Forty

Forty

They had boarded up the lab, going as far as to smash one of the windows in advance, so Scarlets passing by would think it already scouted and searched. Any moment now, the bugle call would sound across the city, summoning all those under Nationalist command.

Juliette wondered if any Scarlets mourned. If, in hearing of her death, they had felt a genuine drop of sadness, or if she was merely a figurehead they had been forced to respect. By now her parents had surely poked through her scheme, had received condolences back from the Nationalists about their dead daughter and searched through the house to find her missing. It would not take long to put two and two together and figure that Juliette was the one who had announced her own death.

“Miss Cai.”

Juliette lifted her head off Lourens’s kitchen table. His apartment was at the back of the labs, and after throwing a pile of shelves onto the floor to make the hallways look ransacked, they had deemed it unlikely any of the gangsters or soldiers would find their way here. Still, Juliette had shoved a knife across the door latch, and if anyone was to try barging through, they would have to snap the steel first.

“Yes?”

Lourens passed her a thin blanket. Juliette had trouble reaching for it, only because she could not see where she was reaching. She had been awake for long enough that her vision was starting to blur, and there was only one candle for light, flickering in the adjoined living room. The sun would be up any second, but they had just finished taping the windows of Lourens’s apartment with layers upon layers of newspapers, blacking out the outside and preventing the outside from looking in.

“If all is settled, I am going back to sleep,” Lourens announced.

Roma looked up suddenly, frowning from across the apartment. He was on the sofa with Alisa, a needle and thread in his hand as he fixed a rip in Alisa’s sleeve, leaning the both of them so closely into the candlelight that there was a risk Alisa’s blond hair would catch aflame.

“Lourens,” Roma said, almost chidingly as he finished his stitching. “How can you sleep? There’s about to be mass slaughter outside.”

“I highly suggest you children do the same,” Lourens chided back. He plucked an orange from his fruit bowl and set it down in front of Juliette. “Take it from someone who ran once too: when you leave all that you know, you want to be well rested.”

Juliette picked up the orange. “Thank you?”

Lourens was already shuffling away, moving from the kitchen into the living room. “Miss Montagova, you will take the spare room, yes? Miss Cai, you should find that the sofa will suffice, and, Roma, I will find a floor sheet for you.”

Juliette watched Roma frown, watched him look at the sofa and mentally measure its width, finding it would probably fit two.

“You don’t have to—”

“Thank you!” Juliette repeated, cutting in. Lourens disappeared down the hallway.

“Juliette, what—”

“He’s old, Roma.” She pushed herself up from the kitchen table and took the orange with her, peeling the skin into neat strips. “Are you trying to horrify him with your social impropriety?”

“Social impropriety while there is mass slaughter outside,” Roma grumbled.

Juliette pulled an orange segment free and plopped it in her mouth. She started to walk around the living room, inspecting the various vases that Lourens owned. As she poked her nose here and there, she heard Alisa begin to mutter to Roma, only Alisa’s version of muttering was loud enough that each word was quite clearly enunciated.

“Roma.”

“What is it?” He prodded her sleeve. “Another rip?”

“No,” Alisa whispered, frowning and drawing her arm away. “So did you . . . ? Did you marry Juliette Cai?”

Juliette choked, the orange immediately lodging in her throat.

“I—” Even by the dim light, Roma looked faintly red. “We are well acquainted.”

Half spluttering, half holding back the most inappropriately timed laugh, Juliette managed to cough the orange out of her windpipe. Roma, meanwhile, cleared his throat, getting to his feet and nudging his sister up too.

“Come on, Alisa. Go get some rest.”

He quickly pushed Alisa down the hallway, exchanging some words with Lourens before Lourens retired into his room. Juliette thought she heard vaccine and are you certain? There was some more murmuring from the guest room before Roma emerged again, fumbling around in the dark with something that looked like a mat.

“Lourens insisted I take this,” Roma explained, setting it onto the floor.

By now Juliette had finished her orange and calmed down, seated upon the sofa. The humor was an instinctive reaction; the city was collapsing outside, and blood was going to run so thickly that the roads would turn to an ocean of red. Laughing was the only way she wouldn’t cry.

“And will you?” Juliette asked.

Roma’s head jerked up. His eyes narrowed, trying to gauge if Juliette was asking a genuine question or teasing.

She smiled. Roma exhaled in relief, kicking aside the mat.

“No one holds a straight face like you do,” he said, joining her on the sofa. “I’m still mad at you, dorogaya.”

Juliette reeled back, placing a hand to her heart. “Mad at me? I thought we already got past that.”

“I already forgave you for everything else,” Roma said. “I’m mad at you for having me think you were dead. Do you know how horrible that was?”

Juliette shifted her knee. It pressed up against Roma’s leg. He didn’t move away. She would take that as a forgiving sign. “Benedikt lived with the same feeling for months.”

“Which is why I didn’t think you would pull it twice,” Roma said. “Which is why I thought it to be true.”

Juliette reached out with her hand. Gently, she pressed her palm to his cheek, fingers skimming softly on skin, and Roma reached up to clasp his hand on hers.

“I should be mad at you too,” she said quietly. “How dare you take a gun to your head as if your life is something that can be thrown away.”

Roma leaned into her touch with a sigh, his eyes fluttering closed. He looked young. Vulnerable. This was the boy she had fallen in love with, underneath all the harsher layers he needed to wear to survive. But in her mind’s eye, she was remembering the sight before her when she had pushed open the doors to the lab. Roma, his pistol pressed to his temple. Roma, looking ready to shoot.

“I panicked,” he said. “I wouldn’t have pulled the trigger. I only needed Benedikt to believe I would so he could let me go.”

But the threat had to have come from somewhere. The very fact that Benedikt had believed it meant Roma was capable of doing it. Of threatening his own life just to get to her. Juliette couldn’t shake off her own ill ease. She didn’t want to be a girl who incited harm. She didn’t want it, but perhaps by mere virtue of being Juliette Cai, she was the embodiment of this city’s violence.

“You can’t ever do that.” Juliette tightened her fingers. “You can’t choose me above everything else. I will not accept it.”

A beat passed. The candle was dancing vigorously atop the table, casting them both in moving shadows.

“I won’t,” Roma whispered. When he opened his eyes again, slowly to adjust to the dim light, he added, “Don’t leave me, Juliette.”

It sounded like a plea. A plea to the heavens, to the stars, to the forces that drew their fates.

“I would never,” Juliette replied solemnly. Too many times had she done it already. “I will never leave you.”

Roma loosed a soft breath. “I know.” He pressed a kiss to the inside of her wrist. “I think I was more afraid that they took you from me.”

Oh. His admission stirred a tightness in her throat. This was their lives. Constantly operating in fear, even when they were supposed to have power. Wasn’t power supposed to provide control? Wasn’t power supposed to solve everything?

Juliette pulled her hand away, only so she could extend her pinkie finger instead. “With my whole heart,” she promised, “if I have any say in the matter, you will never lose me.”

The candlelight flickered. Roma’s eyes, too, flickered up and down, from her face to her hand.

“Is this . . . ,” he said, “a strange American custom?”

Juliette huffed a short laugh, grabbing Roma’s hand and hooking her pinkie with his. “Yes,” she answered. “It means I cannot break my promise or you may chop my finger off.”

“That’s the Japanese interpretation. Yubikiri.”

Her eyes snapped up. “So you do know what it means!”

Roma didn’t give her the satisfaction of being caught out. His expression forcibly serious, he only lifted her hand and smoothed out her fist, so that all her fingers were separated, her palm held facing him.

“What if I don’t want this one?” he asked, tapping her pinkie. He moved his touch to the one beside—her ring finger—and grazed the length of it. “What if I want this one?”

Juliette’s heart started to thud in her chest. “So morbid,” she remarked.

“Hmmm.” Roma continued to draw a circle about her finger, leaving no question for what he was implying. “I’m not sure if morbidity was what I was going for.”

“Then what?” Juliette wanted to hear it. “What were you going for?”

Roma breathed a laugh. “I’m asking you to marry me.”

All the blood in Juliette’s body rushed to her head. She could feel her cheeks blazing red, not out of embarrassment, but rather because there was such an uproar swirling inside her that the hot surge of emotion had nowhere else to go.

“My pinkie promise isn’t good enough for you?” Juliette teased. “Did Alisa put you up to this?”

This time it was Roma’s turn to press both his palms on Juliette’s cheeks. She had thought it would be too dark to notice her blush, yet Roma noticed, a smile twitching on his lips.

“She doesn’t have the power to put me up to this,” he said. “Marry me, Juliette. Marry me so we can erase the blood feud between us and start utterly anew.”

Juliette inched forward. Roma’s hands dropped to her neck, smoothing back the loose hair curling around her shoulders. He seemed to think that she was leaning in for a kiss, but she was in fact reaching behind him, and with a start, Roma blinked, sighting one of Lourens’s many copies of the Bible in her hands.

“I wasn’t aware that you were religious.”

“I am not,” Juliette replied. “I thought you needed a Bible to get married in this city.”

Roma blinked. “So you’re saying yes?”

“Shǎ guā.” She raised the Bible, pretending to beat him with it. “Do you think I’m holding it for a weapon? Of course I’m saying yes.”

Quick as a flash, Roma had his arms around her, pushing her upon the sofa. The Bible fell to the floor with a thump. A burst of laughter rose to Juliette’s lips, muffled only by Roma’s kiss. For a moment that was all that mattered—Roma, Roma, Roma.

Then there was the faintest sound of gunfire, and both of them gasped, breaking apart to listen. The windows were blacked out. They were safe. Only that didn’t change the reality, didn’t mean the world outside was not brightening with light and running with red.

It had started. Although faint, a bugle call could be heard reverberating through the whole city, trickling even into this apartment. The purging had started.

Juliette sat up, reaching for the fallen Bible. She doubted Lourens would be happy if they scuffed it up.

“I should have tried sending more help,” she whispered. “I should have sent more warning.”

Roma shook his head. “It’s your own people. What were you to do?”

Indeed, that was always the problem. Scarlet or White Flower. Communist or Nationalist. In the end, the only ones who seemed to benefit from so much infighting were the foreigners sitting pretty behind their Concession borders.

“I despise it,” she whispered. “If my people can fire on the masses merely because they have Communist sympathies, I despise them.”

Roma did not say anything. He only brushed her hair behind her ear, letting her tremble in her anger.

“I will be free of my name.” Juliette looked up. “I will take yours.”

There was a moment of stillness, a moment where Roma gazed upon her like he was trying to commit her features to memory. Then:

“Juliette,” he breathed. “It is not as though my name is any better. It is not as though there is less blood on mine. You can call a rose something else, but it remains yet a rose.”

Juliette flinched, hearing a shout outside. “So we are never to change?” she asked. “We are forever blood-soaked roses?”

Roma took her hand. Pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “A rose is a rose, even by another name,” he whispered. “But we choose whether we will offer beauty to the world, or if we will use our thorns to sting.”

They could choose. Love or blood. Hope or hate.

“I love you,” Juliette whispered fiercely. “I need you to know. I love you so much it feels like it could consume me.”

Before Roma could even respond, Juliette lunged for a ball of yarn on the table. Roma watched her in confusion, his brow furrowed as she measured a length of string and pulled a knife from her pocket to slice.

He grew less confused when Juliette took the string and started to wind it around his finger—his right hand, as was customary for Russians. She had remembered. Remembered from their whispered conversations five years ago about a future where they could run away and be together.

“I take you, Roma Montagov,” she said, her voice soft, “to be my lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, until death do us part.” She tied a small, secure knot. “I think I’m missing some vows in between.”

“As well as an officiant and some witnesses”—Roma reached for her knife, cutting his own bit of string—“but at least we have a Bible.”

He took her left hand. Carefully, he wound the string around her fourth finger, making such a delicate effort that Juliette didn’t want to breathe for fear it would distract his task.

“I take you, Juliette Cai,” Roma whispered in concentration, “to be my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, until . . .” He looked up as he finished the knot. Paused. When he spoke again, he did not look away. “No, scratch that. To have and to hold, where even death cannot part us. In this life and the next, for however long our souls remain, mine will always find yours. Those are my vows to you.”

Juliette closed her fist. The string really did feel like a ring: as heavy on her finger as any band of metal. These vows were as substantial as any made in front of a priest or audience. They didn’t need any of those things. They had always been two mirrored souls, the only ones who understood the other in a city that wanted to consume them whole, and now they were joined, mightier when together.

“Even death cannot part us,” she echoed fiercely.

It was a promise that felt colossal. In this life they had been born enemies. In this life they had blood for miles between them, wide enough to run a river, deep enough to forge a valley. In the next, maybe there would be peace.

Outside, metal clashed against metal, an echo ringing all across the city—again, then again. Here, within these four walls, all they could do was hold each other, waiting for noon to come, waiting for the moment they could be free.