The King did not know that two vampire princes were watching them leave Paris—their carriage had initially traveled only along the Seine River, but when it came time to leave the grounds of Louvre Palace, it had to turn southwest—they were going to Versailles, which meant they would inevitably pass City Hall, Notre-Dame, and Bastille Square. Near the canal by Bastille Square, a carriage hidden in the shadows lifted its curtains. A band of rioters noticed the glint on the window glass and rushed over, hoping to squeeze some benefit from it. But the swords and spears in Yilalue's monks' hands could deal not only with creatures of darkness, but fallen humans as well. The King's musketeers might have offered a warning first, but these holy knights, silent as stubborn stones, would not even utter a rebuke—of course, no one had anything to say to a group of dead men.
Yilalue had been watching the King's expression. As far as he knew, the young King seemed to be a deeply compassionate person. When he had still been in Paris, unable to bear seeing the city's poor go hungry amid soaring prices, he had quarreled with Mazarin, then used the restoration of the chapel as an opportunity to provide relief to as many people as possible. During their flight, though he himself had barely known where the next day's safety would come from, he still could not watch his subjects die in droves from the famine caused by war. Who knew how many people those "Queen Mother's Crosses" had saved? Yilalue would not have been surprised if they became a place of pilgrimage one day. And then there were the refugees who had followed the King all the way to Versailles in a mighty stream. If it had been Louis XIII,