“Haydee Cadieux.”
Something soft, like paper, slipped against the kitchen counter.
“Does that name mean anything to you?”
Elara tried to remember everything Chantal and Blai had taught her about performing. The key was to not give anything away, to bury yourself deep behind a mask.
But how could she pretend she hadn’t heard a ghost’s name?
“You remember her, don’t you?” Lafontaine slid the paper toward her. “Maybe not her face. You were too young when the meetings started, and your mother probably kept you away from them at a certain point. Didn’t she?”
Elara stared at the door.
“Look at her, Rousseau.”
She refused.
“LOOK AT HER!”
Her shoulders jumped.
She turned, finding the photograph he’d declared evidence at theinterview. At the time, she’d wondered how he’d gotten his hands on one when they were only made for the rebels. Now it all made sense.
There, in the portion that had been torn away from Gaetan’s copy, stood a woman with black hair and a brilliant smile. Her hands, which were slung lovingly around two people’s shoulders, were covered in dirt. A smudge had been left on her cheek. A flower in her ear.
“The bomb was intended for the Counseil,” Lafontaine said, “but beyond a handful of Directeurs, the only other casualties—”
“Were the rebels.”
Haydee’s name had been one her mother chanted in the days before her death, lost in a jumble of apologies and curses.
Elara looked up. “If she loved you, why did she want to kill you?”
“I asked myself the same question when I learned what she’d become.” He said it like a curse. “We’d fallen out of love by then, or so I thought. A baby complicated things. Had the Counseil known I was responsible for a bastard born of Restes dregs, I would’ve lost my seat.”
Elara huffed. When this conversation started, part of her had hoped there was a man buried deep beneath the surface, but all she saw was emptiness.
“She sought comfort in the inane drivel your mother spouted because she believed it would bring about reform that could allow us to be together,” he continued, as if he were reciting facts from a book and not recounting the anguish of his lover.
Haydee loved Lafontaine, so why had she been there that night? Why had she supported a plot to kill him and the entire Counseil?
Unless…
She’d been the one to warn them ahead of time.
After the explosion, only a few Directeurs and rebels had been found among the debris, Haydee included. Elara’s mother had returned, bruised and covered in filth, muttering Haydee’s name. All this time,Elara had believed it was because her mother felt guilty, not because, of all people, it was Haydee who betrayed them.
“She saved you,” she whispered.
“At the cost of her own life.”
Nik had every right to hate the rebels. It made sense why he’d been so prickly after he’d discovered her real identity. It meant a rebel’s daughter had slipped into his home undetected. Worse, the daughter of the woman who had orchestrated the catastrophe that ripped his entire world apart.
But how had the bomb gone off early? Why, after warning Lafontaine, had Haydee died with the rebels when she should’ve been safe with him?
And why had Nik not told her about all this last night when they’d laid all their truths bare? Did he not trust her? Was he still using her?
“Elara?”
