Chapter 19 - The Last Lie
Smoke rolled through the east gallery.
Vautrin had set fire to the archive before slipping his guards.
Of course he had.
Destroy the papers. Destroy the past.
He ran for Sainte-Agathe tower.
I knew where he was going before anyone else did.
My cell.
We found him there with a torch in one hand and Queen Aveline's old letters piled on the floor.
"Stay back," he warned.
I stepped inside anyway.
"You really love burning paper."
He smiled. "Paper made you dangerous."
"No. Memory did."
Behind me, Elise, Lucien, and two guards blocked the door.
Vautrin looked at Elise.
"Your mother could have saved herself. I offered her a confession and exile. She chose you instead."
Elise glanced at me.
That was new.
"Is that true?"
I nodded.
Sixteen years earlier, Vautrin had offered me freedom if I signed a statement saying Aveline died naturally and if I surrendered Elise to a royal household where I would never see her again.
I had refused.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Elise whispered.
"Because children should not grow up believing they are the reason their parents suffered."
Vautrin rolled his eyes. "Beautiful. Useless."
He touched the torch to the letters.
Nothing happened.
The flame died.
Mathurin stepped into the doorway holding an empty oil flask.
"Swapped it for water an hour ago," he said.
For the first time in sixteen years, I laughed directly in Vautrin's face.
The guards took him.
At the tribunal, he finally stopped smiling when Colette, Renard, Severin, Lucien, Elise, Mathurin, and I all testified in sequence.
The evidence was overwhelming.
But when King Edouard prepared to announce Vautrin's sentence, I stood.
"Not yet," I said.
The king looked tired. "What more is there?"
May you like
I placed the prison register before him.
"Me," I said, "and everyone else you locked away without a hearing."
