Paris glistened like a jewel mounted in another man’s crown. The city that had once belonged to lovers, poets, and revolutionaries had been remade into a brothel for conquerors — its beauty purchased, paraded, and consumed.

I walked down the Champs-Élysées beneath filaments strung like necklaces of cold fire across the trees. Officers strolled two by two, their gloves tucked neatly, their medals catching the lamplight. Women leaned from balconies, lips painted carmine, their laughter ringing too brightly in the night. Some were courtesans by trade, others simply survivors playing the part. Paris had learned that desire was another currency, and now she sold herself daily.

The Opéra Garnier was lit like a jewel box. From its balconies hung banners of black and red, and within, I knew, German officers filled the gilt boxes where once the city’s aristocracy had reigned. The air inside must be heavy with perfume, tobacco, and Wagner’s endless chords. For the Reich, Paris was both stage and bedchamber — a place where beauty was taken as spoil, draped across uniforms, silenced beneath medals.

In Montmartre, cafés still glowed amber, but their charm had turned decadent. Automaton waiters poured cognac into crystal glasses while SS men lounged in velvet banquettes, their boots resting carelessly against gilt tables. French girls in silk dresses drifted among them like moths, smiling with painted lips, laughing too loudly, their eyes hollow. The conquerors wanted Paris to remain Paris — not free, but decadent, pliant, a constant reminder that even the most spirited city in Europe could be bought.

I heard German voices in every corner — crude laughter, toasts to Speer’s “new order,” compliments on the silk of a girl’s dress or the sparkle of her eyes. Paris was their playground, their bordello of the West, a trophy city kept alive not to work but to amuse. And yet, in every corner, I also felt the resistance — a violinist’s bow dragging just a little too long, a waiter tapping a coded rhythm with his spoon, a woman whispering French too softly for her patron to hear.

I climbed toward Montmartre’s summit, past shadows that lingered in alleys where once painters had worked by lantern-light. Now they were painted in steam and smoke. At Sacré-Cœur, the dome shone like a ghost in the fog. From its terrace, I saw the Eiffel Tower in the distance, now crowned with zeppelin moorings, its filaments glowing faintly like veins of copper running through an iron body. Once, it had been Paris’s heart. Now it was Berlin’s sentinel.

And yet — Paris still breathed. Beneath the perfume and the uniforms, beneath the gilded decadence of her new role, the city still whispered. She was wounded, violated, but not broken. Every brothel is still a house, every mask conceals a face. And Paris had many masks left to wear.

I pulled my coat close, heels clicking on the cobblestones. To the Reich, this was a conquered jewel, a brothel of Europe. To me, it was a powder keg. One spark, and the velvet curtains would burn.