The black car had been idling outside the iron gates of Saint Brigitte's for three hours.
I watched it from the shadows of the laundry room, my pulse a frantic drumbeat against my ribs. In the fifteen years I had lived within these limestone walls, no one ever came in a car that expensive, and no one ever stayed that long.
At Saint Brigitte's, visitors were either desperate or gone. The sleek, polished obsidian of the vehicle looked like a predator crouching in the gravel, waiting for the right moment to strike.
"Isabelle! Stop staring at the gravel and finish the linens!"
The voice belonged to Claire, a girl whose heart had turned to flint long before she turned eighteen. She shoved a basket of heavy, wet sheets into my arms, the weight of the sodden fabric nearly pulling my shoulders from their sockets. The laundry room was a hell of steam and the biting scent of lye that burned the back of my throat.
My fingers were raw, the skin pruned and white from hours of scrubbing the filth of a hundred forgotten children.
"I'm coming," I muttered, pulling my woolen hood lower until it shadowed my face.
"Why do you always wear that ridiculous thing?" Claire sneered. She stepped into my personal space, her eyes glinting with the casual cruelty that thrived in a house where love was a rationed resource. Before I could move, she reached out with a lightning-fast hand and yanked the hood back.
My hair spilled out like a waterfall of blood. It was a violent, unnatural shock of crimson that seemed to catch the meager light of the room and set it on fire. Claire and the other girls went silent. In a world of gray stone, gray blankets, and thin, gray porridge, my hair was an anomaly.
It was a signature of a life I wasn't allowed to remember, a bright, dangerous flame in a place that preferred the dark.
"Sister Marianne says the cold gives me migraines," I lied. My hand shook as I reached to cover myself, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard it was painful.
"Sister Marianne treats you like a relic because she's afraid of you," Claire spat. She stepped closer, her sneer deepening. "She thinks that hair makes you special. I think it makes you a target. You look like the weeping martyrs in the cathedral, Isabelle. And we all know what happens to martyrs."
With a sudden, vicious movement, she shoved me. I stumbled back against the stone basin, the wet sheets spilling onto the floor like a sodden shroud. I didn't fight back. To fight back was to be noticed, and being noticed was the one thing Sister Marianne had spent fifteen years teaching me to avoid at all costs. I stayed on the floor, my palms stinging from the impact against the grit, listening to the girls' sharp, mocking laughter.
"Cover it up," Claire hissed, her voice dropping as the heavy oak doors at the end of the hall groaned open. "Someone important is here. And I doubt they're looking for a freak like you."
I scrambled to my feet, tucking the red strands back into their dark prison. My chest felt tight, a strange electricity buzzing in the air that made my skin crawl. I watched as Sister Marianne approached, her habit trembling as she led a woman into the laundry room.
The stranger was a vision of ivory wool and shimmering pearls. She looked like she had been carved from a different century, a world of gold and blood that didn't exist in our world of dust and prayer. She didn't look at the other girls. Her eyes, which were a piercing, intelligent blue, were locked onto me with a visceral, terrifying intensity.
"Isabelle," Sister Marianne whispered. Her voice sounded like it was being squeezed from her throat by an invisible hand. "This is Madame Beaumont. She has requested to hear you play."
"Now?" I asked. My voice cracked, raw from the steam. "Sister, the laundry is not finished."
"Now," Madame Beaumont interrupted. Her voice was velvet wrapped around a core of tempered steel.
She stepped toward me, the click of her heels sounding like the cocking of a hammer in the silent room. She didn't look at me with charity or the soft pity I was used to from wealthy patrons. She looked at me with the cold calculation of a general who had just found a lost map to a kingdom.
She reached out, her gloved hand hovering near my face, and for a second, I saw a flash of pure terror in her eyes. It was the look of a woman who had seen a ghost.
We walked to the church hall in a suffocating silence. The air in the sanctuary was freezing, smelling of ancient books, dying incense, and the damp breath of the stone walls. I took my violin from its velvet-lined case. The dark wood felt like the only solid thing left in a world that was suddenly melting away into a nightmare.
I played. I didn't play a hymn or a nursery rhyme. I played a melody that lived in the back of my mind, a sharp, defiant piece that sounded like a storm breaking over a glass city. It was a song of jagged edges and hidden power.
As the final note vibrated through the rafters, Madame Beaumont let out a shaky, jagged breath. She turned to Sister Marianne, her voice a low, urgent hiss that carried through the hollow space.
"It's her. The silver in the eyes, the way she holds the bow... it is the exact silhouette of Elena. If I can see it, Viktor Volkov will see it the second she walks into a room."
"She is safe here, Madame," Sister Marianne pleaded. Her hands fumbled with her wooden rosary beads, clicking them together in a frantic rhythm.
"Safe?" Madame Beaumont let out a short, bitter laugh. "The Volkovs have eyes in every corner of this country. She isn't safe. She is a ticking time bomb. And the countdown just ended today."
She turned back to me, thrusting a heavy, cream-colored envelope into my hand. It was sealed with a thick stamp of gold wax that bore the Beaumont crest.
"You are coming to my estate next week," she said. It wasn't an invitation. It was a summons to a battlefield. "Everything you need, the dress, the security, the lies you will have to tell, will be provided. You will be my featured performer."
"I don't have a name," I stammered, looking at the gold seal. "I'm just an orphan from Saint Brigitte's."
"You are not just anything," she whispered. She leaned in until I could see the frantic desperation in her gaze.
"The people who think you are dead are currently celebrating their victory. And I am about to ruin their party. But listen to me, child. The Volkovs will be there. Especially the son, Dmitri. He is his father's shadow. If he looks at you, do not blink. Do not breathe. Because the moment he realizes who you are, the hunt begins."
She turned and swept out of the hall, the sound of her heels echoing like a death knell against the marble.
The moment the doors closed, Sister Marianne collapsed into a wooden pew. She broke out into a jagged, desperate sob, her hands covering her face.
"I failed," she wailed. "I promised her. I promised Elena I would keep you hidden. I promised I would keep you safe from them."
"Sister, who is Elena?" I asked. My voice was trembling as I knelt beside her on the cold floor. At the mention of fire, a sudden, sharp pain lanced through my head. For a heartbeat, I saw a flash of orange light and heard the roar of collapsing timber.
"The woman who gave you to me," she choked out. She grabbed my arms with a strength that terrified me, her eyes bloodshot. She told me to never let the world see your face. And now I've let them take you. They're going to take you, just like they claim the life of others."
I looked down at the envelope in my hand. It felt like it was made of lead. I realized then that the bells of Saint Brigitte's hadn't been calling me to prayer all these years.
They had been sounding a warning.
I wasn't a girl anymore. I was a ghost that had just been summoned back to life. I walked back to the dormitory, moving past the whispering girls, and stood before the cracked mirror. I pulled the hood back, staring at the red hair and the silver eyes. For the first time, I didn't see a foundling. I saw a target.
The hunter was already at the gate, and I was finally stepping out of the shadows.