Prologue
Paris, 1897.
The woman with smoke-kissed curls hummed as she stitched, her needle darting through the rabbit's threadbare ear. Outside the garret window, winter gnawed at the Rue du Cherche-Midi, its breath frosting the glass. Lila—not yet Lila, just ma petite—cradled the toy, her thumb brushing its matted fur.
"Écoute," her mother whispered.
A street violinist's melody spiraled up from the cobblestones, tangling with the scent of burnt chestnuts. La musique, c'est une carte. Elle te montrera le chemin.
Music is a map. It will show you the way.
But the way led to a damp October dawn. To fists hammering the door. To her mother's choked "Cache-toi!" as she shoved Lila into the armoire. The rabbit tumbled from her grip.
Through the keyhole, Lila watched the men's boots—polished, pitiless—circle her mother's bare feet.
"Où est-il?" they demanded. Where is he?
Her mother spat. A pistol cocked.
A single shot.
A scream—hers?—then silence, save for the violinist below, still playing Au Clair de la Lune.
St. Agatha's Home for Foundlings, Yorkshire, 1900
The matron's fingers were eels, slick and cold. "Filthy little Française," she muttered, scrubbing Lila's scalp raw. The rabbit—her rabbit—lay on the coal pile, one button eye dangling.
Lila lunged.
The matron backhanded her, then tossed the toy into the furnace.
"No room for heathen trinkets here."
That night, Lila dug her nails into the dormitory wall until blood crusted her fingertips. She carved two names into the plaster, hidden behind a bedpost:
Maman. Lila.
Lila Duval arrived at St. Agatha's on a sleet-riddled Thursday, her small fist clutching a moth-eaten rabbit. She was three. The matron pried the toy from her grip, tossed it into the coal furnace, and rechristened her Child 47.
But Lila had already seared her true name into her marrow. Lila. Lila. Lila. A whisper from a life before, when a woman with smoke-kissed curls hummed Au Clair de la Lune and tucked sprigs of lavender into her crib.
By seven, Lila's face had settled into porcelain solemnity, her eyes twin flints. She spoke rarely, but her mind—oh, her mind was a loom, weaving patterns from the orphanage's chaos. She noted that Sister Margot's snores peaked at 1:17 a.m., that the Headmaster's cane struck the flagstones in iambic pentameter, that the rats in the east wing avoided the chapel.
As if they knew.
The First Question earned Lila three strikes of the willow switch.
Sister Agnes had been droning through Deuteronomy when Lila pointed to the Scripture's frayed edge.
"Why does God let pages rot?"
The nun's jowls flushed sacramental-wine red. "Impudence!"
Later, in the vestry, the Headmaster pressed Lila's palm to the stove.
"The Word is flame, Child 47. It burns away doubt."
She did not cry out. Doubt, it seemed, had tougher sinews than faith. Blistered skin crisped like vellum, the stench of seared flesh clotting the air. Lila etched the pain into her private ledger:
Lesson 12 – Righteousness smells of pork and piety.
When the Headmaster withdrew his hand, a strand of her hair clung to the stove's iron teeth, smoking like an unholy offering.
Sister Margot's pins were steel, sharp as Eucharist wafers, and always numbered seven in her greased chignon. Lila noted their migration:
7:00 a.m. – Pins inserted post-matins, after Sister's third gin-laced tea. 2:03 p.m. – Topmost pin loosened mid-dozing over The Lives of Saints.10:17 p.m. – Final pin slid free as Sister sleepwalked to the privy, her breath a gin-cloud.
Lila harvested them like blackberries, careful of thorns. By Trinity Sunday, her mattress secreted a nest of thirty-two. They gleamed in the dark like deranged constellations, their points pricking her fingertips as she practiced cursive on her thigh:
Liberté. Pont Marie. Maman.
Once, Sister Margot stirred as Lila plucked a pin, her milky eye rolling open.
"Sssinner," she hissed, gin-sour spittle flecking Lila's cheek.
The girl froze, a stoat in a viper's gaze, until the nun's head lolled back, snoring.
The Headmaster's piety was a whetted thing.
When Lila asked why the Psalms forbade "graven images" yet St. Agatha's hoarded silver crucifixes, he took her to the font.
"Filth must drown," he rasped, shoving her face into ice-shot holy water. His cane kissed her ribs—once for Father, once for Son, once for Spirit.
The water's cold bit like a martyr's teeth, her lungs screaming psalms of their own. Blessed are the drowned, for they shall inherit the silt.
When he yanked her up for the third time, blood from her split brow ribboned the font's surface—a crone's tea leaves foretelling vengeance.
After, he anointed her brow with chrism. "…Renew this child."
Lila's lips moved in silent reciprocation: Kill the cask, renew the key.
The oil itched like lies as she limped to the dormitory, the stolen pins hidden in her sock jabbing her ankle with every step. That night, she dreamt of locks—not the east storeroom's brass Colossus, but the tiny, elegant ones that once fastened her mother's jewelry box.
Click. Click. Click.
They sang to her in iron lullabies.