Study.
Rise through the ranks.
Become irreplaceable.
Become the chosen one.
Find your power. Use it, but softly.
Haseki.
Pasha conferred this once-ancient title upon me, to fashion me after Süleyman’s most beloved and trusted haseki. It is an honor, he told me. A gift.
In that moment, my name was erased, buried under dirt.
But my spirit was not.
Khayyam
The Petit Palais isn’t a palace at all, and it certainly isn’t petit. It was built for the 1900 World’s Fair, l’Exposition Universelle. It’s a trapezoid of stone and steel with marble mosaic floors, immense columns, and a sky-grazing rotunda where I can roam the exhibition halls content in anonymous humidity-controlled solitude—as my barest self, Khayyam, unadorned and unfettered.
Except this time, I’m not alone.
I’m with a boy. A decidedly cute one. Who happens to be an Alexandre Dumas. In other words, a boy who might have answers to the questions banging around in my brain ever since my epic essay fail.
If I believed in kismet/qismat/destinée, I might trust that the universe planned this meeting. There’s a kind of poetry to it. But believing in fate is magical thinking. A lot of people want to find the deeper meaning behind random circumstances. But what’s the point? Extraordinary events are basically chance plus time.
So why are my palms all sweaty?
I can actually hear my friend Julie answering my question with one of her own: Who cares why it all happened? You’re walking around a museum with a cute French guy. Stop overthinking it.
But she’s not here to stop me from considering my clammy hands and fluttery stomach. Maybe I’m nervous because chance and time have collided and brought me to this place. With this boy. In front of this painting—Eugène Delacroix’s The Combat of the Giaour and the Pasha—that I discovered a couple years ago and that inspired me to jump down an art history rabbit hole where I landed with an unceremonious thud. Maybe I shouldn’t tell Alexandre that I’ve dedicated countless hours of my life to find a connection between his ancestor and this painting’s mate—the one in the Giaour series that lives in the Art Institute of Chicago. Maybe not revealing everything about my entire life in the first five minutes of knowing this stranger is a good thing. I should cultivate an air of mystery like a proper French girl.
“You love the Delacroix?” Alexandre asks. “It’s one of my favorites, too.”
“There’s an art world legend that Dumas—that your grand-père—owned this painting,” I manage, glancing shyly at him.
Alexandre arches his eyebrows.
“Well, not this exact one, but one in the Delacroix series that’s in Chicago. At the Art Institute. Where I live. I mean, I live in Chicago. The city. Not the museum. Duh.” I bite my lower lip to stop this embarrassing overflow of spontaneous dork. Proper French-girl flirting involves elegance and restraint. Clearly, I lack both.
He shrugs. “Delacroix and Dumas were friends. And Delacroix did gift him art . . .” He clears his throat. “You certainly seem to know a lot about my family.”
When I try to hold his gaze, he turns back to the painting. I clam up. I’m not sure how much more I should confess. If he hadn’t been the one who approached me, I’d seem like some weird stalker-y Alexandre Dumas fangirl. Or worse, a dilettante. Celenia Mondego’s judgment echoes in my mind, and an awkward silence occupies the space between Alexandre and me.
“So . . .” He scrunches up his forehead, trying gallantly to fill the pause. “You think that my great-grand-père Dumas might have owned one of the Giaours by Delacroix?”
I shrug and shift my weight from one foot to the other. “Maybe?”
Alexandre nods. “There are family rumors, at least according to my uncle Gérard who researches that kind of stuff. It’s definitely, um, interesting . . .”
Oh God. I am a dilettante. A bumbling, ineloquent amateur art-splainer, telling the five (or was it six?)-times-great-grandson of Alexandre Dumas all about his family. Cascading organ failure continuing. What am I on now? Spleen? Bladder? Please don’t let it be bladder.
Before I can stop myself, I blurt, “Actually I wrote this entire paper on it. For a prize. That I didn’t win. I thought Chicago’s Art Institute Delacroix was the one Dumas owned. I thought I’d made this huge art world discovery about the line of ownership. Turns out I was totally wrong about the provenance.” A nervous giggle slips out. So much for an air of sophistication. “Supposedly Delacroix created at least six in a series based on the same Lord Byron poem, The Giaour. I came here today to take another look at this one in case I missed something, like maybe this was the one Dumas owned, not the one in Chicago. But um, I guess not? I mean, I’m not sure what other clues I was looking for. Probably wishful thinking? I guess if anyone would know if Dumas owned this Delacroix, it would be . . . you. I . . . well . . . anyway . . . Two of those six paintings have been lost—maybe it’s another one?”
I need to pause for air. I think I’m speaking English, but it’s really a high-speed torrent of nerd. This boy could potentially help me, and I’m over here taking random stabs at history. I cover my face with my palm. Focus, Khayyam.
Alexandre gently pulls my hand away. “Are you embarrassed? Don’t be. Your paper sounds amazing. No one seems to care about our lost family history anymore, except maybe my uncle. But to me, the past is a mystery waiting to be revealed.”
I perk up. Maybe this guy speaks nerd, too. And did his hand just linger on mine? “That’s why I’m obsessed with art history!” I practically yell, then quickly lower my voice to a museum-appropriate level. “It discovers life in relics of the past and brings that past forward to the future—it’s like an academic time machine. Those Etruscan vases we walked by? They’re echoes of people who lived over two thousand years ago. We can extrapolate a lot based on a few puzzle pieces. Sometimes it’s a revelation. Though I guess other times, like with my essay . . .” I’m rambling and also too embarrassed to finish the sentence.
He gazes at me with a warm smile. “Who cares if you didn’t win the prize? Qui ne tente rien n’a rien.”
“No pain, no gain?” I sigh. “If only I’d gained something more than humiliation.”
“I thought Americans weren’t defeatist,” he quips.
“That’s the French part of me speaking,” I deadpan.
“Well, I think all the parts of you are charmant,” he replies without missing a beat.
I’m such a pushover for casual French flirting. Wait. Am I enjoying this? I’m enjoying this. I’m supposed to be putting my life back together, but I’m flirting with a cute boy in a museum. Which sounds like the kind of thing Julie would do, not me. But being my usual cautious self hasn’t been working out that great lately, so why not go for it?