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Rodrick's hand tightened on the pen. He felt the wood bite into his fingers. "I already said goodbye to her."

He dropped his gaze back to the paper before his sister could look too closely at his face. The ink had begun to spread where the nib rested too long in one place, a small bloom darkening the line. He moved the pen again, forced the sentence forward.

I find myself in a position to offer—

The line faltered.

He had told her goodbye. She did not trust him. It made sense. Who honestly did? For two weeks, Rodrick had striven to remember he was still a spy. The tragic hero had died at Waterloo, as he deserved, and what remained was the useful part—the man who understood exits, leverage, false names, and the considerable advantage of never belonging anywhere long enough to be missed.

It had been an excellent theory.

Then Louise had walked into La Force.

Every careful lie he had constructed since the field had dissolved beneath those gray eyes. The spy remained, certainly, but he could no longer pretend the spy was all there was. The tragic hero had not died. He had merely gone underground and taken half of Rodrick with him.

Rodrick stared at the unfinished sentence.

For fifteen years he had imagined his soul as a glass of brandy. Every lie, every betrayal, every necessary darkness had cost a dram, and he had accepted the arithmetic because one could always continue drinking until the glass was empty. He had never considered what happened afterward.

Now he knew. The glass was dry. And Rodrick had no idea what a man was supposed to do when there was nothing left to spend.

Rodrick shifted in the chair, the wood creaking faintly beneath him. The room felt too small. The air too still. He set the pen down, then picked it up again at once, unwilling to leave his hands idle.

He bent his head and forced his attention back to the page.

I find myself in a position to offer my services in a capacity suited to your current needs.

Charlotte moved closer. He felt her presence at his shoulder, the air shifting as she leaned in to read.

"How long do you intend to punish her?" she asked quietly.

Punish her?

He laughed.

His Joan of Arc punished him by walking through that door every day, by sitting in his sister's salon with that stillness of hers, by drinking Antoine's coffee as though it were a ritual and not a pretext. She punished him by existing within reach and refusing to disappear neatly into memory where he could place her and be done.

Rodrick's grip tightened, and the quill snapped. The nib skidded across the paper, tearing the surface, leaving a jagged line through the sentence.

"Is there a prescribed duration for such things?"

A date when he could return to breathing?

Charlotte drew back, her expression sharpening. "I know you enjoy pretending to be made of stone. At present it is becoming tiresome."

Rodrick leaned back in the chair and pressed his hand flat against his chest, just left of center. Wouldn't it be convenient if this thing inside was made of stone?

Would it ache, then? The way his did now, at the edges, the thin-sheet-of-glass ache of something that looked solid from the outside and was breaking along seams he hadn't known were there? Would it cut him from the inside, that stony heart, every time he remembered her fallen in the field, risking her life because she did not trust him? Would it bleed when he caught her scent or heard whispers of her voice along the house's corridors, straining to hear even her damn breathing?

"Do not concern yourself, sister," he said through gritted teeth. "If you allow me to complete this letter, you will soon be spared the burden of my company."

He reached for another quill, tested the point against his thumb, and dipped it in ink.

Vienna. Metternich. A city without her in it.

Rodrick held the pen above the page, felt the faint tremor begin in his fingers, and stilled it by force. Somewhere beyond the door, beyond the careful arrangement of this house and its civility, she existed apart from him.

Caulaincourt, her father's most trusted general, had given Louise an hour to convince Napoleon. One hour before the provisional government's patience expired and the Emperor's options ran out.