Versailles at dawn was a palace pretending to sleep.
Mist clung to the gravel paths and formal gardens as thought reluctant to release the night, and the roses-cultivated into obedience-bowed beneath the weight of dew that glittered like false jewels. Marble statues stood sentinel along the hedges, their pale limbs frozen in gestures of eternal grace, untouched by cold or consequence. Somewhere within the palace walls, servants moved like ghosts, extinguishing candles, smoothing silks, preparing the world for spectacle.
Camille de Montreval stood alone among the roses.
She wore the uniform of the Garde Royale, tailored to severity: navy wool, stiff collar, gold braid precise to regulation. It disguised what it was meant to erase. Her posture was flawless - back straight, chin level. boots aligned exactly upon the gravel. Discipline had shaped her body as much as blood had, and discipline always won.
She held her sword before her, both hands steady on the hilt.
"Encore."
The word fell behind her, calm and absolute.
Camille turned without haste, pivoting on her heel as the blade rose and cut cleanly through the cool air. Steel sang - briefly , beautifully - before stillness returned. The roses trembled as the displaced air disturbed their petals.
Beneath a dark cypress stood her father.
The Comte Armand de Villiers watched with the expression of a man who had long since decided tenderness was a luxury history could not afford. His uniform though older in style, was worn with habitual pride. Powdered hair framed a face etched by campaigns fought in places Camille had never seen and wars she had only studied in maps and memory.
"You pause," he said.
"I do not," Camille replied.
Her voice was controlled - trained downward, measured, stripped of softness A voice taught not to invite intimacy, nor provoke inquiry. It has taken years to learn how to inhabit it.
But there had been a pause.
A fracture no instructor could fully erase. A moment where thought intruded between motion and obedience. The body, treacherous thing, remembered what it was forbidden to express.
Armand de Villiers did not correct her grip. He did not step forward. He simply observed, as one observes the slow approach of winter.
"You were born," he said at last, " into a century that devours weakness. I ensured you would survive it."
Camille lowered her blade.
The word born hovered between them heavy with implication. It always did.
Beyond the hedges, the palace stirred more audibly now. Doors opened. Footsteps multiplied. Bells rang - not church bells, but the softer signals of court life beginning its daily performance. The Queen would soon rise. Mirrors would be faced. Wigs adjusted, smiles rehearsed.
Camille wiped her sword clean upon a strip of white linen, the cloth absorbing the faint trace pf moistures as though erasing evidence of something unclean.
She did not yet know the role history would carve for her. Only that roses, when trained too tightly to grow straight, still hid thorns. And that Versailles - resplendent, perfumed, immaculate - had begun to rot from within.
By midmorning, the palace flittered.
Sunlight spilled through tall windows and fractured itself upon mirrors imported at ruinous expense. Courtiers moved through corridors like living ornaments, silk brushing silk, voices modulated into practiced ease. Laughter rang hollow and precise. Everyone was seen; no one was known.
Camille took her post along the Halls of Mirrors, sword at her side, expression composed into neutrality. This corridor was the artery of Versailles, where influence flowed unseen beneath opulence. She had stood here a thousand times, watching alliances form and decay in the span of a bow.
She was aware - always - of eyes.
Some regarded her with admiration, others with curiosity, a few with something like unease. Captain de Montreval was an anomaly the court had learned to accept fully understanding. Her record was impeccable. Her loyalty unquestioned. Her presence tolerated as long as it remained useful.
A nobleman passed ad inclined his head " Capitaine "
Camille returned the gesture. Nothing more.
At the far end of the hall, a murmur began - subtle, anticipatory. Ladies adjusted their posture. Courtiers aligned themselves instinctively toward the sound .
The Queen was coming.
Camille straightened almost imperceptibly.
Reine Éléonore de Roseraie entered as though carried by the light itself.
She was dressed in pale ivory silk embroidered with roses so delicate they seemed to bloom upon her skirts. Diamonds rested at her throat, catching the sun with cruel brilliance. Her hair, arranged high and powdered to perfection, framed a face of luminous calm - beautiful, untouched, and profoundly alone.
Applause followed her like a tide.
Éléonore smiled, as she had been taught to do, and the hall exhaled in collective devotion.
Camille bowed deeply as the Queen passed.
For a brief moment - no longer than a heartbeat - their eyes met.
There was no recognition there. No special notice.Camille was merely another fixed element of the palace, like marble or gold leaf. A function. A fixture.
And yet something passed between them nonetheless.
Perhaps it was only Camille's imagination. Perhaps it was the quiet knowledge that both were imprisoned by the roles written before they were born.
The Queen moved on.
The mirrors reflected everything except truth.
That afternoon, beyond the gilded gates of Versailles, Paris simmered.
Bread was scarce. Ink was plentiful.
In a cramped room above a print shop, Lucien Moreau leaned over a press, hands blackened, jaw tight with purpose. Sheets pf paper lay stacked beside him, damp with fresh words - words that questioned, accused, remembered.
"Careful," someone whispered. "They hand men for less."
Lucien smiled without humour. "They had men for breathing."
He lifted the paper and read again what he had written, knowing it would not be forgotten once released into the streets. Words, unlike roses, did not stay where they were planted.
That night, as Versailles glittered beneath candlelight and music, Camille stood once more at attention.
She felt it then - not yet revolution, not yet blood - but the tremor beneath the marble. The subtle shifting of something ancient and immense.
History was clearing its throat.
And somewhere within that vast, beautiful machine, a rose had begun - quietly - to learn how to bleed.