Eventually Camille had managed to make her excuses. Molyneux clasped her hand and gave her another meaningful look as he told her he hoped she would make her parents proud. Guilt slithered down her spine as she climbed into the carriage. The whole slow way back to Paris she stewed in her seat, peering impatiently at buildings and people. She felt the desperate urge to act, to do something – anything – to try to stand in the way of a new war ripping her home apart.

At the Pont au Change she had the carriage drop her off, and threaded her way back to Saints-Innocents. The tightness in her chest pulled her up short. Doubling over, she held onto a wall for support and tried to take shallow breaths until she felt the spasm easing. She couldn’t walk as fast as she wanted, or think her way out of this problem, or do anything useful at all. Even Ada had lost faith.

Her head swam and exhaustion weighed her down. That dark, fathomless sea had swallowed her. She was lost. Alone in the face of a threat too huge for her to begin to manage.

Al had been right. This was too big for them. Maybe in trying to help, she was making everything worse.

What would her parents have done? Her father always had an answer to everything. What would he say now?

Would they know when it was time to give up?

She forced herself to start walking, picking her way between the mud and excrement.

In the charnel house, everyone was awake and waiting for her. Guil was propped up on several balled jackets, with James redressing his wounds. Olympe was asleep on a pile of cloaks. Ada arrived back only a few minutes after her with Al, who looked as though he’d been dragged through a hedge backwards, and then thrown up in the hedge. She was too tired to berate them for leaving the safe house at such a dangerous time. At least her battalion were together again. They would need each other, to face everything that was to come.

She woke Olympe briefly to fill them all in on the dinner, itching to go downstairs and change out of the dress she was still wearing. But if she moved as little as possible, her lungs behaved themselves and she could maintain some illusion of control.

Before long, they turned in to sleep, leaving Camille on first watch. They had to be up early to be ready for the Festival of the Supreme Being, and the end of everything.

Before Olympe could go downstairs with the others, Camille caught her sleeve, drawing her back. She wanted to say something clever and comforting like her mother would have said, but the truth was visceral and unforgiving.

For all her miraculous powers, she was still made of flesh and blood. She was vulnerable.