Mireille glanced at the man beside her, her expression unreadable. Then, with slow deliberation, she raised the pistol—not toward the door where the Belroques had slithered away, but at him.
He didn't flinch. Instead, his gaze drifted over her—such a frail, petite-looking lady daring to point a gun at me?
"Mister..." she said softly, the click of the hammer loud in the hush. "How could you lie so easily?"
His hazel eyes met hers. No smile. No smirk. Just something unsettlingly steady, like still water before a storm.
"Who are you?" she asked.
He tilted his head slightly, as if weighing her—measuring how far she'd go.
"Is that really important?" he said at last.
A pause. The kind that could end with blood or with a breath.
Mireille's finger curled just a little tighter around the trigger. "You're not Edouard Halden."
"No," he said. "But I played him well, didn't I?"
She hated how calm he sounded. How unbothered. As though stepping into another man's name and wearing it like a second coat was as natural as breathing.
"You looked me in the eye and said you were my fiancé," she said.
"I looked your enemies in the eye," he corrected. "And made them believe they'd already lost."
Her jaw tightened.
"And what do you want in return?" she asked. "Coin? A place to hide? Am I just the latest in a long trail of lies?"
He was silent for a beat too long.
Then: "No. I didn't lie for myself."
She narrowed her eyes. "Then for who?"
Again, that infuriating pause. He looked past her for a moment, as if seeing something—or someone—not in the room.
"I don't remember his name," he murmured. "But he died with a bullet like this one in his chest." He reached into his coat, pulled something from the folds.
Her fingers tightened again—but it wasn't a weapon.
It was a coin. Smooth. Blank-faced. Unstamped.
Ghost currency.
The kind passed between dead men and the ones who made them that way.
"You dragged me from the snow," he said. "And then you lied for me. We're even. For now."
She lowered the pistol—barely. "And if I decide I don't like owing a ghost?"
He smiled. Not charming. Not cruel. Just tired.
"Then shoot me, Lady Eglantine. But know this—if I'm a ghost, then I died serving something bigger than either of us."
She stared at him. At the ragged coat, the haunted eyes, the unspoken things that lived behind his silence.
---
Just then, the door creaked open behind them. The surgeon stepped in, trailed by old Tomas, both of them freezing mid-step.
The pistol was still raised. The man's hand was still at his side, too close to her waist for anyone's comfort.
"My lady…" Tomas's voice was careful, almost pleading.
Mireille didn't move for a moment.
Then, slowly, she uncocked the pistol and let her arm fall to her side.
"You're staying in the blue room," she said, turning on her heel.
The man didn't move. "Because you trust me?"
"Because I don't," she called over her shoulder. "And I want you where I can see you."
Her boots tapped a sharp rhythm down the corridor. Behind her, Tomas exhaled audibly. The surgeon cleared his throat, unsure whether to apologize or pretend he'd seen nothing.
The man—who was not Edouard Halden and never had been—watched her go with something unreadable in his eyes.
Then he followed.
---
The surgeon knelt beside the narrow bed where the man—this mysterious phantom clad in torn wool—had been laid. His fingers, deft and unhesitating despite the chill that seeped through the chamber walls, probed gently beneath the bandages wrapped around the man's torso.
"Remarkable," the surgeon muttered, mostly to himself, eyes narrowing as he inspected the wound. "A bullet lodged near the ribcage, grazing the lung but missing the heart by mere inches." He shook his head in disbelief, the scarred, fevered face before him seeming less like that of a dying man and more like one reborn from some dreadful crucible.
He looked up at Mireille, who stood silently near the door, arms folded, her gaze steady and unreadable. "By all rights, he should be dead—or at least bedridden. Yet he stands and walks."
The surgeon rose, adjusting his threadbare coat. "His constitution is... unnatural. The fever burns like wildfire, but his pulse remains steady. I've seen soldiers survive wounds far graver, but none with this sort of tenacity."
Mireille stepped closer, voice low and measured. "Or desperation."
"Aye." The surgeon met her gaze. "Whatever brought him back from the brink, it has forged him into something far beyond ordinary man."
The stranger's breathing was shallow but even, eyes closed as if in uneasy sleep. Yet beneath the surface, the surgeon sensed a simmering strength—a will not easily broken.
"Keep watch," the surgeon instructed, placing a worn hand on Mireille's arm. "He's not out of danger yet. But perhaps... he is not meant to fall so easily."
---
A week later...
The winter wind rattled the panes of the east wing, sharp as flint. In the courtyard, snow had begun to gather again, covering the old flagstones like a shroud. Mireille stood beneath the awning near the stables, the sky dim with morning mist. Her gloved fingers curled around the grip of her pistol, the barrel aimed at a crude wooden post some thirty paces away.
She fired. The shot cracked through the air—clean, practiced. The splintering thunk of impact followed a heartbeat later.
A second shot. Then a third. Each tighter than the last.
"Your aim is wasted on deadwood, my lady," came a voice from behind.
She turned. Not startled—she had heard the soft tread of boots approaching, had felt it more than heard it, like a change in weather.
He stood there, coat drawn tight around his lean frame, the fever-flush mostly gone from his cheeks. His eyes were clearer now—less clouded by pain, but still guarded, still too steady for her liking.
"You shouldn't be out of bed," she said, holstering the pistol but not relaxing her stance.
"I'm tired of lying in it," he said, with a faint smile. "The blue room begins to feel like a coffin if one stays too long without dying."
She eyed him coolly. "And yet, you seem reluctant to leave this house altogether."
"I was promised my freedom," he said, walking closer. "And yet... I find myself lingering."
"What do you want?" she asked. Her voice was even, but it carried the weight of steel beneath silk. "I told you once—you're free to go, once you've recovered."
He looked at her then, truly looked—past the embroidered collar of her riding coat, past the fine leather of her gloves, and into her eyes, dark with suspicion and something else harder to name.
"What if I don't want to leave?"
Mireille stiffened, just slightly.
"Then you'll have to be Edouard Halden."
A beat passed between them. Then another. A gust of wind caught her scarf and tugged it like a child's hand.
He chuckled under his breath—just once. "A fair trade, perhaps. The real Edouard Halden has been dead for some time. But no one knew... except you, my lady."
"You wear his name as if it were made for you," she said. "And yet you speak of him like a coat you might shed when spring returns."
"If he hadn't died," he said quietly, "you would have had to marry him."
She turned her face away, eyes on the distant frost-laced trees. "I would have fulfilled the contract. Names are often heavier than feelings in matters of alliance."
"And if I stayed?" he asked. "Would you wear the name Edouard Halden beside yours, knowing it belonged to a man who never lived long enough to claim it?"
"You mistake me for a woman with the luxury of sentiment," she said, looking back at him. "I've buried too many illusions for that."
"But not all of them," he said gently. "Else you'd have shot me days ago."
She raised her chin, defiant. "And perhaps I still will."
He stepped closer, until the space between them held nothing but breath and fire and a name neither of them fully owned.
"Then let me stay," he said, voice low. "Let me carry the name, the lie, the burden. If you'll have a ghost by your side, Mireille Eglantine, I will haunt you loyally."
She stared at him, silent, the pistol still at her hip.
The wind shifted again, and somewhere in the woods, a raven cried.
Then she turned, briskly, as if the moment had never happened.
"Come inside, Monsieur Halden," she said over her shoulder. "The snow's begun to fall again. And ghosts catch cold like any man."
He smiled then—just a sliver of it.
And followed her in.