Seventeen

Seventeen

The room was too cold, and Roma couldn’t sleep.

With a huff, he turned in his blankets again, eyes opening begrudgingly. The window above him had the slightest crack, and though he had tried his best to patch it up, cold air blew in relentlessly. Once or twice, he almost thought he heard creaking, like the window was being lifted, but each time he jerked his head up and squinted into the dimness, he found only stillness, nothing but the wind trying to get in. Roma turned again and unwittingly thumped his elbow hard on the wall. He winced. A second later, there came a responding thump.

Juliette.

He was going to lose his damn mind, and it would be entirely Juliette Cai’s fault.

Their beds were side by side, which he knew because the walls were so thin that any time Juliette moved, so too did his bedframe. Every little sound she made was audible, each low, long sigh that Juliette released because she likely could not sleep either, not in a place so strange and foreign, swathed by the scent of perfume.

Roma pulled the blankets up, all the way up, over his head in hopes that it would muffle the sounds.

“Sleep,” he commanded himself. “Go to sleep.”

But all the same, his mind continued running on a loop, relentless between only two thoughts: It is so goddamn cold, and then, Why did she kiss me back?

Roma smacked the blankets off in frustration. He hadn’t been thinking. He was in over his head working in such close proximity to her, forgetting constantly that she was a liar, that she had bided her time pretending to love him again just to betray him. He was a fool.

What was her excuse?

Roma shifted to face the wall. Perhaps with enough effort, he could peer right through and see Juliette there, lying next to him. Perhaps with enough effort, he could understand the girl he had been working with these past few weeks, who had killed the people he loved without remorse, yet looked at him like they were still kids playing with marbles on the Bund.

She had pushed him through the compartment door. Roma couldn’t rationalize that—no matter how hard he tried. And despite the bravado that Juliette had put on, Roma had seen the horror in her eyes when she stumbled forward into his arms. She hadn’t known that she was completely immune. It had been a wager, and if it hadn’t worked, she would have spent precious seconds that she could have used saving herself to push him out instead.

Whatever was going on with Juliette, it couldn’t have all been a lie. Whether it was that she turned cold in New York or she turned cold at some point in their time hunting the Larkspur, someone who had been pretending from the very beginning wouldn’t have reacted that way on the train—wouldn’t have protected him without a second thought, wouldn’t have kissed him with the same longing that still stung his lips.

Something had been real in their past, before she chose her side. Something within her still reached for him, even if it wasn’t with her whole heart, even if it was an instinct more than a choice.

Can you have a girl without the heart? Roma blew a puff of air onto his cold hands, scrunching them up against his neck. She cared for him. He could see that now. So, what then? Would he have her even with hatred running through her veins, even if she would betray him when the Scarlets asked? Just to have her near, might he pretend that she wouldn’t keep cutting down the people he loved simply because he loved her most?

Roma cursed out loud, horrified by where his thoughts were going.

This wasn’t him. This was weakness. Even if they were inexplicably bound to each other, he didn’t want the girl without the heart. He didn’t want Juliette without the love—love that wouldn’t cut. Love that wouldn’t destroy.

But in a city like theirs, that was impossible.

His touch feather-soft, Roma set his palm on the wall, pretending it was Juliette instead.

On the other side, in the other room, Juliette felt her bedframe shift. She opened her eyes into the silver moonlight streaming through the windows, tracing the glow that ran along the wall.

For whatever reason, weary with the day, her hand extended out of its own volition, pressing a gentle palm to the wall. She felt something thrum beneath her skin, some feeling of calm, like the whole wide ocean coming to a stop underneath her prayer. In another world, she could reach for Roma instead, but here and now, there was only a barrier, cutting between them without mercy.

Like twin statues reaching for each other, they both fell asleep at last.

Juliette dreamed of burning roses and lilies wilting at the stem. She was dreaming of so much at once that she felt like she was drowning in it, drowning in the fragrance of a thousand gardens and unable to surface.

Until she did.

Juliette stirred awake, although her eyes stayed closed. For a long second, she wasn’t sure why she had awoken, and yet she had. For a long second, she did not know why she remained still, and then she did.

Juliette bolted upright. There was a dark figure at the foot of her bed, rummaging through her coat. The window was wide open, the white satin curtain blowing like a second phantom.

Juliette pulled the knife from under her pillow and threw it.

The mysterious intruder immediately grunted. He was masked, clothed in black from head to toe, but her blade had embedded into the side of his arm, a shining thing that reflected the light as the intruder jerked around, trying to pull it out. By then Juliette was already up, launching herself on the intruder and throwing him to the floor. She rammed her elbow into his neck, keeping him down.

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded.

The intruder bucked and kicked her off. He wasn’t bothering with the knife in his arm anymore. He was trying to get out.

Juliette’s head slammed hard into the bedframe, colliding with such intensity that she was immediately seeing double. Though she recovered fast, pushing herself onto her stomach with a livid cough, the intruder was already up. There was something in his hands. Something blue.

The vaccine.

The intruder ran out.

“No!” Juliette yelled. “No—goddammit!” She staggered to her feet, then shoved on her shoes. She pulled her coat around her shoulders so roughly that her weapons almost fell out, but with one hand digging around for her pistol, she kicked open her door and slapped a hand repeatedly on the one next door. The intruder was already out of sight. Downstairs, though the floor was dark and the fountain was switched off, the front door was wide, wide open.

“Roma!” Juliette hissed. “Roma, get outside now!”

She took off running. The good thing about having no pajamas to change into was that she was dressed already, her coat billowing after her like a cape in the wind. She charged into the night, searching the streets.

There.

“Juliette!”

Her head whipped back. Roma was coming toward her, his hair disheveled, but otherwise fully dressed too.

“What’s going on?”

“Go the other way, circle around the forest patch,” Juliette snapped, pointing down the street, where it led into a dense cluster of trees. “He took the vial! Find him!”

Pulling the safety on her pistol, Juliette sprinted directly into the trees. She twisted in and out of the thin bamboo trunks, shoes coming down on the dead leaves underfoot, and spotted a flash of movement: a blur of the intruder swerving sharply left. She didn’t hesitate. She aimed and shot, but he ducked, and the bullet missed. Again and again, Juliette shot into the night, sending her bullets upon the briefest flash of movement, but then the intruder dove into a particularly dense grouping of bamboo, and by the time Juliette was there too, she had lost sight of him.

“Tā mā de,” she spat, kicking a bamboo stalk. She should have known better; outside the safety of her house, without her usual retinue of Scarlet guards, she should have slept with one eye open, or at least with all her valuables clutched close to her chest. She had known there was someone after them, someone on their tail. But how was she to know that some masked man would climb in through the damn second-story window? And why take the vaccine? Why not just kill her?

Juliette smacked the bamboo again. It didn’t make her feel any better. It just made her hand throb. She couldn’t tell her father about this. He would use it as another reason why Juliette needed backup—needed a group of men watching her surroundings for her, as if they wouldn’t have been just as useless in this situation, stationed outside her room. As if they wouldn’t have just gotten in her way.

Do better. Juliette’s fist closed hard. Never mind her father. If she wanted to prove to herself that she didn’t need any damn help, she had to stop letting her guard down. She was the heir of the Scarlet Gang. How was she to hold on to an empire when she couldn’t hold on to the belongings in her pocket?

Footfalls suddenly sounded off to the side, and Juliette whirled to attention, pointing her pistol. The crunching leaves came to a stop. Juliette relaxed and put her pistol away. “Did you see him?”

“Not a flicker,” Roma replied, approaching cautiously. “We lost the vaccine?”

“Yeah,” Juliette grumbled. “And my knife.”

“That’s what you’re worried about?”

Roma folded his arms. His gaze was pinned on her, and Juliette suddenly resisted the urge to wipe at her face. It was bare, her cosmetics removed before she slept.

“Convenient, isn’t it?” Roma said. “The vaccine we both acquired that you insisted on safekeeping has gone missing to a mysterious bump in the night.”

Juliette’s eyes widened. “You think I orchestrated this?” she demanded. “Does this look”—she whirled around to show him the back of her neck, a hand sweeping her loose hair up—“like something I would orchestrate?”

She felt the winter wind sting her bare skin, prickling against the wet blood that slowly trickled down the base of her skull. Roma gave a sharp intake of breath. Before Juliette could stop him, he had reached out and brushed a gentle finger near the wound.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “That was unfair.”

Juliette released her hair, stepping away. She thinned her lips, the wound at her neck pulsating with a relentless sensation now that she had focused on it. The bedframe had been as hard as rock. She was lucky it had only sliced a surface wound and not cracked her skull right open.

“It’s fine,” she grumbled, sticking her cold hands into her pockets. “It’s not as if—” Juliette stopped, her hand coming upon a crinkle of paper. With a gasp, she yanked it out, drawing Roma’s concern again until he registered what she had retrieved.

“The second vial,” he said.

Juliette nodded. “Since we’re already in the vicinity, how do you feel about a small trip tomorrow morning before we return?”