Summary
In the gas-lit labyrinth of 1910s Vienna, a marbled palace breathes secrets through its gilded keyholes: Count Varenne, an aristocrat whose silken gloves mask a gambler’s pulse, stakes his last pearl cufflinks on the roulette of desire when Lya Mara’s enigmatic silhouette glides across the Hofburg parquet. She arrives as ward to the decrepit Prince von Ledebur, yet her eyes—twin black daggers—hint at agendas older than the Habsburg crest. Colette Corder, the Count’s porcelain fiancée, floats through drawing rooms in clouds of lace, unaware that her betrothed’s heart has already been pickpocketed by the stranger whose laughter crackles like burning parchment. Karl Platen’s family notary, ink-stained and owl-eyed, unearths a codicil: should the Count marry outside the bloodline, the entail collapses, turning chandeliers into candle stubs overnight. Robert Scholz, a lieutenant with epaulettes sharp enough to slice moonlight, challenges the Count to a duel of spades and whispers, betting his own future on the turn of a card. Meanwhile, Olga Engl’s dowager spins gossip into cobwebs that cling to every candelabra; Heinrich Peer’s valet eavesdrops behind velvet portières; Josef Commer’s debt collector prowls the servants’ stair with a ledger of souls. The narrative pirouettes from masquerade to boudoir, from duelling ground to confession booth, until a single pistol shot ricochets off the opera house dome, scattering diamond earrings across the snow like lethal hailstones. When the smoke clears, identities lie shredded like silk stockings: the Count begs on his knees amid the shards of a shattered chandelier, Mara clutches a passport stamped for Trieste, and Colette—eyes now flint, not porcelain—walks away heir to ruins, her satin train dragging the dust of empire behind her.
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