The students break away from St. Juste and rush back into the salon, leaving me alone with Grantaire, St. Juste, and Feuilly. Feuilly has St. Juste sprawled across four chairs. He looks half dead; his eyes are closed.

“Grantaire! Did you not hear what I said? You are not still sending them out? The Société is compromised. You must abort the plans.”

Grantaire frowns at me and says firmly, “We shared Orso’s suspicions with the Société, and the courier has just this minute brought word back that the plan is to proceed. Barricades are set up around the city. Our time has come.”

I gape at him in amazement.

“We’ve been planning this for years. We know what they’re doing,” he finishes, slight worry punctuating the veneer of his confident words.

They don’t believe me.

They killed one-third of the mice for reason, and one-third for sport. Then the cats hanged the six little mice before all of their brethren to teach the mice fear. The guillotine is for those the City loves; Montfaucon is for the rest of us. These boys will surely hang.

Desperately, I swing around to St. Juste.

“Wake him up!” I tell Feuilly.

Feuilly shakes his head as he ties off the length of cloth around St. Juste’s middle. “He’s in shock. He needs to rest.”

In one movement I grab a bucket of water that Feuilly had the students fill earlier and unceremoniously dump it over St. Juste’s head.

He sits up, spluttering, as Grantaire grabs at me.

“St. Juste, tell them the Société is compromised,” I demand. “Tell them what we’ve seen.”

St. Juste can barely focus. Feuilly props him up and glares at me.

“Tell them what we saw at the avenue Ficelle,” I say again. “Everyone was dead, Grantaire. It’s a trap. You are betrayed.”

“Betrayed? Yes,” St. Juste says, color rising in his cheeks. “But the question is, Who has betrayed us?”

I frown.

“You and your allies took our money and provided us with weapons and information, and just when we needed you most, you backed out.”

“Wh-what?”

I stare at St. Juste, remembering with sudden clarity how he showed up at the palace with the flimsiest of excuses, how he asked me why I was talking to the Sûreté officer.

“The spy in the Société, the reason the Guilds won’t back us. The ambush on the street. Did you do it all?” St. Juste asks me.

“Is that why you followed me to the ball? You think I am the traitor?”

“You cannot deny that you’re known to Sûreté agents and royalty alike. Curious, is it not? We all know you have other priorities. Perhaps we too easily forgot that you and your kind are criminals after all,” Grantaire finishes.

You and your kind.

And I thought for a moment that perhaps I could be one of them. Clearly, they never thought so.

“Do you really think I could betray you?” I ask.

“I think you would do anything to find that girl.”Grantaire’s words are like knives. “She’s all that matters to you.”