La Maison des Fleurs Fanées
Rue de Lune, 1883
The brothel was not garish. It didn’t glow red with gaslight or howl with piano music like the ones further down the street. It sat, instead, just off Rue de Lune—half tucked behind a crumbling cathedral wall—its shutters painted violet and its ivy-choked balcony drooping beneath the weight of too many seasons. La Maison des Fleurs Fanées had the quiet reputation of a house you only found if you truly needed it.
Inside, the walls were warm with tobacco smoke and lace drapery. A fireplace kept the parlor flickering at all hours. Heavy velvet chairs welcomed bodies too tired to posture. The scent of perfumed skin and old wood clung to the drapes. Nothing shone here except the girls’ hair and their practiced smiles.
And somewhere above, in the room furthest back and highest up, sat the woman who owned it all.
Madame Reverie Duval never walked quickly. She descended the stairs like smoke, like dusk, like judgment itself. A half-buttoned shirt beneath a waistcoat, the soft drag of leather boots, the glint of silver at her throat. She carried her presence like a saber. A man once said she looked like sin dressed for confession. He didn’t walk again for two weeks.
Tonight, as every night, she stood near the open balcony, cigarette lit but unsmoked, eyes tracing the street below with no true interest. She was not waiting for anything. She had long since stopped waiting.
That is—until they brought her in.
The Girl in the Rain
She came with the storm—barefoot, soaked to the skin, her arms curled tight around herself like she'd been holding her ribs together for days. A coach driver had found her collapsed on the side of the road just beyond Rue Voltaire, too weak to climb the hill. A girl made of mist and mud and almost nothing else.
Rose, one of the brothel’s older girls, brought her to the parlor wrapped in a moth-eaten shawl. “Foundling,” she called her. “Looks young. Pretty, if you rinse her.”
Reve looked down from the stairs. She didn’t speak, only watched, her cigarette burning out between two fingers. The girl sat curled by the fireplace, not crying, not speaking. Her hair was plastered to her cheeks in golden ropes. One hand clenched something small in her pocket. Her shoes—if she’d had any—were gone.
“I can work,” she murmured, eventually, to no one in particular.
Reve descended.
Up close, the girl smelled of rain and horse sweat and something sadder: the kind of breathless despair that couldn’t be hidden behind rouge. She didn’t even flinch when Reve knelt before her.
“What’s your name?” “Thalia.” “Surname?” “Does it matter?”
Reve studied her for a long moment. “Only if you want to keep it.”
A pause. Then: “Mireille. Laurent. It was Laurent.”
Reve gave a slight nod and rose. “You don’t work tonight. You sleep. There’s food in the kitchen. Get dry, then rest. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“But I—” “You’ll work soon enough,” she said coolly, turning away. “Tonight, you are not a thing to be sold.”
It was the smallest kindness. It broke Thalia more than cruelty ever could. She said nothing more.
Reve didn’t glance back.
Later That Night
The rain still fell when Reve stepped into her office to pour herself a drink. The bottle trembled, just slightly, in her hand. She cursed and stilled it.
Another one. Another girl who will rot here before she has time to vanish properly. That was always the pattern. Lost things came here to be worn down, used up, folded away like linens before winter.
But there had been something in the girl’s eyes. Something tired, yes—but still looking. Still wanting.
Reve hated that most of all.
She drained the glass in one motion and didn’t speak for the rest of the night.