12
LOUIS
The clock tower has been my secret since the moment I found it when I was fourteen. That was twenty-two years ago.
I’d escaped and hidden in here during a state dinner that made me want to claw out my eyes. I climbed the narrow stairs, expecting dust and cobwebs and forgotten storage.
Instead, I found her.
The circular room is small, maybe fifteen feet across, with stone walls that have absorbed centuries of sea air and silence. Three arched windows frame the moonlit Mediterranean, and the old clock mechanism still sits in the center. Its brass gears are frozen in time, too beautiful to remove, but too broken to repair. Wooden beams cross the domed ceiling, and the floorboards creak with every step. It smells like old wood and salt and something faintly sweet, like the ghost of my grandmother’s perfume.
Her portrait hangs on the curved wall where the light from a full moon makes it glow. In the painting, she’s young, maybe twenty-five, and she’s not wearing the crown or a formal gown. The practiced smile I remember from my childhood is nowhere to be found. She’s wearing a simple white dress, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, looking forward with a softness I’ve never seen.
This was before the scandal the Crown kept secret for fifty years. Before my grandfather found the love letters. Before the queen of Montclaire agreed to never see him again ifhe were free.
This painting stayed hidden in the clock tower until I found it that night, glowing in the darkness. At first, I didn’t understand what I was looking at.
Weeks later, I asked my grandmother about it, in private, during our weekly teatime. I expected her to be furious that I had been somewhere I shouldn’t have been. Instead, she walked me to the tower and made me sit beside her on the old wooden bench that still rested beneath the portrait. That day, she told me everything.
“I loved two men in my life,” she explained. “I married one because I was supposed to. I loved the other because I couldn’t help it.”
“Why didn’t you choose love?” I asked.
She stayed quiet. “As queen, I knew my duty was to marry and rule Montclaire. But the truth is, I was afraid. Duty felt safer than desire, and my father would never have approved. I convinced myself that wanting something didn’t mean I deserved it.”
“Do you regret it?”
She studied the painting—of her own young face, full of hope and love and possibility. “Every single day.”
I’ve never told anyone about what I learned or the secrets I uncovered that were hidden around the palace in plain sight.
At 11:58 p.m., I check my watch, knowing Addison might not come. Considering how badly the odds are stacked against us, why would she?
Earlier, after I left her place, I returned to the party. I laughed in the places I was supposed to, spoke to every single woman as if she were the most interesting creature to ever grace this planet, and played the part. For now. Until I figure this out. While that was happening, I asked Delphine to deliver a letter to Addison.
The stairs creak, and it pulls me from my thoughts. Footsteps echo up the narrow spiral staircase. They’re steep and uneven, built centuries ago when this tower was home to a working clock that kept the palace on time.
A few seconds later, Addison appears, wearing jeans and a T-shirt with her hair down and messy. Her lips are pink from earlier, and the sight of her has my heart racing.
“You came,” I say.
“You didn’t think I would?”
She takes in the circular room, the frozen clock mechanism, the arched windows, and the candles I placed along the windowsills. Her attention catches on the portrait, and she moves toward it like it’s pulling her forward. She studies my grandmother’s youthful face with an artist’s eye, hands sliding into her pockets.
“Henri Beaumont.” She breathes. “I’d recognize his brushwork anywhere.”
“You know his style.”
“I’ve been studying it since I arrived. The way he captures light, the texture he creates.” She moves closer, examining the details. “But this is different. There’s something raw about it. Unguarded. Like he actually saw her, knew her maybe.”
“This was painted before he became the royal artist.”
“Who is this?” She glances over at me.
“She was the crown princess then, but it’s my grandmother, Queen Isabella II.” I move beside her, and we both face the painting. “Henri traveled to the palace to paint her debut portrait after she found her suitor.”
“And the two fell in love.” It’s not a question.
