Page 116 of The Spy’s Song

A chill moved through her. He could not remain here.

Her boots were louder than his as she followed him. "Please, sire. You must decide now. Please."

He stopped at the flower bed along the hedge wall. Most of the roses were dead, their petals dried and brown.

He plucked one, then turned it slowly between his fingers.

"What do you know of roses?" he said.

She wrung her hands. "Not much."

"In Josephine's time, the roses of Malmaison were the most beautiful in Paris. In all of Europe." His fingers turned the flower slightly, exposing the darkened edge of a petal. "And then, after she was gone, they turned into this."

The air thinned, the hedges too tall, the fountain too quiet, the hour running down somewhere beyond the green walls. No. There was always hope. There had to be hope. She had come here with options and an hour and a father who had never given up, who had come back from Elba, who had assembled an army in three months on will and reputation alone.

"Perhaps," she whispered, "perhaps the roses are in a strategic stillness. Any moment now they will—"

He turned his face to her. "If I go. If I run—I become a fugitive."

"This," he said, and he gestured, a movement of his hand that took in the maze, the house beyond it, the world that had closed around them, "becomes the story of the running. Not of the empire I created."

Her breath shortened again, catching halfway, refusing to deepen. All her life she had believed she was strong because he was strong. The strongest man ever to breathe, invincible, the man who came from a small island and built the largest empire since Alexander the Great. She had gone to Rodrick's house every day, believing that if she came back another day, and another, and another, she would get him back.

But what if Rodrick was lost to her? What if the farewell in the field—her hands on his face, the kiss on her palm—was the last warmth she would ever receive from him?

Napoleon perched on the bench again, staring at the dead rose between his fingers.

The pressure in her chest deepened, and the tears arrived before she could press her teeth together or lift her chin.

Napoleon patted the bench again. She sat beside him, too weak to dry her face.

The sound of metal leaving a scabbard cut clean through the space, and she flinched.

"The sword of Waterloo," he said, passing it to her.

"Why?"

"I refuse to give it to the Tsar," he said. "Or to Talleyrand."

"But your brothers—Joseph, or—"

"Take it. De Brissac told me you broke yours at Genappe," he said.

She held it across both palms. The scabbard was warm from his hands. She had not expected it to be warm. This might be the greatest honor for any marshal in France who fought beside Napoleon, but she could not feel any of it. Her throat closed on feelings she had no words for.

Please don't.

Her father was surrendering.

Please don't.

Frowning, Napoleon pulled something from his coat. A medal with a cross on its red ribbon, the laurel wreath, the eagle at the center. The Légion d'honneur. "De Brissac told me something else. Something about a flag you retrieved and a royalist detachment you convinced to surrender."

The tears ran. She could not stop them.

He set the medal in her hands. "Jean d'Arc. Eh? An apt nom de guerre."

She looked at both, and the tears didn't stop. She had given her name to Talleyrand and become Louise Bonnechoix again. But she was his daughter. She was a Bonaparte, and a Corsican, and she was too loyal, and too hot-blooded, and she loved too deeply, and she was discovering now that she cried too much.