Map of Fates (The Conspiracy of Us 2)

Jack shoved his hands in his pockets. “I just can’t not think about it when I see how he looks at you.”

I glanced back at the church. The heavy wooden doors were still closed, Elodie and Stellan still inside. “He looks at me like I’m a gold-plated statue to put on his mantel. The same way everyone in the Circle looks at me.”

And that was true, usually. Except for last night, when he realized I wasn’t dead. Except this morning, when he apparently wanted nothing to do with me.

Jack touched the back of my hand. “Forget I said anything, okay? It’s just—it’s everything, you know?”

I stared down at our hands. “Yeah.” I was getting tired of it all, too.

I pulled away and traced over the lines I’d made on the map. We’d been sticking inside the triangle formed by the outermost ones, but now I traced a little farther out with two fingers.

“Are we sure these angles are exactly right?” I said, changing the subject.

“No,” Jack said. “This is everything approximately within the gargoyle’s sight line.”

I squinted at the map. “I wonder if the key word is approximately. I’m sure Napoleon was careful about the clues he planted, but maybe when the gargoyle was installed, he got moved a few millimeters. That could change the angle as you get farther away from Notre-Dame.”

“And to Fitz, the Louvre was the best bet, so he planted his clue there—”

“But it doesn’t necessarily mean Napoleon’s was on that same line,” I finished. We leaned over the map excitedly. “Maybe we could go a little outside this triangle.”

“You know what is really close . . .” Jack pointed.

The Arc de Triomphe. “Napoleon put it up, right?” I said.

“He commissioned it. It wasn’t finished before his death, but it was on its way. He would certainly have been able to inscribe anything he wanted there.”

The church doors opened, and Stellan and Elodie came out. We explained our thoughts.

“And the other monument Napoleon used was a big one,” I finished. “He chose Notre-Dame, not one of these tiny churches. Maybe he assumed his own monument would achieve just as much fame.” And he was right. Besides the Eiffel Tower, which was put in well after Napoleon’s death, the Arc de Triomphe was probably the most famous monument in Paris.

Elodie suddenly looked up with a sharp intake of breath. “The Arc de Triomphe is a monument to soldiers who fought in the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.”

Jack and Stellan both looked confused for a second, then their faces lit up, too, and finally, I got it.

“‘Those who gave all hold the key,’” I said. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER 19

The car let us off in the center of a bustling traffic circle. The Arc de Triomphe loomed overhead, an embodiment of Paris itself: statuesque, historic, incredibly detailed. Surrounded by the modern Paris of stylish ladies on Vespas and tourists and slinking vendors selling Eiffel Tower key chains.

All around the grand arch were intricate carvings of battles and angels and soldiers. Jack split off to the opposite side without waiting for me, and Elodie followed, throwing me a curious look. I leaned against the carved stone and closed my eyes with a sigh.

Someone leaned beside me, and I wasn’t surprised to hear Stellan’s voice. “So your kind-of-but-not-really boyfriend thinks you and I are doing a little something on the side?”

“How do you know—never mind.” It didn’t matter. I opened my eyes. Stellan’s arms were tight, shoulders hunched to his ears, and his eyes darted over the throngs of tourists under the monument. He was trying to act normal, but the attack on Luc had put him on edge.

I thought about asking him if he’d come in to get a sleeping pill last night, or whether he was in my room to see if I was okay. I didn’t. I pushed away from the wall and searched the area above my head.

“Was it Elodie?” I asked.

Stellan crossed his arms over his chest. “Was what Elodie?”

I took a break from squinting up at the bas-relief on the arch above. It didn’t have the symbol from my locket on it and didn’t seem to be of the Fates, which were the two clue markers we’d seen so far.

I motioned in the direction Jack had gone. “Whatever happened between the two of you to make you hate each other, when it’s obvious you used to be close. It sounds like you both had a thing for her at some point, and now he thinks you’re trying to steal me.”

Stellan’s arms dropped to his side, and with that one gesture, he looked tired. “No,” he said. “We all used to be close. Me and Elodie—we liked each other, but it wasn’t . . . We were young. Our bedrooms were on the same hallway.” He shrugged like, what else do you expect? “And she and Jack, after that . . . they dated for a while.”

I was momentarily distracted from the artwork.

“We worked more closely with the Saxons just a few years back. Jack and I were together a lot because of Fitz, and the two of us and Elodie . . . we were friends—us and Luc, too. Jack was practically my younger brother.”

I tried to picture what the two of them must have been like when they actually liked each other. And—Jack and Elodie, together? I knew from the truth-or-dare game that they’d kissed, but wow.

I’d been quiet long enough that Stellan left me behind. I followed him inside the arch, where there were carved lists of names that must have been soldiers. Column after column, with some of the names underlined.

“So what happened—” I cut off. Something the tour guide with a group next to us said had just sparked something. “Did she say the underlined names are the soldiers who died in battle?”

Stellan shrugged, and leaned over to the tour group and asked someone on the periphery. The lady nodded.