Grey, swirling clouds consumed Olympe’s face as she rounded on Al. In a flash, the scared girl was gone and a scowling demon was in her place, blue sparks arcing ominously along her jaw. The light from the candles dwindled as darkness gathered around them, a smothering of shadows and crackling ozone.

‘You’ve seen what I can do. Good luck forcing me.’

He gave a shrug, going back to his pipe, but Ada could see in the tense set of his shoulders that Olympe scared him.

Olympe turned to Camille as the shadows began to recede.

‘Before, you said everything was a choice. That there was no fate, no destiny. Well – this is my choice. I’m not going back to Comtois. And I’m not letting you hand me over to the duc. I want to find my mother, and to be free.’

Camille chewed her bottom lip but said nothing.

It was clear this was no straightforward prison rescue. And handing Olympe over wouldn’t be delivering her into the loving hands of her family.

But if they didn’t, what the hell were they getting themselves into?

3

Section Marat

There were still the last vestiges of daylight in the long summer evening outside the Au Petit Suisse. The rain had blown over, leaving a washed-out sky and quagmires of mud clogging the roads. Camille and Guil picked their way up the Rue de la Liberté, between drays stuck in the mud, abandoned stacks of empty crates and barrels, and ducking under low-hanging eves and upper floors that projected over the street so far they seemed to almost touch above their heads. Leaving Ada and Al to keep watch over Olympe, Camille had set out with Guil to check a nearby safe house. With her crackling blue sparks of electricity and eyes like pitch, Olympe was hard to keep hidden. Camille came close to understanding why the Revolutionaries had gone to such lengths to keep her secret and protect themselves.

The closer to the river they came, the more the old heart of the city showed itself in the tiny wooden buildings made more from whitewash and hope than timber, with sagging beams and cloudy mullioned windows. The front window of each operated as a discrete shop displaying silverware and handkerchiefs, leather shoes, ink, nails and knives. Despite the late hour, the streets were teeming. At the junction of several roads, the deconsecrated convent of the Cordeliers took up almost an entire block. The huge refectory a monolith, with its turret and tall arched windows that tapered to a point. A few windows had been boarded up and weeds and moss grew like mould between the ancient stones of its walls. After the nuns had left, the convent had been taken over as a political club. But the leaders had all been executed a few months ago, and now it was another ghost haunting Revolutionary Paris.