The roar of the crowd was a distant buzz in my ears; the only thing I could see, burned into my memory, were the traitor's dead eyes watching my family.
The man in the crowd. The Swiss Guard. Polignac's man.
The ride back to Versailles was the longest hour of my life. The carriage swayed gently, a gilded cage on wheels. Outside, Parisians were still cheering. They threw flowers. They shouted "Vive le Roi! Vive la Reine!" Long live the King. Long live the Queen.
The irony was a bitter pill in my throat. They were cheering for a dead man walking, cheering for the woman whose death they would one day celebrate.
Marie was glowing. The success of our public walk had washed away the ugliness of the pamphlets. She was relieved, confident, her face animated as she recounted the day.
"Did you see their faces, Louis?" she said, her voice bright with a victory she had earned. "They were smiling! A woman gave me a rose." She touched the simple pink flower resting on the velvet seat beside her, as if it were a crown jewel. "I think... I think it worked."
"It was a good first step," I said, forcing a smile that felt like a crack in a plaster mask. My heart was hammering a frantic, panicked rhythm against my ribs. "But the fight isn't over."
She didn't seem to notice my tension. She was too caught up in the moment, and I couldn't blame her. For the first time, she had fought back against her enemies and won.
But I saw the truth. We hadn't won anything. We had just kicked a hornet's nest, and now the hornets were inside the house.
Every shadow the carriage passed, my muscles tensed. Every loud noise from the street, my hand twitched towards the useless, jewel-encrusted ceremonial sword at my hip. I angled my body slightly, a subconscious shield between Marie and the unseen threats outside the window.
The Swiss Guard. A man paid to take a bullet for us was on the enemy's payroll. How many more were there? Who could I trust?
The answer was a cold, hard knot in my gut. No one.
The moment the carriage rolled to a stop in the grand courtyard of Versailles, I was moving. I practically lifted the children out myself, handing them off to their governess with a sharp order. "Take them to their rooms. Lock the doors. No one enters until I come for them myself."
Marie stared at me, her happy expression fading, replaced by confusion and a flicker of fear. "Louis, what is it?"
"Security," I said, my voice clipped and hard. "A precaution."
I didn't wait to explain. I strode into the palace, my mind a cold, logical machine again. The fear was still there, a block of ice in my chest, but I was channeling it. This was a hostile work environment. Time to implement new safety protocols.
I summoned the Captain of the Royal Guard, a man named De La Tour. He was a career soldier, old and weary, his face a roadmap of long-forgotten battles. He looked like a man who valued duty over politics, but in this court, you could never be sure.
He arrived in my study, his posture ramrod straight. "Your Majesty."
"Captain," I said, forgoing any pleasantries. "The attack on my locksmith proves the threat is no longer external. It is inside this palace."
I watched his face for any reaction, any flicker of deception. I saw only a grim, weary understanding.
"Effective immediately," I commanded, "the Queen's security detail, and that of the Dauphin and the Princess, are to be changed."
His eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Your Majesty? The Swiss Guard have protected the royal family for over a century. They are the best--"
"They are a tradition," I cut him off, my voice sharp. "I am more interested in survival. Tradition did not stop an assassin's blade from killing King Henri IV." I used the historical reference deliberately, a reminder that the unthinkable had happened before.
The Captain's face hardened. "What are your orders?"
"You will give me a list of your ten most loyal men," I said. "Not the most skilled. The most loyal. I want men with families here at court. Men with young children. Men with everything to lose."
A man with a family to protect won't risk his children's future for a duke's bag of gold. It wasn't a guarantee. But in a world of shifting allegiances, it was the best risk management I could come up with.
"They, and only they, will guard the royal family's private apartments," I finished. "No one else gets past them. Is that clear?"
"Perfectly, Sire," he said, a new respect in his eyes. He saluted, a crisp, military gesture, and left. I had just taken control of my own security. I had also forced the Captain to show his hand. By obeying, he had chosen a side.
That night, I went to Marie's private chambers. It was a place I, as Louis, had never been. The real King and Queen lived almost entirely separate lives within the palace. But protocol could go to hell.
The air in her rooms was thick with the scent of roses and lilac. It was a soft, feminine space, a world away from the heavy, masculine energy of the King's apartments. It felt like trespassing.
She was sitting in a silk armchair, still in her gown from the trip to Paris. She looked up, her eyes wide and questioning.
"There are new guards outside your door," I said, my voice low. "They answer only to me. No one is to enter these rooms without my express permission. No one. Do you understand?"
She nodded, a small, frightened motion. "Is it really that dangerous, Louis?" she whispered.
"They're cornered," I said, my eyes scanning the room. "And cornered animals bite."
I didn't stop there. I walked the perimeter of her lavish suite. I went to the tall, gilded doors that led to her balcony and personally examined the lock. It was ornate, beautiful, and utterly useless. A child could have picked it.
"This is unacceptable," I muttered, more to myself than to her. I tested the heavy latch on one of the windows, shaking my head in disgust.
She watched me, her expression a mixture of fear and fascination. No one had ever seen a King do this. A king gave orders. He did not check locks. But I wasn't a king. I was Alex Miller, a man who understood that security was only as strong as its weakest point. My hands, the hands of a 21st-century man, ran over the 18th-century security flaws with a practiced, critical eye.
"I'll have Jean fix this tomorrow," I said. "All of it."
I turned back to face her. "No more late-night walks in the garden. No more unchaperoned visits. Not for a while."
"I understand," she said. And I knew she did. The reality of our situation was sinking in. The cheers of the crowd were a fading memory. The cold, hard threat was here, in her home.
In that moment, I wasn't just protecting a queen. I was protecting this woman, this person, who was looking at me with a terrifying amount of trust in her eyes. The stakes had just gone from professional to personal. And that was a hundred times more frightening than any revolution.
I knew changing the guards wasn't enough. I had to find the snake. I had to know his name. But I couldn't just have every Swiss Guard arrested and questioned. I had no proof, only a fleeting glimpse of a face in a crowd.
I needed to lay a trap. And for that, I needed my snake, the Duc d'Orléans.
I summoned him to my study. I laid out the plan, my voice low and urgent. This was corporate espionage, adapted for a royal court.
"We need to leak a piece of high-value, completely false information," I explained. "The bait has to be irresistible."
Orléans leaned forward, his eyes gleaming with the thrill of the game. "What did you have in mind?"
"We are going to let it slip," I said, "that in his final days, the old king, my grandfather, compiled a secret ledger. A black book, detailing every bribe, every dirty deal, every treasonous whisper he ever knew of. And that I have just found it."
Orléans let out a low whistle. "A fantasy that every noble at court fears is true. Polignac would kill to get his hands on a book like that."
"Exactly," I said. "You will 'accidentally' let this slip to a minister you know to be a gossip. But you will do it at a specific time, in a specific hallway. A hallway that I will ensure is guarded only by a certain rotation of the Swiss Guard."
"The rotation with our traitor," Orléans finished, a slow smile spreading across his face.
"When Polignac makes a move to find this fictional ledger," I said, "we'll know exactly who told him. We'll have our mole."
The trap was set. Now, all we could do was wait. The next twenty-four hours were the longest of my life. Every guard I passed was a potential suspect. Every whisper in the hallway felt like a part of the plot.
The next night, Orléans appeared at the door of my study without being announced. His face was pale, his usual smirk completely gone.
My heart leaped into my throat. "What is it?"
"The bait was taken," he said, his voice low and urgent. He closed the door behind him. "And faster than we could have ever imagined."
A surge of cold triumph washed over me. It worked. "So Polignac's mole is—"
"The leak worked," Orléans cut me off, and his eyes were wide with a new kind of fear, one I hadn't seen in him before. "But the information didn't go to the Duke. Not directly."
He took a deep, shaky breath, as if the words themselves were poison.
"An agent from the Duke's household was seen leaving a late-night meeting... with the British Ambassador."