the passionate lawyer Georges Danton, who stood like a hero on the chairs at the Café Procope and encouraged the audience to rise up. “What else is there?” he shouted. “You must dare to change!”
Then one day an invitation arrived for both her and Lazare, several tricolor ribbons stuck to it with red wax. They were to be honored at a dinner for the rising figures of the Revolution, the young Parisians who had already made a great contribution: Camille for her pamphlets on the Lost Girls, Lazare for the balloon corps.
“Why do they want us?” Lazare had wondered. “Surely there are more deserving people in Paris.”
“I imagine they’ll be there, too. But think what this might do for the girls—and the corps! Surely there’ll be someone there who can see that balloons can be more than military machines. And, I promise, if it gets dreary, we’ll slip out.”
“In that case, I’ll be hoping for the dullest, dreariest night I can imagine,” he said, though there was something in the way he said it that made her think he wasn’t convinced they should go at all.
It turned out he was right.
There were speeches between the dinner’s many courses. During dessert, men stood up one after another, puffed and proud, speaking loudly to be heard. Camille and Lazare, among others, were asked to stand as their contributions were described to resounding applause. Boys placed laurel crowns on their heads and tricolor corsages on their shoulders. The men in attendance wore plain suits, when at court they’d peacocked in pastel silks along with the nobility. The women dressed in white, with sashes of blue, white, and red draped over their shoulders. The jewels they’d once worn to court adorned their necks and ears only so that they could be tossed into a basket to raise money for the revolutionary cause, the women who made these donations wildly applauded to cries of “Vive la Nation!”
There was something about it that felt wrong.
Sitting at a large table littered with half-empty plates and glasses as yet another speaker rose to list the virtues of the revolution, Camille turned to Lazare. “Does it unsettle you?”
Lazare’s eyebrows drew together sharply. “Do they believe what they’re saying? Or did they just change to suit the times?” He’d finished eating and was folding his napkin into intricate shapes. “Eventually they’ll want to change us, too. Would you do that? Be more … whatever it is they want?”
She had changed already. Not long ago she’d vowed never to use magic again, and already she had. Not for her own benefit, she told herself, but for the girls. Though as she remembered the applause that had greeted her short speech about the plight of the poor, and the pleasure she’d had at their cheers, what exactly was for the girls and for the Revolution and for herself was more tangled than she’d thought.
She took a bite of a too-sweet dessert. “If it were the right change?”
Lazare’s napkin now resembled a listing balloon. “And how do we know if it’s the right change?”
“If it’s for the good. If I have to put on a white gown with a tricolor sash, what of it? If I come here and show my face and they toast me, and it helps Paris’s poor children, why not? I am not so very proud.” But as she said the words, she felt less certain. Was it possible to change too much? Or in the wrong direction, so that the changes you made took you to some place other than you’d intended?
“Your motives at least are good,” Lazare said, softening.
Rebellion sparked in her. “Not always.”
His dark gaze traveled to her mouth, and for a moment she thought about finally telling him what she was doing with magic, how she couldn’t control it. And that sometimes she didn’t even want to.
It would be a relief to finally be honest. For though she basked in his praise, it was beginning to feel like a costly and beloved jacket that had grown too tight. If she told him, would he say she was right to do it? That magic was nothing to him? That he trusted her?
She had no way to tell. And when he was looking at her like this—so intensely her heart began to race—she didn’t want to find out.
“You are true,” he said finally, “while others are only playing parts. Take the duc.” Nearby a tall man lounged at a crowded table, surrounded by eager hangers-on. “He calls