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I blink, trying to puzzle out what he means—but he suddenly twists out of my grasp and seizes my other arm. In a second, he pulls it painfully behind my back, bending it so far that I cry out. Then he slams me against the wall. Pain jolts through my entire body.

Before my arm can break, he suddenly releases me and darts back up the stairs. Toward the last exhibit room.

I stumble against the steps and race after him. Flashes of illusions follow in his wake—the railing of the stairs seems to bend, the steps themselves tilting so that I think I might fall. I lean against the wall as I run, trying to tell my brain to fight against the onslaught of visual lies, to convince myself that what I’m seeing isn’t the truth.

Étienne reaches the top of the stairs before I do. And if I hadn’t weakened him, claimed part of his soul during our fight, he would have made it into the room first. But at the top, he finally collapses to one knee, breathing heavily as he gathers what he can of his strength.

I sprint past him and into the last exhibit room.

The space is dimly lit and completely empty. In the center of the space, hung carefully on a separate wall and fenced off with velvet rope, is the da Vinci painting.

Like the Mona Lisa, this piece is smaller than I expected, a legend made more mortal by reality. This doesn’t typically matter—every piece of art I’ve ever acquired for Raven has a certain glow about it, and as I approach it now, I slow down to study it.

I expect my sensitivity to the soul in everything—to the fragments of mortal life embedded in all human creations—to heighten now, the way it had heightened when I first set foot inside the museum.

But this time, as I reach the painting and cross inside the velvet rope, I don’t feel that sliver of soul. I don’t sense the ghost of a creator’s hands breathing life into something inanimate, the whisper of a heart that once existed, soaking the stories from their existence into the fibers of this canvas and the pigments of this paint.

That’s when I know. That’s when I understand why Étienne had helped me get inside, why he had seemingly assisted me even as we fought each other in the other rooms and in the stairwell. He wanted me to reach it.

This painting was not created by human hands. It is not art.

It is a fake. A copy. A lie.

And right as I realize it, I see Étienne emerge from the shadows on the other side of the painting, his smile grimmer now, the features of his face harshened by the light.

At my expression, he says, “I’ve moved the real painting to Copenhagen.”

“You wanted me to get the fake,” I reply.

He shakes his head. “No. I wanted you to believe the lie.”

To believe the lie. That was his assignment from Thorn—not to reach the painting before me, but to accomplish what all lies ultimately hope to do: to make me believe they are the truth. I had failed my first test before I even started.

I expect him to gloat. But for once, there is no joy in his expression. “Apologies, ma fleur,” he says.

And before I can say anything more, our surroundings disintegrate.

IN THE SPRING before they lost each other, there was an afternoon where Laine showed up early at Rose’s school, right after the dismissal bell.

Rose hadn’t expected to see her there, lounging on the swings in the playground across from the schoolyard, nearly lost behind the line of buses. She shoved her way through the throngs of students crossing the yard until she reached her friend, who was lying on her stomach across one of the swings, a cloud of fluffy blond curls obscuring her face.

Rose was about to ask what she was doing there so early when she saw her friend’s pale face and tight lips, her closed expression.

“Everything okay?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

“It’s fine,” Laine said, but she didn’t look up.

Rose mimicked her, hanging over the second swing on her stomach. For a while, they idled like this, just a pair of tired girls you ignored as you hurried past the playground on your way home. But thoughts buzzed through Rose’s mind as she tried to guess what might be bothering Laine. She had never seen her friend quite like this—despondent, distant, hunched against the swing. A ghost of herself.

Rose hesitated, opening her mouth but then closing it, not knowing what to say. All her life, she’d been haunted by the family she never had, wondering why her mother gave her up. But Laine had never told Rose much about her family. On days like this, Rose had to wonder if maybe her history was worse than being abandoned as an infant.

“Hey,” Rose said softly to her. When Laine finally looked over, Rose reached toward her swing to gently squeeze Laine’s dangling arm. “Do you need to stay over? You can be in my room.” She shrugs. “They never check on me, anyway. They won’t notice, at least for a few weeks.”

A cool breeze blew in, and Laine closed her eyes, took a deep breath. Smiled. And looked a little like herself again. Then she gazed back out across the playground to where a group of kids were playing basketball. “Thanks. But I’ll be fine.”

That was the first day Rose ever saw Laine’s infectious smile not as an expression of joy, but as a shield.

They reached across the space between their swings and clasped hands.