The Painter's Apprentice

Chapter 13

"What are these?" Destan asks when he arrives at my studio the following morning.

My brows push together. "What do you mean?"

He retreats into the hall and returns with a small, flat package wrapped in thick brown paper.

"I don't—" It takes a second for me to realize they are Morel's final paintings. "Wait!"

I dash into the hall and find five more flat packages in varying sizes propped against the wall outside my door. The largest is almost as tall as I am. "Help me bring these inside."

Destan takes the largest of them and we transfer them to my bedchamber.

"These are Morel's last paintings," I say when he looks at me nervously. "Lafayette hid them away when Morel died."

Destan's gaze shifts to the packages. "Why would Lafayette hide them away?"

"He thought they were strange, and from what little I saw, he was correct. They do not resemble his work in the least."

"May I see?"

My pulse races, and I don't know why. I'm not sure whether I don't want to look at the other paintings, or if I don't want Destan too see them.

"Unless you would rather I don't—" Destan offers.

"No." I push the flutter aside and tear the paper away from the smallest of the packages. "I don't mind. I just..."

The painting inside is perhaps stranger than the one Lafayette showed me in the attic. It is a similar color palette of golds and dark greens and inky blues, but instead, they weave in and out of each other like waves.

"You want to preserve his legacy," Destan says, and it hits me how right he is.

I want Morel to be remembered as I remember him. Brilliant and fastidious. A master artist with an unparalleled eye for beauty. I don't want him to be remembered as a madman, chasing shadows across the gardens or painting wavy lines on his last canvases.

I run my fingers over the painting to feel the think ridges of paint from his brushstrokes. "It just doesn't feel like him," I whisper through a lump in my throat.

Destan's shoulder brushes mine as he moves to stand in front of the painting. He smells like fresh-baked bread and something sugary like buttery Madeleines. "Sorry," he mutters absently when my head snaps to look at him.

He doesn't meet my gaze, his attention fixed on the canvas before us. "You think this isn't finished?"

"What?" Finished? "Of course not."

Destan leans in closer, then takes a step back. "There's something interesting about it. The gold makes your eye jump around the painting. It makes me wonder if there is something intentional to the composition."

I examine the painting to see what he means. It takes a while, but I start to see a balance in the colors and a movement to the undulating waves. "Perhaps it was an accident," I say and tear open one of the larger packages.

It's the one I saw in the attic.

Destan moves nearer to me as he inspects the new piece. "Now, this looks unfinished." He points to the gaps of paint that reveal raw canvas. "But..."

"What?"

"It reminds me of something." He takes the painting and rushes off to the studio.

I follow him and he stops in front of Morel's painting of me where I have it propped up on a table against the wall.