Eight months ago, Camille had stood in front of the Revolutionary Tribunal in the grand Hall of Liberty and fumbled through her defence. Her father’s lawyer had fed lines to her, but she’d kept mixing up legal terms and names of different political factions and dates and places until the whole thing had become a blur. All she could remember was the way the jury watched her with accusatory looks, hunting for the lies in her testimony. But somehow she’d been acquitted as nothing but an easily led girl who didn’t understand anything her father had been doing. Camille had been furious, because it was the truth. She’d barely understood anything that had been going on.

Al gave no defence at all.

He stood in front of the Tribunal with a sneer and put up no argument against any charge they raised. Nor was he given a lawyer or the chance to call witnesses. It was a piece of theatre, from the baying audience, to the stage set for Revolutionary justice to prevail against aristocratic treachery. There were even girls wandering among the crowd selling oranges and herring. Al stood in his rumpled, stained britches and tailcoat, looking every bit the aristocrat dragged out of his mansion. He played his part too well. Camille wanted to shake him, make him try to fight, but there was nothing she could do. He was marching towards his own execution.

His chance to speak lasted no more than a few minutes. He was being tried with other traitors. Once his turn was over, he was pushed into a packed pen, and Camille struggled to keep track of him.

The sentence was handed out en masse: guillotine.

Trial over, the public poured into the narrow streets of the Île de la Cité. Camille left with them, almost too tired to feel anything. The verdict was no surprise. She’d known what to expect since she’d first seen his name in the papers. She’d thought watching the trial might have gone some way to taking her mind off Ada, but it only brought her closer to her crowding memories. Ada wrapping her arms around her and pulling her out of the courtroom as her mother was sentenced. Molyneux watching her give testimony, his familiar face blank and unsympathetic. And her father. Tall, stern, the god of her childhood reduced to a fumbling man in chains who couldn’t lay out the pieces of his life and make them add up to anything that would save him.

Before, the thought of him had broken her heart. Now, all she could remember was the look of confusion on her mother’s face when the soldiers had come for her. The way she’d looked at Camille’s father with desperate, questioning eyes. The moment too long he’d waited before protesting her innocence.