Lydia Shaw's soaked backpack hit the professor's desk with a squelch that echoed through the exam hall. Thirty heads snapped toward the sound – Terminale students in crisp blazers staring as river water pooled around her saddle shoes. Professor Moreau's nostrils flared like a bloodhound catching scent as he thrust her Baccalauréat papers forward.
"Vos documents, Mademoiselle Shaw," he demanded, spectacles fogged with condensation. "On dirait que le Rhône vous a volé votre dignité." The Rhône stole your dignity.
Lydia swept dripping chestnut hair from her forehead, revealing the crescent scar above her brow – a relic from last winter's ice storm. As Moreau scrutinized her waterlogged ID photo, her fingers brushed the pearl hidden in her pocket. «Sophie's pearl. Gavin's mother's ghost.»
When Moreau slid the philosophy paper across the desk, Lydia reached for her pen – only to freeze. Her satchel gaped open, revealing Descartes' Meditations bloated like a drowned corpse. No pen.
«Merde! Did it sink with Sophie's dignity?»
Thwack.
A matte-black Waterman Expert landed beside her trembling hand. Platinum accents glinted under fluorescent lights like frost on a tombstone. Lydia didn't turn. She felt Gavin Sterling's gaze burning through her damp blazer – that predatory focus that earned him "L'Esprit de Fer" (The Iron Mind).
Moreau's voice dripped acid: "Un cadeau du prince des ténèbres?" A gift from the prince of darkness?
"Un prêt," Lydia corrected, fingers closing around the barrel. Cold. Heavy. Like holding a loaded gun.
From the back row, Gavin's voice cut through silence: "Elle le rendra quand les carpes du Rhône chanteront." She'll return it when Rhône carp sing.
The exam prompt glared: "Can virtue exist without witness?"
Lydia uncapped the Waterman. The nib flowed like black tears:
«Rousseau claimed man is born free – yet we chain ourselves to others' eyes. This morning I dove into filth not for cameras, but because no one did for my sister when the ice cracked…»
Water dripped from her hair onto the paper, blooming into Rorschach stains: one resembled Sophie's pearl, another Gavin's serpent signet. She pressed on: «True courage is what the river swallows unseen. What does it matter if the world applauds? The drowned never hear it.»
Across the aisle, Gavin's pen hesitated. His eyes tracked the blood crusting Lydia's knuckles – split against quay stones while hauling Sophie ashore. «Why throw her the pen?» he wondered, ink pooling darkly. «Father would say she's gutter algae. Yet when she surfaced with that woman… for a heartbeat, I saw Mother's face.»
When the dismissal bell clanged through Lycée Descartes' vaulted halls, students surged toward freedom like salmon upstream. Lydia capped the Waterman, its weight suddenly unbearable.
Gavin materialized beside her desk, palm extended. "Ma propriété, Shaw."
Their fingers brushed as she surrendered the pen. A static shock leaped between them. "Merci. Sans ça, Moreau m'aurait écorchée." He'd have skinned me alive.
"Il essaiera demain," Gavin murmured, tucking the pen inside his Brioni blazer. His eyes lingered on the algae smearing her collar. "Alors? Le Rhône a-t-il meilleur goût que la cantine?" Does the Rhône taste better than cafeteria slop?
Lydia shouldered her ruined satchel. "J'ai sauvé deux vies, Sterling. Pas pêché des carpes." Saved lives, not fished.
His lips twitched – the ghost of a smile. They fell into step through the cloisters, Gavin's stride effortlessly matching hers. Outside, July heat wrapped around them like a damp shroud.
In the Cour d'Honneur, sunlight ignited Gavin's golden hair into a halo. Lydia felt the weight of stares:
Rugby captains sneering at her mud-caked loafers
Terminale S girls sighing over Gavin's razor-sharp jawline
Moreau watching from his office like a vulture eyeing carrion
Lydia edged toward the bike racks. "Mon vélo est—"
Gavin caught her elbow. "Attends." He nodded toward the gates where Élodie Marchand's France 3 van idled, camera lenses glinting like sniper scopes. "Les requins sentent le sang." Sharks smell blood.
"Qu'importe?" Lydia pulled free. "Je suis déjà trempée." I'm already drenched.
But as she turned, Gavin's voice halted her: "Pourquoi?" Why? When she glanced back, his mask had slipped. Raw hunger burned in those glacier eyes. "Pourquoi sauter dans ce fleuve pestilentiel?" Why dive in that sewer?
Lydia touched the pearl. "Parce que personne ne l'a fait pour ma sœur." Because no one did for my sister. The admission hung between them, fragile as a soap bubble.
Élodie Marchand intercepted them at the gates, microphone thrust forward like a bayonet. "Mademoiselle Shaw! Un mot pour nos téléspectateurs?"
Lydia shielded her eyes from the glare. "S'il vous plaît, je dois—"
"Attendez!" Élodie's gaze snagged on Gavin. "Mais c'est le fils Sterling!" Recognition sparked. "Parfait! La caméra vous adore tous les deux!"
Gavin stepped smoothly between Lydia and the lens. "Quel est votre intérêt ici, madame?"
"Un documentaire!" Élodie's eyes gleamed. "Sur les canuts de la Croix-Rousse!" She gestured toward Lyon's historic silk-weaver district. "Votre sauvetage… c'était du cinéma vérité! Le réalisateur veut vous deux."
Lydia froze. "Nous? Dans un film?"
"Pas un film," Élodie purred. "Un témoignage. Des lycéens sauvant l'héritage lyonnais." She fixed Lydia with a predatory smile. "Vous serez notre Jeanne d'Arc des traboules."
Gavin's laugh was a scalpel. "Jeanne d'Arc? Shaw est plutôt son cheval embourbé." Her stuck horse. He studied Élodie. "Qui finance? La Fondation Dubois?"
Élodie flushed. "La… la Mairie de Lyon."
Lydia tugged Gavin's sleeve. "C'est vrai? Je pourrais être…" Her whisper held the awe of someone who'd grown up watching heroes on tiny TV screens.
Gavin's gaze softened imperceptibly. «Mon Dieu, she'd sign with the devil for this,» he realized. «This girl trusts foxes guarding henhouses.» Aloud, he demanded: "Quels rôles?"
"Des défenseurs du patrimoine!" Élodie beamed. "Vous documentez les ateliers de soie, organisez des manifestations…" She leaned toward Lydia. "Et vous, notre héroïne rebelle."
Lydia's breath hitched. "Héroïne?" The word felt dangerous. She turned to Gavin. "Tu crois que c'est vrai?"
He saw it then – the naked hope in her eyes, the vulnerability beneath river mud and sarcasm. «She'll say yes with or without me,» he thought. «And Lyon will eat her alive.»
Gavin slid hands into tailored trousers. "Je serai dans votre film… si Shaw y est."
Élodie clapped. "Magnifique! Rendez-vous—"
"Un instant." Gavin's voice turned arctic. He plucked something from Lydia's hair – a shard of river-smoothed green glass. "Le Rhône vous laisse des souvenirs, Shaw."
As his fingers brushed her temple, Lydia flinched. Not from pain, but from the current his touch ignited. She pressed Sophie's pearl into his palm.
"Et ça?" she whispered. "Un souvenir du Rhône… ou de votre mère?"
Gavin froze. The courtyard's noise faded – chattering students, idling news van, even the Saint-Nizier bells silenced. His thumb stroked the pearl's surface, knuckles whitening.
"Où?" The word was a blade.
"Autour du cou de Sophie Lacroix," Lydia said. "Femme de Philippe Dubois."
A muscle jumped in Gavin's jaw. "Impossible." But his eyes betrayed him – dilated pupils, rapid blink rate. «Mother's pearls. In the Rhône. On a banker's wife.»
Élodie broke the spell. "Alors? Demain?"
Gavin pocketed the pearl. "Oui. Mais nous écrivons nos scènes." He steered Lydia toward the bike racks. "On parle. Maintenant."
In the alley behind Boulangerie Dupont, Gavin backed Lydia against ivy-covered stone. "Qui est Sophie Lacroix?"
"Je vous l'ai dit!" Lydia's heart hammered. "Une femme que le Rhône a failli prendre."
Gavin's laugh held no humor. "Le Rhône prend ce qu'on lui jette." He opened his palm. The pearl gleamed like a traitor's eye. "Ces perles… mon père les a offertes à ma mère pour leur dixième anniversaire. Elle les portait le jour où elle a disparu."
Lydia's breath caught. "Disparu? Pas…"
"Non," Gavin's voice roughened. "Pas morte. Disparue. Comme brume sur le fleuve." He leaned closer, citrus-cedar scent overriding river stench. "Et maintenant elles ornent le cou d'une banquière?"
"Peut-être que votre mère—"
"Ne finissez pas cette phrase," Gavin warned. His finger traced Lydia's jaw – threat or caress? "Voici notre marché: vous m'aidez à découvrir la vérité… et je vous protège des requins."
Beyond the alley, Élodie called Lydia's name. Gavin's lips curved. "Choisissez: les caméras ou les ombres?"
Lydia stared at the pearl – a tiny sphere holding oceans of lies. «Fame or truth?» The choice should've been simple. Yet Gavin's proximity scrambled her thoughts, his heat cutting through her chill.
"D'accord," she breathed. "Mais le documentaire continue."
Gavin's eyebrow lifted. "Vous négociez?"
"C'est ma porte de sortie," Lydia insisted. "De cette ville. De cette vie."
For three heartbeats, Gavin studied her – the stubborn set of her jaw, the river-fire in her eyes. Then he nodded sharply. "Très bien. Mais vous ne tournerez pas une scène sans moi."
He extended his hand. When Lydia grasped it, his fingers locked around hers, sealing the pact.
"Allez," Gavin murmured, steering her toward the cameras. "Jouons aux héros, Shaw. Pour l'instant."
As they emerged into sunlight, Élodie's cry split the air: "Action!"
Lydia squared her shoulders. «Heroes or pawns?» she wondered, Gavin's palm warm at her back. «Only the silk-weavers' ghosts know.»