“Let the city weep,” she hissed. “We are past hope, past cure, past help.”
She pulled the pin.
“Juliette!”
Juliette whirled around, her hand tight around the grenade. For a fleeting second, she thought it was Roma on her balcony, perching on the railing once again. Then her vision sharpened, and she realized her ears were playing tricks on her, for it was not Roma sliding open her glass doors but Benedikt.
“What are you doing?” Benedikt hissed, striding in.
Juliette, on instinct, took a step back. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. “You have to go—”
“Why? So you can blow yourself up?” Benedikt asked. “Roma is still alive. I need your help.”
The rush of relief almost caused Juliette to drop the grenade, but she tightened her hold just in time, keeping the lever pressed down. When she closed her eyes—overwhelmed by the sheer knowledge of this one little thing that the universe had granted her—she was so grateful that tears sprang up immediately.
“I’m glad you evaded capture,” Juliette said, her voice quiet. “Of all people, you will be able to get him out.”
“Oh, please.”
Juliette’s eyes snapped open, so shocked by Benedikt’s tone that her tears receded. He pointed at the grenade in her hand. “Do you think that’s worth it? What will it do to blow up a few Nationalists? They will build their ranks again! They will pick a new leader from Beijing, from Wuhan, from wherever else there are people. The war will still be fought. The conflict will go on.”
“I have a duty here,” Juliette managed shakily. “If I can do one thing—”
“You want to do one thing?” Benedikt asked. “Let’s go blow up the monsters. Let’s stop Dimitri. But this?” He jammed a thumb in the direction of her door. The sounds of the party outside continued to filter through. “This is inevitable, Juliette. This is civil war, and you cannot disrupt it.”
Juliette did not know what to say. She closed both hands around the grenade and stared at it. Benedikt let her stand like that for a long moment, let her roil in her conflicting emotions, before turning on his heel and cursing under his breath, muttering, “First Marshall, then you. Everyone is just dying to self-sacrifice themselves.”
“Marshall?”
Benedikt grimaced. As if remembering that he had broken onto enemy ground, he wandered out to the balcony again and peered around, watching for movement. “Dimitri intercepted the Scarlets and took Roma and Alisa. Marshall got looped in too when he was trying to rescue them. Now it’s just me and you. We really do not have long, Juliette.”
“Has Dimitri recruited the workers?” Juliette asked, her heart pounding in her ears.
“Yes,” Benedikt confirmed. “At this point I don’t even know if Dimitri is still intent on taking the White Flowers. With just about every gangster either dead or imprisoned or having fled the city, he’s far more concerned with building a base of power among the Communists.”
“Then why did he take Roma? If not to end the Montagov line—”
“It’s symbolic, I suspect. Kill the gangsters. Kill the imperialists. Kill foreign influence in the city. A public execution as a last-ditch war cry for the workers in the city before Nationalists stomp them out. And then Dimitri and his monsters will flee south with the rest of the Communists, and the war will rage on.”
Juliette sucked in a ragged inhale. Was that how this would end? Lourens could sneak a vaccine into the city’s water supply, but the whole country? The whole world? If Dimitri fled with the Communists, high off the power that his acquired arms and money and monsters gave him, what was the limit? Where would it stop?
“Look,” Benedikt said, cutting into Juliette’s panic, his voice floating in from the balcony. “Either way, I think we can rescue them. Roma, Marshall, and Alisa—we can get them away from Dimitri and leave the city for good. But you need to help me.”
The immediate agreement was on her tongue. And yet Juliette was having such trouble making the move to go.
We punish traitors. And if Juliette wishes to defect to the White Flowers’ cause, then she may die along with them.
It wasn’t a new development. She had turned traitor five years ago, that windy day on the Bund when she befriended Roma Montagov. She had turned traitor all those times refusing to push her knife into him. She had turned traitor long before she put her bullet in her own cousin, because if loyalty meant being cruel to a fault, then she could not do it.
Her parents would mourn. They would be mourning a version of her that did not exist.
“I love you both so much,” she murmured, “but you are killing me.”
Benedikt’s head popped back into the room. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” Juliette said, snapping into action. “I’ll come.”
“Oh.” Benedikt almost seemed surprised by Juliette’s turn in attitude. He eyed her as she eyed her room, allowing herself one last look around. “You’re still holding . . . um—”
Juliette reached for the pin and slid it back into the grenade. Gently, she returned the weapon to her shoebox and tucked it into her wardrobe once more. Before she closed the doors again, she pulled out one of her flapper dresses.
“Let me change first. I’ll be fast.”
Benedikt frowned as if to advise against such a flashy choice, but then Juliette pulled out a coat too, her brow raised in challenge, and Benedikt nodded. “I’ll wait on the balcony.”
Enough time had passed for Juliette’s hair to dry, but it had been a downpour outside, and her clothes were still sticking to her. In her effort to yank off her dress, it seemed she might have yanked a bit too hard, because as she shed it, there came a plink! of something hitting the carpet. Had she broken off a button? A sequin?
She squinted at the floor. No—it was something blue. It was . . . a small pill, its color as shiny as a gem. Beside it lay a slip of paper, slightly damp as it fluttered to a stop.
“Oh my God,” Juliette muttered, unfolding the note. Bai Tasa’s hand on her back. The quick swipe against her when he removed it. He had put these items into her dress pocket.
Use wisely. —Lourens
Bai Tasa was an undercover White Flower.
A disbelieving laugh burst through her throat, but Juliette choked it down fast, not wanting to concern Benedikt, who already seemed to think she was a moment away from leaping off the deep end. Juliette picked up the pill, examining it carefully. When she slipped on her new dress, she put it snugly into her new pocket, dry and clean, then transferred over the rest of what had not fallen out—her little lighter, a single hairpin. That was all. She had no weapons, no valuables, nothing save the clothes on her back and a warm coat, tightened around her waist with a sash.
She hurried to the balcony. When Benedikt turned around, his hair was ruffling in the wind, expression earnest and in such resemblance to Roma that it hurt her chest to look at him.
“Let’s go.”
Forty-Six
Dimitri announced the execution to be at nightfall, so I gather we do not have much time left.”
Juliette looked up at the gray clouds, clutching her fists tight. “Yes, but for your plan to work, we must know exactly how the monsters transform. We cannot just pin our chances of success on sheer hope. Now!”