Chapter 7:
The Unspoken Portrait
Time seemed to warp, stretching and condensing in the sun-dappled silence of the library. Élise sat, a statue in a navy dress, while Luc’s pen flew across the page. The scratch of the nib was the only sound, a frantic, whispered secret between them. He didn’t look at her with the clinical detachment of a portrait artist, but with a fierce, consuming focus, as if he were trying to trace the very contours of her thoughts.
She watched his face as he worked. The furrow of concentration between his brows, the slight tightening of his lips when a line didn’t meet his exacting standard, the way he occasionally blew a stray speck of graphite from the page. He was completely immersed, a man lost in his craft, and she was his subject. The intimacy of it was terrifying and exhilarating.
After what felt like both an eternity and a single heartbeat, he stopped. He didn’t immediately show her. He looked down at the page, his expression unreadable, then back up at her, his stormy eyes searching hers as if comparing the drawing to the original.
Slowly, he turned the notebook around.
Élise’s breath hitched.
It wasn’t a photorealistic rendering. It was something more. He had captured her in a moment of quiet contemplation, her head slightly tilted, her gaze turned inward as it had been when she was describing the library. He had drawn the soft wave of herhair falling beside her cheek, the line of her neck, the quiet dignity in her posture. But it was the eyes that held her captive. He had given them a depth, a gentle intelligence, a hint of sheltered wonder that she never knew was visible to the outside world.
He had drawn not just her face, but her essence. The person she was within these walls.
“Luc,” she whispered, her voice trembling.“It’s… it’s too much.”
“It’s the truth,” he replied, his voice low and gravelly.“It’s what I see when you speak about this place.”
He closed the notebook, the gesture final, as if sealing the image—and the moment—inside. The spell was broken, but the air still crackled with its aftermath.
“I should…” she began, gesturing vaguely towards the counter, her sanctuary now feeling a thousand miles away.
He nodded, understanding.“Of course.”
She stood, her legs feeling unsteady. As she walked back to her post, she felt the weight of his gaze on her back, a tangible warmth between her shoulder blades.
The remaining hours of the afternoon passed in a surreal haze. Luc returned to his writing, the green book on the oubliettes open beside him. But the dynamic had shifted yet again. The table between them was no longer a no-man’s-land; it was a bridge, and they stood on opposite ends, acutely aware of the connection.
When he packed his things at five o’clock, he approached the counter. This was new. He usually left with just a nod from the door.
He stood before her, the black notebook held tightly in one hand. He seemed to be wrestling with something.
“Thank you,” he said finally.“For sitting. And for your words.”
“Thank you for the drawing,” she managed to reply.“It’s… I’ve never been seen like that before.”
A shadow of something—regret? melancholy?—crossed his face.“Sometimes, the world only shows us what it wants us to see. It takes a certain kind of silence to see what’s really there.”
He held her gaze for a moment longer, then turned to leave.
“Luc,” she called out, the name still foreign and sweet on her tongue.
He paused at the door, looking back.
“What is your story about?” she asked.“The one with the man in the catacombs. What is he really searching for?”
Luc’s expression softened, a faint, almost sad smile touching his lips.“He’s searching for a way to bury his past. But he’s about to discover that you can’t bury something that’s still alive.”
With that, he was gone, leaving Élise with the echo of his words and the ghost of her own portrait imprinted on the back of her eyelids. He wasn’t just building a world in his notebook. He was revealing his own. And she, the quiet librarian of the Bibliothèque Lafleur, had suddenly become a part of it.
Chapter 8:
The Saturday Shift
Saturdays at the Bibliothèque Lafleur were different. The silence was thinner, more fragile, punctuated by the rustle of weekend tourists and the occasional exclamation from a visitor discovering a hidden treasure. Monsieur Deschamps was present, puttering near the front, his presence a gentle deterrent against any lapse in decorum.
