Page 71 of The False Vow

The scrap of newspaper I withdrew was wilted, its pulp gone soggy from the cumulative hours it had spent folded in my hand. It was the same clipping I’d taken with me to the opera house, oh—so many days ago now. My past had seemed to distance itself after Eliot’s and my argument in the turret, like cloth bunching and shrinking back around a tear. Every day passed in a blink; nights were sharp and carved deep gullies. The gap was too wide; I could never go back.

On one side of the clipping was the article about the independent autopsy the Daboses had funded. Noé examined it briefly as I handed it to him, then turned it over to study the advertisement on the other side.

I’d remembered it shortly after my first meeting with Nathalie Moreau. His eyes widened as he took in the veiled lady in the illustration, a monocle in the same style as the one I carried held up to her face. “ ‘Seek and find,’ ” he read aloud, running a thumb over the slogan at the bottom of the clipping. He glanced up. “You found this in a paper?”

“I thought Nathalie’s description of the veiled lady sounded familiar,” I replied, stowing the surge of pleasure I felt at the surprise in his voice. “I’ve been searching through other newssheets since then, trying to find anything that might tell me how to contact the person behind the adverts, but nothing turned up. Until Mireille dropped her monocle during the Maiden’s Race.”

Noé’s eyes went to it. Viewing the physical object next to the illustrated version in the newspaper clipping, the resemblance was uncanny. The monocle seemed to have been plucked out of its pen-and-ink rendering and placed, real and whole, in my lap.

Not to mention, if I’d had any doubt about the two items being related, the message on the monocle’s glass had put it to rest. Seek and find—the same phrase that appeared in the paper. But find what exactly? “A lucky accident?” Noé asked, still studying the monocle.

I made a face. It was a theory, but not my preferred one. “Or the person running the adverts knows that I’ve been looking into them and used Mireille to send us the token purposefully,” I said. “She may have been instructed to let me glimpse the monocle, knowing it would spark my interest and I’d come after it.” Tilting my head, I inquired, “What do you know of her?”

“Mireille?” Noé echoed. He ran a hand over his jaw, setting the clipping beside him. “Not much. She was quite desperate to please during the Vainglory—but I believe her eagerness hampered her, made her as fearful of losing as she was motivated to win. I could never get more than a few sentences out of her at once.” He looked up at me. “Interesting Wit, though. She can correct mistakes. If your dress were to tear, for example, she’d be able to fix it for you.”

As though imagining it, his gaze drifted lower, to the spot where the pale arch of my throat was visible above the satin bow which tied my capelet closed.

“Nothing ever passed between us,” he finished.

My skin warmed. I shifted back toward the window, placing the monocle over my eye. At once, the golden thread manifested; I focused on it as I replied, “It matters little to me, what did and what didn’t.”

Noé chuckled. “Of course not, darling,” he returned. “You are Lovett Tamerlane. You care for no one, and you utterly despise me.”

I turned over my shoulder to glare at him.

Catching my stare, he prompted, “Remind me what exactly the invitation said again?”

His expression was distorted through the monocle’s glass, his features warped as though I were viewing him through a great basin of silvered water. Curved along the bottom of the lens, I eyed the second set of instructions which had appeared during my visit to the cloisters with Bastian. Formal dress, they said. And next to that command, its vastly more damning successor: No witches without an escort.

“Nothing which might provide any clues as to the identity of its sender,” I said. Squinting at the golden thread, I added brusquely, “Left turn now.”

Noé repeated my message to the driver, and a second later, the carriage careened wildly as the horses lurched in the specified direction. Once all four of the vehicle’s wheels had come to rest solidly against the ground again, my fiancé cleared his throat and continued coolly, “You could have told me about the advert earlier, you know.”

“Mad at me, are you? I’m sorry I left you out.” I did not alter my position, staring, unblinking, into the gloom ahead of us.

“Disappointed.”

“What’s that?” I glanced over, distracted.

“Disappointed,” Noé repeated. “Not angry.” I frowned at him. His expression was light, despite his words; as I watched, his mouth crooked in a half smile. “However did Eliot deal with you?” he mused. “You really make a terrible partner.”

My wrist twitched involuntarily. My hand was still lifted to my face, pressing the monocle to my eye; beneath the heel of my palm, I felt my cheeks grow hot.

I was preparing my rebuttal when the carriage rolled to a halt. From his booth, the driver called out that we’d reached a dead end.

Blinking, I refocused on our surroundings. We’d entered an alleyway: Two buildings rose up on either side of the carriage, a third hemming us in to our front. The cobblestones were soot-black, greasy with darkness.

I traced the golden thread through the monocle’s lens. It snaked along the ground before disappearing beneath the building to our left like water trickling down a drain.

Relief flowed through me. We’d arrived.

Chapter Thirty-One

Without another word, we disembarked. Noé instructed our driver, Philippe, to wait at the alleyway’s mouth, out of sight of anyone wandering within. The clatter of horses’ hooves receding behind us, we ventured toward the side of the alley.

I sensed the door before I saw it. Where the monocle’s path had slipped beneath the stones, I felt a sort of dip in the flat consistency of the crumbling brick. Reaching my hand out, I let my Wit guide me to a spot just below my knee—where, I observed upon closer examination, an eye had been chiseled into the stone. Its lid stretched wide and unblinking, its lashes crude and straight like spokes on a wheel.

A shudder went through me. When I pressed down on the symbol, the section of wall bordering it shivered, then swung open. Behind it lay a small antechamber, lit only by a single gas lantern which dangled from a hook to our left. A hulking man in servant’s livery guarded a second door waiting at the back of the space. He raised his head when he saw us, his stare traveling first to the ring on my finger, then to the Weaver sigil stitched into the collar of Noé’s capelet.