! The ones that tasted like cardboard.”

“Oh, that place.” Carhartt shook his head. “Yeah, let’s skip it.”

“Agreed.”

“Can I get you guys anything?” The barista appeared at their table, notepad in hand, that same easy smile she’d given me earlier.

Customer service.

I tell you, MainStreet does it right.

“Uh, yeah -” Flannel looked up. “Can I get a cortado? And-” He glanced at Carhartt. “You want your usual?”

“My usual’s boring. I’ll try something new.”

“Alright.”

“I’ll get an Americano. Thanks.”

The barista scribbled it down and left. Flannel went back to his phone. Carhartt stretched, arms over his head, then settled back into his booth with this satisfied sigh like he’d just gotten home after a long drive.

“I’m glad we’re doing this,” he said.

Flannel didn’t look up from his phone, but he smiled. “Where else would I be?”

And that…

That wrecked me.

Where else would I be?

Thanks for calling me single in the worst fuckin’ way.

I thought about my friends back in Athens. The ones who’d made Valentine’s plans weeks ago, who’d sent apologetic texts when I mentioned coming home. Aw, sorry babe, we’re doing a couples thing, but we’ll miss you!

They’re probably not even thinking about me at all right now because they’re busy being with people, the way people are supposed to be on February the 14th.

And here were these two guys, spending their Valentine’s Day planning a road trip to nowhere in particular, and they looked more content than anyone I’d seen in weeks.

I hated it.

No, I didn’t hate it. I hated that I wasn’t in it. That I didn’t have a person who’d say Where else would I be like it was the most natural thing in the world.

The barista brought their drinks. Flannel immediately stole a sip of Carhartt’s Americano, made a face, and slid it back across the table.

“That doesn’t look good,” Carhartt said, not even annoyed.

“Just making sure it’s not poisoned, milord.”

“Pfffft! Twenty-three years I’ve known you, and you’ve never gotten used to not having milk in your coffee.”

Flannel smiled.

Twenty-three years.

Jesus.

I did the math. If they’d known each other for twenty-three years, that meant they were probably in… what, elementary school, Kindergarten, when they first met? And here they were, still doing this thing together, still planning stupid road trips to nowhere and stealing sips of each other’s coffee.

I looked down at my closed laptop and phone.

Fuck it, it’s too painful. I may as well open it back up and pretend to write again.

The Google Doc opened back up.

Being single on Valentine’s Day doesn’t mean being alone.

Except it kind of does, doesn’t it?

Because I wasn’t alone in the technical sense. I was surrounded by people. My parents were ten minutes away. I could text any number of acquaintances and probably get a response. But I was alone in the only way that mattered.

The way where nobody in the world was looking at me right now and thinking where else would I be?

And these two guys, this adorable couple, had exactly that.

Then Flannel’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it, frowned, and typed something back.

“Your mom again?” Carhartt asked.

“Yeah. She’s asking if I’m ‘doing anything special’ today.”

“What’d you tell her?”

“That I’m having coffee with my best friend and planning a road trip. She sent back a sad-face emoji.”

Carhartt snorted. “Of course she did.”

Flannel continued. “Oh, she’s just sent, ‘When are you going to get a girlfriend?’”

“Really?”

“She means well,” he said, typing something back.

“She thinks you’re lonely.”

“I’m here with you. Does that sound lonely?”

“You know what I mean.”

Flannel put his phone face-down on the table. “Yeah. I know.”

They sat in silence for a moment. A long, devastating silence.

Wait, so they’re not even together? Are they even fucking? What the hell is a Swiss Burger King then?

“So what do you think?” Flannel asked, turning his phone around to show Carhartt the route. “Three days, four if we take it slow?”

Carhartt squinted at the screen. “You’re really gonna make me sleep in the car again?”

“I’m not making you do anything. I’m just suggesting that motels are a capitalist scam and that we have a perfectly good-”

“Your Subaru is not ‘perfectly good’ for sleeping.”

“It has seats.”

“It has seats that don’t recline all the way.”

“Details.”

They were bickering now. They’d gone off to talk about music and podcasts and whether or not it was legal to sleep in a Subaru in a Walmart parking lot, and I realized:

Fuck.

They chose this? Over literally anything else?

I can’t do this anymore.

I closed my laptop.

I looked down at my hands.

And I tried very, very hard not to cry in a public coffee shop.

I was still sitting there, trying to will my tear ducts into submission, when I sneezed.

Not a cute sneeze by any means. A loud one. The kind that makes people three tables over look up from their phones.

“Bless you,” both of them said in unison, barely glancing my way before going back to their conversation.

“Thanks,” I managed, my voice coming out smaller and squeakier than I intended.

They didn’t respond. Didn’t even register me, really. Just went back to arguing about whether New Hampshire had better hiking than Vermont.

I should’ve felt invisible.

But I felt awful.

Because I’d been sitting here for the better part of an hour, constructing entire narratives about their lives, deciding they were a couple, then realizing they weren’t, analyzing their every word like I had any right to their story, and they didn’t even know I existed.

I was a ghost. A creepy, eavesdropping ghost who couldn’t even finish an article about why being single was totally fine, thank you very much.

I checked my phone one last time.

4:53 PM.

I managed, as discreetly as I could, to wipe away any latent tears I couldn’t force back in. There was no guarantee they wouldn’t come back.

The shift happened pretty quickly.

One minute, MainStreet Coffee was all muted conversations and the hiss of the espresso machine. The next, the door was opening every thirty seconds, to let in couples in dressy coats, groups of friends in too much perfume, someone’s boyfriend holding a bouquet of roses like a shield.

The lighting became warm and dim. Someone turned on smooth jazz. I looked over at whatever the hell the barista was doing. She’d swapped her apron for a black button-down. Suddenly, she stopped making lattes altogether and started making espresso martinis, just like my parents said they would.

I watched where Flannel and Carhartt were, and realized they’d already left.

I’d missed watching them leave.

And I realized I was the only person in the room sitting alone.

Everyone else had someone. A hand to hold. A drink to share. A reason to be here that wasn’t “avoiding my parents’ house and failing to write 800 words about self-care.”

The urge to stay had left me.

The urge to cry had not.

If two best friends talking about a road trip broke me, I couldn’t imagine dealing with a room full of actual couples.

I packed up my laptop, shoved my notebook into my bag, and went out the door.

The cold hit me the second I stepped outside.

It was a stupid, wet Rhode Island cold that laughs at your coat and seeps straight into your bones.

Fuck it.

Rhode Island may just take the cake for the worst cold weather.

I pulled my phone out and opened my messages. Not like there’s anything else I’m wont to do.

I scrolled past my mom’s texts, past the Red & Black group chat, and landed on my best friend’s name.

Sheila.

She’s probably having the time of her life down in Athens.

With her boyfriend.

With her two cats.

“Oh, shit, nevermind”, I whimpered out loud to myself as I sniffled and shed a tear, her apartment doesn’t allow cats, they had to stay with her parents. Nevermind.

I looked to my left and right for any eyes looking upon my misery. None to take note of.

Phew.

I typed: Miss you.

Then I deleted it.

I typed: Hope you’re having a good night.

Deleted that, too.

Finally, I just sent: Love you.

Yeah, she’d know what I meant.

I walked back towards my car, hands shoved deep in my pockets, and tried not to think about Swiss Burger Kings or road trips or twenty-three years of knowing exactly where you’d rather be.

But I failed.

The lump in my throat only worsened.

And I reminded myself they didn’t have partners, either.

Gay or not, at least Flannel’s mom thinks he’s lonely.

I tell you, if nothing else, I’m one for schadenfreude.

Nah, maybe that’s a lie, too.

Maybe I’ll make it up to myself and go out with Sheila the night I come back. Doesn’t have to be romantic.

I pulled out into the street.

Gave the sky my delightful middle finger as I turned up my heating to the max.

Yeah.

I won’t feel so alone when I get back to Sheila.

When I get back to the Red and Black.

When I get back home.

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© E. A. Morales. All rights reserved.

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Back to the Café

This post, as you probably know, is in relation to my ongoing historically inspired fantasy novel, When the Earth Moves On. I won’t elaborate too much further, I’ve got three more posts on the matter you can access from here, from latest to earliest:

An Update on the Novel

Back to the Novel

We Need to Talk About the Novel

At the time of writing this, I’ve made a little bit of progress on chapter 14. By the time this releases, I hope I’ll have finished it and gotten at least halfway through #15. I’ve got about 20 to go.

But I’ve also done a little bit of revision work close to the beginning of the story, and that’s what I decided to share today. Not chapter 1, mind you. It’s nowhere near exciting enough.

No.

For Substack, I figured you guys might want the inciting incident proper: Alcander’s fall into the ice. That’s chapter 2.5, gimmickally enough.

So I won’t waste any more of y’all’s time. Here’s the excerpt.

Chapter 2.5

Alcander’s face had begun to tingle against the wind.

Something about the site had been bothering him for hours now, though it paled in comparison to trying to rub what felt like sweat off his face, but in fact was a different itch altogether. It had tormented him for hours.

When he finally managed enough to pay attention to the sky, it had darkened with storm clouds, some leaves twirling frantically in the air.

The first gales of the season.

I’ve got a mind to send these workers home for the day. The storm will pass overnight, and we will resume work tomorrow.

And so, debating this with himself, he walked over to an outcropping in the rock that he’d been using as a seat. But he found, interestingly enough, that his backrest against the mountain had grown a hairline crack.

Immediately, he panicked.

He hadn’t heard the crack forming over the sounds of the workplace.

Worse still, the crack had turned to the left right where it met the seat and continued downward onto the gravel on the ground.

Then the crack expanded about five feet, not along the ground, but along the rock wall. It was expanding upwards from some focal point on the site. Alcander traced the line with his eye, discerning fragmented gravel from cracks in the rock, until he came upon the foundations of one of the aqueduct pillars.

No one had been working on that part of the worksite today, it had mostly been a transit space last traversed about twenty minutes ago by a mason bringing a basket of nails to a pulley lift on another of the foundation pillars.

The ground was hollow.

Praetor Marcus must have known the workplace was unsafe.

The bastard’s sentenced me to death!

He spun around to the workers on the other pillar, voice sharp with command, “Everyone off the platform, now! Leave your tools! Move!”

A few heads turned, rather confused. One or two obeyed instinctively, but everyone else hesitated.

Alcander made his way as far as possible from the focus of the crack, met with odd stares as a few more obeyed and made their way down. Pintus, for one. Foreman Quintus, for another, even old man Drusus, among a handful of others.

But it was too late.

It hadn’t occurred to Alcander to tell them where the focal point of the crack was.

One of the men hastily walked along the very place Alcander stood a minute earlier, and just as he passed through it, the rock gave.

A thunderous crack split the air. The ground shook. More workers panicked and tried to make their way down the scaffolding, some along the edges of the site, but others closer to the pillar.

They hadn’t noticed the error of the first.

The mountain groaned, and screams followed as bricks from the highest levels of the aqueduct and stones from higher along the mountain began to fall on the ground of the worksite. A few even hit the heads of workers, killing them at once.

Alcander stayed behind, near where he saw the edges of the site were safe and unsafe, shepherding the workers to safety. But it was too little, too late.

Another thunderous crack split the air, and the focal point of the crack spiderwebbed and gave way entirely.

The central section of the aqueduct tore loose from its moorings and plummeted down, slamming into the rocks below and splashing water skyward, where it froze in midair amid the gathering wind. Stone shattered like brittle chicken bones. Dust and snow exploded upward, though dampened by freezing water, as men scattered.

Back in the stables, Stella threw her head back with a wild cry. Her ears pinned themselves to her head as the ground trembled again. She reared, and the next instant, she charged out of the stable with a scream, tearing free of her reins, her empty saddle flapping behind her, slapping her scales in the wind. The other bels followed in panic, stampeding down the mountain road toward the city.

Toward safety.

Alcander was already running.

He leapt over a toppled support beam, dodging splintered wood and sliding shale. He caught one man’s wrist just in time and dragged him from a collapsing ledge, pushing him toward safety. Another worker had been pinned under a half-toppled wheelbarrow. Alcander heaved it off with a guttural cry, but the man didn’t move. Dead.

Just ahead, he noticed Sabina and Pintus with their legs trapped beneath a wooden beam. They were alive and screaming for his help. He rushed toward them as a shadow passed over him. He looked up, still running, as a large stone crashed in front of him and stopped him in his tracks.

The ground cracked open with a sickening groan.

And the very earth gave way.

Alcander plunged through darkness, through snapping ice worse than any windburn that may have once tormented him, through cold that stole the breath from his lungs. He hit frigid water and sank with terrifying speed. His limbs flailed, and his heart hammered upside his throat, threatening to burst from his chest entirely.

He opened his eyes. The chamber around him widened into a vast subterranean pocket, the color of a sterile midnight, silent as death itself. Jagged ice tore at his arms and at his chest. Other rocks and debris hit the water beside him, pummeling the water at terrifying speeds before the sheer volume of the water slowed them to a halt ten or twelve feet down.

He tried to swim.

But the water was already hardening, spreading in tendrils of frost-like veins across the surface. Cold air rushed in from somewhere above, whistling through new chasms in the rock as the storm gathered outside.

His strength became that of an infant in the womb.

His limbs slowed until they may as well have been rock.

Alcander could do nothing else but give up, and give in.

For what seemed an eternity, he slowly drifted off to a deep sleep.

But his last conscious flash came about when he nearly felt himself slip away into the mysterious lands beyond the veil.

And in the deepest machinations of his heart, he saw a flash.

A flash of fire, he supposed it might have been.

Then came an old man’s cry.

It was a name, or at least part of one. It didn’t much matter what the name was.

An understanding of a blade cut the name down.

And the dream ended.

Darkness closed over him.

And the storm began.

And just to placate the publishers, I’ll put it out there: this is still subject to further revisions. The market has not been saturated. This book can still make money. But more importantly, it can touch hearts and lives. I do sincerely hope people find parts of themselves reflected in Alcander, in Irenaea, in Florina, in Theo, in Catalina, in Balthus, in Sophia, and yes, even in Praetor Marcus.

If you want to see how we got here, you’re gonna have to wait until the book comes out. Unless you’re an agent or a publisher. Or you specifically ask to beta-read my unfinished, ongoing first draft.

Again, thank you all so much for continuing to support me. God bless you all, and for Pete’s sake, we’ve really got to do something about this whole voter extortion and terror campaign in Minneapolis known to the masses as ICE. Go to protests. Assemble en masse. Fight with your ballots. I know this isn’t technically the place to say that kind of stuff, but the situation’s gotten so bad it’s all I can think about. Everyone must focus their energy on stopping the machine before the United States is eaten alive.

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I finished the episode early. Like, really early. I’ve scheduled it to release on February 13th so far, but I could always send it right now if you guys are up for it. I’m still super on schedule with my other novel.

The past Sunday had been the first she could say was truly extraordinary.

For her lack of propensity to gossip, without even so much as her knowledge, she had been admitted to the Duc’s and Gaspard’s circle of watchers around the Château, tasked with observing the pianist Julien and whatever he was up to.

The very next day, Émeric, of all people, decided to have the circle meet without Gaspard or the Duc. Émeric, the strictest and most disciplined rule-follower in the whole Château, at the head of a mutiny. And worse still was the fact that he could justify it: he believed Gaspard and the Duc had been hiding something from them, that being the Duc’s true identity as the elder brother of the King, or something or other..

It wasn’t until Thursday that Gaspard found out while the circle was out in Paris looking for Bastien, who had been shot in the foot by bandits in an attempt to deliver a letter summoning Claude, the archivist.

The circle hadn’t met since, as far as Marguerite was aware. She had only recently heard that Apolline had renamed it the “Billiard Court”.

Marguerite rather liked that name.

But today, Marguerite could safely say, was just as strange as the past Sunday on which she caught the old rule-following Émeric sneakily listening in on Julien’s confession from the outside of the stained-glass window of the chapel.

Today, at the Holy Mass, was the first day she could remember that her father did not play the organ.

The cadence was different. The song was one she had never heard him play before. She looked behind her, and it was as though her worst nightmare had come true.

Julien was at the organ, stoic-faced in a pink tailcoat she didn’t think he had the money to buy, playing her father’s instrument.

Her heart dropped.

She gulped, turning slowly back to Colombe as the congregation began to sing the Kyrie.

She tried to focus her mind on the prayers, on the words coming out from her mouth, Kyrie, Eleison, Christe Eleison… but the words felt hollow.

Julien’s rendition of the Gloria was technically splendid, but different. It was not her father’s. It did not have his soul.

She half expected to find some secret message in it.

All throughout the Mass his very presence tormented her. She forced herself to stand for the Gospel, sit for the homily, kneel for the consecration. Every moment felt like an hour in itself, time enough for a thousand Masses and more to be held. Père Colombe’s voice kept steady as he lifted the Host for all to see, but Marguerite noticed an unusual quaver in his hands.

Père Colombe was a young priest. His hands never quavered unless there were something to disturb his peace.

Perhaps it was reverence. Or perhaps she was imagining it. Perhaps Julien had gotten himself in her mind. Everything felt wrong.

By the time communion came, her mind was racing, her own hands were shaking with anticipation. She tucked them quietly in her lap, watching the congregants file forward. She always joined them, and she should have done so this time as well, but she could not move her legs. If she stood up, if she walked to the altar, she felt she might break into a run instead, might rush out to find her father. Might rush out and break through the very stained-glass window Émeric listened to Julien’s confession through. Oh, how she wished she had never been brought into all this. How she wished she had been left to live her perfectly ordinary life…

“Ite Missa Est.”

“Deo Gratias.”

Marguerite startled.

Have I missed communion?

She must have been more distracted than she thought. She forced herself to listen quietly to the Gospel of John. When it was done, she did not even sing the closing hymn as she usually did. She sat staring at the altar even as everyone else filed out. Only then did she hear Julien behind her walking out. She stood up and half-turned, expecting to catch him and ask him what was going on before he escaped, but he had already walked out without a trace.

Well, Julien is out. I had better ask Pére Colombe.

She left her pew, genuflected before the gold-and-silver tabernacle, and left the chapel.

Père Colombe was leaving the vestry and going out to greet the outgoing congregation for a moment, as he usually would before going back inside to tidy the altar. But she was meek. She could not compete with the outgoing throng greeting the priest, and so she decided to wait it out inside to meet him in private.

After all, it was a rather private matter.

But of course, today was different. Colombe reentered early, dripping with anxiety, his countenance the gravest she had ever seen it.

“Marguerite, oh, thank God, I needed to talk to you.”

“Père Colombe! Thank God! What happened to my father? Why was he not at the organ today?”

“That is precisely what I came to talk to you about. I should have come to you before the Mass, but I was overcome with anxiety, if you’ll forgive me.”

“Père Colombe! All is forgiven. Is he ill? Is he injured? God forbid, is he dead?”

“He is ill with something, but I cannot for the life of me discern what.”

“Is it a fever? I can make him a broth, or-”

“No, it is not a fever.”

Only then she realized they were walking down the aisle. Colombe offered her a seat at the front pew, and so she sat down.

She sighed.

“Then what is it?”

He paused for a moment, considering his words carefully.

“I cannot say for sure. Perhaps it is best if I tell you what happened.”

Marguerite gave no response save for a nod.

Père Colombe considered his words once again.

“This morning, I did not find your father in the chapel. He was pacing in his room, muttering… something. Incoherent nonsense. I went to visit him, thinking perhaps he had overslept, though you know well how rarely that happens.

“When he greeted me, he did not seem to recognize me at all. He called me names, terrible names, he threw books at me. Books and candles and whatever was nearby.”

“What sort of names?”

“I shall not repeat them for you. It would defile the chapel.”

Marguerite’s breath caught once again.

Her father was the gentlest man she knew. In all her life, he had never once raised his voice in anger, much less spoken an unkind word to anyone.

“That’s not him- he wouldn’t-”

“And yet he did.”

And so they sat for a moment, simply staring at the altar and the tabernacle.

What in the world is going on?

“Would you like to come with me? I am going to visit him once again.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“But whyever so? Did he not abuse you? Throw things at you and call you terrible names?”

“You are his daughter. Perhaps he will treat you differently. But I have only read about such cases as these in books… Marguerite, I believe your father may be possessed.”

“Possessed? No, that cannot be. My father would never-”

“Marguerite, it would not be your father’s fault if he were. I believe it would explain a great many things.”

“But possessed? How can that be? Why my father?”

“It could happen to anyone, my child. It could even happen to you and me.”

“No, no, no, no, no. Not you. Anyone but you.”

“Do not worry about such things now. You are anxious, and rightly so. Let us go and visit your father. He is in his room.”

“Alone?”

“No, no, I asked Émeric to keep watch on him for me,” said Père Colombe before sighing. “I do hope he has not been attacked as well.”

And so the pair left the chapel and walked along the gravel courtyards and gardens, unable to take in the chaffinches chirping in the junipers above, the cloud that looked like a baby alone amid the firmament blue.

In the distance came the sounds of the château coming to life after the Mass: servants moving along the halls and in the gardens, horses in the stableyard, the faint clatter of dishes being prepared for the midday meal.

None of it felt right.

Not when Marguerite’s father was like this.

“How long have you been working with Gaspard?” came Père Colombe’s voice, startling Marguerite out of her inner world once again.

“Pardon?”

“Gaspard. And Sœur Apolline. You have been spending more time with them of late, and last Thursday, I heard you went with them to Paris.”

His tone was utterly gentle.

“That’s unusual, isn’t it? You’ve always preferred the gardens to the city.”

Marguerite hesitated.

Is the Billiard Court not meant to be a secret?

But Père Colombe was a priest. Perhaps if he treated this as a confession he would not give away any secrets. He already knew whatever it was Julien was confessing. If anyone could be trusted, it was him.

“The Duc asked us all to watch someone,” she said carefully. “To see what they were up to.”

“Julien,” he answered assuredly.

Marguerite nodded.

Colombe sighed, rubbing his temples. “I wondered if that was it. When I asked him to play this morning, he seemed… surprised, even suspicious, as though I had an ulterior motive.” He paused. “Do I want to know what you’ve discovered about him?”

“Not really,” Marguerite managed a weak smile. “It’s complicated, and none of it makes much sense, even to us. I believe we invited him to join us and told him to cut ties with his other employers, but he evidently has not done so.”

Colombe nodded.

“Does the Duc know you went to Paris?”

“Gaspard told him afterward. We were looking for Bastien. He had been sent to deliver a letter, and never came back. We found him at the Hôtel-Dieu, attended to by the Augustinian Sisters. He had been shot in the foot by bandits at the Porte Saint-Honoré.”

Colombe’s eyebrows rose. “Bastien was shot?”

“Only in the foot.”

By then, they had reached the doors of the service quarters. Colombe opened the door for her, she muttered thanks, and stepped onto the reddish tiled floor of the vestibule.

“Only in the foot, you say, but shot nonetheless. Thank the Lord he is being attended to at the Hôtel-Dieu, otherwise he would have died of an infection by now,” rambled Colombe. That earned a few stares from the servants passing them by on the hallway and up the stairs.

Marguerite could not find it in her to say anything else before they arrived at her father’s door: the last one on the left before the garde-meuble at the end of the corridor.

She wished she could have been in their old room at Clermons. She knew every inch of that space by heart: the warped floorboard near the window, the crack in the ceiling plaster that looked like Jupiter’s thunderbolts, the trunk at the foot of the bed where he kept his sheet music, even the chest by the door where she kept her costumes. She had wanted to be an actress as a little child.

Now, she laughed at the notion. She wasn’t sure she could have handled the fame.

But now, they stood in front of this new door at this new Bellevue. Again, it was clean and beautiful, but it wasn’t hers. Not the way she remembered it.

However, she was startled by the fact that Émeric was standing by the door, his face drawn, showing relief at their sight. She had not noticed him until she arrived.

“Père Colombe. Marguerite.” He nodded to each of them in turn. “He has been quiet for the last hour. I believe he may be sleeping.”

“Good,” said Colombe. “That’s good. You may go now, Émeric. Thank you for watching over him.”

Émeric hesitated, glancing at Marguerite. “Are you sure? I can stay, if you need-”

“No, thank you. We will be quite alright,” said Colombe. “Go. Rest. You may join us at the next Mass in a few hours.”

“Thank you,” replied Émeric, again hesitatingly, as he walked away, looking over his shoulder back at them as he made his way down the hall.

Once he had gone, Colombe turned to Marguerite and opened the door for her again. “After you.”

The room was dim in the late-morning light, the curtains drawn. It took Marguerite a moment to adjust her eyes, and when she did, they were devastated.

The room was a mess. Objects strewn about on the floor as though they’d been thrown, candle wax melted and neglected on the windowsill, books ripped to shreds. Jean-Charles sat hunched at the foot of the bed, his hands gripping his knees. His hair, usually either combed or under a wig, was in violent disarray around his face, and his shirt was torn at its collar, as though he’d tried to rip it off.

And his eyes were the most beastly yet. They darted around the room like those of a trapped animal, wide, unfocused, terrified.

“Papa?” Marguerite took a step forward.

His head snapped towards her, but there was no recognition in his gaze. Only fear and emptiness.

“Who are you?” His voice was hoarse and strange. “What do you want?”

“Papa, it’s me, Marguerite. Your daughter.”

He guffawed. “Daughter?”

“Yes, papa, don’t you remember-”

“I don’t have a daughter yet! I am not even married. Élise won’t marry me if you keep bothering us, do you hear? She won’t!”

Élise.

That had been her mother’s name. The mother who had died giving birth to her nearly twenty years ago.

“Monsieur Favreau,” Colombe said, stepping forward. “We are here to help you.”

Her father’s expression twisted into rage.

“You,” he spat. “I know what you want. You think I don’t see it? You want to steal her from me, take Élise for yourself!”

“No one is going to take anyone,” Colombe assured. “We only want-”

Her father lunged. He moved faster than Marguerite thought possible at his age, snatching a candlestick from the floor and hurling it at Colombe’s head. The priest ducked, and the candlestick struck the doorframe with a thunderous crack.

“Get out! GET OUT!” Her father was on his feet now, grabbing anything within reach: a clay cup, a shoe, a book. He threw them wildly at Colombe, his face contorted with fury. “You won’t have her! She’s mine! MINE!”

A rosary flew across the room, hitting Colombe right on the chin before he could lift his arms in self-defense. It wasn’t hard by any means, being a string of beads, but the whiplash must have stung.

“Papa, stop!” Marguerite cried, but he could not hear her. He was ranting, his words tumbling over one another in a torrent of jealousy and paranoia.

“Always lurking around, always watching her. You think I wouldn’t notice? You think I’m blind? I see you, priest! I see your scheming! You will never have her! Never! I’ll kill you first! I’ll-”

He grabbed the nightstand by the bed and tried to lift it, but his strength gave out. He collapsed to his knees, gasping, his hands clawing at the floor.

“Élise,” he whimpered. “Where are you, Élise? Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.”

Marguerite felt tears streaming down her face. This was not her father. This was a shell of a man, a demon hiding the man who raised her, who once taught her to see God’s beauty in the smallest flower.

Colombe moved slowly toward him, keeping his voice low and soothing, taking out his vial of holy water from his pocket. “Jean-Charles, we are here to help you, but you must let us.”

Her father looked up, and for a moment, Marguerite thought she saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes. But it was quickly gone.

“GET OUT!” He screamed.

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Next Episode

Back to Directory

Previous Episode

But I guess the solution would be for the people who know to ignore it.

Here goes:

I’ve been working on my novel, When the Earth Moves On, since January 2025. I have a post uploaded already for the basics of the world, and all the main characters involved, which I’ll put links to here:

We Need to Talk About the Novel

And here:

Back to the Novel

But around mid-July, I was in a rough place, emotionally speaking, and so I decided to switch gears and start a Substack. I had been looking for community, and Substack was one of the best places to find that.

I continue to thank all of you every day for being there for me when I needed it most.

But I got carried away with my flagship series, “Château de Bellevue”, and it ended up exceeding the length of this novel I’d written so far. All of a sudden, the finish date shifted from that October to that December, and now, to this upcoming April, if I pick up the pace.

I wasn’t wrong in how much I would write overall: I’ve still gotten about 118,000 words in this year, it’s just separated across, like, six different projects. And that’s not counting essays, papers, projects, and discussions from university! (Nor is it counting non-literature Substack posts 😅)

But around October, I decided I would put the focus back on my novel, because that was something tangible I could get traditional publishers to publish, and I think it’s got some good messages for the world. So I put Bellevue off to the side, no matter how much I love it, and I started writing.

That didn’t go so well at first. I got burnt out from university things, for the most part. But just a few days ago, on Christmas, I finally managed to finish… Chapter 12. The same one I told you guys about in my last post. I had been stuck on it for two and a half months.

Granted, a hearty chunk of that time I spent decompressing on Minecraft. I’ve got a nice little forever world going.

But Chapter 12 ended up being the longest chapter of the book, at over 5,400 words, and I think it’s some of the best 5,400 words I’ve written so far. It involves a dark night at the Praetor’s villa, a character we hadn’t seen for (technically) nine years, and a gripping, yet heartbreaking, escape scene. Trauma abounds.

Now, I’ve started work on Chapter 13, which involves a bad hangover, a hard day’s work with a new apprentice, and an angry mother. Let’s hope it’s not another 5,400 words.

But that’s enough of me and my work. Let’s have some fun!

Several months ago, I made some playlists for each of the main characters, along with a dream casting if ever HBO takes it on as a prestige fantasy series. I won’t bog you down with more details and words, so here you go:

Alcander:

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/alcanders-playlist/pl.u-9N9L2GyI1ayaW8A

Dream casting: Oscar Isaac (after a six-month clean bulk)

Irenaea:

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/irenaeas-playlist/pl.u-d2b05VjsL4G4XZy

Dream casting: Eva Green

Florina:

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/florinas-playlist/pl.u-e98lGLqFadZdEkb

Dream casting: 13-year-old Thomasin McKenzie

Theo:

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/theos-playlist/pl.u-38oWZlWtYLZLBXa

Dream casting: 14-year-old Timothée Chalamet

Catalina:

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/catalinas-playlist/pl.u-DdAN8Pau0qNqXWK

Dream casting: Rachel Weisz

The Praetor:

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/the-praetors-playlist/pl.u-76oNlPytvGqGYg1

Dream casting: Mads Mikkelsen

Sophia:

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/sophias-playlist/pl.u-mJy8130CNDYD0o4

Dream casting: Amandla Stenberg

Balthus:

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/balthuss-playlist/pl.u-V9D7mgah36j6Nyb

Dream casting: 21-year-old Andrew Koji

Again, thank you all so much for being here with me. Y’all are the best subscribers, and every day you guys make my heart full.

Until next time.

Episode 31 of Château de Bellevue, The Priest in Peril, comes out January 13th.

The next novel update comes January 28th.

I’ll see you guys then.

Much love,

Eduardo

Oh! And I almost forgot: Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

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“Et cum spiritu tuo,” responded Claude Dervaux, archivist of the Château de Bellevue, his voice muffled out by the collective response of the great crowd of layfolk basking in the polychrome morning light from the stained glass windows above, watching the sea of incense billow out from the sanctuary as it fragranced the entire space with holy frankincense and myrrh.

“Initium sancti Evangelii secundum Joannem,” began the Cardinal. But Claude wasn’t about to stay seated for the final gospel.

“Gloria tibi, Domine,” he recited with the congregation as he pocketed his rosary, put on his hat, shifted to a more comfortable position, and crouched up. For the past two months, his arrangement every Sunday was to discreetly get up from his seat and make his way to the front of the nave and to the transept during the gospel of John, with about four others, to meet with the celebrating priest at the end of the Mass to receive their pyxes and, with him, begin making their rounds across the city to administer the consecrated Host to their sick relatives.

By now, he had learned their names and become acquainted with them. Jean-Michel, crouch-walking just a few feet ahead in the side aisle in his pink tailcoat, was caring for his father with dropsy; Paul, in the navy coat, had a grandmother with consumption; Lambert, a wider and shorter man in a green coat and feathered hat, had a wife with the plague. He was a newer addition to the group. Sylvie, in her yellow dress and tall hat, had a mother with a wasting internal malady.

He himself; his mother was at home with consumption, like Paul’s grandmother. A tragically ordinary thing it was - he wasn’t sure he could name anyone who could honestly say they didn’t know at least one person afflicted with consumption. He was only grateful to be able to be there for his mother, Anne, while she needed it.

But if it took her two more months to finally give up her renowned stew recipes, he wasn’t sure his patience could hold out much longer.

Finally, all five of the group were discreetly seated in the transept, awaiting the celebrant: the dashing young Père Duval - though they’d all known him long enough that he allowed them the liberty of calling him Père Émile. Within a minute or two, he arrived, holding five pyxes sandwiched between his fingers.

He inclined his head as Père Émile approached. As he was handed his pyx, he thanked the priest in a subdued, somber whisper.

Émile only smiled as he moved on to hand the rest of the pyxes to the other four ministers as hurriedly as he could; he had to be back in the sanctuary before anyone noticed he was gone to accompany the Cardinal and his aides in the departing procession.

He turned the pyx over in his palm, its polished metal catching the morning sun streaming through the lancet windows, obtaining for it a measure of nigh-imperceptible warmth. The warmth of home; the faint scent of stew wafting up from the kitchen, a memory of her life’s labor crystallized in the palm of his hand.

Or perhaps he was just hungry.

He exchanged glances with Jean-Michel and Sylvie; a single look was enough to convey the question, “How are you doing? How was the Mass?”

And their kind looks in return gave the answer. Both relieved and a tad anxious, Claude nodded and faced back to the sanctuary, where the clergy and their aides were beginning to step down and bow before the altar while the organ and the choir burst out in the exulting symphony of the closing hymn.

Who was he not to sing it alongside them?

So he stood up and belted the words being sung from on high and, when it was done, he gave his fellow lay ministers a glance to make sure they were all ready to come with; and they were, and so they left the cathedral alongside the throng that was the people of Lyon, in search of Père Émile, who would join them as they made their rounds.

In a rather unusual arrangement, due to their growing friendship, they had only three weeks ago agreed to visit one another’s homes while making their rounds to give their ailing relatives the consecrated Host, as a single large group. Their families were, naturally, rather confused at this, thinking their loved ones had joined some sort of caroling troupe, but eventually things were clarified and, in due time, they’d come to expect the company, even seeming rather concerned one day when Lambert was unable to make it. They’d talked the arrangement over with the Cardinal when the matter was brought to him by the celebrating priest, and he thought it hilarious, seeing no reason to oppose it. And so they were allowed to continue as they pleased.

As the quintet made their way out the door and into the square, Paul was the first to speak.

“Well, then - Claude, I believe it is your turn to go first this time around, non?”

Paul said it lightly, but not without intent. There was always intent in these turns; there had to be. Whoever went first set the tone for the afternoon: whether it would be solemn, awkward, hopeful, or even dreadful. They’d learned the hard way when they let Lambert go first and his wife was only in the early stages of the plague, utterly inconsolable about the matter.

Claude adjusted his grip on the pyx and nodded. “Oui, she’s not far. Croix-Rousse way.” He hesitated, then added, “And she has been… alert today.”

Jean-Michel winced sympathetically. “That is either very good news or very bad news.”

“Both,” Claude said, without quite smiling.

They set off together through the square, five figures moving with the current of departing parishioners to meet with Père Émile once he’d divested himself of his vestments and his ceremony. The city had already begun its Sunday transformation: shutters opening, vendors calling, the smell of bread and roasting meats blooming into the air as though the Mass itself had unlocked something and let it loose; the very antidote to Pandora’s box.

The walk along the riverside was filled with yet more jokes and banter and stories and updates. Once, they even stopped to buy some sweets from a vendor.

Anne’s building stood just far enough from the river that the smell of fish vendors was just barely occluded by the smell of fresh-baked bread. Claude, once again, felt that familiar tightening in his chest as they approached; the moment when duty ceased to be general and became sharply, painfully particular.

“You need not all come up,” he said, pausing at the threshold. “She tires easily.”

He wasn’t fully sure what he was saying. It was his first time going, well, first.

“And deprive her of an audience?” Sylvie said, arching an eyebrow. “Cruel.”

Père Émile smiled. “They will keep to the wall. I promise.”

Up the narrow stair they went, footsteps softened by long habit. Anne’s door was ajar; she never closed it anymore. Claude had stopped insisting weeks ago.

The room smelled faintly of herbs - thyme, bay, something peppery. Anne lay propped on pillows, her hair braided tightly as ever, cheeks flushed with the fever that refused to resolve itself into anything decisive. Her eyes, however, were sharp.

“You’re late,” she said.

Claude glanced instinctively at the sunlit window. “Only just.”

“You used to come faster.”

That was true. He swallowed it. “I brought company.”

Her gaze moved past him, assessing the group in one efficient sweep. “You always do now,” she said. “Very fashionable of you.”

Père Émile stepped forward gently. “Madame Dervaux. Pax Christi.”

“Et cum spirito tuo,” Anne replied at once, reflex intact if nothing else.

Père Émile inclined his head, the faintest smile of approval touching his mouth. Claude knelt beside the bed at once and opened the pyx in his hands.

The priest removed his stole from beneath his cloak and let it fall into place, the green silk catching briefly on the edge of the bedframe. He made the sign of the Cross slowly, deliberately, as though drawing a boundary the illness itself could not cross.

“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”

“Amen,” Anne said, her voice thin but steady.

The priest took the small vial from his satchel and touched it lightly to his fingers. He did not linger over the anointing, only the barest sign of it at her brow and hands, accompanied by a murmur of prayer too low for Claude to catch in full. He recognized fragments: “infirmitate… misericordia… levet Dominus.”

Claude watched closely. He always did; he couldn’t help himself noting how Émile avoided pressing too hard against her skin, how he kept his movements economical, sparing her strength.

This is less theology than it is common courtesy.

Finally, Père Émile turned, ceding the center of the moment without surrendering its gravity. “Claude,” he said quietly.

Claude raised the Host, his hands steady despite the sudden tightness in his throat.

“Ecce Agnus Dei,” Émile intoned. “Ecce qui tollit peccata mundi.”

“Domine, non sum digna ut intres sub tectum meum,” Anne replied, breath hitching only slightly. “Sed tantum dic verbo, et sanabitur anima mea.”

Claude raised the Host once more. “Corpus Christi,” he said.

“Amen.”

And he placed the Host on her tongue with a care born of long familiarity, of spoons lifted to reluctant mouths, of broths cooled just enough, of nights measured by coughing fits rather than hours.

The room fell quiet in the most reverent way, in the way Claude had once imagined silence in holy places, only softer, like a fire settling into coals. Père Émile stood at the bedside a moment longer, his hand resting lightly on the coverlet.

“May the Lord Jesus Christ be with you,” he said, this time less a formula than it was an assurance. “May He give you peace, and if it be His will, strength for the day.”

Anne closed her eyes. Claude could not tell whether in prayer or exhaustion. Perhaps the distinction no longer mattered.

Père Émile made the sign of the Cross once more, stepped back, and allowed the space to become a room again, with its faint smell of herbs, onions, and old wood.

Claude placed the Host’s empty pyx in his pocket and rose slowly, already calculating how long she might keep the water down this afternoon, whether the cough had worsened since morning.

The priest lingered only long enough to gather his stole, his gaze lifting briefly to the crucifix above the bed, as though to mark the matter concluded, entrusted, no longer his to solve.

For a moment, Claude said nothing.

Then, softly, “How is your breathing today?”

“Annoying,” she said. “Persistent. Like a son.”

Jean-Michel coughed to hide a laugh.

Claude allowed himself the smallest exhale. “And your appetite?”

She eyed him. “You did not bring parchment.”

“No.”

“So you are still hopeful,” she said.

It was not a question.

Claude rose slowly. “I am patient.”

“That is worse,” Anne replied. “Hopeful men get angry. Patient ones wait forever.”

“Not forever,” he said quietly. “Only until you decide.”

Her eyes slid to his pocket, where the pyx now hid.

“You think this,” she gestured faintly, “will soften me.”

“I think,” Claude said carefully, “that grace works whether we admit it or not.”

Anne snorted. “You sound like a priest.”

Père Émile, from the wall, said, “We do say that sometimes.”

She looked at him, appraising. “And do you think the Lord cares whether my stews survive me?”

The room held its breath.

“No,” Claude responded. “I think you do, and you are afraid of what happens to them once they are no longer exclusively yours.”

Her mouth tightened.

“Go on, then,” she said. “Before I tire.”

Claude stood. The group began to retreat, murmuring farewells. At the door, Anne spoke once more.

“Claude.”

He turned.

“Next Sunday,” she said, voice thin but resolute, “bring paper.”

Claude bowed his head. Outside, the city rang with bells.

So the siege continues.

The group did not speak as much as they went.

At Jean-Michel’s father’s house, the air was thick and sweet with stagnation. The old man lay propped on cushions, his legs swollen to grotesque proportions beneath the blanket, skin stretched to a glassy shine. Dropsy made a mockery of dignity; Claude thought that if God had wanted to test patience, He could not have devised a more effective method.

Père Émile prayed longer there. He rested his hand on the man’s shoulder as though weight itself were a thing that could be transferred. Jean-Michel hovered uselessly at the foot of the bed, his face fixed in filial helplessness Claude recognized too well.

At Paul’s grandmother’s room, the windows were flung wide. Consumption demanded air, or so everyone said. The old woman’s cough tore through the prayers like a blade through silk, and Père Émile paused more than once, waiting, never hurrying her. Claude admired that about him: he knew when the rite must bend to the body, and when the body must bend to the rite.

Lambert’s house they approached with caution.

His wife lay isolated in an upper room, the door marked with a crude chalk cross that did nothing to reassure anyone. The smell of vinegar stung Claude’s nose. No one touched her without hesitation, not even Lambert himself. Père Émile did not remove his stole there, only laid it lightly across his arm, administered the Host swiftly, and spoke the blessing with a firmness that bordered on command.

Sylvie’s mother was the strangest of them all. No coughing, no swelling, no sores, only a diminishment of sorts, as though something essential were being quietly withdrawn. She smiled too much, spoke too gently, and thanked them all with a voice that sounded already halfway elsewhere. Père Émile looked rather unsettled when they left, his brow furrowed as though theology had failed him a little.

By the time they parted ways, the afternoon had grown thin and pale. The group dissolved at street corners with murmured farewells, Père Émile vanishing toward the presbytery with his collar turned up, folding the morning away into memory.

Claude returned home alone.

Anne was awake when he entered, more upright than he had left her, a folded letter resting on the coverlet like an object of real consequence.

“You’ve had post,” he said, already moving toward her.

“It came while you were out,” she replied.

He reached for it. She did not hand it over.

Instead, she turned it once in her fingers, watching him with that maddening, half-knowing calm she had cultivated his whole life long.

“It’s from a Sœur Apolline.”

Claude stopped.

For a moment, only a moment, his mind went entirely blank. Then everything arrived at once: a tightening in his chest, a dry heat behind the eyes, the absurd impulse to laugh, to swear, to kneel.

Apolline.

Twelve years of marginal notes, inventories corrected in a sharper hand than his own, letters that arrived unbidden and always precisely when he had convinced himself he could manage without her. A woman who did nothing lightly, least of all write.

“She had no business sending to me,” he said at last, the words clipped and defensive, but already defeated.

Anne’s mouth curved, pleased in a way that was not kind. “She says otherwise.”

He took the letter, his fingers betraying him with the faintest tremor. The seal was intact. Of course it was. Apolline never rushed, never presumed.

“Well,” he said, exhaling through his nose. “Let’s see what she says.”

Anne watched him closely, her eyes bright with something that might have been triumph.

Claude himself wanted to cry.

The siege has been lost.

He walked to the desk, took out the letter opener, and broke the seal.

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“Madame d’Aguesseau,” he said, bowing because that was what one did when cornered politely.

“Monsieur de Belval”, she replied, curtsying just deeply enough to satisfy convention while her eyes, steady, intelligent, and faintly amused, spoke the deeper truth for her.

A minuet had begun somewhere behind them. The rhythm forced his words into short, measured phrases, as though the orchestra itself demanded etiquette.

“Do you enjoy the music?” he asked.

“Not when it is used as a background for commerce,” she said lightly. “Do you?”

“I… prefer when it ends.”

She laughed, a quick, bellish tone that might have been genuine when paired with the little hand-flutter she gave, though he suspected it was all well-rehearsed. “You are honest. That’s refreshing.”

He felt himself relax, foolishly encouraged, and reached for something clever to say. “Honesty is the only currency left untaxed.”

Too sharp. He saw it land wrong, a hair’s breadth past wit. Her hand fluttered once at her side once again, that same little motion he’d noticed from earlier. Had she drawn a line? Was he meant to cross it?

Lucien decided he’d try to recover.

“Forgive me; that sounded better in my head.”

Her laughter this time was softer, almost kind. “Then we have an affliction in common. I can’t help but say the wrong thing perfectly.”

He smiled despite himself, uncertain whether he was being comforted or studied. Around them, the mirrors expanded the space into a hall twice the size and windows on the other end, opening up to a world just as big as this one.

Anatole does not want me…

I do not want this Henriette…

But perhaps someone on the other end of the mirror?

Henriette followed his gaze and moved herself in front of it, breaking his escapist focus.

“Hello? What happened? Have you spotted someone?”

“Hmm? Oh, I, uh… pardon, I lost myself for a second.”

“If you are not enjoying the festivities, you can tell me. I am open.”

He certainly wasn’t, but he wasn’t about to tell this girl that. She hadn’t earned his trust. Would she tell her mother? His parents? The king?

“No, don’t worry about that, I-”

And then he spotted his father near the curtain.

He frowned.

“We’re being watched.”

She arched a brow. “We’re always being watched. What is your point? Do you wish to retire somewhere more… private?”

He simply assented with his lips, and Henriette rolled her eyes and took his hand to sashay them both out of their old circle and towards a more private place, near the corner of the room.

Henriette leaned closer, speaking just above the rhythm once they arrived. “You dislike this, don’t you?”

“I’m terrible at it,” he confessed.

“Dancing? You’re not half bad, but I see discomfort in your eyes.”

“Pretending.”

Her eyes widened, as if she had just realized she were looking at a small child and not a young man. “Then I wish you luck in all your future endeavors, because the court is not for you. But I will commend you this much - you survived this ball so far, have you not?”

“Barely.”

Henriette’s fan fluttered once before going still. “Barely,” she said, tilting her head in that graceful half-pose that turned concern into performance. “You’ve endured worse, surely?”

“I’m not certain,” Lucien said. “Most disasters end more quickly.”

Her lips curved. “Ah, but they rarely serve champagne.”

They moved along the edge of the crowd. Henriette inclined her head toward a passing duke whose sash had slipped crooked. “Observe him. He thinks himself invisible when he adjusts it, though half the room is watching. Vanity can blind more effectively than candlelight.”

Lucien managed a smile. “A comforting thought, given how much candlelight we have,”

“Indeed. Though some faces require it” Her tone was so light that he wasn’t sure whether she meant to insult him or the passing duke.

For a minute or so, they listened in silence. The violins climbed, trembled, and fell away again. Henriette seemed content to fill the space between words with the tapping of her fan.

“Tell me, Monsieur de Belval,” she said at last, “are you always this grave, or is it my conversation that oppresses you?”

“I was told you were fond of honesty,” he said.

“Fondness is not endurance,” she replied easily.

He bowed his head slightly, conceding the hit.

Henriette looked out across the mirrored hall, her eyes reflecting the chandeliers. “It’s a cruel trick, isn’t it? To see a whole new world one could enter, only to have all your attempts at entry blocked by your own reflection.”

He followed her gaze, dumbfounded that she might have come to the same conclusion as himself - of the mirror as a form of escape.

Are we truly so alike? Could it be that we are connected?

I hope not.

“You speak like a philosopher,” he said.

She laughed once again, but it wasn’t her usual quick, bellish titter: it was a single, dismissive snort. “Heaven forbid. They are the only people less amusing than priests.”

He would have smiled again had he not spotted his parents stumbling drunkenly out of a hidden doorway in the wall. His father’s sash hung half-undone, his mother’s jewels clinking faintly as she laughed too loudly. The sight turned his stomach cold.

Henriette followed his gaze. “Ah,” she said after a beat. “So the resemblance is not purely physical.”

He stiffened. “Meaning?”

“Oh, come now. You cannot expect me to notice the little… theatre of inheritance. The same eyes, the same silence, though I grant you carry your wine better.”

Lucien’s jaw tightened. “You find amusement in degradation?”

“I find amusement in everything,” she replied lightly. “It is the only way one survives here.”

Her fan fluttered lazily. The music changed, something quicker and more ornamental. Around them, the courtiers turned in practiced half-circles, pretending not to watch. He wished she would stop looking at him that way, in that half-curious way, that half-cruel way.

Henriette leaned in slightly. “Forgive me, Monsieur. I forget not everyone grew up watching their parents claw through every evening for attention. You must be… what’s the word? Tender?”

He said nothing.

“Tender,” she repeated, eyes glinting. “You seem built for sincerity. That must be dreadfully inconvenient.”

He felt his cheeks flush and the color rise in his throat. “You speak as if sincerity were a defect.”

“In most company, it is. You would be eaten alive if not for that beautiful gloom of yours. It makes you look interesting, even when you’ve nothing to say.”

“Then I’ll say nothing.”

“Too late,” she said, smiling faintly. “You’ve already said too much.”

Her words landed like the faintest slap. He turned from her, pretending to watch the dancers, but she followed, unhurried, until they stood at the edge of the mirrored wall again.

“Tell me,” she said, “is there someone who does please you? Or must the world continue disappointing you one lady at a time?”

He froze. The phrasing was too sharp to be accidental.

She raised her brows once more. “Ah. I see I’ve found the sore spot.”

Lucien tried for composure, and failed. “You mistake disinterest for disdain.”

“Oh, I never mistake those,” she said. “Disinterest is cold. Yours burns.”

The violins trembled again, just enough to cover his breath. His pulse beat like the summer sun in Egypt behind his ears. “You are cruel.”

Henriette’s smile softened, not out of mercy, but curiosity. “Am I? Then tell me the truth, and I shall stop being cruel.”

She was terribly close now, not only to the truth, but to his face: her perfume was the only veil between them. He could have lied, and he almost did. But the laughter, the mirrors, his parents’ staggering shadows behind them, everything in the room conspired to make the lie taste like ash upon his tongue.

“You want a confession?” he said quietly. “And I thought you said priests were unamusing. Very well. You disgust me less than most women, but not enough to change the rest.”

It was done.

He had done it.

He had confessed it.

Her face remained composed for a moment longer than humanly possible, and then she blinked twice before closing her fan.

“I see,” she said softly.

He almost apologized. Almost. But she saved him the trouble.

“You could have kept that to yourself,” she said. “It would have spared us both a fine deal of awkwardness.”

“It would have spared you your sport.”

Henriette tilted her head. “And denied you your courage. You’re welcome.”

Then she smiled, an immaculate, cruel little thing, and stepped back into the whirl of the ballroom.

Lucien opened his mouth, but she had already turned toward a cluster of nearby courtiers. “My friends,” she called lightly. “You’ll forgive us - we’ve just concluded a very philosophical discussion. Monsieur de Belval has the most unusual views on love. Positively… ancient.”

A ripple of laughter passed among them, brief, brittle, and eager. Lucien’s throat closed.

She looked back at him, still smiling. “Do go on, Monsieur. You were saying that affection transcends form, were you not?”

He felt yet more heat crawl right the way back up his neck. Every sound in the hall grew sharper: the clinking of a glass, the scrape of a bow, the muffled gasp of someone catching the scent of scandal.

“What are you doing?” he mouthed at her.

She whirled back toward him, took his hand, and led him back into the circle with her, whispering into his ear, “I’m trying to help you.”

Then he saw his mother.

She stood half-hidden near a marble column, her posture evidently lazy with wine, her smile slow and careless, until it wasn’t. Her eyes found his. The smile fell away in dawning comprehension, as if she were watching someone drown and only now realized the water was real. A hollow, pitiful gaze.

Henriette’s laughter rang once again, delicate and merciless. “Ah, but we mustn’t disturb him more than prudence requires. Monsieur is shy. It is his virtue.”

The courtiers tittered, and she dipped in a perfect curtsey before floating off among them, leaving perfume and murmurs in her wake.

Lucien remained, fixed to the spot. Across the mirrors, he still saw his mother, pale, uncertain, her fan limp at her side. Then a companion tugged her arm, and she turned away, mouthing something he couldn’t hear.

He prayed she would remember nothing in the morning.

Sacre bleu, what have I done?

When he finally moved, it was toward the doors, toward the air. Behind him, the music rose again, precise, ornamental, and cruelly indifferent.

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Or perhaps he was just jaded after dealing with Julien’s escapades.

No, he told himself, Julien was not the exception. This has been a recurring pattern since the palace was first built.

He neared the edge of the throng, letting the noise of the ball wash over him: gowns gliding, fans fluttering, powdered wigs tilting about with delicacy and poison alike. But the object of his clear sight was none other than Lucien, his son, pale and restless.

Just a boy… no, on the cusp of adulthood now.

“He cannot simply remain still forever,” Ètienne murmured almost to himself, the words swallowed by the swell of the orchestra. His eyes tracked Lucien’s subtle shifts, noting the way he glanced toward the center of the room, and then away again, as though testing whether some invisible line had been crossed.

Then a soft rustle off to his side drew his attention.

A fickle thing, my attention seems to be these days.

Henriette d’Aguesseau, daughter of the late Chancellor, approached, guided by her mother, Anne Louise Françoise du Pré, who bore with herself the elegance of a woman accustomed to command. Her gown flowed pale green, understated yet refined, and the silk caught the candlelight in subtle waves. Henriette’s expression moved with caution and curiosity alike; she had clearly been coached on how to navigate the court, yet there was a quickness in her glance that suggested a dangerous level of independent thought.

“Monseigneur,” her mother said, her voice soft, precise, yet warm with encouragement, “The time has come. Where is your son?”

Ètienne inclined his head, offering a faint smile that did not reach his eyes. “Right over there,” he pointed subtly toward his son in the center of the room.

“Ah, is he shy?” asked Anne Louise. “For a boy his age, I would have thought him excited to meet a suitor.”

“Then again, it took me quite some time to consider myself ready for the matter. Perhaps he takes after me,” Ètienne pondered.

“Well, I intend no harm to the boy. I only wish to see him flourish in this lion’s den of a court,” said Anne Louise.

The girl herself stepped lightly forward, her hands folded, eyes darting toward Lucien as he adjusted his posture, suddenly aware of her presence and showing even more discomfort.

“Monseigneur,” she murmured, “I hope I have not intruded. I…” she hesitated, the words faltering as she considered the dance of social expectation and private desire all around her.

“Not at all,” Ètienne said, guiding her gaze toward Lucien. “Observe first, speak second. Let him decide the rhythm. You may find that a gentle nudge is all that is required.”

Anne Louise inclined her head, stepping back but keeping a careful hand lightly upon her daughter’s shoulder. “Remember, love: in court as in life, appearances are more persuasive than argument.”

Ètienne’s gaze swept the room once more. Lucien’s attention had shifted; he was frowning slightly at some distant conversation, unaware of the carefully arranged set of observers. “See,” Ètienne whispered, “he is ready, or nearly ready at least. Timing, patience, and the slightest encouragement, that is all he requires. And yet…” his eyes darted toward the far end of the hall, where the crowd seemed denser, where the glint of eyes and powdered wigs gave the impression that even the walls themselves were listening, their mirrored faces blank as those of the courtiers. “...one must always be aware of the audience, even when orchestrating private steps.”

Henriette nodded, a faint blush coloring her cheeks, but she seemed to understand. “I will try to be subtle,” she said, almost to herself. Her hands fidgeted lightly with the folds of her skirt.

“Subtlety,” Ètienne murmured. “That is a good word,” he muttered before sending her off and gesturing to Lucien in the middle of the throng. His eyes betrayed a horror his countenance tried its best to hide.

Anne Louise smiled faintly, the shadow of pride in her expression. “He’s starting to learn, it seems. At the least, he has gotten much better at this since last time.”

Ètienne allowed himself a ghost of a smile. “Indeed. Let us see if he can keep it up.”

So it was that the Duc de Belval and the Chancellor’s widow stood near the gilded chair rail, eyeing their respective progeny with glee and mischief in their eyes, hoping for a sign of a spark of attraction.

“Oh, the poor boy looks like he’d rather be executed than begin a conversation. Doesn’t he speak?” Anne Louise cooed.

Ètienne gave a small chuckle. “Oh, he speaks. Sometimes even wisely. He merely needs to find the perfect words. A defect inherited from his father, I fear.”

She laughed softly and tilted her chin toward the pair across the room. “Look there. She’s teasing him now. See the hand? That little flutter? That’s a small mockery disguised as flirtation.”

“I see it,” Ètienne murmured, leaning slightly, studying his son’s posture, his shifting weight. “He’s trying to recover the conversation. Perhaps overstepped, or tried a joke he should not have.”

“That poor boy,” Anne Louise sighed, eyes gleaming with delight. “Henriette does that. She draws a line, then dares you to cross it. If he manages to laugh at himself, she’ll adore him. If he pouts…” she made a small motion with her fan: a swift, elegant dismissal.

Ètienne hummed thoughtfully. “I wonder which it will be. Shall I test it?”

“Test it?” she repeated, brow arched.

He gestured his mouth with subtlety toward the denser edge of the crowd. “I can move closer from that side. If I stand away from the musicians, perhaps close to that curtain, I may catch their words, or at the very least I might read their lips. I’ll report back, of course.”

Her fan stilled: the universal sign of conspiratorial pleasure. “You would spy for me, Monseigneur? How gallant.”

“For both our interests, Madame,” Ètienne said lightly, “If this is to be a fruitful acquaintance, it helps to know which way the wind is blowing.”

Anne Louise inclined her head, eyes twinkling. “Very well. Go, then. I’ll pretend to be engrossed by the Marquis de Marnes’s dreadful jokes in the meantime.”

Ètienne nodded, then slipped through the moving constellation of courtiers, weaving between silk trains and powdered wigs with the ease of long practice. The air thickened nearer the musicians, then thinned once again away from them, the perfume, heat, and candle wax mixing with the faint sourness of champagne, all giving way to a slightly fresher draft near the window. From here, he could see Lucien and Henriette more clearly: Henriette’s smile, poised between mischief and sincerity; Lucien’s awkward but sincere attempts to match her tone.

He watched their hands, how hers gestured lightly, how his lingered just behind the rhythm of her words.

Not bad.

Clumsy, I’ll admit, but genuine. This may be the start of something new at last. It is the sort of clumsy that can win over a heart.

He caught fragments of sound - laughter, the name of a composer, something about a promenade, but not enough to piece together. Still, the body language told him all he needed. Henriette leaned slightly closer. Lucien did not retreat. Promising.

He might have stayed there, content with his silent surveillance, with the occasional nod and smile to Anne Louise at the other end of the crowd, had a familiar voice not called softly but determinedly behind him.

“Why am I not included?”

It was Geneviève.

He turned. She stood framed by a small path made amongst mildly disturbed courtiers, posture regal, eyes sharp as cut glass. There was nothing uncertain in her expression: only the cool determination he had learned, over years of marriage, to interpret as trouble.

Sacre bleu, does she believe I have been too close with the Chancellor’s widow? What does she want?

He offered her a measured smile, masking the quick recalibration unfolding in his mind.

No, no, that cannot be. We are on opposite ends of the room. She cannot see her. She wants to be included? I can afford her at least this much.

“Hush-sh-sh-sh!” he said as the music swelled once again, placing a finger over his mouth, then pointing it lightly to Lucien. “Look!”

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© E. A. Morales. All rights reserved.

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