The palace had never felt so cold.
Marie moved like a shadow through the Queen's wing, her apron stiff with starch, her head bowed so low she barely saw the patterns on the marble beneath her feet. Silence had become her shield. Obedience, her only armor.
And yet, the threat was no longer distant. It was close now—too close.
The Duchess d'Artois had looked at her that morning. Truly looked. Not with curiosity or dismissal, but with something colder. Calculated. The way a cat watches a trapped bird, tail twitching in anticipation.
And that was not the only sign.
Someone had been in her quarters again.
She returned to her room late that evening to find her wooden comb snapped clean in two, its splintered teeth tucked neatly beneath her pillow. A message. Deliberate. Quiet. Cruel.
---
"Someone wants me afraid," she whispered to Léonie as they sat huddled in the laundry room that night, the scent of damp linen heavy around them.
"They want more than that," Léonie replied grimly. "They want you to stumble. Make a mistake. Anything they can use."
"I haven't done anything."
"You don't need to," Léonie said. "You've already caught his eye. That's enough."
---
The next morning, the trap was laid.
Marie was delivering a tray to the Comtesse de La Fayette—a task she had done a dozen times. But when she reached the Comtesse's private salon, the door was already ajar.
Inside, the room was empty.
Only a small writing desk remained at the center, its drawers half open, as if someone had searched them in haste. Letters spilled across the floor like fallen leaves.
Marie froze.
Then she saw it—an envelope addressed in the Queen's hand. Familiar. Sealed with the royal crest. Lying squarely atop the tray she was meant to carry.
Her breath stopped.
It wasn't there before.
The door creaked behind her.
Footsteps.
A gasp.
Then—"Thief!"
The voice rang out through the hallway like a bell, sharp and triumphant.
Marie turned to see a lady-in-waiting—one of the Duchess's favorites—framed in the doorway, eyes wide with mock outrage.
She'd been caught. Framed.
And the palace would eat her alive.
---