Twenty-Three

Twenty-Three

Juliette pulled Alisa back into the courtyard. Briefly, she thought she caught Rosalind and Kathleen out of the corner of her eye, but her cousins needed to stay by her mother’s side, and so they did not come after her, nor ask what she was doing.

“I promise I’m not going to hurt you.” Juliette glanced over her shoulder again. Roma had made it out of the crowd, a splatter of blood on his collar. His eyes were ablaze, vivid in their violence. “I just need to bait your brother somewhere quiet. Run!”

They ran until Juliette found a thin alleyway. She shoved Alisa in fast, sparing no time before she kicked several trash bags, stacking them tall so they acted like a barricade. Then she pushed Alisa to hide, slotted behind the bags and out of view.

It wasn’t that she was trying to scare Roma. She simply had a feeling that Alisa didn’t need to see whatever was going to happen next.

Roma came into view, his chest rising up and down from exertion. With one glance at the tight grip he had on the pistol in his hand, Juliette knew she was right.

“Why are you doing this?” Roma spat. His expression was hateful—but his words were tortured. Like he wished she would just disappear instead, so that he didn’t have to deal with her, so that he didn’t have to be vengeful. “What the hell are you doing?”

Juliette held out her hands. As if showing that she was unarmed would make any difference.

“Listen to me for a second,” she pleaded. “I have information. About the blackmailer. It might be coming from within the White Flowers. I’m here to help—”

Juliette flinched, narrowly sidestepping his first shot.

“I was going to make it quick,” Roma intoned. “As a mercy. For what we once were.”

“Will you listen to me?” Juliette snapped. She sprang forward, and the gun went off again, missing her, but so barely that she felt the heat skim her shoulder. His pistol was still smoking when she closed her hand around the middle of the barrel. Roma tried to shoot again, but by then Juliette had turned the pistol skyward, letting him empty out three bullets before she thumped a hand hard on the inside of Roma’s elbow. His arm slackened, and she threw the gun out of his grip.

“This wasn’t hard for you to understand a month ago,” Juliette hissed. “The city is in danger. I can help you.”

“And you know what I have realized since then?” His hand darted into his pocket for another gun, and Juliette tackled him fast, throwing him to the ground of the alley and using her two hands to pin his arm to the floor. The move was familiar, like that first time Roma ambushed her near Chenghuangmiao, but if the memory meant anything to him, Roma didn’t show it.

“I have realized,” he continued, keeping his arm still for that moment, “I do not care about this city, or the danger it brings onto itself. I cared for people, and now the people are gone.”

He kicked out, and Juliette rolled away to avoid the hit, swallowing her wince of pain when she landed hard on her elbows and her forehead nearly smacked into the rough wall of the alley. Roma was up in the blink of an eye, looming over her with the gun, and she didn’t think; she just lunged. This was a true fight now—vicious and unflinching. Each time Roma tried to shoot, Juliette tried to disarm, but he had not known her so long for nothing, and he predicted her moves well enough that Juliette’s head was soon spinning from colliding against the concrete ground multiple times. Throwing herself out of harm’s way too fast and too hard was painful, but it would sure as hell be more painful if she didn’t avoid his quick hits and strikes.

“Roma!” Juliette spat. Her elbow slammed hard against a stack of bricks, having finally writhed out of their grapple with his blade in her hand. Victory. She threw the blade, hearing it clatter and spin out of the alley. “Listen to me!”

He stilled. She almost thought she had gotten through to him, but then his eyes narrowed, and he hissed, “The time for listening has long passed.”

He dove for the blade.

From the very moment he raised his arm, Juliette knew he had aimed too high. Roma had always been a bad thrower, which never made any sense because he was so damn good with his bullets. But he loosed his grip from the end of the alley, and time slowed down; Juliette tracked the blade, predicting it to sail so far above her head that it was comical—

Then Alisa Montagova stood up from her hiding place, scrambling to her feet and calling out a plea to end the fight.

“Please, don’t hurt each other—” Before Juliette could think, could even take a moment to gasp, she shot up, diving in front of Alisa. She didn’t realize what she had done—not really—until she came to a stop in front of the other girl and there was the hard thunk! by her ear.

Alisa’s eyes grew wide, her words cutting off and her hand flying to her mouth.

The pain did not come at first. It never did: a blade entering always felt cold and then foreign. Only seconds later, as if her nerve endings had finally registered what happened, did intense, sharp agony reverberate outward from the wound.

“Mudak,” Juliette managed, turning to look at the blade half-embedded in her shoulder, then at Roma. His jaw was slack, face drained of color. The wound, meanwhile, immediately started to bleed, a steady stream of red running its way down her dress. “You just had to throw the one with a jagged edge?”

That seemed to startle Roma into action. He walked forward, slowly at first, and then at a run, nearing Juliette and grabbing hold of her arm. She watched him examine the wound. Even if Juliette were uninjured, she didn’t find a reason to be frightened. His anger—however momentarily—had dissipated.

“Alisa, run to the nearest safe house and get the emergency first-aid box.”

Alisa’s eyes grew to enormous proportions. “Are you planning to stitch her up yourself? She needs the hospital.”

“Oh, that would go down well,” Roma said tightly. “Shall we take her to a Scarlet or a White Flower facility? Who will shoot a little slower?”

Alisa balled up her fists. Juliette was still alert enough to pick up the clamor of the fight coming from a distance, but she couldn’t quite feel her fingers anymore, nor squeeze her own fists.

“It’s only down the road, Alisa.” Roma pointed forward. “Hurry.”

With a huff, Alisa spun on her heel and hurried off.

Juliette breathed out. She almost expected to see her breath, as she would on a cold winter’s day. Instead, there was nothing: the coldness was coming from inside her. A numbness was flooding her limbs, little prickles like every cell in her body was trying to go to sleep.

“Put pressure on the wound, would you?” she asked casually.

“I know,” Roma snapped. “Sit.”

Juliette sat. Her head was spinning, doubles and triples appearing in her field of vision. She watched Roma tear his jacket off, balling it up and adjusting the fabric around the blade, pressing as hard as he dared to stop the blood from running. Juliette did not protest. She only bit down on her lip, bearing the pain.

“What is wrong with you?” Roma muttered after a while, breaking the silence. “Why would you do that?”

“Stop you from knifing your own sister?” Juliette closed her eyes. Her ears were humming with white noise. “You’re welcome.”

Roma’s frustration was tangible. She knew exactly what he was thinking—why take a hit for Alisa when she had been the one threatening to shoot his sister at the hospital? None of this made any sense. Of course it did not make sense. Because Juliette couldn’t make up her damn mind.

“Thank you,” Roma said, sounding like he could hardly believe he was saying those words. “Now open your eyes, Juliette.”

“I’m not going to sleep.”

“Open. Them.”

Juliette snapped her eyes open, if only to glare at the alley space in front of her. It was then that Alisa returned clutching a box to her chest, her cheeks red and her breath coming in gasps.

“Ran as fast as I could,” she huffed. “I’ll watch the alley while you . . .” Alisa trailed off, not knowing precisely what Roma was going to do.

She dropped the box by her brother, then ran for the other end of the alley. When Juliette strained her ears again, she realized that there was no shouting in the distance anymore. Alisa had likely noted the same thing: the fight was over. The gangsters would be fanning out soon, looking for them.

If Juliette was going to talk to Roma, she needed to do it now, before it was too late. He had already stopped trying to stanch the wound, flipping the box open and unscrewing a bottle of something pungent. He set it aside.

“I’m cutting your coat off,” Roma said. Another blade appeared in his hand, slicing through the fabric at her neck before Juliette could protest. When he peeled the coat away from her thin dress, all Juliette could smell was the metallic tang of blood. If her shoulder hadn’t been in overpowering pain, she would have thought some stray alley cat was giving birth nearby.

Muttering a curse, Roma put his fingers to the zipper at the back of Juliette’s dress.

“You know,” Juliette said, barely stopping her teeth from chattering, “you used to ask before you undressed me.”

“Shut up.” Roma tugged the zipper down. Just before he peeled aside the dress, he yanked the blade out.

“For crying out—”

“I do suggest keeping it down,” Roma said tightly. “Would you like a handkerchief to bite?”

Juliette’s head was too light to respond immediately. She was going to faint. She was definitely going to faint.

“I’ll bite nothing unless it’s your hand,” Juliette muttered. “Raw. And detached.”

In response, Roma merely passed her the blade he had stabbed her with.

“Hold this.”

Juliette reached for it with the arm that did not have a weeping gouge in its attached shoulder, then clutched the blade to her chest, holding her dress up. She blinked hard to keep herself alert, then watched Roma as he shifted to a crouch beside her, making quick work of finding a clean rag in the box and dousing it with the foul-smelling bottle.

It took everything in her willpower to hold back her scream when Roma clamped the rag to her wound. The antiseptic stung like a thousand new cuts, and Juliette had half a mind to ask whether Roma was actually poisoning her instead. His eyes were not on his task; he was scrutinizing Juliette instead, searching for a reason, for the slightest fracture in her face that would give way to an explanation.

Juliette blew out a slow breath. Despite the agonizing pain, she could feel the bleeding crawl to a stop. She could feel her head clear up, the fuzz lessening.

She had a job here to do.

“You’ve been infiltrated by Communists.” Juliette turned her head ever so slightly—not enough to disturb her shoulder but enough to lock eyes with Roma. “There’s a sect in the White Flowers working with them, giving over your resources and weaponry. I suspect the monsters are emerging from this very collaboration.”

Roma did not react. He only removed the rag and retrieved what looked to be a needle and a thread. “I’m going to suture the wound.”

Juliette’s first instinct was to snap that he couldn’t. She had no doubt that he would do a fine job; running about in this city meant knowing how to snap an enemy’s leg with two fingers and also how to piece an ally’s body back together. But was she an ally? Would he piece her together with a steady hand?

Roma made an impatient noise, waving the needle. Though she imagined she could probably get up and get to the hospital with a gaping hole in her shoulder, Juliette winced and relented.

“Wait.”

She dropped the blade she was holding and reached for the lighter in her pocket. Wordlessly, she flipped its lid and struck her thumb on the spark wheel. When the flame sprang to life, Roma brought the needle near to sterilize it without being asked, like he had already read Juliette’s intention. It was easy sometimes to forget how well they had known each other before everything went awry. To forget that they were once as familiar as halves of the same soul, predicting each other’s next words. Here, with Roma absently tapping the back of his hand against Juliette’s, asking her to put the flame away when the needle glowed red, Juliette could not forget.

“Don’t stitch too deep. I don’t want a scar,” she grumbled, snapping her lighter closed.

Roma frowned. “You’re hardly in the position to negotiate the size of your scars.”

“You threw the knife at me.”

“And now I’m stitching you up. Do you have any more complaints to air?”

Juliette resisted the urge to strangle him. “Did you hear any of what I said before?” she asked instead. “About the Communists?”

“Yes,” Roma replied evenly. He pulled the thread into the needle. “And it doesn’t make sense at all. We don’t want the Communists taking the city. Why would we help their revolution?”

Roma leaned in, and the first prick of the needle entered her skin. Juliette gritted her teeth hard but otherwise withstood the pain. She had suffered worse, she tried to remind herself. She had suffered worse simply by smashing wine bottles too hard in New York, which had ended with her needing stitches all along her arm.

At least those had been done in a hospital.

“I don’t know why,” Juliette said tightly. “But it’s happening, and right under your nose.”

Her shoulder twitched, and Roma’s hand came around her arm immediately, holding her still. His fingers were hot, burning into her skin.

“And what,” Roma asked, pulling the thread through again, “do you want me to do about it?”

“What you were supposed to,” she replied. “Find the Frenchman. The monster on the train.”

The needle went in too deep. Juliette gasped and Roma cursed, his grip tightening to stop her from leaping up.

“Stay still,” he commanded.

“You’re clearly trying to kill me.”

“I’m obviously not very good at it because you remain alive, so stay still!”

Juliette exhaled sharply through her nose, letting Roma resume the last of the stitching. Though she tried not to move, she continued eyeing him until he shifted uncomfortably, his eyes flicking to her and narrowing.

“The monster,” Juliette said again. “Everything will be clearer from him onward.”

But Roma shook his head and held his hand out. Juliette passed him the blade beside her—the very same one he had stabbed her with—and he cut the thread at the end of his stitching.

“I can’t,” he said shortly. “My hands are full. As you can see”—his jaw tightened, and he inclined his head toward the other end of the alley where Alisa was keeping guard—“the blood feud is whittling us down alongside our mass casualties from the madness. I fear sending resources into finding the blackmailer will only incite more attacks, and while I hear you have your vaccine already, we—”

“I’ll give it to you. Samples. Papers. Take it to your labs to re-create.”

Roma’s look of vexation faded for complete surprise. It didn’t take him long, however, to shake himself from his stupor and get back on task with a frown, retrieving a bandage from the box and laying it over Juliette’s shoulder.

“You have permission?”

Of course not, Juliette scoffed silently. In what world would the Scarlet Gang be willing to pass their vaccine on to the White Flowers? No one in that gang did anything out of the goodness of their hearts unless a good heart could bring in a fortune on the black market.

Aloud, Juliette only said, “No.”

Roma narrowed his eyes again and pressed down too hard on the bandage, not entirely by accident. “I somehow doubt that you are willing to betray your people, Juliette.”

“It is not betraying my people,” Juliette said, taking the stinging sensation. “It is going against my father. My own people will not suffer if the White Flowers suffer less too. Your loss is not my gain.”

Roma taped down the bandage. Seeing that he was done, Juliette used her uninjured arm to reach for the fabric of her dress and yank it over the wound, congratulating herself for not letting out a pained shriek.

“Isn’t it?” Roma asked. He shifted behind her again and reached for her zipper, but he did not immediately pull it up. His fingers hovered there, a hairsbreadth away from her skin, yet she could still feel the proximity like a physical touch against her bare back.

“Not when it comes to the madness.” Juliette’s throat was dry. She could not see his face. She did not know how to read this. “I can help you orchestrate a break-in”—Roma suddenly pulled the zip up—“but in return, give me the monster in the White Flowers. I will get to the root of this.”

She felt his warm breath curl around her neck, as heavy as everything unsaid between them. A sudden pressure came on her other arm then, and she realized Roma was helping her stand. Almost as one, they rose upright, following the path of the breeze as it blew into the alley and swept skyward.

Juliette turned around. The wind settled. By all means, it was cold in that alley, but she couldn’t feel it. Her coat was in two pieces on the ground, and her dress was torn at the back. Roma’s jacket was kicked aside, soaked with blood, and his sleeves were pushed up his arms, kept away from his stained hands. When they stood like this, close enough that their heartbeats were in conversation, Juliette did not know what coldness was.

“Agreed?” she asked, her voice almost a whisper.

Roma stepped back. Like that, the chill crept in, swirling the front of Juliette’s dress, raising goose bumps all along her arms.

“For the vaccine,” Roma said. “Agreed.”

One more day of survival. One more day of Roma letting her off the hook without putting a gun to her head. How long could she keep this up? How long before she either caved or just let him shoot his goddamn bullet?

Juliette bobbed her head in a mock curtsy, turning to go. Only then Roma held his arm out, stopping her before she could take a single step.

“Why did you do it?” he asked. “Why did you jump in front of Alisa?”

Juliette’s lips parted. Because I cannot bear to see you hurt, even when I am the one hurting you the most.

She wanted to say it aloud. It was on her tongue. It burned the whole length of her throat, begging to be let out. What was the harm in another secret between them? What could they not withstand if they had already fought a monster and the stars themselves?

Then Alisa, from the other end of the alley, called, “We’ve got people incoming. Juliette, Perhaps you should go.”

Juliette heard the voices too. They were still some distance away, but keenly audible, overlapping one another in Russian. Laughing, they spoke of dead Scarlets, of her people falling to the ground with their lifeless eyes staring up at the sky.

It was that which had Juliette remembering herself. It was that which jolted the truth back to the forefront of her mind, like a slap to her face.

This wasn’t about fighting for love. This was about staying alive.

“You ask why?” Juliette said quietly. She swallowed hard—leaving nothing but lies studded in her mouth like extra teeth. “It stopped you from trying to kill me, did it not? I keep telling you, Roma—I need your cooperation.”

In an instant, the tentative readiness for peace fled from Roma’s expression. He was a fool if he thought the truth would make it easier. It would only tear them apart to think that this could end any other way: both of them consumed by the blood feud.

“Thursday,” Juliette said. The White Flower voices were getting closer. “Chenghuangmiao at the ninth hour. Don’t be late.”

Juliette walked away before the other White Flowers could happen upon the alley, before Roma saw the tears rise to her eyes, utterly, utterly frustrated that this was what they had been reduced to.

Roma breathed out, kicking his bloody jacket. It was unsalvageable, but he hardly cared.

“Roma!” one of the White Flowers exclaimed, seeing him in the alley. They looked between him and Alisa, noting the blood on Roma’s hands and his haggard appearance. There was definitely a bruise or two on his face after his fight with Juliette. “What are you doing here?”

“Leave us,” he snapped.

The White Flowers hurried away without another word. Slowly Alisa walked back to him, cocking her head to the side. Instead of hurrying to ask what had just happened, she started packing up the first-aid box.

“Dammit!” Roma hissed aloud. He had had her. Right here. He could kill however many bodies he wanted on the streets, land perfect shots upon the Scarlets that ran at him with knives. But none of that mattered if he couldn’t strike a killing blow on the heart of the Scarlet Gang. On Juliette. Revenge on disposable parts was not revenge at all, but cowardice. And maybe he was a coward. He was a coward who couldn’t stop loving a wicked thing.

“What was that all about?” Alisa asked plainly.

Roma scrubbed at his hair. A dark lock fell into his eyes, covering his whole world in black. “I should be asking you if you’re all right first.” He sighed. “Are you hurt?”

Alisa shook her head. “Why would I be?” She sat down, leaning up against the wall. “Juliette jumped in front of that knife.”

She had. And Roma could not comprehend a single reason why . . . or at least one that made sense, no matter what Juliette had said.

“So?” Alisa prompted. “Why were you trying to kill Juliette?”

Roma decided to sit too. He shuffled beside his sister like they were awaiting a bedtime story, not hiding out in an alley stained with blood.

“Well, two generations ago, her grandfather killed ours. . . .”

Alisa wasn’t buying it. “Leave the blood feud out of this. You were collaborating with her, and then suddenly you’re not. I’ve heard the rumors—the ones that seem logical and the ones that are so preposterous to be laughable. What is the truth?”

Roma pushed his hair out of his eyes. His pulse was still raging, his palms slightly damp. “It is . . . it’s complicated.”

“Nothing in this world is complicated, only misunderstood.”

Roma peered at Alisa, his nose scrunching. Alisa scrunched the exact same button nose back, and the siblings suddenly seemed like mirror images of the other.

“You are entirely too wise for your young age.”

“You are nineteen. It is not far by much.” Alisa tapped her knee. “Does Papa know?”

“It was his idea,” Roma muttered. Seeing that he could not keep his sister in the dark anymore, he started at the beginning, from the moment Lord Montagov called him into his office to discuss the plan and then the snide, knowing glance Roma had caught from Dimitri in the living room.

“The last of it was in Zhouzhuang,” he finished. “Then the Scarlets blew up our safe house, and I figured the alliance was called off.”

Alisa was staring at the wall of the alley, clearly mulling through the events. The gears in her head were turning, her frown deepening. She wouldn’t be able to make sense of anything. It was a waste of energy to try.

“I almost wanted to stay.”

Alisa’s frown disappeared quickly, surprised by his sudden pivot. “In Zhouzhuang?” She snorted. “It’s so quiet.”

“We need a little quiet. This city is always so loud.” Roma tipped his head up, staring at the flurrying clouds. The desire to run had been pulling at the edge of his mind for years: a constant whisper surrounding the idea of escape. He remembered one late night leaning on his windowsill, his cheek still smarting from Lord Montagov’s discipline, wishing he could pick himself up and fade into a life somewhere outside these city boundaries. He wanted air that didn’t smell like factory smoke. He wanted to sit under the cover of a large tree, lean upon the trunk and see nothing but green for miles. Mostly, that night in 1923, he wanted Juliette back, and he wanted to take her and run, far from the clutches of their families.

Only he also knew exactly what that meant: leaving the White Flowers without an heir, carving open a space that any hateful soul could fill.

“It is loud because you listen,” Alisa said.

“It is loud because everybody’s always talking at me.” Roma sighed, pressing the heel of his bloody palm into his eyes. Constant demands from the White Flowers. Constant demands from his father. Constant demands from the city itself. “I entertain that it must be nicer to live simply instead. To catch fish and sell it on the fresh market every day for livable wages instead of trading mounds of opium for amounts of cash we’ll never need.”

Alisa thought on it. She pulled her legs up to her chest and leaned her arms on her knees. “I think,” she said, “that is something you say because we have been rich all our lives.”

Roma smiled tightly. Indeed. They had never been born for a simple life, and so they did not deserve it either. It had taken generations to climb to where they were now, and who was Roma to throw it away?

All the same, that part of him never seemed to go away. The part that wanted to run, the part that wanted a different life. If only he could erase every memory of his earlier years, maybe he could erase these thoughts too, but he would always remember lying in a park with Juliette—fifteen and carefree, his head in her lap and her lips pressing a soft kiss to his cheek, the grass under his fingers and the birds fluttering in song on the branches above him. He would always remember that little nook where nothing could disturb them, a world of their own, and thinking this—this is the only complete happiness I have ever felt.

It was that part of him he could never kill, and when Juliette was stitched into those memories like a finished hem, how could he ever kill her?

A sound came from the other end of the alley then—a pebble skittering across the pavement. Seconds later Benedikt came into view, frowning at the sight of his two cousins on the ground.

“What are you doing? We need to go.”

Roma got to his feet without argument, nudging the first-aid box out of sight and reaching a hand out to Alisa. “Come on.” He ruffled her blond hair as she stood, the two of them trailing after Benedikt as they made their way home.

It wasn’t until they were trekking back into White Flower territory and Alisa started dragging her feet upon the gravel that Roma suddenly blinked, his eyes coming to the back of Benedikt’s head. He hadn’t thought much about how his cousin had found them. But now, as Benedikt chided Alisa to walk properly and stop ruining her shoes, he realized that he had heard no footsteps before Benedikt’s approach.

So how long had Benedikt been lingering outside the alley, listening to their conversation?